The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton by Jane Smiley

made themselves at home, but the air was stuffy and close, and the windows were begrimed with soot from the firing of the boiler. On the other hand, the floor of the ladies’ saloon was more or less free of the brown stains of tobacco juice that decorated the sunny decking. Men, even married men, weren’t allowed, except to sleep with their wives in one of the few staterooms at night. By the same token, women, even married women, were not welcome on the deck, except under the unusual circumstances of an accident or a sight of special importance, and there were none of those until just above Saint Louis, when the boat would cross the mouth of the Missouri.
    As I stepped over the threshold, all three ladies looked up, first at me, then at Mr. Newton—until he backed away and closed the door—then at me again. Two were gray-haired, already at their needlework, and one, dressed in black, was about my sisters’ age. Seated next to her was a little girl, also in a black dress. When the door closed behind me, everyone smiled. I found myself a seat beside one of the small windows and carried my bag over to it. I felt the largeness of Mr. Newton’s presence, which was only the more pressing now that we were man and wife, move off a bit. I fancied that I could feel his weight shifting the boat as he moved here and there. I wasn’t sure about this; it was a characteristic of marriage that neither Alice nor Beatrice, who for some nights had been preparing me for my new duties, had mentioned. Underneath my chair and through my feet, resting on the floor, I could feel the rumble of the boat’s engines and its swaying passage through the water.
    The water, which I knew was below me, seemed distant and unreachable, as unreachable as the girl who, a year ago, had stepped into the brown river about a mile above Palmyra and emerged an hour later about a mile below Quincy. Frank had conspired with me to row a boat we borrowed from friends of his, to carry my shoes and stockings and petticoats and dress, to watch out for and serve as a screen against passing steamers and other craft. The water had been brown, of course, though it looks blue from above, on top of the bluff, and it was full of debris—branches and logs, pieces of broken-up boats and other planks and boards. There were shoes and a pair of pantaloons, a shirtsleeve and two hats and an old cap, caught upon rocks and snags. Half sunk in the mud were bottles and bits of metal, pieces of rope and a bent barrel hoop or two, bits of leather straps, broken fragments of tin and brass and iron. There was a raccoon carcass and the skull of a horse, the hind limb of a deer. The true grandson of my father, Frank picked up what looked useful or salable, until I stopped that and got him to row with me to the tiny cove where I sent him off and undressed down to my shift. When I had pushed into the water, he rowed himself to a group of rocks and retrieved the things I’d left there.
    The first time I stepped into the river, I was just about the age of the girl across the cabin from me, twelve. I had taught myself to swim that summer, by spying on the boys and mimicking their actions. My mother thought I was visiting Beatrice, who thought I was visiting Alice, who thought I was at home. That first time I stepped into the river, I was royally self-assured, until I took two strokes and felt the continental power of the brown water seize me and drag me from shore. Two strokes turned into a spluttering ten by the time my feet found the bottom again. But seven years later, when I was nineteen, I knew parts of the river very well, and I knew how to use and relish the six-miles-per-hour push of the water, to go down and over, down and over, how to not be afraid, and to not even attempt a swim unless the river was low and its tributaries more or less dried up. I knew how to hold my breath and dive, how to keep an eye out for logs and debris. I knew that some of the boys swam the river all summer. I