‘The Crafty Raft’

Photographer: Tobi Brun

The Crafty Raft

Alexis de Tocqueville never visited St Louis but Charles Dickens showed up and so did I. These names spurt from the mouths of children who are with their parents on the 630 foot tram ride to the top of the Gateway Arch. No Tocqueville in my resume outside of a vague recall of him and democracy but I did read Dickens’ Great Expectations in high school. I threw around the Pip name for a while, pip this, and pip that. Oh, I have toked. Kon-Tiki and Huckleberry Finn were the other two I conquered. Mark Twain certainly spent some time here, no idea about Thor Heyerdahl. Maybe the watery pages of the second and third inspired me to join the Navy but they didn’t prompt me to someday visit the piece of the Mississippi waterway here in St Louis. I drive a fuel oil truck. An elderly chatty customer inspired me. She regrets never visiting 2 of the 7 Wonders of the U.S.: The Gateway Arch and Disneyworld. I had no interest in the rodent trap. I plan to gift Milicent with a few postcards. The kids, - he’s Drew, she’s Quinn - are focused on a marbled notebook page. I figure her age is 10 and the boy, 8. Mickey and Minnie watches stand out on their small wrists. They are dressed casually except for his mauve bowtie. Her jumper is subdued madras. The cursive writing is small. Quinn has intricately braided honey blonde hair. Drew is freckled. His brown locks have a few streaks of red. I wonder about the unisex names. They strike me as precocious the way they annunciate or maybe just well schooled. “The Arch is as high as it is wide,” Quinn says. Their dad, Bruce, has scary tattoos; the largest are three crows with human skull faces. On the back of each hand is a purple star, law and order man or a Cowboys fan? His arms are muscular and his cheeks are puffy. His cap advertises “Titleist.” I bet he’s able to drive a golf ball into orbit.

“It doesn’t look so to me, Quinny,” he says.

“You are the victim of an optical illusion, trust me, Pop,” says Quinn.

“Shucks, I forgot to pack my tape measure,” adds Drew.

“It is 192.024 meters,” says Pop, with a half baked Brit accent. He gets three “wows.” I almost joined in. The cute, very pregnant wife, Audrey, is busy knitting. The yarns are a couple of shades of blue. Her raven hair is short. She wears a maternity outfit. It’s white with tiny pink tulips scattered over it. 

When we reach the top of Arch, and debark at the Observation Deck, the kids are of course tour guides. “Look, there’s a wedding,” shouts Quinn.

“Will they throw mice?” asks Drew.” Quinn taps on her watch crystal and gives him thumbs down then points out the Old Courthouse where slavery triumphed she says which brings Huck and Jim to mind. Audrey asks if the groom is blindfolded. Drew didn’t forget binoculars. He has a small pair. He reports no peepers are hidden. “He can see what he’s getting himself into,” he quips. Pictures of a wedding party are being snapped. The bridesmaids are matched in yellow and gray. The girl reminds her brother that his eyes were yellow when he had jaundice last year. She says hers are gray but she’s lying. They are a pale blue. Quinn tells Mom that they have decided the baby’s name that she suggested is just fine. I imagine the child being born in minutes and named Lewis after explorer Meriwether, or Louisa, hell, Lou fits them all to with the same gender deal.

“Tommy is a winner,” adds the boy. Audrey looks quickly at me, swallows hard. She’s the one, green eyes. Glancing down I see her fingers are crossed. 

We met outside the West Bend Bar and it was about 9 months ago. I’d noticed her checking me out inside. She sat a couple of captain’s chairs away. I didn’t make a move due to the wedding ring. I figured she was waiting for her hubby, not me. Did these two kids have off the street fathers? If so, could this be filed under ultra Democracy, Alexis?

Dickens would have them on a street begging. She was waiting outside the Bend Bar when I left. “Take me to the river, “she said, eyes sparkling. The streetlight alerted me that the wedding ring had disappeared and cast a glitter on the jeweled doodad that held her dark black hair in a ponytail. What the hell, I had no commitments. Jayne, the woman I’d been with won a motorcycle in an American Legion raffle and joined a female gang. I was left in the dust. I learned later that the dust and the bike had come from the maw of a fortune teller who went by Lady Luella, another Lou for Christ’s sake! I’d bought Jayne the winning ticket. I opened the passenger door of my eight-year-old Pontiac and brushed some McDonald’s fries off the passenger seat. My new friend slid in and wrapped herself in her arms. She was wearing a long black skirt, light pink blouse and a maroon shawl. She didn’t bother with the seat belt. I put on a golden oldies station. Del Shannon was singing “Runaway.” After we parked under some pines I got out and held her door. I realized I’d left the headlights on. I turned to step away. “I’ll do it,” she said.

She took my hand and we walked to the river. We sat on the cement bank. I heard an owl. I heard a bullfrog. The moon made eerie tree branch shadows in the slowly flowing water. She reached in her purse and pulled out a handful of Popsicle sticks. “Make something,” she said, counting out 15. I did the only thing I ever knew how to do with this timber. I weaved a raft. Were they from actual popsicles, fudgsicles or ice cream bars or an arts and crafts store? I had one left that I called a paddle. She inspected my work. She took the paddle, inserted it to make a handle of it and demonstrated a fan.

“Cool me off,” she whispered. Was that request misplaced? On a patch of lumpy grass she laid down, made minimal clothing adjustments and spread her arms as if she were crucified but her legs were tucked and parted in a fleshy welcome. I entered Wonderland with crazy thoughts of Father, Son, Holy Ghost, spikes and hell. Her breath smelled like vinegar. There was no lingering when the weirdness was done. She held the raft to her chest, hurried to the Pontiac and said nothing but an Act of Perfect Contrition and resumed her scrunched position as far away from me as the door would allow. I remembered the prayer. If death were imminent and no confessor near you could squeeze through the heavenly gates. I couldn’t recall if any purgatory time was involved. Before I dropped her off where I’d found her she freed her hair. She broke down the raft/fan, bound them in the ponytail maker and returned them to her purse. Enough strands fell helter-skelter across her face to make her look like a woman possessed. She wasn’t through with the sticks. She pulled the kindling from her purse with a flourish. She tapped my shoulder with them as if knighting me. I recalled Twain’s conman royalty fake that Huck and Jim rescued.

She offered her hand to shake. I did; a quick squeeze. “Oh, what’s your name,” she asked.

“Tom.”

“Take care, Tommy,” she said.

“And you,” I asked.

“I’m anonymous. Remember me as the stick lady.”

The tram trip return is quiet. Drew, Quinn and Bruce do some yawning. Audrey and I communicate via eyelid semaphore. Audrey bumps into me when we are exiting. I walk around for a while in a daze, lost in the hordes heading to the Cardinals game. I get lucid in front of a store devoted to left handed people. Window posters read:

“De Tocqueville And Dickens Were Southpaws.”

“Rheumatism Forced Twain To Join Us.

“Stan Musial Smote Homers Port Side.

Righties Quinn and Drew probably knew all this. I wonder if Bruce is impotent or they’d discovered serial killers in his bloodline. Were the tattoos the monsters manifesting themselves? Had he’d gotten a vasectomy but wanted a family, didn’t want to adopt? Would her tale of me be treasured between them along with the other two? Did her sperm hunting accounts act as an aphrodisiac for them? How did Audrey know I would be in St. Louis? Is she a friend of Milicent’s? Did she know the biker’s seer Luella?

I pick up some postcards at Walgreens and stroll to a Luke’s Bar. There is a big Lewis & Clark print, a man poling a keelboat. They’ll send Milicent greetings their best too. I order a pitcher of native Bud, sit at a corner table and start my Milicent chore. I sign the first one Thor Hyerdhal, Alexis on the last of the 10. I choose a Suey King House for dinner, but got Chow Mein. I do not use chopsticks. Waiting for my meal I ponder whether Tommy will be a serious know-all like Quinn or one with a comic side like Drew who might describe the Arch as a giant mouse house entry, the world its wall.

On the way to drop the mail my Milicent’s mementos, I put my hands in my jacket pockets. In the starboard one I discover the kink baton. Immersed in another fog I rush to the Mighty Miss. A riverboat is preparing to depart. I sit in the sand, free the Popsicle gear. I rebuild the raft and almost launch it with a silly vision retrieving it from the Ten Mile someday. I break it down then think better and reassemble. What harm can it do? The ponytail gizmo will be my St. Louis souvenir, a dashboard charm. Maybe next oil delivery at Milicent’s house, I’ll fake finding it in her driveway and gauge her reaction when I ask if it’s hers. 

Maybe it’s Audrey’s religious antics that cause me to suddenly view the River as a holy water font. I dip my fingers and cross myself before crashing a figment of bubbly on it. I poorly mimic a ship’s horn signaling underway.

A passing foot cop gives me a $20 ticket for littering. Now that’s a pip!

Thomas M. McDade resides in Fredericksburg, VA. He is a graduate of Fairfield University. McDade is twice a U.S. Navy Veteran . His fiction has most recently been published by The Story Sanctum and Double.