Show Boat by Edna Ferber Page B

won’t let me talk to show-boat folks.”
    “Damned little brat,” said the pretty girl, and spat out a cherry stone. The man laughed.
    With a lightning gesture the older woman took off her hat, stuffed it under the man’s arm, twisted her abundant hair into a knob off her face, pulled down her mouth and made a narrow line of her lips, brought her elbows sharply to her side, her hands clasped, her shoulders suddenly pinched.
    “Your mama looks like this,” she said.
    “Why, how did you know!” cried Magnolia, amazed. The three burst into sudden loud laughter. And at that Parthy Hawks appeared at the door, bristling, protective.
    “Maggie Hawks, come into the house this minute!”
    The laughter of the three then was redoubled. The quiet little village street rang with it as they continued their leisurely care-free ramble up the sun-dappled leafy path.
    Now her father, at supper, had a tale to tell of these forbidden fascinators. The story had been told him that afternoon by Hard Harry Swager, river pilot, just in at the landing after a thrilling experience.
    “Seems they were playing at China Grove, on the Chappelia. Yessir. Well, this girl—La Verne, her name was, or something—anyway, she was on the stage singing, he says. It was the concert, after the show. She comes off and the next thing you know there’s a little blaze in the flies. Next minute she was afire and no saving her.” To one less initiated it might have been difficult to differentiate in his use of the pronoun, third person, feminine. Sometimes he referred to the girl,sometimes to the boat. “Thirty years old if she’s a day and burns like greased paper. Went up in ten minutes. Hard Harry goes running to the pilot house to get his clothes. Time he reaches the boiler deck, fire has cut off the gangway. He tries to lower himself twelve feet from the boiler deck to the main, and falls and breaks his leg. By that time they were cutting the tow-boat away from the
Sensation
to save her. Did save her, too, finally. But the
Sensation
don’t last long’s it takes to tell it. Well, there he was, and what did they have to do but send four miles inland for a doctor, and when he comes, the skunk, guess what?”
    “What!” cries Magnolia not merely to be obliging in this dramatic crisis, but because she is frantic to know. Captain Andy is on his feet by this time, fork in hand.
    “When the doc comes he takes a look around, and there they all are in any kind of clothes they could grab or had on. So he says he won’t set the leg unless he’s paid in advance, twenty-five dollars. ‘Oh, you won’t, won’t you!’ says Hard Harry, laying there with his broken leg. And draws. ‘You’ll set it or I’ll shoot yours off so you won’t ever walk again, you son of a bitch!’ ”
    “Captain Andy Hawks!”
    He has acted it out. The fork is his gun. Magnolia is breathless. Now both gaze, stricken, at Mrs. Hawks. Their horror is not occasioned by the word spoken but by the interruption.
    “Go on!” shouts Magnolia; and bounces up and down in her chair. “Go
on!
“
    But the first fine histrionic flavour has been poisonedby that interruption. Andy takes his seat at table. He resumes the eating of his pork steak and potatoes, but listlessly. Perhaps he is a little ashamed of the extent to which he has been carried away by his own recital. “Slipped out,” he mumbled.
    “Well, I should say as much!” Parthy retorted, ambiguously. “What kind of language can a body expect, you hanging around show-boat riff-raff.”
    Magnolia would not be cheated of her dénouement. “But did he? Did he shoot it off, or did he fix it, or what? What did he do?”
    “He set it, all right. They gave him his twenty-five and told him to get the h——to get out of there, and he got. But they had to get the boat out—the towboat they’d saved—and no pilot but Hard Harry. So next day they put him on the hurricane deck, under a tarpaulin because the rain was pouring the