TWENTY-FOUR
During the day there was, with very little intermission, a continued series of shocks, attended with innumerable explosions like the rolling of thunder; the bed of the river was incessantly disturbed, and the water boiled severely in every part; 1 consider ourselves as having been in the greatest danger from the numerous instances of boiling directly under our boat; fortunately for us, however, they were not attended with eruptions. One of the spouts which we had seen rising under the boat would have inevitably sunk it, and probably have blown it into a thousand fragments; our ears were continually assailed with the crashing of timber, the banks were instantaneously crushed down, and fell with all their growth into the water. It was no less alarming than astonishing, to behold the oldest trees of the forest, whose firm roots had withstood a thousand storms, and weathered the sternest tempests, quivering and shaking with the violence of the shocks, whilst their heads were whipped together with a quick and rapid motion; many were torn from their native soil, and hurled with tremendous force into the river; one of these whose huge trunk (at least 3 feet in diameter) had been much shattered, was thrown better than an hundred yards from the bank, where it is planted into the bed of the river, there to stand, a terror to future navigators.
Narrative of Mr. Pierce, December 25,1811
Captain Jean-Joseph Malraux hummed Bernard Herrman’s theme music to the film Jason and the Argonauts as he steered Beluthahatchie down the channel of the Ohio River. The pilothouse was dark around him except for the glow of the instruments. The lights of Bay City were falling astern, and the mass of the Shawnee National Forest loomed dark and silent off to port. Joe kept one eye cocked on the depth indicator as he steered, making certain not to run onto any more unexpected sandbanks looming out of the river’s channel.
His company had given him permission to moor his tow of fifteen barges to the St. Francis revetment, where it could be picked up when the river was safer, and so he had only the fast and highly maneuverable Beluthahatchie to worry about. He was happy to be out of the Mississippi with its shifting channel, its hidden reefs, and its masses of saw-toothed debris. The Ohio was in bad shape as well, with the bridge at Cairo lacking a span and Locks and Dams No. 52 and 53 both broken. But the Corps of Engineers had been clearing the wreckage, the river was high enough so that the dams weren’t necessary to keep the channel full, and all the wreckage was heading to where Joe had been, to the Mississippi. And now that he was above the intact Smithfield Lock and Dam, the Ohio was smooth sailing.
The worst part of the last two days, though, had been calling Frank Adams on the marine band to tell him that his kid had gone missing. Frank had reamed him up one side and down the other. He had used language that would make a longshoreman blush, as Joe, who had known plenty of longshoremen in his time, could testify.
And then, when Joe had refused Frank’s demand to turn his boat around and head back to conduct a search for his missing son, Frank’s language had grown even more violent, and Joe’s temper had finally snapped, and he’d given Frank the company’s phone number, and told him that the company had lawyers who were paid to take that kind of abuse.
Joe felt kind of bad about that. Frank had just been looking for someone to blame, which was understandable enough.
But it wasn’t Joe’s fault. He had looked after Nick and Jase as well as he could. It wasn’t his fault that they had left Beluthahatchie. And damned if he was going to let some Los Angeles shyster tell him that it was.
Cincinnati, he thought hopefully, in the morning. And then a lot of downtime, while barge traffic languished and the Mississippi was made safe again. Time in which Captain Joe would probably not be employed.
At least it would give him a chance to get his video collection in order.
Bernard Herrman kettledrums boomed through his mind. He pictured the Argonauts’ galley moving up the river, drums beating time to the oars, while invisible gods and goddesses bickered overhead.
The door to the pilothouse opened, and his bowman came in. “Coffee, skip. And some beignets.”
“Thanks,” Joe said. He had barely slept in the two days since Beluthahatchie had got off its sandbar in the Lower Mississippi. He was the only crewman aboard certified by the Coast Guard, and he wanted to be on hand at every moment of the treacherous passage.
The bowman, who shared his watch, dropped the coffee cup into its waiting holder, and put the plate of beignets within Joe’s reach. Joe reached for one of the beignets, but they were fresh from the deep-fryer and burned his fingers. He dropped the beignet and licked confectioner’s sugar from his fingers.
And then the water began to dance around him, thousands of little wave-crests criss-crossing the river’s still surface in the light of Beluthahatchie’s floodlights. He could feel a trembling run through the towboat, shiver through the wheel beneath his fingers. To port and starboard, whole forests waved madly in the darkness.
“Aftershock,” he said to his bowman. He had seen this before.
But the aftershock didn’t die. Instead the wave peaks grew taller, and Joe could see foam forming in streaks along the surface. The vibration increased. The plate of beignets threatened to slide onto the floor, and Joe’s heart beat like the Argonauts’ kettledrums. His hand hovered over the engine throttles, but he didn’t know whether it would be safer to throttle up or down, so he decided not to make a change.
“Go get the other watch,” he told the bowman. “I want as many pair of eyes up here as possible.” The aftershock could stir up all kinds of crap in the channel.
The bowman nodded and left the pilothouse in a hurry. Spray bounded over Beluthahatchie’s blunt bow. And then the pilothouse door slammed, and the bowman was back, his eyes wild.
“Big wave!” he shouted, one finger pointing aft. “Just behind us!”
Joe’s hand slammed the throttles forward before he looked over his shoulder. The diesels roared to a deeper pitch as Joe craned his neck aft, searching the leaping water for sign of the overtaking wave.
Joe’s heart gave a lurch. There it was, a big black wall moving across the leaping, foam-flecked water. It had to be at least fifteen feet high, and it was about to climb right up Beluthathatchie’s ass.
Tsunami. The great sea-wave caused by an earthquake.
Joe had never heard of a tsunami on a river before.
“Sound the collision alert!” Joe yelled. He didn’t want to take his hands off the controls, but the off-duty watch needed to be ready for what was going to hit them. The other watch, plus any other human being within hearing distance of the signal.
The bowman threw himself across the pilothouse and the alarm blared out. White water boiled under Beluthahatchie’s counter as the engines redlined. Joe peered at the great wave rising astern, tried to judge its speed relative to the boat.
Still overtaking. Damn it.
The bridge telephone rang. The off-duty watch, trying to find out what was happening.
“Answer that!” Joe snapped. Calculations leaped through his mind. If the wave rolled over the towboat’s stern, it could sweep Beluthahatchie from stern to stem, bury it beneath tons of water. The boat might survive that, he reckoned, or it might not. And if the wave caught the boat broadside, Beluthahatchie would almost certainly capsize.
There was one possible escape, Joe thought. And that was to keep forward of the crest, by using the wave’s own power.
He gripped the wheel with one hand, the throttles with the other. The bowman, shouting into the bridge telephone, was looking aft with eyes wide as saucers. “Hoo-aaah!” Joe shouted in a voice intended to be heard on the other end of the telephone. “Hang on! We goin’ surfing, podnah!”
Joe pulled the throttles back, saw the wave loom closer. He let it come till he felt the wave just begin to lift Beluthahatchie’s stern, then throttled forward again. Turbines shrieked. The boat rose, and Joe felt a flutter in his stomach, panic rising in his throat.
Joe throttled way back. The boat continued to lift. The foaming curl at the wave top loomed closer, then stopped, hanging over the stern. Exultation screamed through Joe’s veins.
“Yeeow! Hang ten, baby!”
He adjusted the throttles so that he was neither climbing the face of the wave, nor dropping forward. The power of the wave itself was doing most of the work.
Joe’s inner ear swam. There was a sense of movement swirling on the other side of the pilothouse windows, and Joe felt panic burn along his nerves. He threw the wheel over, shoved the throttles forward. The boat straightened.
Joe took a gasping breath. He had almost lost the boat. If he’d let the wave push him to one side or the other, he’d have swung broadside to the wave and been rolled under.
Debris boomed on the bottom of the hull. The boat swayed: Joe corrected. The bowman was standing in the pilothouse staring aft, his knuckles clenched around the telephone.
“Put that down and call the Coast Guard!” Joe said. “Tell them we got a tsunami on the Ohio heading for Golconda! Move it, there, podnah!”
The bowman lunged for the radio. Joe’s head lashed back and forth, peering behind to make certain the tsunami wasn’t about to fall on them, staring forward into the night to see if the wave was going to run them right onto an island.
“Careful baby baby careful just a little more a little more juice gaw-damn ...” Words burbled from his lips in accompaniment to his thought. The blackness off the port bow was broken by light. Joe peered at it, trying to make certain the light wasn’t a reflection on the pilothouse glass ...
Golconda. Already. He didn’t dare think about how fast they were going.
Whoah. He juiced the throttle, swung the boat to starboard. He’d almost lost it there.
And if that was Golconda, he thought, that meant he was coming up on a big island that sat smack in the middle of the river. And if he made it past the island, the river was going to make a sweeping ninety-degree curve to the right, and that meant the big wave was going to get complicated ...
Adrenaline screamed through his veins. He goosed the throttle, shaved the wheel just a little. Joe wanted to steer down the face of the wave, moving laterally to port as the wave kept rolling down the channel. He needed to get well clear of that island before he impaled the boat on it...
“Whoah whoah whoah you cochon just a little baby there you go ...”
He was inside the wave’s curl, heading slantwise down the wave. Golconda was dead ahead. Now if he could just head the boat a little to port, get it moving straight again ...
“There you go baby there you go aiaaah surfin’ USA careful there goose her yaaah ...”
The boat swayed, the wave crest looming on over her, and then Beluthahatchie leaped down the wave, picking up speed. Joe’s laugh boomed in the pilothouse.
Golconda was past and the island flashed up to starboard. Joe heard the grinding, grating, booming noise as the tsunami pounded over the island, ripping it and its timber to shreds.
“Roi de la rivière! C’est moil” Joe felt like pounding his chest in triumph.
The island caused the wave to lose cohesion, caused ripples and back-eddies to build under the crest. Joe twitched the wheel and throttles to keep Beluthahatchie on course. And then the island was astern, and the tsunami shuddered as it met its twin, the wave that had creamed along the Kentucky side of the island. Joe felt sweat popping on his forehead as the boat surged beneath him.
“Yah, baby, roi de la rivière! Surf’s up!”
He tried to decide what to do about the upcoming bend. He didn’t want to be where he was, near the north bank of the river, when the river turned to the right— he would get caught between the bank and the tsunami and pounded to bits against the timber in the floodplain. So what he needed to do was cross over the front of the wave again and get as close to the south bank as he could . ..
“Here we go here we go on t’udder side . ..”
He was traveling along the front of the wave again, the turbines carrying him to starboard, white water creaming behind. The wave’s curl hung overhead, looming over them like a white-fanged monster about to drop on them from above.
“Skip! What are you doing?” the bowman demanded, staring at the curl in horror.
“Hang on podnah.” Joe skated right across the front of the wave, speed building. Then he turned the wheel, got the wave behind him, felt the boat lift...
He could see the silver surface of the water curving to the right. Damn they were going fast.
Water boiled white to port as the tsunami slammed into the outer bank of the river bend. There was a rending, crashing, as if the wave was trying to tear the riverbed itself from the earth. But the part of the wave pushing Beluthahatchie seemed to be speeding up, going faster as it skiddered around the inside of the river bend. The boat swerved violently, and Joe steadied it just in time, a bellow of terror and exultation rising in his throat.
The roar to port continued. Joe worked the throttles. “Yah baby you go papa say you go ...”
The wave kept going, rolling across the curving river to smash into the north bank in a fountain of white foam. Trees went down like ranks of soldiers before machine-gun fire. But Beluthahatchie was flung away, across the river’s inner curve and into the calmer upper river, like a watermelon seed squeezed between the fingertips.
Joe throttled up, intending to get clear of the turbulent water behind him and the reduced reflection of the tsunami as it bounced off the north bank. He looked into the terrified eyes of his bowman and gave a wild laugh.
“The Argonauts ain’t got nothin’ on me!” he shouted, and reached for the horn button so that Beluthahatchie could trumpet his joy, send the sound ringing from Kentucky to Indiana and back again, the triumphant cry of the old river man who has beaten the elements, and is bringing his boat safely home ...
*