wouldn’t be. When I woke up this morning I thought maybe the good
fairies would have darned it up neat’s a pin while I slept.” Julie’s
voice was as indolent as Julie herself. She spoke with a Southern drawl.
Her I was Ah. Ah declah to goodness—or approximately that.
Magnolia would smile in appreciation of Julie’s gentle raillery. She
adored Julie. She thought Elly, with her fair skin and china-blue eyes,
as beautiful as a princess in a fairy tale, as was natural in a child of
her sallow colouring and straight black hair. But the two were
antipathetic. Elly, in ill-tempered moments, had been known to speak of
Magnolia as “that brat,” though her vanity was fed by the child’s
admiration of her beauty. But she never allowed her to dress up in her
discarded stage finery, as Julie often did. Elly openly considered
herself a gifted actress whose talent and beauty were, thanks to her
shiftless husband, pearls cast before the river-town swinery. Pretty
though she was, she found small favour in the eyes of men of the company
and crew. Strangely enough, it was Julie who drew them, quite without
intent on her part. There was something about her life-scarred face, her
mournful eyes, her languor, her effortlessness, her very carelessness of
dress that seemed to fascinate and hold them. Steve’s jealousy of her
was notorious. It was common boat talk, too, that Pete, the engineer of
the _Mollie Able_, who played the bull drum in the band, was openly
enamoured of her and had tried to steal her from Steve. He followed
Julie into town if she so much as stepped ashore. He was found lurking
in corners of the _Cotton Blossom_ decks; loitering about the stage
where he had no business to be. He even sent her presents of imitation
jewellery and gaudy handkerchiefs and work boxes, which she promptly
presented to Queenie, first urging that mass of ebon royalty to bedeck
herself with her new gifts when dishing up the dinner. In that close
community the news of the disposal of these favours soon reached Pete’s
sooty ears. There had even been a brawl between Steve and Pete—one of
those sudden tempestuous battles, animal-like in its fierceness and
brutality. An oath in the darkness; voices low, ominous; the thud of
feet; the impact of bone against flesh; deep sob-like breathing; a high
weird cry of pain, terror, rage. Pete was overboard and floundering in
the swift current of the Mississippi. Powerful swimmer though he was,
they had some trouble in fishing him out. It was well that the _Cotton
Blossom_ and the _Mollie Able_ were lying at anchor. Bruised and
dripping, Pete had repaired to the engine room to dry, and to nurse his
wounds, swearing in terms ridiculously like those frequently heard in
the second act of a _Cotton Blossom_ play that he would get his revenge
on the two of them. He had never, since then, openly molested Julie, but
his threats, mutterings, and innuendoes continued. Steve had forbidden
his wife to leave the show boat unaccompanied. So it was that when
spring came round, and the dogwood gleaming white among the black trunks
of the pines and firs was like a bride and her shining attendants in a
great cathedral, Julie would tie one of her floppy careless hats under
her chin and, together with Magnolia, range the forests for wild
flowers. They would wander inland until they found trees other than the
willows, the live oaks, and the elms that lined the river banks. They
would come upon wild honeysuckle, opalescent pink. In autumn they went
nutting, returning with sackfuls of hickory and hazel nuts—anything but
the black walnut which any show-boat dweller knows will cause a storm if
brought aboard. Sometimes they experienced the shock of gay surprise
that follows the sudden sight of gentian, a flash of that rarest of
flower colours, blue; almost poignant in its beauty. It always made
Magnolia catch her breath a little.
Julie’s flounces trailing in the dust, the two would start out sedately
enough, though to the accompaniment of a chorus of admonition and
criticism.
From Mrs. Hawks: “Now keep your hat pulled down over your eyes so’s you
won’t get all sunburned, Magnolia. Black enough as ’tis. Don’t run and
get all overheated. Don’t eat any berries or anything you find in the
woods, now. . . . Back by four o’clock the latest . . . poison ivy . . .
snakes . . . lost . . . gipsies. . . .”
From Elly, trimming her rosy nails in the cool shade of the front deck:
“Julie, your placket’s gaping. And tuck your hair in. No, there, on the
side.”
So they made their way up the bank, across the little town, and into the
woods. Once out of sight of the boat the two turned and looked back.
Then, without a word, each would snatch her hat from her head; and they
would look at each other, and Julie would smile her wide slow smile, and
Magnolia’s dark plain pointed little face would flash into sudden
beauty. From some part of her person where it doubtless was needed Julie
would extract a pin and with it fasten up the tail of her skirt. Having
thus hoisted the red flag of rebellion, they would plunge into the woods
to emerge hot, sticky, bramble-torn, stained, flower-laden, and late.
They met Parthy’s upbraidings and Steve’s reproaches with cheerful
unconcern.
Often Magnolia went to town with her father, or drove with him or Doc
into the back-country. Andy did much of the marketing for the boat’s
food, frequently hampered, supplemented, or interfered with by Parthy’s
less openhanded methods. He loved good food, considered it important to
happiness, liked to order it and talk about it; was himself an excellent
cook, like most boatmen, and had been known to spend a pleasant half
hour reading the cook book. The butchers, grocers, and general store
keepers of the river towns knew Andy, understood his fussy ways, liked
him. He bought shrewdly but generously, without haggling; and often
presented a store acquaintance of long standing with a pair of tickets
for the night’s performance. When he and Magnolia had time to range the
countryside in a livery rig, Andy would select the smartest and most
glittering buggy and the liveliest nag to be had. Being a poor driver
and jerky, with no knowledge of a horse’s nerves and mouth, the ride was
likely to be exhilarating to the point of danger. The animal always was
returned to the stable in a lather, the vehicle spattered with
mud-flecks to the hood. Certainly, it was due to Andy more than Parthy
that the _Cotton Blossom_ was reputed the best-fed show boat on the
rivers. He was always bringing home in triumph a great juicy ham, a side
of beef. He liked to forage the season’s first and best: a bushel of
downy peaches, fresh-picked; watermelons; little honey-sweet seckel
pears; a dozen plump broilers; new corn; a great yellow cheese ripe for
cutting.
He would plump his purchases down on the kitchen table while Queenie
surveyed his booty, hands on ample hips. She never resented his
suggestions, though Parthy’s offended her. Capering, Andy would poke a
forefinger into a pullet’s fat sides. “Rub ’em over with a little
garlic, Queenie, to flavour ’em up. Plenty of butter and strips of
bacon. Cover ’em over till they’re tender and then give ’em a quick
brown the last twenty minutes.”
Queenie, knowing all this, still did not resent his direction. “That
shif’less no-’count Jo knew ’bout cookin’ like you do, Cap’n Andy, Ah’d
git to rest mah feet now an’ again, Ah sure would.”
Magnolia liked to loiter in the big, low-raftered kitchen. It was a
place of pleasant smells and sights and sounds. It was here that she
learned Negro spirituals from Jo and cooking from Queenie, both of which
accomplishments stood her in good stead in later years. Queenie had, for
example, a way of stuffing a ham for baking. It was a fascinating
process to behold, and one that took hours. Spices—bay, thyme, onion,
clove, mustard, allspice, pepper—chopped and mixed and stirred
together. A sharp-pointed knife plunged deep into the juicy ham. The
incision stuffed with the spicy mixture. Another plunge with the knife.
Another filling. Again and again and again until the great ham had grown
to twice its size. Then a heavy clean white cloth, needle and coarse
thread. Sewed up tight and plump in its jacket the ham was immersed in a
pot of water and boiled. Out when tender, the jacket removed; into the
oven with it. Basting and basting from Queenie’s long-handled spoon. The
long sharp knife again for cutting, and then the slices, juicy and
scented, with the stuffing of spices making a mosaic pattern against the
pink of the meat. Many years later Kim Ravenal, the actress, would serve
at the famous little Sunday night suppers that she and her husband
Kenneth Cameron were so fond of giving a dish that she called ham _à la_
Queenie.
“How does your cook do it!” her friends would say—Ethel Barrymore or
Kit Cornell or Frank Crowninshield or Charley Towne or Woollcott. “I’ll
bet it isn’t real at all. It’s painted on the platter.”
“It is not! It’s a practical ham, stuffed with all kinds of devilment.
The recipe is my mother’s. She got it from an old Southern cook named
Queenie.”
“Listen, Kim. You’re among friends. Your dear public is not present. You
don’t have to pretend any old Southern aristocracy Virginia belle mammy
stuff with _us_.”
“Pretend, you great oaf! I was born on a show boat on the Mississippi,
and proud of it. Everybody knows that.”
Mrs. Hawks, bustling into the show-boat kitchen with her unerring gift
for scenting an atmosphere of mellow enjoyment, and dissipating it,
would find Magnolia perched on a chair, both elbows on the table, her
palms propping her chin as she regarded with round-eyed fascination
Queenie’s magic manipulations. Or perhaps Jo, the charming and
shiftless, would be singing for her one of the Negro plantation songs,
wistful with longing and pain; the folk songs of a wronged race, later
to come into a blaze of popularity as spirituals.
For some nautical reason, a broad beam, about six inches high and
correspondingly wide, stretched across the kitchen floor from side to
side, dividing the room. Through long use Jo and Queenie had become
accustomed to stepping over this obstruction, Queenie ponderously, Jo
with an effortless swing of his lank legs. On this Magnolia used to sit,
her arms hugging her knees, her great eyes in the little sallow pointed
face fixed attentively on Jo. The kitchen was very clean and shining and
stuffy. Jo’s legs were crossed, one foot in its great low shapeless shoe
hooked in the chair rung, his banjo cradled in his lap. The once white
parchment face of the instrument was now almost as black as Jo’s, what
with much strumming by work-stained fingers.
“Which one, Miss Magnolia?”
“I Got Shoes,” Magnolia would answer, promptly.
Jo would throw back his head, his sombre eyes half shut:
[Illustration]
[Lyrics]
I got a shoes, you got a shoes.
All of God’s chil-dren got a shoes;
When I get to Heav-en goin’ to put on my shoes.
Goin’ to walk all over God’s Heav’n.
Heav’n, Heav’n,
Ev-’ry bod-y talk-in’ ’bout heav’n ain’t go-in’ there;
Heav’n, Heav’n,
Goin’ to shout all over God’s Heav’n.
The longing of a footsore, ragged, driven race expressed in the
tragically childlike terms of shoes, white robes, wings, and the wise
and simple insight into hypocrisy: “Ev’rybody talkin ’bout Heav’n ain’t
goin’ there. . . .”
“Now which one?” His fingers still picking the strings, ready at a word
to slip into the opening chords of the next song.
“Go Down, Moses.”
She liked this one—at once the most majestic and supplicating of all
the Negro folk songs—because it always made her cry a little. Sometimes
Queenie, busy at the stove or the kitchen table, joined in with her high
rich camp-meeting voice. Jo’s voice was a reedy tenor, but soft and
husky with the indescribable Negro vocal quality. Magnolia soon knew the
tune and the words of every song in Jo’s repertoire. Unconsciously,
being an excellent mimic, she sang as Jo and Queenie sang, her head
thrown slightly back, her eyes rolling or half closed, one foot beating
rhythmic time to the music’s cadence. Her voice was true, though
mediocre; but she got into this the hoarsely sweet Negro
overtone—purple velvet muffling a flute.
Between Jo and Queenie flourished a fighting affection, deep, true, and
lasting. There was some doubt as to the actual legal existence of their
marriage, but the union was sound and normal enough. At each season’s
close they left the show boat the richer by three hundred dollars, clean
new calico for Queenie, and proper jeans for Jo. Shoes on their feet.
Hats on their heads. Bundles in their arms. Each spring they returned
penniless, in rags, and slightly liquored. They had had a magnificent
time. They did not drink again while the _Cotton Blossom_ kitchen was
their home. But the next winter the programme repeated itself. Captain
Andy liked and trusted them. They were as faithful to him as their
childlike vagaries would permit.
So, filled with the healthy ecstasy of song, the Negro man and woman and
the white child would sit in deep contentment in the show-boat kitchen.
The sound of a door slammed. Quick heavy footsteps. Three sets of nerves
went taut. Parthy.
“Maggie Hawks, have you practised to-day?”
“Some.”
“How much?”
“Oh, half an hour—more.”
“When?”
“’Smorning.”
“I didn’t hear you.”
The sulky lower lip out. The high forehead wrinkled by a frown. Song
flown. Peace gone.
“I did so. Jo, didn’t you hear me practising?”
“Ah suah did, Miss Magnolia.”
“You march right out of here, young lady, and practise another half
hour. Do you think your father’s made of money, that I can throw
fifty-cent pieces away on George for nothing? Now you do your exercises
fifteen minutes and the Maiden’s Prayer fifteen. . . . Idea!”
Magnolia marched. Out of earshot Parthy expressed her opinion of nigger
songs. “I declare I don’t know where you get your low ways from! White
people aren’t good enough for you, I suppose, that you’ve got to run
with blacks in the kitchen. Now you sit yourself down on that stool.”
Magnolia was actually having music lessons. George, the Whistler and
piano player, was her teacher, receiving fifty cents an hour for weekly
instruction. Driven by her stern parent, she practised an hour daily on
the tinny old piano in the orchestra pit, a rebellious, skinny, pathetic
little figure strumming painstakingly away in the great emptiness of the
show-boat auditorium. She must needs choose her time for practice when a
rehearsal of the night’s play was not in progress on the stage or when
the band was not struggling with the music of a new song and dance
number. Incredibly enough, she actually learned something of the
mechanics of music, if not of its technique. She had an excellent rhythm
sense, and this was aided by none other than Jo, whose feeling for time
and beat and measure and pitch was flawless. Queenie lumped his song
gift in with his general shiftlessness. Born fifty years later he might
have known brief fame in some midnight revue or Club Alabam’ on
Broadway. Certainly Magnolia unwittingly learned more of real music from
black Jo and many another Negro wharf minstrel than she did from hours
of the heavy-handed and unlyrical George.
That Mrs. Hawks could introduce into the indolent tenor of show-boat
life anything so methodical and humdrum as five-finger exercises done an
hour daily was triumphant proof of her indomitable driving force. Life
had miscast her in the rôle of wife and mother. She was born to be a
Madam Chairman. Committees, Votes, Movements, Drives, Platforms, Gavels,
Reports all showed in her stars. Cheated of these, she had to be content
with such outlet of her enormous energies as the _Cotton Blossom_
afforded. Parthy had never heard the word Feminist, and wouldn’t have
recognized it if she had. One spoke at that time not of Women’s Rights
but of Women’s Wrongs. On these Parthenia often waxed tartly eloquent.
Her housekeeping fervour was the natural result of her lack of a more
impersonal safety valve. The _Cotton Blossom_ shone like a Methodist
Sunday household. Only Julie and Windy, the _Mollie Able_ pilot, defied
her. She actually indulged in those most domestic of rites, canning and
preserving, on board the boat. Donning an all-enveloping gingham apron,
she would set frenziedly to work on two bushels of peaches or seckel
pears; baskets of tomatoes; pecks of apples. Pickled pears, peach
marmalade, grape jell in jars and pots and glasses filled shelves and
cupboards. Queenie found a great deal of satisfaction in the fact that
occasionally, owing to some culinary accident or to the unusual motion
of the flat-bottomed _Cotton Blossom_ in the rough waters of an open
bay, one of these jars was found smashed on the floor, its rich purple
or amber contents mingling with splinters of glass. No one—not even
Parthy—ever dared connect Queenie with these quite explicable mishaps.
Parthy was an expert needlewoman. She often assisted Julie or Elly or
Mis’ Means with their costumes. To see her stern implacable face bent
over a heap of frivolous stuffs while her industrious fingers swiftly
sent the needle flashing through unvarying seams was to receive the
shock that comes of beholding the incongruous. The enormity of it
penetrated even her blunt sensibilities.
“If anybody’d ever told me that I’d live to see the day when I’d be
sewing on costumes for show folks!”
“Run along, Parthy. You like it,” Andy would say.
But she never would admit that. “Like it or lump it, what can I do!
Married you for better or worse, didn’t I!” Her tone leaving no doubt as
to the path down which that act had led her. Actually she was having a
rich, care-free, and varied life such as she had never dreamed of and of
which she secretly was enamoured.
Dwellers in this or that river town loitering down at the landing to see
what manner of sin and loose-living went on in and about this show boat
with its painted women and play-acting men would be startled to hear
sounds and sniff smells which were identical with those which might be
issuing that very moment from their own smug and godly dwellings ashore.
From out the open doors of the Cotton Blossom Floating Palace Theatre
came the unmistakable and humdrum sounds of scales and five-finger
exercises done painfully and unwillingly by rebellious childish hands.
Ta-ta-ta—_TA_—ta-ta-ta. From below decks there floated up the
mouth-watering savour of tomato ketchup, of boiling vinegar and spices,
or the perfumed aroma of luscious fruits seething in sugary kettles.
“Smells for all the world like somebody was doing up sweet pickles.” One
village matron to another.
“Well, I suppose they got to eat like other folks.”
Ta-ta-ta—_TA_—ta-ta-ta.
It was inevitable, however, that the ease and indolence of the life, as
well as the daily contact with odd and unconventional characters must
leave some imprint on even so adamantine an exterior as Parthy’s. Little
by little her school-teacherly diction dropped from her. Slowly her
vowels began to slur, her aren’ts became ain’ts, her crisp new England
utterance took on something of the slovenly Southern drawl, her
consonants were missing from the end of a word here and there. True, she
still bustled and nagged, managed and scolded, drove and reproached. She
still had the power to make Andy jump with nervousness. Whether
consciously or unconsciously, the influence of this virago was more
definitely felt than that of any other one of the _Cotton Blossom’s_
company and crew. Of these only Julie Dozier, and Windy, the pilot (so
called because he almost never talked) actually triumphed over Mrs.
Hawks. Julie’s was a negative victory. She never voluntarily spoke to
Parthy and had the power to aggravate that lady to the point of frenzy
by remaining limp, supine, and idle when Parthy thought she should be
most active; by raising her right eyebrow quizzically in response to a
more than usually energetic tirade; by the habitual disorder of the tiny
room which she shared with Steve; by the flagrant carelessness and
untidiness of her own gaunt graceful person.
“I declare, Hawks, what you keep that slatternly yellow cat around this
boat for beats me.”
“Best actress in the whole caboodle, that’s why.” Something fine in
little Captain Andy had seen and recognized the flame that might have
glorified Julie had it not instead consumed her. “That girl had the
right backing she’d make her mark, and not in any show boat, either.
I’ve been to New York. I’ve seen ’em down at Wallack’s and Daly’s and
around.”
“A slut, that’s what she is. I had my way she’d leave this boat bag and
baggage.”
“Well, this is one time you won’t have your way, Mrs. Hawks, ma’am.” She
had not yet killed the spirit in Andy.
“Mark my words, you’ll live to regret it. The way she looks out of those
black eyes of hers! Gives me the creeps.”
“What would you have the girl look out of,” retorted Andy, not very
brilliantly. “Her ears?”
Julie could not but know of this antagonism toward her. Some perverse
streak in her otherwise rich and gentle make-up caused her to find a
sinister pleasure in arousing it.
Windy’s victory was more definitely dramatic, though his defensive
method against Parthy’s attacks resembled in sardonic quiet and poise
Julie’s own. Windy was accounted one of the most expert pilots on the
Mississippi. He knew every coil and sinew and stripe of the yellow
serpent. River men used his name as a synonym for magic with the pilot’s
wheel. Starless night or misty day; shoal water or deep, it was all one
to Windy. Though Andy’s senior by more than fifteen years, the two had
been friends for twenty. Captain Andy had enormous respect for his
steersmanship; was impressed by his taciturnity (being himself so
talkative and vivacious); enjoyed talking with him in the bright quiet
security of the pilot house. He was absolute czar of the _Mollie Able_
and the _Cotton Blossom_, as befitted his high accomplishments. No one
ever dreamed of opposing him except Parthy. He was slovenly of person,
careless of habit. These shortcomings Parthy undertook to correct early
in her show-boat career. She met with defeat so prompt, so complete, so
crushing as to cause her for ever after to leave him unmolested.
Windy had muddy boots. They were, it seemed, congenitally so. He would
go ashore in mid-afternoon of a hot August day when farmers for miles
around had been praying for rain these weeks past and return in a
downpour with half the muck and clay of the countryside clinging to his
number eleven black square-toed elastic-side boots. A tall, emaciated
drooping old man, Windy; with long gnarled muscular hands whose enlarged
knuckles and leathery palms were the result of almost half a century at
the wheel. His pants were always grease-stained; his black string tie
and gray shirt spattered with tobacco juice; his brown jersey frayed and
ragged. Across his front he wore a fine anchor watch chain, or “log”
chain, as it was called. And gleaming behind the long flowing
tobacco-splotched gray beard that reached almost to his waist could be
glimpsed a milkily pink pearl stud like a star behind a dirty
cloud-bank. The jewel had been come by, doubtless, in payment of some
waterfront saloon gambling debt. Surely its exquisite curves had once
glowed upon fine and perfumed linen.
It was against this taciturn and omnipotent conqueror of the rivers that
Parthy raised the flag of battle.
“Traipsin’ up and down this boat and the _Mollie Able_, spitting his
filthy tobacco and leaving mud tracks like an elephant that’s been in a
bog. If I’ve had those steps leading up to the pilot house scrubbed
once, I’ve had ’em scrubbed ten times this week, and now look at them! I
won’t have it, and so I tell you. Why can’t he go up the side of the
boat the way a pilot is supposed to do! What’s that side ladder for, I’d
like to know! He’s supposed to go up it; not the steps.”
“Now, Parthy, you can’t run a boat the way you would a kitchen back in
Thebes. Windy’s no hired man. He’s the best pilot on the rivers, and I’m
lucky to have him. A hundred jobs better than this ready to jump at him
if he so much as crooks a finger. He’s pulled this tub through good many
tight places where any other pilot’d landed us high and dry on a sand
bar. And don’t you forget it.”
“He’s a dirty old man. And I won’t have it. Muddying up my clean . . .”