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Show RTVER rest of the chill out of my bones. I went back to the landing and sat around watching Saturday afternoon happen. The square was evidently on the main cruising drag because every high school kid in Caruthersville drove by. A carload of musicians drove up and we rapped about my boat. They were working on a pint of vodka and were already pretty well soused. They invited me to come and play with them that night at the Climax Bar and Grill. Shortly thereafter I met Morrel. She was cruising through town with a girl friend in her father's car and she pulled at the park to look out over the river. She was one of those strikingly beautiful young women that dumpy southern towns spawn so prolifically, with long blonde hair, deep brown eyes, and gentle curves, round and soft. She'd been born to break hearts. She stopped to look at the boat and we got acquainted. Morrel was as friendly and charming as she was pretty. Her accent was as smooth as honey (I'm a positive sucker for women with accents) and she was as unselfconscious as a young wild animal. She offered to show me Caruthersville, so I left Thor to guard the boat and got in her car. We drove out a street littered with the flotsam of American civilization-fast-food joints, car washes, beer palaces, used car lots-out to a large rococo cemetery nearly covered up with gravestones, statues, and monuments. Morrel showed me a statue of the Virgin Mary that late at night would cry or wink or wave. We drove past the girls' high school, which like most American high schools looked like a combination prison and workhouse. But I didn't pay much attention to Caruthersville: I couldn't take my eyes off Morrel. Beside the river she pointed out the largest of the Victorian houses, now vacant and boarded up except for the upper-story windows. A river pilot had built the house for his young bride, complete with a widow's walk so that she -164- |
