Mark Twain once
wrote, “I can picture that old time to myself
now, just as it was then . . . the great Mississippi, the
majestic, the magnificent Mississippi, rolling its mile-wide
tide
along, shining in the sun.”
As I stood at
the railing of the Southern Belle, I knew what he
meant. I had seldom seen anything quite so beautiful and
serene as the great river. Sure, the scenery along the banks
wasn’t as pristine and unspoiled as it was back in Twain’s day.
I could see tall fast-food signs and electrical lines and jets
winging across the blue summer sky. But out here in the middle
of the river all I could hear were the gentle rumble of the
boat’s engines and the splashing of the paddlewheels as they
propelled us through the water at a sedate pace. I felt the
faint
vibrations of the engine through the deck, and the sun was
warm on my face. If you closed your eyes, I thought, it would
almost seem like you were really back there and Sam Clemens
himself was up in the pilothouse, guiding the riverboat toward
the next quaint little river town where it would dock.
And then
somebody’s dadgum cell phone rang.
“Yellll-o!”
That’s the way
he said it, swear to God.
“Yeah, guess
where we are? . . . We’re on a riverboat! . . . Yeah,
on the Mississippi. Helen wanted to come. But it’s so freakin’
slow, I think I could walk faster! Haw, haw!”
My hands
tightened on the smooth, polished wood of the
railing. I figured I’d better hold on, because a good travel
agent
never punches her clients. That’s one of the first rules they
teach you.
“What? . . . No,
damn it, I told him those reports had to be
finished by yesterday . . . What’s he been doing this whole
time, sitting around with his thumb up his—”
I couldn’t let
him go on. I turned around and said, “Sir!”
He looked
surprised at the interruption. He was a big guy,
balding, with the beginnings of a beer gut in a polo shirt.
Played
college football, from the looks of him, but that was more than
twenty years in the past. Beside him, wearing a visor,
sunglasses,
a sleeveless blue blouse, and baggy white shorts, was a
blond woman carrying a big straw purse and a long-suffering
look. She was married to the loudmouth, more than likely.
He said, “Hold
on, Larry,” into the cell phone, then took it
away from his ear. “Yeah? What can I do for you?”
About a dozen
other members of my tour group had lined
up along the railing. I gestured vaguely toward them and said,
“These folks are tryin’ to, you know, soak up the ambience of
the river, and your business conversation is a little jarring.”
“I’m sorry”—he
didn’t sound like he meant it—“but I got a
crisis on my hands here.”
“I understand
that. Maybe you could go inside to talk to
your associate.”
He shook his
head. “My crappy phone won’t work in there.
I’m barely getting any reception out here.” He put the crappy
phone back to his ear and went on, “Larry, you still there? You
tell that worthless little weasel to get those reports done by
the end of the day or he’s fired! You got that? And if any
of this
comes back on my head, he ain’t gonna be the only one,
capeesh?”
I didn’t know
whether to be mad at him for ignoring me or
flabbergasted at the guy’s language. I couldn’t remember the
last time I’d heard anybody say “Capeesh?”
“Yeah, yeah, you
and Holloway both know where you can
put your excuses. Just take care of it.”
He snapped the
phone closed, looked at me, raised his eyebrows,
and shrugged his shoulders as if to say, Now are you satisfied,
lady?
I managed to
say, “Thank you.”
He rolled his
eyes, shook his head, and moved off down the
railing toward the stern.
His wife
lingered long enough to say, “I’m sorry, Ms. Dickinson.
Eddie’s just very devoted to his business.”
“That’s all
right, Mrs. Kramer,” I told her. I had finally remembered
their names. “I understand.”
I didn’t, not
really, but that’s what you tell people anyway. I
didn’t understand why people would pay good money to take
a vacation and then bring their work with them. I was devoted
to my business, too, but if I were getting away from it, I’d
get
as far away as I could and stay there until it was time to go
home.
Louise Kramer
smiled at me and then followed her husband
along the deck. He had already opened his phone and
was talking on it again, but at least he wasn’t disturbing the
other members of the group as much.
The Southern
Belle had started upriver from St. Louis about
an hour earlier, after the forty members of my tour group had
gotten together for lunch at a restaurant not far from the
riverfront.
I had booked a private room so that we could eat together,
and then everyone had gotten up and introduced himself or
herself. I don’t think that everybody who goes on one of my
tours has to be all buddy-buddy with the other clients, but
since
we were all going to be together on a relatively small boat for
the next twenty-four hours I didn’t think it would hurt for
them
to get to know each other. After all, some people go on
vacation
tours hoping that they’ll meet someone who’ll turn out to
be special in their lives.
Most folks,
though, just want the scenery and the history.
And, in the case of the Southern Belle, the gambling. The side-
wheeler was a floating casino.
Casino gambling
is legal in most places up and down the
Mississippi River, and there are numerous riverboats devoted
to that purpose. Most of them are permanently docked, however.
Some even have the engines gutted out so that they’ll
never move again, at least not under their own power.
The Southern
Belle was a little different. Built in the late
nineteenth century, it had been lovingly restored and
refurbished
under the supervision of its current owner, a real estate
mogul named Charles Gallister. From what I’d heard, he owned
half the shopping centers in the greater St. Louis area.
In addition to
being a very successful businessman, he was
a Mark Twain buff. Because of his interest in the man some
consider to be the greatest American author, Gallister had
bought
the riverboat and set up these overnight cruises to Hannibal,
Missouri, the town where young Sam Clemens had grown up.
Gallister had
the golden touch in more than real estate, too.
Rumor had it that he was making a small fortune from the
gambling that took place on the Southern Belle.
All I knew for
sure was that it was a powerful draw. When I
decided to add the riverboat cruise to the list of literary-
oriented tours that my little agency in Atlanta books, I hadn’t
had any trouble filling it up. This was the first time my
clients
had gone on the tour, so I figured I’d better come along, too,
just to make sure there were no glitches. I had flown to
St. Louis, leaving my daughter and son-in-law back in Atlanta
to hold down the fort at the office.
I had been
running tours like this for nearly a year. Thanks
to a suggestion from a friend of mine, an English professor
named Will Burke, I had concentrated on tours with some sort
of literary angle. The Gone With the Wind tour, which included
an overnight stay at a working plantation designed to resemble
Tara from the book and the movie, was the most popular.
Which sort of surprised me considering the fact that there had
been a couple of murders on the plantation the very first time
I ran the tour.
Since then I’d
been a little leery of trouble every time I
added a new tour to my list, but so far everything had gone
smoothly. I didn’t have any reason to expect that this
riverboat
cruise would be any different.
Laughter from
the tourists attracted my attention. I turned
to see a man in a rumpled white suit ambling along the deck.
He had a shock of white hair, a bushy white mustache, and
carried an unlit cigar in his hand. He nodded to the tourists
and said, “It could probably be shown by facts and figures that
there is no distinctly native American criminal class . . .
except
Congress.”
That brought
more laughter and applause. The white-suited
man waved his cigar in acknowledgment and went on, “I’ll be
dispensing more of the wit and wisdom of the immortal Mark
Twain tonight in the salon, at eight o’clock. Thank you.”
The tourists
applauded again. The Twain impersonator continued
along the deck, coming toward me. He stayed in character
for the most part, stooping over, shuffling his feet, and
walking like an old man.
He greeted me
with a nod and said in his gruff Twain voice,
“Good afternoon, young lady.”
“Hello, Mr.
Twain,” I said. I held out my hand to him. “I’m
Delilah Dickinson. I put together one of the tour groups on
the boat.”
He took my hand.
His hand was a giveaway that he wasn’t
as old as the character he was playing. His grip was that of a
much younger man.
“Very pleased to
meet you, Ms. Dickinson. I quite fancy
redheaded women, you know. I’m Samuel Langhorne Clemens.”
“You know, I can
almost believe that,” I told him with a
smile. “You’ve got the look and the voice down.”
He waved the
cigar. “Thank you, thank you.” He leaned
closer and half whispered, “You can’t tell that I’m new at the
job?”
That took me by
surprise. He looked and sounded like he’d
been playing Mark Twain for a long time.
“Not at all,” I
told him. “You must be a quick study.”
He shrugged. “I
have some acting experience.” His real
voice was also that of a younger man. “My name actually is
Mark . . . Mark Lansing.”
“I’m pleased to
meet Mr. Lansing as well as Mr. Twain.”
I was happy that
he’d referred to me as a young lady, too.
When you get to be my age, which I refer to as the late
mumblymumblies,
and you’re divorced and have a grown, married daughter,
you don’t often feel all that young. I was just vain enough
to enjoy the attention from Mark Lansing, even though in
reality
he might be younger than me.
“Will you be
attending my performance tonight?” he asked.
“I hadn’t really
thought about it—”
“I’d appreciate
it if you would. I could use a friendly face in
the audience. Like I said, I’m new at this.”
“Well, all
right, sure. I’ll be there,” I promised.
“I hope you
won’t be disappointed.” He lifted a hand in
farewell. “I have to circulate among the other decks and the
casino. See you later.”
He shuffled
off—not to Buffalo—and I went over to the members
of my tour group who had gathered along the rail to ask
them if anybody had any questions or needed any help with
anything. Nobody did.
That gave me a
chance to go back to my cabin for a few
minutes and call the office. Unlike Eddie Kramer’s cell phone,
mine worked just fine inside the boat.
Luke Edwards, my
son-in-law, answered. “Dickinson Literary
Tours.”
“Hey, Luke, it’s
me.”
“Miz D! Are you
on the riverboat?”
“I sure am.
Everything’s going just fine, too. I met Mark
Twain a few minutes ago.”
“Really? The guy
who wrote Huckleberry Finn?” Luke hesitated.
“Wait a minute. He’s dead. He can’t be on that riverboat.”
“No, but an
actor playing him is.”
“Oh. That makes
sense, I guess.”
“Is Melissa
there?” Luke is big and handsome and charming
as all get-out with the clients, but Melissa has a lot better
head for business.
“No, she’s gone
to the office supply place to pick up some
stuff.”
“Any problems
since I’ve been gone?”
“Uh, Miz D, you
only left this morning. We’ve been able to
manage just fine for the past five hours.”
“I know, I know.
Anybody else sign up for that New Orleans
tour yet?”
“Nope. Of
course, I haven’t checked the Web site in the
past five minutes. Somebody could’ve e-mailed us about it.”
“Why don’t you
do that?”
“Right now?
Really?”
I sighed. “No,
you’re right. I need to just relax and enjoy
this tour I’m on. What’s the point in being a travel agent
if you
can’t get some fun out of it yourself?”
“That’s it
exactly. Just relax and let us take care of everything
here. It’ll be fine. You’ll see.”
“All right. Tell
Melissa I called, okay?”
“Will do. Don’t
worry about a thing.”
“I won’t. Love
ya both.”
“Love you, too,”
he told me. I knew he meant it. They
were good kids, both of them.
I closed my cell
phone and slipped it back in the pocket of
my blazer. Real estate agents and tour guide leaders would be
lost without blazers. And everything was going along so
smoothly
that I was sort of at a loss to know what to do next.
I know, I know.
I couldn’t have jinxed myself any worse
than by thinking such a thing. That realization occurred to me
just as somebody knocked on the door of my cabin.