Three Long Blasts Below the Bluff

I did not make Shane into a monster. I said he was behind on support and working weekends and he kept thinking next week. Dutch listened to all of it without a word.

“When we come by Mom’s bluff,” I said, “I’d like to blow the horn. Three long ones. One for every Saturday he waited.”

Dutch set his cup down on the console and looked out the front windows at the river for a long time. The pilot pretended not to listen, which meant he heard every word.

“Three long ones,” Dutch said at last.

“Three. That’s all.”

“You know three long blasts don’t mean anything in the rules,” he said. “That’s why I like it. I’ll call it out on the radio before you pull it, so nobody up or down the river takes it for trouble.”

I nodded.

“I had a girl,” Dutch said, still looking out at the water. “She’s grown now, lives in Davenport. I missed four of her birthdays in a row on this river. I’d send a card from whatever lock we were at.”

He picked his coffee back up. “She kept every one of those cards. I found that out last year. I’d rather she had gotten me.”

Then he turned and looked at me straight. “What time do you figure we pass Clayton?”

Figuring the time

We figured it together on the chart. We were due to lock through the dam above McGregor at first light, and from there it is about 35 river miles down to Clayton, with the Guttenberg lock in between.

Loaded with grain and running with the current, a 15-barge tow on that stretch makes maybe seven miles an hour, a little more or a little less depending on wind and what is coming up the other way.

“Say you’re out of the first lock by seven, and through Guttenberg by noon,” Dutch said, running a thick finger down the river. “That puts you under your mama’s place somewhere around half past one. Call it one-thirty and tell her to get there early.”

Half past one on a September afternoon. Broad daylight. I could have kissed him, but he is not that kind of captain, so I said thank you and went down to eat.

At supper I told the crew, because on a towboat you cannot keep anything a secret for more than an hour anyway. There were eight of us aboard, and by dessert every one of them knew.

Augie, our youngest deckhand, is 22 and still has a little sister in grade school back home in Wisconsin. He put his fork down and said, “Can we all go out on deck when it happens?”

The cook said she would make sure the galley was cleaned up early.

The engineer, who almost never says anything, said he would come up from the engine room for it, and that he had not done that for anybody’s birthday in five years.

The call

The next morning was clear and cool. We locked through the dam above McGregor just after six, and while the tow was split and the first cut was going through, I stood on the lock wall and called my mother.

“Mom,” I said. “I need you to do something for me, and I need you not to ask why.”

“All right,” she said.

“Have Jory at the fence by one-thirty this afternoon. Both of you. And don’t tell him anything. Just tell him you want to watch a boat.”

There was a little pause. My mother is not a woman who asks questions she does not need answered.

“I’ll pack a lunch,” she said. “We’ll be out there by one.”

“Mom,” I said. “Bring Dad’s binoculars.”

I heard her breath catch. Dad’s binoculars still hung on a nail by the back door, where he had left them. Nobody had taken them down in two years.

“I will,” she said. “I’ll say a prayer for good weather, too, though it looks like the Lord already took care of that.”