Parson Rasba piled the books on the crap table in his cabin and stood
them in rows with their lettered backs up. He read their titles, which
were fascinating: "Arabian Nights," "Representative Men," "Plutarch's
Lives," "Modern Painters," "Romany Rye"--a name that made him shudder,
for it meant some terrible kind of whiskey to his mind--"Lavengro," a
foreign thing, "Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases," "The Stem
Dictionary," "Working Principles of Rhetoric"--he wondered what rhetoric
meant--"The Fur Buyers' Guide," "Stones of Venice," "The French
Revolution," "Sartor Resartus," "Poe's Works," "Balzac's Tales," and
scores of other titles.
All at once the Mississippi had brought down to him these treasures and
a fair woman with blue eyes and a smile of understanding and sympathy,
who had handed them to him, saying:
"I want to do something for your mission boat; will you let me?"
No fairyland, no enchantment, no translation from poverty and sorrow to
a realm of wealth and happiness could have caught the soul of the
Prophet Rasba as this revelation of unimagined, undreamed-of riches as
he plucked the fruits of learning and enjoyed their luxuries. He had
descended in his humility to the last, least task for which he felt
himself worthy. He had humbly been grateful for even that one thing left
for him to do: find Jock Drones for his mother.
He had found Jock, and there had been no wrestling with an obdurate
spirit to send him back home, like a man, to face the law and accept the
penalty. There had been nothing to it. Jock had seen the light
instantly, and with relief. His partner had also turned back after a
decade of doubt and misery, to live a man's part "back home." The two of
them had handed him a floating Bethel, turning their gambling hell over
to him as though it were a night's lodging, or a snack, or a handful of
hickory nuts. The temple of his fathers had been no better for its
purpose than this beautiful, floating boat.
Then a woman had come floating down, a beautiful strange woman whose
voice had clutched at his heart, whose smile had deprived him of reason,
whose eyes had searched his soul. With tears on her lashes she had flung
to him that treasure-store of learning, and gone on her way, leaving him
strength and consolation.
He left his treasure and went out to look at the river. Everybody leaves
everything to look at the river! There is nothing in the world that will
prevent it. He saw, in the bright morning, that Prebol had raised his
curtain, and was looking at the river, too, though the effort must have
caused excruciating pain in his wounded shoulder. Day was growing; from
end to end of that vast, flowing sheet of water thousands upon thousands
of old river people were taking a look at the Mississippi.
Rasba carried a good broth over to Prebol for breakfast, and then
returned to his cabin, having made Prebol comfortable and put a dozen of
the wonderful books within his reach. Then the River Prophet sat down to
read his treasures, any and all of them, his lap piled up, three or four
books in one hand and trying to turn the pages of another in his other
hand by unskilful manipulation of his thumb. He was literally starving
for the contents of those books.
He was afraid that his treasure would escape from him; he kept glancing
from his printed page to the serried ranks on the crap table, and his
hands unconsciously felt around to make sure that the weight on his lap
and in his grasp was substantial and real, and not a dream or vision of
delight.
He forgot to eat; he forgot that he had not slept; he sat oblivious of
time and river, the past or the future; he grappled with pages of print,
with broadsides of pictures, with new and thrilling words, with
sentences like hammer blows, with paragraphs that marched like music,
with thoughts that had the gay abandon of a bird in song. And the things
he learned!
When night fell he was dismayed by his weariness, and could not
understand it. For a little while he ransacked his dulled wits to find
the explanation, and when he had fixed Prebol for the night, with
medicine, water, and a lamp handy to matches, he told the patient:
"Seems like the gimp's kind of took out of me. My eyes are sore, an' I
doubt am I quite well."
"Likely yo' didn't sleep well," Prebol suggested. "A man cayn't sleep
days if he ain't used to hit."
"Sleep days?" Rasba looked wildly about him.
"Sho! When did I git to sleep, why, I ain't slept--I----Lawse!"
Prebol laughed aloud.
"Yo' see, Parson, yo' all cayn't set up all night with a pretty gal an'
not sleep hit off. Yo' shore'll git tired, sportin' aroun'."
"Sho!" Rasba snapped, and then a smile broke across his countenance. He
cried out with laughter, and admitted: "Hit's seo, Prebol! I neveh set
up with a gal befo' I come down the riveh. Lawse! I plumb forgot."
"I don't wonder," Prebol replied, gravely. "She'd make any man forget.
She sung me to sleep, an' I slept like I neveh slept befo'."
Rasba went on board his boat and, after a light supper, turned in. For
a minute he saw in retrospect the most wonderful day in his life, a day
which a kindly Providence had drawn through thirty or forty hours of
unforgettable exaltation. Then he settled into the blank, deep sleep of
a soul at peace and at rest.
When in the full tide of the sunshine he awakened, he went about his
menial tasks, attending Prebol, cleaning out the boats, shaking up the
beds, hanging the bedclothes to air in the sun, and getting breakfast.
On Prebol's suggestion he moved the fleet of boats out into the eddy,
for the river was falling and they might ground. He went over to
Caruthersville and bought some supplies, brought Doctor Grell over to
examine the patient to make sure all was well, killed several squirrels
and three ducks back in the brakes, and, all the while, thought what
duties he should enter upon.
Doctor Grell advised that Prebol go down to Memphis, to the hospital, so
as to have an X-ray examination, and any special treatment which might
be necessary. The wound was healing nicely, but it would be better to
make sure.
Rasba took counsel of Prebol. The river man knew the needs of the
occasion, and he agreed that he had better drop down to Memphis or
Mendova, preferring the latter place, for he knew people there. He told
Rasba to line the two small shanty-boats beside the big mission boat,
and fend them off with wood chunks. The skiffs could float on lines
alongside or at the stern. The power boat could tow the fleet out into
the current, and hold it off sandbars or flank the bends.
Rasba did as he was bid, and lashed the boats together with mooring
lines, pin-head to towing bits, and side to side. Then he floated the
boats all on one anchor line, and ran the launch up to the bow. He
hoisted in the anchor, rowed in a skiff out to the motorboat, and swung
wide in the eddy to run out to the river current. There was a good deal
of work to the task, and it was afternoon before the fleet reached the
main stream.
Then Rasba cast off his tow lines, ran the launch back to the fleet, and
made it fast to the port bow of the big boat, so that it was part of the
fleet, with its power available to shove ahead or astern. A big oar on
the mission boat's bow and another one out from Prebol's boat insured a
short turn if it should be necessary to swing the boats around either
way.
Rasba carried Prebol on his cot up to the bow of the big boat, and put
him down where he could help watch the river, and they cast off. Prebol
knew the bends and reaches, and named most of the landings; they
gossiped about the people and the places. Prebol told how river rats
sometimes stole hogs or cattle for food, and Rasba learned for the first
time of organized piracy, of river men who were banded together for
stealing what they could, raiding river towns, attacking "sports,"
tripping the river, and even more desperate enterprises.
While he talked, Prebol slyly watched his listener and thought for a
long time that Rasba was merely dumbfounded by the atrocities, but at
last the Prophet grinned:
"An' yo's a riveh rat. Ho law!"
"Why, I didn't say----" Prebol began, but his words faltered.
"Yo' know right smart about such things," Rasba reminded him. "I 'low
hit were about time somebody shot yo' easy, so's to give yo' repentance
a chance to catch up with yo' wickedness. Don't yo'?"
Prebol glared at the accusation, but Rasba pretended not to notice.
"Yo' see, Prebol, this world is jes' the hounds a-chasin' the rabbits,
er the rabbits a-gittin' out the way. The good that's into a man keeps
a-runnin', to git shut of the sin that's in him, an' theh's a heap of
wrestlin' when one an' tother catches holt an' fights."
"Hit's seo!" Prebol admitted, reluctantly. He didn't have much use for
religious arguments. "I wisht yo'd read them books to me, Parson. I
ain't neveh had much eddycation. I'll watch the riveh, an' warn ye, 'gin
we make the crossin's."
Nothing suited them better. Rasba read aloud, stabbing each word with
his finger while he sought the range and rhythm of the sentences, and,
as they happened to strike a book of fables, their minds could grasp the
stories and the morals at least sufficiently to entertain and hold their
attention.
Prebol said, warningly, after a time:
"Betteh hit that sweep a lick, Parson, she's a-swingin' in onto that bar
p'int."
A few leisurely strokes, the boats drifted away into deep water, and
Rasba expressed his admiration.
"Sho, Prebol! Yo' seen that bar a mile up. We'd run down onto hit."
"Yas, suh," the wounded man grinned. "Three-four licks on the oars up
theh, and down yeah yo' save pullin' yo' livin' daylights out, to keep
from goin' onto a sandbar or into a dryin'-up chute."
"How's that?" Rasba cocked his ear. "Say hit oveh--slow!"
"Why, if yo's into the set of the current up theh, hit ain't strong; yo'
jes' give two-three licks an' yo' send out clear. Down theh on the bar
she draws yo' right into shallow water, an' yo' hang up."
Rasba looked up the river; he looked down at the nearing sandbar, and as
they passed the rippling head in safety he turned a grave face toward
the pilot.
"Up theh, theh wasn't much suck to hit, but down yeah, afteh yo've
drawed into the current, theh's a strong drag an' bad shoals?"
"Jes' so!"
"Hit's easy to git shut of sin, away long in the beginnin'," Rasba bit
his words out, "but when yo' git a long ways down into hit--Ho law!"
Prebol started, caught by surprise. Then both laughed together. They
could understand each other better and if Prebol felt himself being
drawn in spite of his own reluctance by a new current in his life, Rasba
did not fail to gratify the river man's pride by turning always to him
for advice about the river, its currents and its jeopardies.
"I've tripped down with all kinds," Prebol grinned as he spoke, "but
this yeah's the firstest time I eveh did get to pilot a mission boat."
"If you take it through in safety, do yo' reckon God will forget?" Rasba
asked, and Prebol's jaw dropped. He didn't want to be reformed; he had
no use for religion. He was very well satisfied with his own way of
living. He objected to being prayed over and the good of his soul
inquired into--but this Parson Rasba was making the idea interesting.
They anchored for the night in the eddy at the head of Needham's Cut-Off
Bar, and Prebol was soon asleep, but Rasba sat under the big lamp and
read. He could read with continuity now; dread that the dream would
vanish no longer afflicted him. He could read a book without having more
than two or three other books in his lap.
Sometimes it was almost as though Nelia were speaking the very words he
read; sometimes he seemed to catch her frown of disapproval. The books,
more precious than any other treasure could have been, seemed living
things because she had owned them, because her pencil had marked them,
and because she had given them all to his service, to fill the barren
and hungry places in the long-empty halls of his mind.
He would stop his reading to think, and thinking, he would take up a
book to discover better how to think. He found that his reading and
thinking worked together for his own information.
He was musing, his mind enjoying the novelty of so many different images
and ideas and facts, when something trickled among his senses and
stirred his consciousness into alert expectancy. For a little he was
curious, and then touched by dismay, for it was music which had roused
him--music out of the black river night. People about to die sometimes
hear music, and Parson Rasba unconsciously braced himself for the
shock.
It grew louder, however, more distinct, and the sound was too gay and
lively to fit in with his dreams of a heavenly choir. He caught the
shout of a human voice and he knew that dancers were somewhere, perhaps
dancers damned to eternal mirth. He went out on the deck and closed the
door on the light behind him; at first he could see nothing but black
night. A little later he discovered boats coming down the river, eight
or nine gleaming windows, and a swinging light hung on a flag staff or
shanty-boat mast.
As they drew nearer, someone shouted across the night:
"Goo-o-o-d wa-a-a-ter thar?"
"Ya-s-su-uh!" Rasba called back.
"Where'll we come in?"
"Anywhere's b'low me fo' a hundred yards!"
"Thank-e-e!"
Three or four sweeps began to beat the water, and a whole fleet of
shanty-boats drifted in slowly. They began to turn like a wheel as part
of them ran into the eddy while the current carried the others down, but
old river men were at the sweeps, and one of them called the orders:
"Raunch 'er, boys! Raunch 'er! Raunchin's what she needs!"
They floated out of the current into the slow reverse eddy, and coming
up close to Rasba's fleet, talked back and forth with him till a gleam
of light through a window struck him clearly out of the dark.
"Hue-e-e!" a shrill woman's voice laughed. "Hit's Rasba, the Riveh
Prophet Rasba! Did yo' all git to catch Nelia Crele, Parson?"
"Did I git to catch Missy Crele!" he repeated, dazed.
"When yo' drapped out'n Wolf Island Chute, Parson, that night she pulled
out alone?"
"No'm; I lost her down by the Sucks, but she drapped in by
Caruthersville an' give me books an' books--all fo' my mission boat!"
"That big boat yourn?"
"Yeh."
"Where all was hit built?"
"I don' remembeh, but Buck done give hit to me, him an' Jock Drones."
"Hi-i-i! Yo' all found the man yo' come a-lookin' fo'. Ho law!"
"Hit's the Riveh Prophet," someone replied to a hail from within, the
dance ending.
A crowd came tumbling out onto the deck of the big boat of the dance
hall, everyone talking, laughing, catching their breaths.
"Hi-i! Likely he'll preach to-morrow," a woman cried. "To-morrow's
Sunday."
"Sunday?" Rasba gasped. "Sunday--I plumb lost track of the days."
"You'll preach, won't yo', Parson? I yain't hearn a sermon in a hell of
a while," a man jeered, facetiously.
"Suttingly. An' when hit's through, yo'll think of hell jes' as long,"
Rasba retorted, with asperity, and his wit turned the laugh into a
cheer.
The fleet anchored a hundred yards up the eddy, and Rasba heard a woman
say it was after midnight and she'd be blanked if she ever did or would
dance on Sunday. The dance broke up, the noise of voices lessened, one
by one the lights went out, and the eddy was still again. But the
feeling of loneliness was changed.
"Lord God, what'll I preach to them about?" Rasba whispered. "I neveh
'lowed I'd be called to preach ag'in. Lawse! Lawse! What'll I say?"