Houseboat Girl (13 page)

There stood Mrs. Barker on the little back porch with a broom in her hand.

“Well, if it’s not Liz Foster!” she cried. “Seth told me he seen you folks comin’ down river and said you’d hunt us up.”

The next minute they were all inside, and the two women were in each other’s arms, and the children were trying to remember Aunt Edie. The Barkers’ houseboat was much smaller than the Fosters’. It had three rooms, kitchen, bedroom and living room. It was tiny and cozy, and held a lot of furniture, including a TV set and a sewing machine. Aunt Edie was a plump good-natured woman of fifty, with hair already turning gray.

“We’re always stoppin’ along the river, huntin’ folks up,” said Mrs. Foster. “Usually we find ’em, but sometimes it’s a hard job. We were afraid you folks had gone off again by this time.”

“Law me!” exclaimed Mrs. Barker. “We been all over the map the last few years. We used to be at Ashport and got sick of it, so we went to Fort Pillow. Then we came back and lived in a tent at the head of this chute—you found us there, remember? Then we went to Louisiana for about a year. That state’s plumb full of houseboats, but it’s so wet, it gives you rheumatism.”

“Seth is like Abe,” said Mrs. Foster. “He’s as crazy as Abe is—been all over and come back again like us.”

“Seems like Seth is never satisfied,” said Mrs. Barker. “In the woods it was too lonesome. Seth likes to talk and there was no one but me. Then he tried Louisiana ’cause he was born and raised there…”

“How long you been here?” asked Mrs. Foster.

“About eight months,” said Mrs. Barker. “We just got this houseboat last winter. Seth paid five hundred dollars for it.”

“It’s nice and cozy,” said Mrs. Foster, “for just you two. Wouldn’t be big enough for a family of kids like mine.”

Mrs. Barker asked the children how old they were and passed around cookies. Then they went out to play and the two women talked alone.

“How you makin’ out, really, Edie?”

“Purty good,” said Mrs. Barker. “Seth gets a hundred and eighty-six dollars a month as lamplighter, but he has to furnish his own boats and motors and his own gas and oil. That doesn’t leave too much for us. So I figgered if we stayed here in Arkansas this fall, I could help out by pickin’ cotton in my spare time. One woman told me she makes sixty dollars a month at it. Of course I’m gettin’ old and can’t pick very fast, but…”

“I just won’t pick that stuff,” said Mrs. Foster. “I tried it for two weeks once, but didn’t like it.”

“Well, I thought I’d do it,” said Mrs. Barker. “They’re always needin’ pickers, and you can go at your own speed. Why don’t you come with me? I’ll introduce you to Mr. George, the boss man.”

Mrs. Foster laughed. “If I’d go to pickin’ cotton, we’d be broke in two days’ time. No, I’ll let Big Abe catch fish and sell ’em and I’ll take in the money.”

“Is he aimin’ to fish?” asked Mrs. Barker. “Here, at O’Donald Bend?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Foster. “We got a good place down under the river bank, below the store there. Abe’ll put a sign out.”

“Andy Dillard won’t like that!” said Mrs. Barker.

“Who’s Andy Dillard?”

Patsy came in just in time to hear what Mrs. Barker said.

“Andy’s got a fish house down below us here, at the ferry landing. He sells to folks goin’ back and forth to Tennessee on the ferry, and to the cotton pickers, too.”

“Is there a store down there?” asked Mrs. Foster.

“It used to be a store and we ran it for a while,” said Mrs. Barker.
“I
did it, Seth didn’t help much. I sold soft drinks, peanuts, chewing gum and candy, maybe a few cakes and pies, but no beer. We’re Christians and don’t believe in it. I did that for a while, but didn’t make out very well, so I quit.”

“So it’s a fish house now?” asked Mrs. Foster.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Barker, “and Andy Dillard acts like he owns the whole Mississippi River. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!”

Mrs. Foster called the smaller children and they came running.

“Look, Mama,” cried Patsy, pointing down the river bank. “Aunt Edie’s got a whole yard full of chickens and a garden and a line for clothes down there. And look at her pretty flowers!” The window boxes on the houseboat were filled with red geraniums. “Aren’t they purty?”

“They sure are,” said Mrs. Foster. “I never was one to mess with flowers myself.”

“They’re no work,” said Aunt Edie. “You just stick ’em in the ground and they grow.”

“Not for me they don’t,” said Mrs. Foster. “They fold up and die.”

A cat came up and rubbed against Mrs. Barker’s leg. “Go away, Ten-Spot!” she said.

“What’s the cat’s name?” asked Patsy.

“Ten-Spot.” Mrs. Barker laughed. “That’s our ten-dollar cat!”

Mrs. Foster and the children stared. The cat did not have long hair, and it was not a Siamese, in fact it looked very common and ordinary. Its color was a mixture of yellow, white, gray and black.

“You don’t mean to tell me you was a big enough fool to pay ten dollars for that…that skinny old alley cat!” exclaimed Mrs. Foster. “It looks like something somebody threw out in the dark!”

Mrs. Barker laughed.

“It’s a ten-dollar cat all right,” she said, “but we didn’t buy it. A man borrowed ten dollars from Seth and left this cat, so he calls it his ten-dollar cat—Ten-Spot for short!”

“But if it’s a
nice
cat,” said Patsy, “it’d be worth ten dollars, wouldn’t it?”

The women laughed.

“That’s the kind you can’t give away,” said Mrs. Foster.

“I’ve tried a dozen times,” said Mrs. Barker, “but it always comes back. It seems to feel at home here.”

The children said good-bye to Aunt Edie and Mrs. Foster invited her to come for a visit. They started off, but Aunt Edie called them back.

“How long you folks goin’ to be here?” she asked.

“Don’t know,” said Mrs. Foster. “Until we get a notion to move on, I reckon. It’s a good place to lay and handy for the kids to go to school.”

“Be sure to stay through cotton picking,” urged Aunt Edie. She broke off some geranium slips and handed them to Patsy.

“Plant them in some dirt in tin cans and they’ll grow,” she said.

“They will?” asked Patsy, delighted.

As they walked back along the dusty road, Patsy said to Mama, “Aunt Edie’s houseboat is
almost
a house, isn’t it?”

“No more than ours is,” said Mama.

“I mean it seems like a house ’cause it’s up on land,” said Patsy. “The water’s way down at the bottom of the river bank, not up under the hull.”

“Oh yes,” said Mama.

As they passed the store, Patsy saw the girl Joella and her brother and little sisters sitting on the steps. The store was big and barnlike, sitting on high posts, so there were five steps up to the long entrance porch across the front. The girl waved to Patsy, but she did not wave back. She turned to Mama.

“That girl’s always hangin’ around that store,” she said. “She must have a lot of money to spend.”

“Maybe so,” said Mama. “We’ll find out soon enough.”

The girl Joella and her brother and sisters followed Mama and the children down the river bank. As soon as Mama and Bunny went inside, Patsy put her slips down and she and Dan picked up stones and threw them. They chased the strange children up to the road. They called them names.

“I hope Mama didn’t see us throw stones,” said Patsy. “She made me give that girl a banana—only she didn’t take it.”

“They just better not come down our river bank again,” said Dan.

Back at the houseboat, Daddy had his trotlines baited and was about to start off in the johnboat. Patsy went to the kitchen to look for tin cans to plant her geranium slips.

“Abe,” said Mama on the porch, “Edie says there’s a man down at Ashport Ferry Landing who has a fish house there and sells fish.”

“That so?” said Daddy. “What’s his name?”

“Andy Dillard,” said Mama. “Edie says he won’t like it if you try to sell fish here.”

“What can he do about it?” asked Daddy.

“Run you out,” said Mama. “Edie felt she had to warn you.”

“Run me out?” Daddy laughed. “Just let him try it.” He turned to Patsy. “Want to go with me, honey, to set my lines?”

“Yes,” said Patsy, jumping in the boat.

On the way out toward the mouth of the chute, they passed the ferry landing, and saw the small ferryboat over on the Tennessee side. Patsy pointed to the Arkansas bank, where a small frame building stood. It had a sign on it,
Fish for Sale.

“There it is,” she said. “That’s where Andy Dillard sells fish.”

Daddy saw the sign and laughed; so Patsy laughed, too.

“There’s plenty of fish in this old river for everybody,” said Daddy.

But when they got back to the houseboat, a strange man stood on deck. Mama was there, too, talking to him. The man turned and waited for Daddy to get out of the boat. He was a large fat man with a red face and a tight-fitting cap. His ears stuck out at both sides and he did not look friendly. Patsy began to tremble. What did he want? How come he was standing on the porch of their houseboat with both his hands on his hips as if he owned it? As soon as he opened his mouth, Patsy knew that this was Andy Dillard and that Daddy was in for trouble.

“You can’t tie up on this bank, mister!” said Andy Dillard in a loud blustery tone.

“Who says I can’t?” Daddy’s voice was soft and he had a half smile on his lips.

“I
say you can’t!” said the man. “My name is Andy Dillard. You can take your measly, fleabitten, ramshackle outfit away from this chute and go right back where you came from!”

Daddy began to go about his business on the fish barge as if he did not hear. After a while he said, “You own this river bank, do you?”

The man ignored his question. “I’m givin’ you fair warning, mister,” he said. “If you don’t get out, I’ll have the law on you.”

“The law won’t do a thing to me,” said Abe Foster. “The Mississippi River is Federal

“No,” said Andy Dillard. He spoke more quietly now. “I’m a friend of George Milburn. He owns this whole big cotton plantation and that’s his plantation store. He said he didn’t want any riffraff tied up to the river bank along here.”

“The Federal Government’s on my side,” said Abe Foster with a smile. “I can tie up for sixty-five feet from the water’s edge and nobody can put me off. If I tie a line up there and tear the bark off a tree, they can make me pay for it. I can drive a stake and tie up to it or to a tree ‘for storm, delay or accident’ and nobody can put me off. I can cut any wood that’s not green. The Federal Government doesn’t care. You’d better learn a little more about the law.”

The man began to shout and bluster again. When he stopped, to draw breath, Mama interrupted and said, “Supper’s ready. Won’t you set down and eat a bite with us, Mr. Dillard?”

“No!…No, thankee m’am!” the man said, stalking off angrily across the stage plank. He turned and glared at Abe Foster. “Remember I gave you fair warning!” Then he was gone.

When Daddy came in, he said, “Some things make me so mad, I could eat that fish barge!” But he did not mention Andy Dillard’s name.

Patsy could not eat her supper that night. She leaned against Daddy’s shoulder and said, “Is he gonna run us off, Daddy?”

“Of course not,” said Daddy.

“How could he?” said Mama.

“I’ll tell you what,” said Patsy. “Let’s buy a house. Then he can’t run us off the bank. Let’s buy a house up in town by the school.”

“That’s a good idea,” said Mama, “but Daddy’s got no money.”

Daddy put his arm around Patsy and told her not to worry.

Dan told about the Parkers’ ten-dollar cat and they all laughed.

N
OTHING HAPPENED FOR A
week. Then, on Saturday, Milly and Mama and Bunny went to town. They caught a ride at the corner by the store. That left Patsy and Dan alone at the houseboat. Daddy was busy with his nets and fishing gear.

“Gee, I wish I had a bike,” said Patsy. “I’d take you on the back and ride up the river road all the way to Tomato.”

“Tomato!”
That’s a funny name for a town,” said Dan. “Mama said they had a store there once,” said Patsy, “and they sold everything but one tomato. So they named the town after it.”