The Missing

August collapsed in a chair and covered his face with his hands. Sam spoke with the nurse for a few moments, then stood staring down the long hall after her retreating steps. He remembered visiting Elsie sick in bed, and that was hard enough. He didn’t want to see her now. When he asked August if he wanted to, the boy trembled and shook his head.

“I’m scared.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“No, I don’t want to.”

For himself, he chose to remember her in a close-fitting gown the color of pearl, bouncing the notes of “Painting the Clouds with Sunshine” as the hundreds on the dance floor quick-stepped and the river breeze streamed through the windows and the shoreline moved past like the dreary real thing it was, the thing made of smokestacks and shabby houses and overworked souls, all gilded by Elsie’s gliding voice, her flash of blond hair, the spark of hard work showing in her song, in her eyes. He wanted to dwell in the remembering, but he was obliged instead to turn to August and pull him out of the chair. “I’m sorry, Gussie. Cry all you want.” And the boy did, against Sam’s cheap second-mate coat. After a while he walked him down the echoing hallway, trying hard to think of something to say, and in the entry, he pulled him aside and told him, “Never forget that you had her for fifteen years. A lot of kids never had anything like those fifteen years.”

Captain Stewart paid the expenses for the body to be shipped to Cinci

IN MID-JUNE the boat was far north of Ha

For the night trip, the boat filled up with local men and their women. Sam worked the stage plank asking for weapons and surveying the crowd. The men were all muscle from working ten-hour shifts wrestling cylinder heads and piston rods, but only two surrendered anything, a jackknife and a dollar pistol. The ones who strutted onto the dance deck either took seats at tables or leaned against the bulkheads, all of them staring grimly at the band. When Sam came up and looked around, the hair rose on his neck. The crowd stared as if they’d never seen Negroes holding anything other than a shovel or a wrench. He guessed they hadn’t heard much jazz and distrusted any music that didn’t sound like the conventional tunes played on their Victrolas. The orchestra was playing a grinding rendition of “Sud Bustin’ Blues,” and no one was dancing. It wasn’t clear that anyone knew how.

He walked over to the trumpeter when the piece was over. “Hey, we got a boatload of rubes tonight,” he said, his back to the floor. “Can you do your hotel stuff?”

The man nodded, wiped his face with a voluminous white handkerchief, and sca

“Nope.”

“We can’t play no polka music.”

“Just dumb it down.”

“Play like the day band?” The trumpeter’s smile was wide and bright.

“Give me a break.”

He walked over to the main staircase and down to start his rounds on the main deck. The boat was barely a hundred feet from shore when an argument broke out in the forward lounge and he got sandwiched between two men dressed in heavy denim shirts who were trying to tear them off each other. Closing his eyes, he pushed into the muffled flailing of their fists, but two enormous hands grabbed him from behind and tossed him against a bulkhead, the concussion a star-flashing impact that sent him sliding to the floor. He tried to get up but found a large soggy boot pressing on his chest. “Let ’em at it,” a voice above him said, cramped by a wad of tobacco. Someone else put a brogan on his ankle, and he lay down and gave up. After a while he felt a sticky sensation on the back of his head and realized he was bleeding. A whole wicker table arced in the air above him, and somewhere glass was breaking and rattling on the deck like gravel. Someone’s thumb must have found a windpipe or eyesocket because an ungodly squalling ensued and the room began to reshuffle, but he suddenly wasn’t there.

HE WOKE UP on the deck outside his cabin door, a wadded bedsheet under his head. Down below he could hear hundreds of shouts and the orchestra playing a waltz. Above him were stars in one eye, nothing in the other, and in the next instant he was in his upper bunk, Charlie’s hand drifting above him holding a rag soaked in alcohol. A streak of fire ru

“Damn it to hell, that hurts!”

“I’ll bet it does. Glad to see you’re coming around.”

He put a hand over his eyes. “What happened?”

“Well, it’s over now. You been out four hours.”

He blinked and rolled his head. “Where’s Lily?”

“She’s in with a maid and the maid ain’t too happy about it.”

“I can’t…Big fight?”

“You could say that. There’ll be some carpenter work to do tomorrow and a hell of a lot of mop work.”

Charlie opened the door and looked out at the paintless buildings of the town. “You dizzy?”

“I don’t think so.” He touched the bandage Charlie had put on him. “You’re not going back out?”

“Still gotta work. You can’t handle this.”

“Handle what?”

“Coming back from Talbot Island a motorboat pulled alongside with ru

Sam lay back, deciding to stay in bed. “You meeting with the law?”

Charlie stepped through the door into the night. “It’s a mess, all right. A real mess.”

He lay there listening to the rasp of brooms overhead, the rattling of bucket bails, the crash of mop water and slops in the river. His head pulsed, and an iron taste rose up the back of his throat. He heard distant sawing and nailing in the night as the carpenters propped up the boat’s power of illusion, and finally, he slept.

At daybreak he heard his cabin door open and close, and he thought Charlie had come in.

“I’m hungry.” It was Lily standing under his bunk in a wrinkled baby dress, barefoot, her face dirty.

“Sweetie, I’m sick.”

Lily looked at him a long time and said again, her voice absolute, “I’m hungry.”

He slowly sat up and waited for the cramped room to stop drifting off to his left. He pulled on his pants and looked into the mirror at a black eye, then began to wash up and shave.

Lily lay in Charlie’s bunk and watched him. “Why doesn’t somebody come up and bring us something to eat?”