“NOW, don't you fret, Buddy-boy,” said Peter Lane with forced
cheerfulness, “because I'm going to let you do something you never did
before, and that I wouldn't let many boys do. You are going to help
Uncle Peter steer this boat, just like you was a big man.”
Buddy stood in the skiff which was drawn up on the bank. Peter, with
a rock and his stove-poker, was undoing the frozen knot that held his
shanty-boat to the Rock Island Railway System, and by means of that to
the State of Iowa. He was preparing to take the shanty-boat down the
river to George Rapp's place. His provisions were aboard, the rag of
a sail lay ready to raise should the wind serve--but it promised not
to--and the long sweep that had reposed on the roof of the boat was on
its pin at the bow, if a boat, both ends of which were identical, could
be said to have a bow.
“I like to steer boats,” said Buddy out of his boyish optimism.
“I bet you do,” said Peter, “and a mighty good steerer you'll make.
I don't know how Uncle Peter could get down river if he didn't have
somebody to steer for him. Now, you let me push that skiff into the
water, and we'll row around the boat, and before you know it you'll be
steering like a regular little sailor.”
He threw the mooring rope on to the stern deck of the shanty-boat,
pushed the skiff into the water and poled to the other end of the boat
where the long sweep was held with its blade suspended in the air, the
handle caught under a cleat on the deck. Peter lifted Buddy to the deck,
made the skiff's painter fast, and climbed to the deck after the boy.
“Now, Buddy, we'll be off in a minute and a half,” he said, “just as
soon as I fix you the way they fix sailors when they steer a ship in a
big storm.”
He drew a ball of seine twine from his pocket, knotted one end about
Buddy's waist, cut off a generous length, and tied the other end to the
cleat.
“Don't!” said Buddy imperatively. “I don't want to be tied, Uncle
Peter.”
“Oh, yes, you do!” said Peter. “Why, a sailor-man couldn't think of
steering a great boat like this unless he was tied to it.”
“No!” shouted Buddy, and Peter stood, holding his end of the cord,
studying the boy.
“Now, Buddy-boy,” he said appealingly. “Don't holler like that. Ain't I
told you we must keep right quiet, because your ma is asleep in there.”
“But I don't want to be tied!” cried the boy.
“But Uncle Peter's going to be tied, too,” said Peter. “Yes, siree, Bob!
Just as soon as I get this boat out into the river, I'm going to be tied
like you are, and no mistake. You didn't know that, I guess, did you?”
The boy looked at him doubtfully.
“Are you?” he asked.
“If I say I am, I am,” said Peter. “You can always be right sure that
when Uncle Peter says a thing, he ain't trying to fool you, Buddy. No,
sir! You can just believe what Uncle Peter says, with all your might.
I might lie to grown folks now and then, but I wouldn't lie to a little
boy. No, sir!”
“I ain't a little boy. I'm a big sailor-man!” said the boy. “And you
said I could steer, and I want to steer.”
“Right away you can,” said Peter. “You're going to steer with one of
them skiff oars, but first I've got to row this boat out into the river
a ways so you'll have plenty of room. So don't you fret. You watch Uncle
Peter.”
He made the skiff fast to the boat with a length of rope, took the oars,
and as he rowed, the heavy boat moved slowly from behind the point out
into the river current. Peter towed her well out into the river before
he let the skiff drop back. He meant the shanty-boat to float sweep
first--it was all the same to her--and he fastened the painter of the
skiff to the shanty-boat's stern, and edged his way along the narrow
strip of wood that marked the division between the hull and the
superstructure, holding himself by clasping the edge of the roof with
his cold fingers, and sliding an oar along the roof as he went. It would
have been much simpler and safer to have passed through the cabin.
To satisfy Buddy, he tied a length of seine cord about his own waist and
fastened the end to the deck ring, and then he lashed Buddy's oar to
a small iron ring. The boy could take a few steps and splash the water
with the oar without falling into the river. Then Peter took the heavy
sweep handle in his hands and the shanty-boat was under way.
It was time. The rising water had dislodged heavier ice than had yet
come down, and the river was filling with it. The wind, such as there
was, while it blew almost dead upstream, was an aid in that it swept the
floating ice toward the Illinois shore, leaving Peter's course clear,
and an occasional dip of the sweep was sufficient to keep the boat
head-on in the current. The wind made the river choppy, but the
shanty-boat, not having had time to water-log since Peter put her in the
water, floated high.
For a while Buddy steered energetically, splashing the water with the
blade of his oar, but Peter was ready for the first sign of weariness.
“My! but you are a fine steerer!” he said approvingly. “When you grow
just a bit bigger, Uncle Peter is going to teach you how to row a boat,
and a song to sing while you row it. Hurry up, now, and help Uncle Peter
steer.”
“Let's sing a song to steer a boat,” said Buddy.
“No, I guess we won't sing to-day,” said Peter. “Some other day we'll
sing.”
For Peter and Buddy were not taking the voyage alone. When Peter,
assisted by Mrs. Skinner, had completed the preparations he felt were
due any woman who is making the Great Journey, he found his money too
little to afford her a resting-place in the town, but Peter Lane could
not let one who had knocked at his door, seeking shelter, go from there
to the potter's field, any more than he could let her boy go to the
county farm. While the smart reporter was wondering whether the power
of the press, in his article “Pass Her Along,” had warned Lize Merdin to
take the road to some other town, and while Dr. Roth was telling of the
shanty-boatman whose wife had died without medical attendance, Peter, by
roundabout questions regarding George Rapp's place, learned of a small
country burying ground not too far from the spot where the shanty-boat
was to be moored for the winter. There he was taking Lize Merdin who,
“decent” at last and forever, lay within the cabin.
Through the long forenoon Peter leaned on the handle of his sweep,
pressing his breast against it now and then to swing the shanty-boat
into the full current. There was no other large boat on the river. Here
and there a fisherman pulled at his oars in a heavy skiff, or moved
slowly from hook to hook of his trot-line, lifting from time to time
a flop-pily protesting fish, but gave the shanty-boat no more than a
glance.
The boat floated past the empty log-boom of the upper mill--silent
for the winter--and past the great lumber piles, still bearing their
covering of sleet. Peter could hear the gun-like slap of board on board
coming from where some man was loading lumber in a freight car, and
occasionally a voice came across the water with startling distinctness:
“I told him he could chop his own wood, I wouldn't do it.”
“What did he say to that?”
“He said he could get plenty of men that would do it.” He knew the men
must be sitting close to the water's edge, and finally his sharp eyes
made them out below the railway embankment--two black specks crouched
over a small, yellow blaze. He recognized one voice, the voice of one
of the town loafers. The other was strange to him, probably that of some
tramp.
Below that, dwellings fronted the river and the streets of the
town opened in long vistas as the boat came to them, closing again
immediately as it passed. The hissing of a switch-engine, sidetracked
to await the passing of a train soon due, and the clanking of a poker
on the grate bars as the fireman dislodged the clinkers, came to Peter's
ears distinctly. Then the boat slipped past George Rapp's stable, with
its bold red brick front, and as he passed the door, Peter could hear
for an instant the scrape of a horse's hoof in the stall, although the
boat was a good half mile out in the river. Beyond the stable was the
low-lying canning factory, and the row of saloons, and the hotel, and
the wholesale houses, partly hidden by the railway station on the river
side of Front Street, and the packet warehouse on the river's edge. Then
the low rumbling of the dusty oatmeal mill, cut by the excited voices of
small children playing at the water's edge, became the prominent voice
of the town.
From the edge of the river the town rose on two hills, showing masses of
gray, leafless trees, with here and there a house peeping through. From
Peter's boat it looked like the dead corpse of a town, but he knew every
street of it, and he knew Life, with its manifold business of work and
play, was hurrying feverishly there, and he knew, too, that not one of
all those so busy with Life knew he was floating by, or if knowing it,
would have cared.
“That there is a town, Buddy,” said Peter. “That's Riverbank.”
“Is it?” said Buddy, without interest. He gave it but a glance.
“Yes, sir!” said Peter. “That's the town. And it's sort of funny to
think of that whole townful of people rushing around, and going and
coming, and doing things that seem mighty important to them whilst
your--whilst this boat goes floating down this river as calm and
peaceful as if the day of judgment had come and gone again. It's funny!
Probably there ain't man or woman in that whole town but, a couple of
days ago, was better and whiter than--than a certain party; and now
there ain't one of 'em but is all smudgy and soiled if compared with
her. Yes, sir, it's funny!”
He worked his sweep vigorously to carry the shanty-boat to the east
of the large island--the Tow-head--that lay before the lower-town. The
screech of boards passing through the knives of a planing-mill drowned
the rumble of the oatmeal mill. A long passenger train hurried along the
river bank like a hasty worm, and stopped, panting, at the water tank,
and went on again. The boat, as it passed on the far side of the island,
seemed to drop suddenly into silence, and the chopping of the waves
against the hull of the boat made itself heard.
“Yes, sir, towns is funny!” said Peter. “Now, take the way going behind
this island has wiped that one out. So far as you and me are concerned,
Buddy, that town might be wiped off the earth, and we wouldn't know. We
wouldn't hardly care at all. The folks in it ain't nothing to us at all,
right now. And yet, if I go into that town, I'm interested in every one
of the folks I meet, and it makes me sort of sick to see any of them
cold and hungry. Maybe that's what towns is for. Maybe I live alone too
much. I get so all I think about is sleep and eat. And eating ain't a
bad habit. How'd you like to?”
Buddy was willing. He was willing to eat any time. He ate two apples and
eight crackers, and watched the apple cores float beside the boat.
“Now, you 're going to fish,” said Peter. “Right here looks like a good
place to fish. Maybe you'll catch a whale. You're just as apt to catch a
whale here as anything else.”
“Ain't Mama hungry?” asked Buddy so suddenly that Peter was startled.
“Now, hear that!” he said. “Ain't you just as thoughtful! Why, no,
Buddy. It's real nice for you to think of that, but your ma ain't
hungry. She ain't going to be hungry or cold or wet any more, so don't
you bother your little head about it one bit. She don't want anything
but that you should grow up and be a big, fine man.”
“Like you, Uncle Peter?” asked Buddy. “My land, no!” said Peter
impulsively. “I mean, no, indeed. Don't you take me for no model, Buddy.
You want to grow up and be--I'll explain when you get older. I want you
to grow up to be a good man; the kind of man that takes some interest in
other folks. You don't want to be a dried-up old codger like me.”
“What's a codger?” asked Buddy.
“A codger is a stingy, old, hard-shell cuss--” Peter began. “I guess you
could eat another apple,” he finished, and Buddy did.
The island they were passing was low and fringed with willows, now bare
of leaf, and the shanty-boat kept close in until the current veered to
the Illinois shore, with its water-elms and maples, and tangles of wild
grapevines. Peter knew every mark of this part of the river well. The
current swung from shore to shore, now crossing to the Iowa side
again, where the levee guarded the fields, and now swinging back to the
Illinois bottom-land. For the boy the scene held little interest;
for Peter it was a new chapter of an old story he loved. Here a giant
sycamore he had known since youth had been blackened and shortened by
lightning; there an elm, falling, had created a new sand-bar on which
willows were already finding a foothold. In time it might be quite an
island, or perhaps the next spring “rise” might sweep it away
entirely. A farm-house high on the Illinois bluff had a new windmill. A
sweet-potato bam on the other side of the river was now a blackened pile
of timbers. Rotting sand-bags told the spot where the river, on its last
“rampage” had threatened to cut the levee.
Buddy fished patiently until even a more interested fisherman would have
given it up as a bad job, and Peter fed him a slice of bread and butter.
For half an hour he watched Peter whittle a nubbin off the end of the
sweep and fashion it into a top, but at the first attempt to spin it the
top bounded into the water, and floated away, and this suggested boats.
For the rest of the afternoon Peter doled out pieces of the pile of
driftwood on the deck, and they went over the side as boats, Peter
naming each after one of the river steamers, until Buddy himself said,
“This is the _War Eagle_, Uncle Peter,” or “This is the _Long Annie.
She'll_ splash!” Peter did not grudge his firewood; there was an
abundance of driftwood to be had in the slough for which they were
making. The last piece he fitted with a painter of twine, and Buddy let
it drag in the water, enjoying its “pull,” until the afternoon grew late
and the sun set like a huge red ball that almost reached from bank to
bank, and made the river a path of gold and copper.
As they floated down this glowing way, Peter fed the boy again. Little
as he knew about boys, he knew they must be fed.
“There, now!” he said when the tired boy could eat no more, and the
tired eyes blinked, “I guess you'll sleep like a sailor to-night, and no
mistake, Buddy-boy, and I'm going to give you a treat such as boys don't
often have. You see that great, big, white moon up there? I'm going to
let you go to bed outdoors here, so you can look right up at that moon
and blink your eyes at it, and see if it blinks back at you. That's what
I'm going to do; and whenever you want to, you can open your eyes and
you'll see that big old moon, and those stars, and Uncle Peter.”
“I don't want to go to sleep,” said Buddy.
“Nobody said you had to go to sleep,” said Peter. “You stay awake, if
you want to, and watch that funny old moon. You'd think we'd float right
past it, but she floats along up there, like a sort of shanty-boat up in
the sky, and the stars follow along like the play boats you put in the
water. You wait until you see the bed Uncle Peter is going to make for
you!”
Buddy fixed his eyes very seriously on the moon, while Peter unlocked
the cabin door and brought out an armful of nets and blankets and a
pillow. Close against the cabin Peter built a bed of nets and blankets.
“There, now!” he said. “That's some bed! I hope that moon didn't blink
at you. Did she?”
“No, she didn't,” said Buddy. “But she almost did.”
“You crawl in here where you'll be nice and warm, then,” said Peter.
“Uncle Peter has to have somebody to watch that moon and tell him if she
blinks, and you can lie here and look up, like the sailors do. If she
blinks, you tell me, won't you?”
“Yes,” said Buddy seriously, and Peter tucked him in the blankets.
“Uncle Peter,” he said, after a minute, “she blinked.”
“Did she, now?” said Peter, but Buddy said no more. He was asleep.
But the moon did not blink much. Big and clear and cold she filled the
river valley with white light through which sparkles of frost glittered,
and through the evening and late into the night Peter Lane stood at his
sweep, looking out over the water and thinking his own strange thoughts.
Now and then he stooped and arranged the blanket over Buddy's shoulders,
and now and then he knelt and dipped water from the river with his
cupped hand to pour upon the sweep-pin lest it creak and awaken the boy.
When he swung the sweep he swung it slowly and carefully, so that only
the softest gurgle of water could be heard above the plashing of the
small waves against the hull.
After midnight the night became intensely cold and Peter's fingers
stiffened on the sweep handle, and he warmed them by hugging them in his
arm-pits. It was about two in the morning when the shanty-boat slipped
into the mouth of the slough that cut George Rapp's place, and floated
more slowly down the narrow winding water until the soft grating of sand
on the bottom of the hull told Peter she was going aground on a bar.
Very quietly, then, Peter poled the boat close to the low, muddy
bank--frozen now--and made her fast. His voyage was over.
He gathered driftwood and made a fire, well back from the boat so the
light might not disturb the boy's slumber, and sat beside it, warming
his hands and feet, until the sun lighted the east. It was a full hour
after sunrise before Buddy awakened, and then he looked expectantly at
the sky.
“The moon got lost, Uncle Peter,” he said with deep concern.
“Well, we haven't time to bother about any moon this morning,” said
Peter briskly. “This is the day you are going to have a real good time,
because a farmer man lives not so far away from here, and he has more
pigs than you ever heard of, and horses, and cows, and chickens, and
turkeys, and guinea-hens, and I don't know what all, and I dare say he's
wondering why you haven't come to see them by this time. Yes, sir, he's
wondering why Buddy hasn't come yet. And so are the pigs, and the cows,
and the horses, and the chickens, and the guinea-hens.”
“And the turkeys,” said Buddy, eagerly.
“Yes, siree, Bob!” said Peter. “So we'll hurry up and wash our faces--”
Buddy scrambled to his feet, all eagerness, and then, with the sudden
changefulness of a small boy, he turned from Peter, toward the cabin
door.
“I want my mama to wash my face!” he said.
Peter Lane put his thin brown hand on Buddy's shoulder.
“Son,” he said, so seriously that Buddy looked up, “do you recall to
mind the other night when you and your ma come a knocking at my door,
and how cold and wet and tired in the leg, and hungry you was? Well,
Buddy, your ma was awful sorry you was so tired out and all. I guess I
couldn't half tell you how sorry she was, son, not in a week. You took
notice how your ma cried whilst you was on that trip, didn't you?”
“Yes, Mama cried,” said Buddy.
“Yes, she cried,” said Peter. “And the reason she cried was because she
had to take you on that trip that she didn't know what was to be the end
of. That's what she cried for, because she had to let you get all tired
and hungry. And you wouldn't want to make your ma cry any more, would
you?”
“No,” said Buddy simply.
“Well, then,” said Peter, clearing his throat, “your ma she has had
to go on another trip, unexpected, and she says to me, in a way, so to
speak, 'Uncle Peter,' she said, 'here's Buddy, and he just can't go with
me on this trip, and I want you to take him and--and--show him the pigs
and--'”
“And cows,” Buddy prompted. “And horses. And turkeys.”
“Why, yes,” said Peter Lane. “So to speak, that's what she meant, I
guess. The horses and turkeys and the things in the world. So she went
away, and she wouldn't like to have you fret too much just because she
couldn't take you along.”
“All right,” said Buddy, quite satisfied. “Let's go see the pigs, and
the cows, and the turkeys.”
For Peter it was a long day, from the time he carried Buddy on his
shoulder to the farm-house two miles back on the bluff to the time he
stopped for him at the farm-house again, late in the afternoon, and bore
him back to the boat, with a chunk of gingerbread in his hand, and the
farmer's kind wife standing in the door, wiping her eyes on her blue
apron.
When Peter had tucked the boy in the bunk, and had said “Good night,”
he took out his jack-knife to shape a wooden spoon. The boy, raising his
head, watched him, and Peter, looking up, saw the blue eyes and thought
he saw a reproach in them.
“That's so!” he said. “That's so! I forgot it teetotally last night.”
He seated himself on the edge of the bunk and leaned over the boy,
taking the small hands in his.
“I don't know if your ma had you say your prayers to her or not, Buddy,”
he said, “and I don't rightly remember how that 'Our Father' goes, so
we'll get along the best we can 'til I go up to the farm again and I
find out for sure. You just say this after Uncle Peter--'O God, make us
all well and happy to-morrow: Buddy and Uncle Peter, and Aunt Jane,'”
“And Aunt Jane,” repeated Buddy.
“And--and Mrs. Potter,” said Peter.
“And Mrs. Potter,” said Buddy, “and the pigs, and the horses, and the
cows, and the chickens, and the turkeys.”
“Well--yes!” said Peter. “I guess it won't do any harm to put them in,
although it ain't customary. They might as well be well and happy as
not.--Amen!”
“Uncle Peter,” said the boy suddenly, “will Mama come back?”
“Oh, yes!” said Peter Lane, in his unpreparedness, and then he opened
his mouth again to tell the boy the truth, but he heard the sigh of
satisfaction as Buddy dropped his head on the pillow and closed his
eyes.
“I got to take that lie back to-morrow,” said Peter gravely, but he
never did take it back, never! It stands against him to this day, but it
is quite hidden in the heaped up blossoms of his gentle kindness.