Show Boat by Edna Ferber Read Free Book Online Page B

supplies and passengers, set along the river banks for the convenience of steamboats. He knew every plank in every river-landing from St. Paul to Baton Rouge. As the sky is revealed, a printed page, to the astronomer, so Andy Hawks knew and interpreted every reef, sand bar, current, and eddy in the rivers that drained the great Mississippi Basin. And of these he knew best of all the Mississippi herself. He loved her, feared her, respected her. Now her courtiers and lovers were deserting her, one by one, for an iron-throated, great-footed, brazen-voiced hussy. Andy, among the few, remained true.
    To leave the river—to engage, perforce, in some landlubberly pursuit was to him unthinkable. On the rivers he was a man of consequence. As a captain and pilot of knowledge and experience his opinion was deferred to. Once permanently ashore, penduluming prosaically between the precise little household and some dull town job, he would degenerate and wither until inevitably he who now was Captain Andy Hawks, owner and master of the steamboat
Creole Belle
, wouldbe known merely as the husband of Parthy Ann Hawks, that Mistress of the Lace Curtains, Priestess of the Parlour Carpet, and Keeper of the Kitchen Floor. All this he did not definitely put into words; but he sensed it.
    He cast about in his alert mind, and made his plans craftily, and put them warily, for he knew the force of Parthenia’s opposition.
    “I see here where old Ollie Pegram’s fixing to sell his show boat.” He was seated in the kitchen, smoking his pipe and reading the local newspaper. “
Cotton Blossom
, she’s called.”
    Parthy Ann was not one to simulate interest where she felt none. Bustling between stove and pantry she only half heard him. “Well, what of it?”
    Captain Andy rattled the sheet he was holding, turned a page leisurely, meanwhile idly swinging one leg, as he sat with knees crossed. Each movement was calculated to give the effect of casualness.
    “Made a fortune in the show-boat business, Ollie has. Ain’t a town on the river doesn’t wait for the
Cotton Blossom
. Yessir. Anybody buys that outfit is walking into money.”
    “Scallywags.” Thus, succinctly, Parthenia thought to dismiss the subject while voicing her opinion of water thespians.
    “Scallywags nothing! Some of the finest men on the river in the show-boat business. Look at Pegram! Look at Finnegan! Look at Hosey Watts!”
    It was Mrs. Hawks’ habit to express contempt by reference to a ten-foot pole, this being an imaginaryimplement of disdain and a weapon of defence which was her Excalibur. She now announced that not only would she decline to look at the above-named gentlemen, but that she could not be induced to touch any of them with a ten-foot pole. She concluded with the repetitious “Scallywags!” and evidently considered the subject closed.
    Two days later, the first pang of suspicion darted through her when Andy renewed the topic with an assumption of nonchalance that failed to deceive her this time. It was plain to this astute woman that he had been thinking concentratedly about show boats since their last brief conversation. It was at supper. Andy should have enjoyed his home-cooked meals more than he actually did. They always were hot, punctual, palatable. Parthenia had kept her cooking hand. Yet he often ate abstractedly and unappreciatively. Perhaps he missed the ceremony, the animation, the sociability that marked the meal hours in the dining saloon of the
Creole Belle
. The Latin in him, and the unconsciously theatrical in him, loved the mental picture of himself in his blue coat with brass buttons and gold braid, seated at the head of the long table while the alpacas twittered, “Do you think so, Captain Hawks?” and the Prince Alberts deferred to him with, “What’s your opinion, sir?” and the soft-spoken black stewards in crackling white jackets bent over him with steaming platters and tureens.
    Parthenia did not hold with conversation at meal