The Glorious Adventures of the Sunshine Queen by Geraldine McCaughrean

but their feet get sticky with nectar, you see, and before they know it . . .”
    He told them about nearsighted bandits who had held up the bullion train in Wichita and stolen three hundred eggs, a turkey, and a folding chair, because they got the wrong caboose. He began a report on the Kentucky Derby where the winner had been disqualified for using six legs—”Well, the horse was so short in the legs that the jockey could join in and run as well, and that’s just plain contrary to the rules of the sport!”—but by then one of the little Kobokins was laughing so hard that she fell off the roof ridge and slid down as far as the gutter.
    The whole row of faces was grinning and scowling in equal parts—struggling to hear Everett above the noise of the river. Ma Kobokin passed the baby into a neighboring lap and shouted, “ Know any songs? ”
    So Miss Loucien sang. And though she protested that she could sing properly only when she was wearing a corset, her loose underwear did not seem a serious handicap. Her big, chocolaty voice streamed across the water in a heartfelt rendering of “Flow Gently, Sweet Afton,” and even the river seemed to slow a little, like sauce thickening on the boil. When everyone joined in with “We’ll Get Home to Heaven By ‘n’ By,” Everett and Powers improvised harmonies, and Kookie produced a harmonica, as if by magic.
    All this while, the Calliope swung to and fro, as if in time with the music, but (in fact) because her stern was still sticking out into the river. The surge of the current over her rudder was swinging her to right and left, making her bow splinter the last of the landing stage and chew a larger and larger bite out of the riverbank.
    Eventually the river drew the boat back out into the mainstream, like a jealous dancer reclaiming a fickle partner. Powerless to resist, the Calliope spun around once in midriver, then continued her reckless plunge downstream. From the rails of the hurricane deck, the Bright Lights went on waving until Patience and the Kobokins were completely out of sight.
    â€œYou should do something with that voice,” said the old man out of the boiler, again reduced to an alligatorish crawl across the tilting stateroom floor. “Dan Rice used to make a mint of money with his floatin’ operas, I remember.”
    â€œShowboats are all washed up!” called Tibbie, sliding across the planks on her stomach, pursued by a spittoon and a café table.
    â€œWell, this here’s a theater company. And for now we’re still afloat!” called Kookie, catching hold of Cissy around the waist just as she was about to crash into a wall. “So I don’t see what’s to stop us being a floatin’ theater. Did I happen to say, everybody? I do plumdoodly cartwheels!”

Chapter Six
Casting On, Casting Off
    T hat Dan Rice fella,” said Elijah, the boiler scraper and alligator man, “he useta build him a flatboat in St. Louis, put a deck on it and a kinda wood opera house, painted all over. Nothing like this, o’ course—no engine, no wheel. Useta to push it along with a steam tug. Then he’d hire himself a troupe and float them downstream, giving shows. Everyone lived aboard, so no hotel bills—no barns or halls to hire neither. Most everything they took was clear profit. Once he got to New Orleans, he’d sell the boat for lumber, pay off the troupe, buy himself a ticket on a steamboat going north again. Buy a new flatboat. Start all over again. Did four or five trips a year, I remember. Made a pile of money. Always said singing went down best. Especially singing by a woman with a big—”
    â€œVocal range?” Everett interrupted hastily. His arm circled his wife’s shoulders protectively. They looked at each other, like two children tempted beyond endurance.
    Somehow when Elijah described that long-gone floating playground, it sounded . .