Fannie smiled at Norwood. She’d never heard anyone call him Woody before.
“Listen, Chappy, I want to take my new bride out for a spin, show her the river. You got some time?”
“Sure, Cap,” he said.
“Once I get the boat out, think you could handle her while I go on deck for a few minutes?”
The young man’s eyes lit up.
“All right then.” Norwood pressed a button and moved a lever forward.
The engine revved, sending muddy water gurgling from beneath the boat. Norwood guided the boat out onto the river. After a few minutes, he gave a signal to Chappy to come over and take the wheel. “Bring her just beyond the bend at Algiers Point, then turn her around.”
Chappy took the wheel. “No problem, Cap.”
Norwood slipped a life jacket over Fannie’s head. “Here, put this on and tie it up tight.”
“Aren’t you going to put one on?” she asked as she slid the ropes through the metal fasteners on the life jacket.
He shook his head. “You don’t want to make me out to be a sissy in front of Chappy, do you? Now come on.”
She followed him down the steps. He motioned for her to go toward the bow. The boat was so low in the water that the waves were lapping over the edge. She hesitated.
“Hold on,” Norwood instructed, pointing to the small metal railing that ran the length of the wheelhouse.
Fannie held on with both hands, stepping sideways along the wheelhouse wall as he steadied her. When they got to the front, water was splashing over the sides of the boat. She was scared out of her wits but didn’t want to let on.
“Hold on to the back of my belt,” he said as he picked up the bucket of mullet Chappy had left for him.
She followed him out onto the bow, holding on tight. Norwood grabbed her arms and pulled them around his waist.
Between the roar of the engine and the sounds of the river raging by, he had to holler for her to hear. “Don’t let go!”
“Don’t worry,” she said, leaning her head against his back, glad now for the life jacket.
After a few moments, Norwood gave Chappy the sign to cut the engine. The boat leveled off, traveling close to the far bank of the river at a steady cruising pace. As the engine died down, Fannie was able to let go and stand on her own. She gazed at the river, how it seemed to swirl about instead of flowing by, crashing up against the side of the boat from all directions.
“The river is amazing, isn’t it?” he said as he came up beside her. “The Army Corps of Engineers has tried to tame her, but she’s got a mind of her own. She’s never at rest.”
A flock of brown pelicans swooped overhead and surrounded the boat. They were graceful, gliding through the air with outstretched wings, their heads held back on their shoulders and their bills resting on their necks. They flew so low, Fannie felt as if she could reach up and touch them. Norwood grabbed a fish from the bucket and held it up in the air as one of the birds snatched it and tipped it into its bill.
“That one there is Whitey,” he said. “Call him that on account he’s got white tips on the end of his wings. Got names for all the birds.” He held up another fish. “That one there is Sandy. She’s got tan streaks on her underbelly—looks like sand.”
She watched as the birds came in, one by one, as if in some pecking order. When he ran out of fish, a few of the birds nose-dived into the water looking for more, disappearing completely beneath the surface, while the others bobbed up and down like buoys.
“I always wished I could float like that,” Norwood said, pointing at one of the birds. “They got hollow bones that make it so they can float. You or me go in that water, that would be the last anyone would see of us.”
He pointed upriver. “The river doesn’t flow smooth. It snakes around, sometimes at one-eighty-degree angles, and when the water hits the bank at one of the bends, it roils, driving the current straight to the bottom of the river. The diving current creates holes, some hundreds of feet deep, and eddies that jump up from nowhere. Can swallow a person down.”
He was staring straight out into the river with his hands in his pockets.
“The river’s like an uncoiling rope. It can snap like a whip. Anytime. Anyplace. Just when you least expect it.” He paused. “You can’t tame the river. But it can tame you.”
Fannie dropped her head for a moment. “One day your grandfather left for a stint on the river,” she told Ibby. “He never came back. I don’t think he really meant for it to happen that way. I think he went out with the pelicans.” She gazed sideways at her granddaughter. “Life goes by so fast. Remember that, Ibby. Turn around one day, and life as you know it . . . is gone.”
“Fannie?”
Fannie glanced her way.
“Did you bring me here because you think I’m going to leave you, too?”