I Don't Wanna Be No Mate

by RICHARD BlSSELL

MY GOD but it’s wonderful to be a deckhand. “Sure,” they say, “you always saying that because you ain’t a Mate or Pilot and don’t look like you ever will be.” That ain’t the idea at all, I just don’t care about it and I’d like to have a dime for every time I’ve thought “Oh man am I ever glad I ain’t in that guy’s shoes" when I seen the Mate or the Pilot up to his ears in trouble and the sweat running down his collar like the Turkey River in the spring rise.

I ain’t savin I could get to be Male, you understand, but still I’ve worked for some guys that was awful dumb and still made her. Of course my trouble is that I can’t write, so how in the world could I pass that there Mate’s examination up to the steamboat office at St. Louis? I couldn’t very well do it without a good deal of practice and then maybe I couldn’t do it anyway. Yes, I use to be able to write, went through the third grade, but that was twenty years or more ago and if you think I had any time to practice writing sence then why you got Izzy Chotin all wrong, about all I can do with a pen or pencil at the present time is to write my name, and I ain’t do in a very bang-up job at that, neither.

Where’d I get a name like that? Well my name is Isadore. No I ain’t jewish. I’m a cajun. Well anyway, I was raised up here at the Upper End in a little old place called Cassville, but I was born down there and my folks and all my relatives is cajuns. “What kind of a name is that?” some old loafer up at the barge terminal in Rock Island asked me the other day. “I’m a cajun,” I says. “What’s that?” he says. I says to him I says, “Why don’t you save your money and go out into the world and find out what is going on instead of just settin around here in Rock Island thinkin up things to say to people. Why’nt you get on a log and float down to Louisiana and find out for yourself what it is, a cajun.” “You’re another of them fresh deckhands, ain’t you?” he says, and I says, “If you want any more facts about my back history ask the Mate, I can’t stand here all day, that steamboat is just a few miles downstream now, and I’m in the mood for some very cold beer.”

No but I got absolutely no desire to rise above my station which is deckhand on any steamboat in any of the waters flowing into the Mississippi, preferably up in the north in summer and down below in wintertime. I was up on the Illinois amongst the ice cakes one time and I stuck her out until January but that was the end; off I went on a daycoach that stopped at every grade crossing and sometimes where there wasn’t none, all the way to Memphis. It was still cold there so I bummed a ride down river.

Because that’s all I want to be is just a plain deckhand, it don’t matter none steam or diesel is all the same to me, just so I can sit and smoke and enjoy myself when I ain’t on watch without wondering what and the name of hell the Second Mate has got the deckhands doing, whether they pumped out the barge that’s leaking, or if I was the Pilot, sweating them long tows up through the sand bars and wondering what the channel been doing sence I was past here the last time. No by god when I’m off watch I can sleep like an Indian baby and then some. And when I’m on watch the Pilot or the Captain ain’t blowing the whistle for me to come up to the pilothouse and saying “What’s the matter with you guys, it took you an hour and twentythree minutes to lock through and here I see in the log the other watch only took an hour and fifteen minutes back at Le Claire.” No when I’m on watch the Mate says “Izzy, grab the sounding pole and go out and sound them barges.”And when I come back offn the barges and he asks me did I find any water and I say “Yes, there is seven inches in number one-sixteen,” well, he don’t say “Are you sure? How can you tell? That ain’t possible” or some such material, instead he says “O.K., you and Red go and get the pump and go to work on her.” There ain’t a lot of nonsense heaped on your head all the time and fed into you with a spoon.

And anytime you do happen to get one of these wise Mates that think they are the latest thing why all you have to do is just wait till you get to St. Louis and walk off. If you’re a Mate why you can’t just walk off and then walk onto some other boat as Mate, but if you are a deckhand, that is if you are a deckhand, not some college boy building up his toes on the barge fine so he can kick a football in the fall of the year, why then you can always work; sure there is hard times when it’s tough to find a boat, but then, a deckhand out of work ain’t half so unhappy as a Mate or a Pilot. A deckhand he can go to work on the section or most anyplace, but a Pilot has to be a Pilot, and a Mate makes a dang poor cab driver.

So I don’t care if I never get to be a Mate, even if I could write.

2

NY WAY, the first time I seen The Splinter he was standing up at the top of the bank down at Alton, Illinois. We was waiting on loads and most of the crew was uptown gettin full before we was to take off for St. Paul. “Is that the Rose McGrady?” he says, settin his suitcase down in the sand. “Yes,” I says, “and this here wet stuff is the Mississippi River.” “O.K.,” he says and he come sliding down the bank and raising a cloud of dust. “I’m the new deckhand they sent from St. Louis.” I don’t know who it was named him The Splinter, I think it was Joe Novak, one of the wipers, but anyway it was a good name because he was so skinny, you see, the name fitted him very good. “What boat you come from? I says, but it was more to make him mizzable than anything, I could tell he never been steamboating before from the way he come aboard. “Never come from no boat,”he says. “I ben helpin out on the farm.” “Well,” I says, “that’s fine. How’s all the hogs gettin along?” “They was just doin fine when I left,” he says.

That was in June when The Splinter come aboard and by the time the ducks begun to come south he had turned into a deckhand. We had a good season that summer on the old Rose, just, towin straight coal all the time, eight loads or maybe ten loads; see, the Rose was one of the last of the big coal burning sternwheelers and could shove a lot of tons up that channel. We usually dropped a few off on the way up, at Genoa, Winona, or Red Wing, sometimes maybe even spotted one in there at Lake City but not often, and ran on into the Cities with usually five or six loads. It was a good summer and we had old Andy Hanks on there as cook and it was mighty good eating. We lost a deckhand overboard one night up by Diamond Bluff and he never did come up so far as we heard; you know they’ll usually come up in a few days and somebody, a commercial fisherman or some kids out in a skiff, usually finds them and brings them in on a line, but this boy, he was from Nauvoo, why he fell over the side and that was the end of him, he never come up at all. “He got into the wheel, that’s what happened to him,” the Chief always said. “He got into the wheel and got mashed up so there wasn’t nothing left to find, that’s my notion of what happened to that boy from Nauvoo.”

Aside from that why we had no trouble most of the summer and now here it was December tenth and we was the last boat up there in the far northern pools of the Upper Mississippi. We was up in there to “clean out the empties for the season.” All the other boats had went south, afraid of getting caught by the ice and froze in all winter much less gettin into trouble with the ice at the spring thaw. There was plenty of ice in the sloughs already and any minute why that wind could come in from Montana and the Mississippi would make ice so fast it would freeze solid in a few hours. We made Red Wing lock, a double locking with thirteen empties. The sky was dead gray and the wind from the Northwest. Temperature on the thermometer outside the pilothouse door was fourteen. That’s cold out on the barges, mister, even if it ain’t uptown.

After we got through I went up to the galley and swiped a couple of apples and a piece of slab cake and me and The Splinter went down to the deck room and we climbed up on the line racks onto the coils of line right beside the boilers and we sat there eating our apples and cake and listening to the force draft; it was mighty satisfying after locking through in the cold and wind and fighting with them empties. Pretty soon it’d be watch time and we could wash up and dig into some good dinner and after dinner set around the mess room kiddin with the other guys or get in the old bunk and just lay there smokin and listenin to the wind howl in the ventilators and maybe lookin at a comic book or one of them picture magazines with all the girls. But The Splinter he was one of them nuts that ain’t never satisfied.

“How much do these Mates make?” he says. “What do you care?” I says. “You ain’t even a deckhand yet.” “Listen Izz,” he says, “it’s all right for you to talk, but I aim to be a Mate. And after that I aim to be a Pilot. I don’t give a hang what you wanna be. I aim to be a Mate.” “You know who’s the happiest man of all thirty men aboard this old coal burner?” I says. “You know who?” “Sure,” he says, “that’s easy, it’s ole Cap with his seven hunnerd a month.” “Yeah,” I says, “he’s bound to be happy. If the thermometer drops another ten degrees tonight his boat will be froze in up here in the wilderness until spring. The company will love that. Also the company loaded thirteen empties in front of us and the wind is blowin so hard the best pilot in the world couldn’t steer them around Red Ming bend. And after he works around the bend somehow there’s Lake Pepin right below, nightfall coming on, and the waves ten feet high. Why I’ll bet that old boy is as happy as a lark. I’ll bet he’s singin and dancin around the pilothouse just like Friday night out at the dance hall.” “Well then, who is the happiest man aboard if it ain’t him? How about Andy, all he got to do is cook and sleep. It don’t matter none to him if we do freeze in.” “Andy? Why dang it boy he’s got a girl down at Quincy that keeps him half nuts wonderin what she’s doin. He don’t get no sleep.” “All right then,” The Splinter says, “who? Who is this guy that got everything so good?” “Me,” I says.

Just then Blackie, the Mate, come down between the boilers. “ Well,” he says, “you boys look mighty comfortable.” “How’s it lookout there, Blackie?” I says. “It ain’t gettin any better,” he says. “And when we get down to the lake gawd knows what it’ll be like. I don’t look for much sleep tonight.” “ The Splinter was just tellin me here he figures to go for a Mate’s job some day,” I says. “What’s the matter with you, boy, you got a touch of brain fever?” says Blackie. “Why,” he says hauling out his watch out of his breast pocket, “in forty minutes youse guys can eat and lay down. But the big important Mate will probly be up all during the off watch to see what the hell happens in the lake.”

“Yeah,” says The Splinter, “but he makes a hunnerd and forty-five a month and I only get ninety.” “What would you do with a hunnerd and forty-five?” I says. “Buy the Statler hotel down in St. Louis and retire I suppose.” “And anyway I want one a them caps with the star on,” he says. “Oh those dang caps with the stars on! Buy one and wear it around when you’re down home on the farm,” I says. “Nobody will know the difference.”“I aim to be a Mate,”he says. “I want to wear one of them caps while I’m right here on the boat.”

3

WELL it was some trip down. It took two hours to get around Red Wing bend and the wind was still raising when we got down to where the Mississippi widens out into this here place they call Lake Pepin. We had a bad time through the lake. When we come on watch at midnight two of the empties had busted loose and we was chasing them across the lake and the wind was howling and the temperature was down to zero.

Yeah well we got them thirteen empties to St. Louis but there was times when we was bustin six inches of ice. “How you like to be Mate this trip? ” I says to The Splinter. We had the blow torch out on number twenty-three tryin to thaw out the bilge pump. My fingers was plumb blue. The lines was froze so tight to the timber heads you had to beat them off with an axe. “I still like the looks of them caps with the star on,” he says. “Why you dang Splinter you,” I says, “neither one of the Mates has had any peace sence we left St. Paul. Both them boys is beat to the last sad farewell.”

They laid the old Rose up for boiler repairs and I got tired of wait in on her; didn’t look like she’d ever turn that great big wheel again the way they dawdled over them boilers and hemmed and hawed over them with the superntendent and the shore engineer and the port captain and the chief and the second and the U.S. Inspector, so I got sick of it there in drydock and went off down to Baton Rouge on a little six hunnerd horse diesel pusher called the Reliance. The way t hat come about was she stopped in at the drydock while we was layin there with the Rose to have a new wheel on — she had backed into a rock pile up near Wood River — and I went over to chew it with the boys.

“Where you goin, boy?” I says just when I got over to her. Here was this fella comin down the ladder with his suitcase. “Home,” he says. “Back to Clay County where 1 belong.” “Wait a minute,” I says. “Are you a deckhand?” “Was a deckhand,” he says and starts up the bank. “How much?” I says. “Ninety-five,” he says. “Who’s the cook?” I says. “Chicken Jim,” he says. So I went down the river as deckhand and it was a regular home — only two or three loads, and no locks, and time in Baton Rouge to get uptown and kick it around.

So I didn’t see The Splinter for nearly two years. Two years on the river passes like two weeks uptown, it seems like the years slip past you don’t know where.

And there I was one raw February day down at Addyston, Ohio, waiting for ihe steamer Diamond Prince to show up from down below. She was short two deckhands and t he Cincinnati office had sent, me down on the Fernbank bus to catch her at, the coal docks. I was set tin there on my suitcase lookin down the river and up behind me comes The Old Splint er.

“What you say, Izzy?” he says. “Nothin new,” I says. “You wait in on the Prince?” he says, and I says “Acs” and he says, “Me too.”

“Well,” I says. “Did you get one of them caps with the star on yet?”

“Did I? Lemme tell you about that, Izz,” he says. “You know kid, after you climbed off the old Rose we laid there nearly a month before we took her off the ways and then all we did was run her down to Cairo light and lay her up for the season. So there I was on the bank with a sixty dollar pay-off which lasted me about three nights up there at the Jockey Club bar. I went down to Peddies Landing and hung around and the second day a steamboat down bound stopped out in the channel and sent the yawl ashore for mail. When the yawl landed, a charter member of the suitcase parade climbs out and starts up the bank.

“‘Who’s he?' I says to the Mate. ‘You need a deckhand, mister?’

“‘If you wanna wash dishes, climb in,’ he says. ‘That’s the messboy and he’s got them dishpan hands so bad he’s goin home.’

“So I went down river as messboy until one of the deckhands broke his arm down at Helena and I got his job and I was back on deck again. A week later the boat burned to the water line tied up at Vicksburg. I got a job on the Samson, sixteen-hundred horse, twin screw Busch-Sulzer, I guess you seen her plenty a times. First week the Mate come back to the boat from uptown, he fell off the dock and broke his neck. They give me the Second Mate’s job and I am on my way, boy. We get to New Orleans first trip and I get me a cap, by god, with a star on her. We pick up four loads of high-test gas and take off up the river. We get as far up as Paducah and the Mate keels over and we put him off to the hospital with double pneumonia.

“Cap calls me up to the pilothouse. ‘Can you Mate this boat?' he says. ‘I can try,’ I says. ‘Takes more than try-in,’ he says, ‘but we got nobody else.’

“After we made the first lock he says, ‘Congradulations.’ ‘What for?’ I says. ‘You just won the Ohio River first prize for sett in out four lock lines and all of them wrong,’ he says.

“Wc had a bilge pump on there they must have got off Fulton’s original boat it was all held together with baling wire and he says, ‘Well I see it didn’t take you long to bust the pump.’ One of the deckhands got homesick and went up the bank. ‘Flow come you run Slim off?’ he says. ‘Can’t you get along with the deckhands?’ ‘I never run him off, Cap, I says, ‘The dang fool got homesick.’ ‘Funny he got homesick so sudden,’ he says. Izz, I almost picked up a chair and hit him I was that mad.

“All the time I was out on deck at the locks or making a landing he had that megaphone out the pilothouse. ‘Get your line out, get your line out,’ he’d start hollering when we was still fifty feet off. Then when we was acoming into a lock he’d toot for a check and I’d no sooner start to check than he’d holler out so you could hear it clear to Pittsburgh, ‘Turn loose, you dang fool, turn loose.’ Oh I’m here to tell ya Izzy, it was an awful thing the way that man carried on. In no time at all I was fit for the house up yonder with the iron windows.

“Then it rained some more and then the rain turned to sleet and the sleet to snow. Then it fogged in. Then we run aground. Then we caught a notch in the lock wall and cracked a knuckle. Then the cook took sick and we ate beans for four days. I wasn’t gettin no sleep. Just like you said, Izz, when I was in the sack I was worry in about what the hell I had left undone, wonderin about the lines and the pumps and all the rest of it. And when

I wasn’t in the sack why that old man was on me just every minute, boy.

“Well, one night we are tied off in fog and he says, ‘All right, we’ll try it again, get out there and turn loose if you can get that far without fallin overboard.’ I never said nothin but I got two deckhands and went out on the head and climbed down the ladder and into the woods and turned the line loose. Before I could get on again he was backin and the barge slides off into the fog and I’m in the woods at

2 A.M. It turned out he got lost in the fog again and I got lost and dang near froze to death on that island. They tied off again across the river and about a mile down. I never got aboard again until the fog lifted about 8 A.M. and they come upstream and seen me wavin my shirt. I was so cold I was just numb all over and shakin like a dancin coon.

“‘Congradillations,’ says Cap when I come into the mess room. ‘You win the Ohio River first prize for the only Mate ever got lost in a fog all night in order to get out a doin any work on the boat.’

“So I says to him, ‘That’s enough,’ I says. ‘I heard all a that stuff I aim to hear, Now you can go hunt up a new Mate because here’s one boy goin back to the bull pen where he belongs. If you need a good deckhand on this boat,’ I says, ‘why I’ll sign up. As Mate I resign right now, effective ten minutes ago.'

“‘Can’t take it, huh?' he says.

‘“No, I can’t,’ I says. ‘I’d ruther be a deckhand and enjoy life than a Mate and have to listen to that line of yours for only fifty bucks a month more.’

“‘You’re fired,’he says.

“‘I already quit,’I says. ‘Here’s a present for your next Mate,’I says, and I tossed the famous cap onto the table in front of him. ‘Give it to the poor mizzable boy with my compliments. I’m a deckhand, I won’t need it no more. Not on this here boat or no other boat.'”

The Splinter stood up and looked down the river. “Here comes the Prince,”he says. “Look at her smoke, the old devil.”

“Well,” I says, “I always tole you them Mate’s jobs was nothing but poison. By the way,”I says, “I wonder who’s Mate on the Prince now.”

“Me,”says The Splinter. “I’m the Mate on the Prince.”