From The Delta Mud."

[Bigguy]

I am an Indie author with seven titles available on Amazon. With permission of the admins I will publish the Prologue of my novel, “From the Delta Mud.” It is somewhat standalone as it takes place 30 years before the actual story. It is 25 pages, and I plan to post a couple of chapters a day until we reach the end of the prologue.
I’ll post a link to the novel on Amazon at the end of this post. I hope you enjoy it. If you do, PLEASE, leave reviews on Amazon.

Enjoy.

“From The Delta Mud”

Prologue

July 1992

John was red eyed with greasy hair and peach fuzz on his twenty-year-old chin. The other deck hand had abruptly blasted him from sleep by flipping on the light in the cabin they shared, and pulling the covers off of him. Shouting would have done no good as the cabin was separated from the twin twelve-thousand horse engines by less than an eighth of an inch of steel. You just didn't have meaningful conversations in the deck-hand cabin when the engines were running. Especially when they were at full throttle as they had been for the last twelve hours. The time was currently eleven-forty pm, and John was starting the six hour shift from midnight to six am known as the second part of the after watch. He sat up and looked through bleary eyes as Stinky, the other hand, satisfied himself that John was awake. Satisfied, Stinky disappeared back out the door to finish the last fifteen minutes of his watch.
John slid from the upper bunk, pulled on his clothes and grabbed the ever-present flashlight. He killed the cabin lights and stepped out in the companion way. The stairs to the second deck were almost directly across from his cabin and he made his way up them. At the top of the stairs was a small common room with a couch, a couple of chairs, a table, and a TV set. The port holes on his left were actually double pained sliding windows, just like those found in any industrial building. More windows in the front of the room on the wall behind the television looked forward, out over the weather deck and onto the barges that made up the tow the boat was pushing. John crossed the back of the room to the other entrance. This opened on a companion way that led into officer country where the cabins for the captain, the chief engineer, and the cook were located.

[Bigguy]

There is no quiet place on a tow boat while the engines are running. But in these cabins, a deck above and slightly forward of the engine room, conversation was at least possible. John rapped on the door to the pilot's cabin then pressed his ear against it listening for the sounds of someone stirring on the other side. He heard some muffled grumbling, then a groggy, "OK!" Satisfied that the pilot was awake, he went to the chief's door and repeated the process.

His duty finished here, John headed back up the hall. He would be back in a few hours to wake the cook, but for now he wanted to grab a snack from the galley before his watch started. Retracing his steps, John found himself again in front of the door to his cabin. In this part of the boat, the rumble and clatter of the engines was something you felt more than heard. When he had first been shown his bunk he wondered how he would ever sleep, enveloped in such a cacophony. Much to his surprise, he slept incredibly well. His body quickly accepted the mechanically steady rhythm of the engines as the gentle sway of the boat rocked him to sleep. The best sleep he ever had was in the dark swaying cocoon of his cabin while two engines, each the size of an eighteen-wheeler's trailer, rumbled their reassuring lullaby.
He turned aft to a set of double doors just past his cabin that led to the engine room. The main deck companion way continued through the engine room as a catwalk between the engines. Opening the doors to the engine room, the noise which had been a physical sensation, became a physical assault. John made his way down the catwalk and through another set of doors at the other end of the engine room. He was now in another short companion, off of which were the second engineer's cabin, a utility locker, and a head. Continuing aft, John passed through the last set of double doors into the galley.
The galley was a large space that ran the width of the boat. It held enough seating for twelve people as well as the industrial sized stove, oven, refrigerator and freezer. It looked especially cavernous around midnight with only two people there. Stinky was washing something down with a glass of milk. From the crumbs in his scraggly beard, it must have been the last of the apple pie. Finishing the milk, Stinky tossed the glass and dish into the sink where they bounced around but miraculously didn't break. He was supposed to rinse them, then put them in the dishwasher. Leaving them in the sink for John was just a subtle reminder that Stinky was still a step above John in the pecking order. A forearm across his mouth completed Stinky's hygiene for the evening. He headed for his bunk giving John a friendly slap on the shoulder as he passed.

[Bigguy]

Frank, the second engineer was seated at a table delicately picking at a bowl of chocolate pudding. John did his best to stifle a grin as he stepped to the cupboard and retrieved a mug. Every crew member had a favorite snack, and the cook took great pride in leaving something for the people going on watch. John liked fried oysters, and it was a good bet that there was a bowl of them waiting in the fridge. Bob, the pilot John had just awakened, like chocolate pudding. Every crew member, seeing a single serving bowl of chocolate pudding in the fridge, would understand that it was there for Bob. The cook had asked Frank what he liked. Frank had mumbled that he didn't want anything, then started eating the snacks left for other people. Lately he had been zeroing in on Bob's pudding. The cook even left two bowls so Frank could have one if he wanted it. Frank ate them both.
Tonight John had instruction from the cook to be sure that Bob didn't eat the pudding in the unlikely event Frank left it. In the two months he'd been on the crew, John had learned there were times you just followed instructions without asking questions. This was a summer job, and John still had a year before he graduated college. But you didn't need a degree to figure out there was probably a couple of bars of ex-lax in that bowl. He appreciated the idea that old Frank was probably getting his just desserts tonight, as well as Bob's dessert. John lifted the coffee pot, but hesitated before pouring any into his mug. He looked suspiciously at the contents of the pot. It looked more like asphalt than coffee. Stinky must have made a pot for the Captain before going off watch. The Captain could chew his coffee as easily as drink it. If you could get another grain in the filter, the coffee was too weak for the Captain. John poured his mug about a third full, then filled it the rest of the way with hot water. It still tasted bitter, but it didn't dissolve the skin on his tongue. He'd make a new pot soon, but decided to wait until Bob replaced the Captain in the wheelhouse. The Captain might want another cup before turning in. He found the expected oysters in the fridge then took a seat as far from Frank as he could.
Frank gave him a sullen glare as he spooned the last of the pudding into his mouth. He stood then sauntered over to the sink and joined Stinky's social statement by tossing in the unwashed bowl and spoon. John didn't exactly appreciate Stinky doing it, but it at least had the feel of good natured ribbing. Somehow when Frank did it, there was a vindictive edge to it that John really resented. He watched Frank leave the galley. He was pretty sure that old Frank wasn't going to be so full of shit in a few hours. A few minutes later, Bob came through the doors sleepily rubbing the back of his neck

[Bigguy]

"Morning." he said, giving John a friendly nod. He went to the fridge and pulled the door open. Leaning lazily on the door facing, he stuck his head in the fridge and looked around for the bowl of pudding. Convincing himself that it wasn't there, he withdrew and gently pushed the door shut. The hint of a smirk played across his lips. John now knew that the pilot was also aware of the setup, but neither man was going to mention it.
Bob turned and sauntered over to the coffee pot. He hesitated as he was reaching for a cup. Leaning closer to the pot, he got a good whiff. He wrinkled his nose as he returned to the fridge and removed a small bottle of orange juice.
"This is probably better for me," he said as he took a seat across from John. He removed the safety ring and flipped the top off. He took a sip to allow his mouth to adjust to the acidity of the liquid. "I'm still going to need some coffee though. You're going to make a pot as soon as Captn' Charlie turns in aren't you?" he asked.
"I thought I'd check the tow first." said John.
"I checked with the Captn'." Bob said. "We're still coming out of Victoria bend. The tow ought to be all right for a while. Why don't you wait on the Captn' to turn in before heading out? That way, we can get some coffee before you get tied up on the business end of an idiot stick."
It was the first bad decision on this shift, in a series that would lead to disaster.
Working the tow is what deck-hands do. Of course they also wash dishes, help the cook and clean the boat. But all of that comes in the time left over from tending the tow. Tow boats push barges up and down the river. That's why they were there. The McNeece normally ran from Little Rock Arkansas to Baton Rouge Louisiana. On this night she was making one of her rare runs to Paducah Kentucky. She usually pushed eight jumbo barges loaded with anything from rock to grain. On this trip she was hauling dredging equipment back to the company's headquarters.
One barge was loaded down with forty-thousand pounds of fertilizer in four-hundred, hundred pound, water tight bags. The barges are "wired" together using steel cables half-an-inch thick wrapped around steel posts a foot-and-a-half high at the corners of each barge called turn heads. The cables are then tightened using ratchets attached to turnbuckles. The ratchets handles are steel bars six-feet long, some times called idiot sticks. The name comes as a friendly dig at the deck-hands. It was explained to John that they’re called idiot sticks because when in use, you can find a ratchet at one end of the stick, and an idiot on the other.

[Bigguy]

When the tow is made up, the cables are tightened until they are as stiff as granite. If you tap a properly tightened wire with a ratchet handle, it will thunk like stone rather than ring like metal. As the tow is pushed through the water, torque works them loose. After just a few miles, the wires will actually sag. Left unchecked, the tow will continue getting looser and sloppier until the unequal loading snaps a coupling. A good part of a deck hand's life is spent on the business end of an idiot stick.
With a little more experience, John might have held out for a quick check of the tow. Stinky wasn't known for going over and above, and John would like to have had an idea as to what kind of shape the tow was in. Still, Bob was in command when the captain was off watch, so John held his peace. "Will we be in the bend much longer?" he asked the pilot.
"We should be clear in about an hour." came the reply. Victoria bend was a narrow turn in the River. Because it was so narrow, the current was fast. With both engines pumping twenty-four thousand horse power into the screws, it still took the McNeece a little more than six hours to run the mile and-a-half upstream against the current. She had nosed into the bend just as John went off watch, and was only now coming out as he was again coming on watch.
John felt a little better about the tow. In the bend for the last six hours, the boat wouldn't have been maneuvering much and the tow wouldn't have gotten much of a work out. For the hour or so that the boat would still be in the bend, it wouldn't have to make any hard turns, putting stress on the couplings. That would give him an hour to get a pot of coffee going and get out on the barges. "I guess I'd better get to the wheelhouse," Bob said. He took another swallow of orange juice, then left the galley.

[Bigguy]

Captain Charlie heard Bob coming up the stairs. He took a quick glance out the wheelhouse windows. There was little to see. He could make out the tree line, but there was only inky blackness below that point. He couldn't see where the bank was, or anything in the water. He flipped on the huge spotlights for a quick check. The lights can be directed from inside the wheelhouse, and Charlie scanned them over the bank to be sure it was where he thought it was. He then checked the water's surface in the immediate vicinity of the boat. Satisfied, he flipped off the lights and checked the radar.
The display looked much as it had for the last 6 hours. The screen showed an ill shaped. curved "H." It is tempting for the novice to think of the radar as a sort of magic moving map. The reality of late twentieth century technology was somewhat less impressive. Though the image was drawn from an overhead perspective, the information was collected from a line of sight scan. The shorter leg of the “H” was the part of the West river bank that could be seen from the radar's position on top of the wheelhouse. The longer leg was the East bank. As the curve of the river takes each bank out of sight around the bend, the images disappears on the scope. The Queen Mary could be sitting in the middle of the river just a few hundred yards ahead, but not show up on the radar if she was behind trees along a curving bank.
The cross bar of the H was made up of ground clutter in the vicinity of the boat. The surface of the water was choppy from the current and presented enough reflective surfaces to bounce back the stronger radiation a few tens of yards from the transmitter. The radar was also picking up the front third of the tow. 
While the radar had serious limitations, it was still a valuable tool when used by skilled pilots like Charlie and Bob.
The navigation buoys marking the navigable channel were topped with radar reflectors and showed up well on the scope. No pilot would try to navigate by radar alone, but in fog or rain radar could make the difference in continuing on or tying up. In a business that measured its operating expenses in millions of dollars per hour, radar paid for itself very quickly.

[Bigguy]

Satisfied that the immediate area was clear, Charlie stepped back to let Bob slide into the pilot chair. As Bob settled in to the seat, his hands reached out in an unconscious ritual, lightly grasping the "sticks." He didn't feel as though he had taken control until he extended his tactile self to include the boat. He needed to feel her talk to him through his hands on the sticks. To reassure him that all was well, and she was ready to respond to his wishes.
Though the control cabin of boats the size of McNeece are generally referred to as "wheelhouses," tow boats haven't been steered by a wheel in decades. Each of McNeece's twin screws could be rotated independently through three-hundred-sixty degrees. A pole running from the top of the control console to the overhead controlled each screw. A handle protruded from each pole at ninety-degrees. When both screws were aimed dead ahead, the handles stuck out straight back. These are the "sticks" that guide the boat. With the ability to independently steer each screw through three-hundred-sixty degrees and independently apply a range of power from full forward to full reverse, a skilled pilot can actually move a boat sideways.

[Bigguy]

Charlie took a seat on the bench behind the pilot chair. This is the time when the pilots share information, the man going off watch making sure his replacement knows about anything going on. It also gives the man going off a chance to wind down a little. To reverse the process Bob just went through and draw back in to himself.
Normally Charlie was an animated captain. He constantly pulled on the sticks, making adjustment that were necessary more as an expression of his personality than to guide the tow. And on a six-hour watch, he would pour kilowatts of his pontification into the ether on the marine bands. Often he would stand next to the pilot for an hour or more after going off watch holding the mike and continuing a conversation with the pilot of some other boat.
Tonight had been hard on Charlie. He had been blocking the bend for more than six hours. Boats behind him also going upstream couldn't enter the bend under these conditions until he got clear. If he lost power, or his tow broke up, a boat down stream would be unable to maneuver out of the way. As a result, they just tied up to the bank. Boats coming down stream also could not enter until Charlie got clear. The current would sweep them through the bend in a little more than a half an hour. But they would have little control, and the river was narrow so they also were tied up waiting on Charlie.
Charlie was not a popular man on the river tonight. Most of the other captains thought that he should have acknowledged that his boat was simply not powerful enough for the current, and tied up for a day or so until the river went down a little. So Charlie had been deprived of the banter that usually helped him sit in the pilot's chair throughout a watch.

[Bigguy]

With one avenue of relief gone, Charlie's tension had poured out the only other channel. He had been pulling on the sticks all night, wagging his tow up river. The more he worried the tow, the looser the couplings got. Since his maneuvers were always short, the tow never had time to swing fully one direction. Water pressure kept each barge pushed to the one behind it, and the last barges in the tow up against the push knees of the boat. While Charlie knew the tow was a little sloppy, he didn't understand just how loose those couplings really were.
"I'm going to leave you with it," said Charlie.
"Good night captn'," said Bob. "I'll still be here in the morning."
Charlie stepped through the door at the bottom of the stairs into the companion way on the second deck. Usually he would have gone to the galley for a last cup of coffee. Tonight though, he was exhausted. He went straight to his cabin, took a warm shower and hit the bunk.

[Bigguy]

— — —
John looked at the clock on the galley wall. It was twelve-thirty. He knew the captain often hung around the wheelhouse for an hour or more after going off watch. Still, he was anxious to get out on the tow. At twelve-forty-five he decided to expedite things. He poured a large mug of coffee and headed for the wheelhouse. The captain had his own mug, but John could fill it from the one he was carrying. He'd get permission to start a new pot, then get out on the tow. Reaching the wheelhouse, John looked around. "Where's the Captn'?" John asked.
"Dunno," said Bob. "I thought he was in the galley."
"I haven't seen him," said John.

[Bigguy]

Neither said anything more for a few minutes. John finally broke the silence. "Do you think he turned in?"

"Why don't you check his cabin?" said Bob. It wasn't really a request. It was unlikely that the captain had stepped out on deck and fallen overboard, but on a tow boat you didn't take safety for granted. If someone wasn't where you expected them to be, you took the time to find them. John set the mug of coffee on the oversized arm of the bench at the back of the wheelhouse and took the stairs. He pressed his ear against the captain's door listening. He was prepared to take a peek if he had to, but the captain was known to snore. With a little luck John would be able to confirm the captain's presence with out violating his privacy. He listened for several minutes, trying to decide if the indeterminate sounds were proof of the captain’s whereabouts. He was about to give up and rap on the door when he finally got a satisfying "snort."

Relieved, he returned to the wheelhouse. “I guess he won’t be needing this, “he said to Bob as he took the mug of coffee to the port side door of the wheelhouse. He stepped out onto the deck and flung the contents of the cup out into the darkness. Back inside, he checked the Indiglo dial of his watch. It was now after one o’ clock. “You think I’d better get out on the tow?” he asked the pilot.

Bob was a good pilot. One of his few weakness was an addiction to good coffee. At one o’ clock in the morning, sitting in a darkened wheelhouse, Bob really needed the kick the caffeine would give him. He had been smelling the aroma from the mug John left on the bench. Now the residual smell from the empty cup was almost overpowering. Bob could tell the tow was sloppy and needed attention. That was part of the reason he was so reluctant to let John go. He knew that once John got out on the tow, it would be hours before he got back. He might not get back at all before the watch was over. It was leading Bob to make the same bad decision for the second time that watch. "Go ahead and make a pot of coffee first." he told John. "A few more minutes won't make that much difference.

[Bigguy]

— — —
While John was making the coffee, a mile upstream a party balloon was working it's way loose from the tree it had been hung in. A plastic float tied to the end of the string was intended to keep it from getting away. Lettering over the reflective red background declared wishes for a happy fifth birthday. It had blown off of a pontoon boat three days earlier when a gust of wind had blown it from the celebrant's chubby hand. The lady of the hour sucked in a deep breath, ready to give voice to a piercing expression of her grief when her tearing eyes fell on the brightly wrapped package in momma's hands. Birthday presents! The balloon was gone from her mind as though it had never been. The wail of distress turned into a shriek of delight. Dad would have chased down the float, but his attention was on the river ahead, and he was unaware of the escape. Mom, focused on removing packages from a plastic sack also failed to notice the departure.

Lacking the buoyancy to lift the float from the water, the balloon skated across the surface eventually tangling in a tree at the water's edge. The water had continued to rise for the next three days to record levels. As water rose higher around the spindly trunk of the tree the balloon was hung in, the trunk began to bob up and down in the current. The oscillations had increased with the water level over the last three days until now it was shaking the balloon loose from its grip. The reflective sack slipped from the wet branches and was carried by the current out into the river. It had lost too much helium to get airborne, so it floated on the surface connected to the float by a three-foot segment of water logged ribbon. As the river curved away the balloon was carried further out into the river, headed down stream toward the McNeece. Just before it got close enough to be in sight of the tow boat, the ribbon snagged on a submerged tree. For just a second momentum carried it almost underwater, then it bobbed back to the surface. Its wet reflective sides were efficient reflectors in wavelengths from the optical range down into radio frequencies. Though it wasn't as tall as the navigation buoys marking the channel, it presented a similar radar cross section.

[Bigguy]

— — —
Bob was watching the radar as the McNeece came around the bend. He was finally clearing the narrow part of the river and the boat was moving faster over the bottom. Suddenly a blip appeared on the scope. He was looking for a buoy called a Nun. These buoys mark the right side of the channel when headed upstream and were conical at the top. They were painted red, and the ones the coast guard used to mark the river channel also had a red reflector on top so that they could be seen at night.

The blip on Bob's scope showed up a little sooner than he expected. Still, it was in a logical location. He could see another blip further up the river that must be the next Nun buoy. He was heading a little too far to port so he gently pulled the sticks to starboard. The boat turned more quickly than he expected as the sloppy tow bent back to port. Bob eased off the sticks a little taking a deep breath and letting the adrenaline decrease in his blood. He sure didn't want to bust up his tow by snapping a coupling. Not only does that not look good on a pilot's record, but with a deck-hand out on the tow, it could be deadly. As barges are ripped apart from each other, the half-inch steel cables that hold them together are pulled apart. The ends whip around at supersonic speed, and friction from the individual strands pulled against each other heat the metal past the melting point. Bob had seen tows break up at night. It looked like a fireworks display. He had seen granite boulders on a rock barge busted apart by flying cables. He didn't want to see what would happen to human flesh hit by something like that.

[Bigguy]

He flipped on the huge spot light and shined it on the tow at the forward coupling. He could see John looking back at him. Bob was about to switch the mike over to the PA and call John back when the deck hand dropped the ratchet handle and started back toward the boat. Apparently the deck hand also realized it was too dangerous out on the tow and was heading back. Bob flipped off the light and began easing the tow to back starboard.

What Bob didn't realize was that John had dropped a glove. He had been unable to find it with his flash light, but when Bob illuminated the tow with the spotlight, John had seen where it had fallen, about half way back on the barge. John headed back toward the glove. Bob flipped the light off just as John reached it. He retrieved the glove and started back toward the front of the now darkened barge to resume tightening cables.

Bob was growing more uneasy with the situation. He was putting as much pressure as he dared on the tow, trying to get it back in the channel. That buoy just didn't look right on the scope. It seemed to be heading him too far toward the east bank. He flipped on the spotlight and aimed it in the direction of the blip. At that distance, he couldn't see the surface of the water but right where the radar said it should be, was a red reflection. He raised the light, trying to see the next buoy, but it must have been too far away. He brought the light back to the spot he first checked. Again, there was the light being reflected from a red reflector.

[Bigguy]

He wasn't exactly satisfied, but he didn't really have much of an explanation, so he flipped the light off and returned his attention to getting the loose tow back on course. As soon as they got in the straights, he'd ease off on the throttle and have John get it tightened up. He'd get Stinky's lazy butt up to help too. Bob was concentrating so hard on navigating he didn't stop to wonder why John hadn't shown up in the wheelhouse.

The picture on the scope was making less sense by the minute. As he continued to starboard, another blip appeared from behind the trees further up the river. He couldn't connect the dots he was seeing into a sensible channel. He flipped on the spotlight again. He could see the red reflection from the closest buoy. Raising the light, he again looked for the next marker. Out in the darkness, he caught a faint glimpse of green. It didn't make any sense at all. The next marker had to be red. The thought flashed through his mind that he was seeing a buoy further up the river, but even as the idea occurred to him he knew it wasn't right. He brought the light back to the closest buoy. Something wasn't right. The color was off. It was red, but not quite the red it should be.

He suddenly felt hot and cold at the same time as acid poured into his stomach. What ever that was, it wasn't a buoy. Ignoring the bogus contact, the radar image suddenly made perfect sense. He was almost sideways in the channel heading for the east bank at full throttle. Just as his mind grasped the horrible truth, he felt the faint sigh of sand lightly kissing the bottom of the tow boat.

His reaction was as reflexive and mindless as it was wrong. He shoved the sticks hard to port thinking only that the channel was in that direction. Even a well made tow would have had a hard time holding together under such a load. The sloppy mess the McNeece was pushing never had a chance.


Bob watched with stunned fascination as fire danced at the couplings and barges went their separate ways. He became aware of the boats whistle blasting four short bursts in the emergency signal. He was surprised to find his hand on the cord. His mind was racing, trying to figure out where to send the people who would soon be showing up in the wheelhouse.

[Bigguy]

— — —

John felt the tow move under his feet in an unexpected jerk. Suddenly he felt a low moan raising from the deck. The moan rose to a shriek until there was a sudden bang as the parting cable ends broke the sound barrier. He saw a fiery orange flash that seemed to pass right through him as he felt a thump. He seemed to be off balance and tumbling. The cable had caught him just below the buttocks. It didn't even slow down as it passed through him. His legs continued to stand for a few seconds then toppled over. His torso had siphoned off enough energy from the cable in the form of angular momentum to lift him into the air and spin him slowly backwards. His arms instinctively whirled counter clockwise, trying to get legs that were no longer attached back beneath him. Nerves in the affected tissue were traumatized into silence. By the time they would recover enough to send searing messages of the horror to his brain, blood loss and shock would shut down his nervous system.

As he sailed weightlessly through the darkness, John tried to figure out where he was. His brain was so fuzzy he couldn't think. It seemed as though there was something important he should know, but he couldn't clear his head enough to figure it out. He became distantly aware of cold water on the back of his neck. What did that mean? Why was it so dark and why couldn't he wake up? Was he still in his bunk? Why was there water in his face? A death that was horrible beyond words to see enveloped him with surprising mercy. He slipped gently into his final sleep before pain or fear had a chance to intrude.

[Bigguy]

— — —
Stinky and the chief appeared in the wheelhouse at the same time, followed closely by the captain. "What's going on?" demanded the captain.


"I've busted up the tow." said Bob flatly. He was way past any concerns of how this would look. His career was sunk, but for a few hours yet he still had some responsibility. There were loose barges being swept down river, and he was going to make sure they didn't do any more damage. He had all ready broadcast a general alert on marine band channel six-teen. A couple of captains down river had come back promising to catch and tie up any barges that came their way.

"Jesus," the captain muttered. "What have we still got?"

"We've still got lines on three barges, and two more are grounded outside the channel." said Bob. "The other three were headed back into the channel last time I saw them."
"How the hell did this happen?"

"I let the radar sucker me out of the channel," said Bob. "Then, when I tried to get back in, those sloppy couplings couldn't take the load." The captain and pilot both glared at Stinky, but neither said anything to him. Both knew they should have taken action long before now. This was as much their fault for letting him get by with it as it was his for not keeping the tow in good shape.

For his part, Stinky kept quiet. He knew he would probably lose his job, but he would be able to get on with another company. Unlike the captain and Bob, this wouldn't ruin his career such as it was.

"OK then," said the captain. "Let's get two of these barges tied to the bank some where, and face up good to the other one so we can start chasing down runaways.

[Bigguy]

The square front of a tow boat isn't designed for speed through the water. The powerful engines can actually push the nose of a boat underwater if it's not tied, or faced up, to a barge. The fastest way for a tow boat to travel is faced up to a single barge. The barge will also give the deck hands more room to move around while trying to wrangle in the errant barges.

The captain was debating about taking the pilot's seat, but decided that at the moment Bob probably was in a better position to know where to find the runaway barges. Having decided to leave Bob at the helm, he turned his attention to the rest of the crew. "Where's Frank and John?" he asked. He glanced back to Bob and saw the sudden look of concern come over his face. "He wasn't on the tow was he?" asked the captain.

"I saw him come off." insisted Bob.

The captain grabbed the mike, and flipped it over to PA. "John," his voice boomed over the boat. "Come to the wheelhouse now." He replaced the mike and turned to the chief. "Get Frank's ass out of the bunk. You man the weather deck and get Frank and the boys out on the barge. Break out the radios so we can stay in touch."



The chief left, heading for Frank's cabin aft the engine room. He stopped at his station in the engine room and pulled three hand held radio's out of a locker. He flipped them all on and did a radio check with Bob as he went to Frank's cabin. He rapped on the door and was surprised to hear Frank's voice come from the other side of the companion way.

"I'm in here." Frank groaned. "I can't get off the pot."

The chief poked his head through the door, then quickly pulled it back. "Damn!" exclaimed the chief. "What crawled up your ass and died?"

"My guts are killing me." whimpered Frank.

"Well, you’re going to have to hold it for a while." said the chief. "We've got problems."

The radio crackled. "Chief," came Bob's voice through the radio. "Have you seen John?"

[Bigguy]

"Negative," the chief replied. "I haven't seen him."

"Check the boat and see if he's aboard." came Bob's worried reply.

The chief stuck his head back through the door. "Come on Frank. We've got a man to look for."

"I don't think I can get off the pot," Frank whined.

The chief was unaware of the reason for Frank's distress. Frank worked for the chief. As aggravated as the chief got at Frank, he felt a responsibility for him, and he wouldn't have gone along with the prank. While it was obvious that Frank was really having trouble, he assumed that Frank was milking it, trying to get out of work. Tonight there just wasn't time for to put up with Frank’s procrastinating.

"Get your pants up and get your ass on deck!" the chief roared.

Frank hastily pulled up his pants as the chief handed him a radio. The chief stepped through the door into the galley with Frank on his heels. Seeing that John wasn't in the galley, he pointed to the port side door which led to the narrow deck that ran down the side of the boat. "You take the port side, I'll take starboard. We'll meet on the bow," he told Frank.

Frank waddled out the door, knees together and bent over. Out on the narrow port side deck, he looked aft. He knew he should go all the way to the stern, but he was afraid that too much walking might make him soil himself. He decided to head straight for the bow. There was another head there and he all ready felt like he was going to need it. He took a few steps, then felt something leaking into his pants. He stopped and grabbed the rail as he tried to keep himself dry. As he stood there holding the railing and clenching his rear something in the water caught his eye. He pulled the flashlight out of his back pocket and shined it out on the water. His eyes bulged as recognized a life jacket. There was something in it. "Man overboard, port side!" he screamed into the radio.

[Bigguy]

Immediately the engines dropped in pitch as the pilot chopped the throttles. With the engines idling the danger of sucking the man in the water under the boat and into the screws was gone, but Frank still had to try and get him back onboard, He grabbed a long gaff pole from it's hooks on the bulkhead behind him and began trying to reach the floating figure. He laid on the deck and, holding the rail stanchion with one hand, reached as far as he could with the gaff pole. He managed to get the hook on the end of the pole through the loop on the back of the life jacket just as the chief came through the galley door onto the deck behind him.

"You got him!" the chief said excitedly.

The back end of the pole kept hitting the side of the boat as Frank tried to pull the floating form in. Seeing this, the chief took the pole and backed down the deck, "I'll bring him to you." the chief said. "You just grab him when I get him along side." As the jacketed form got closer, Frank could see it was John. He was face down in the water with his arms floating limply at his side. Frank realized he was going to have to get John's face out of the water, but the gaff pole was holding him in that position.

"I've got him," he told the chief, as he disengaged the hook from the life jacket. Still laying on the deck, Frank took a hold of the life jacket with his left hand and reached underwater with his right, trying to grab John's belt loop. He couldn't reach the loop under the life jacket so he decided to just grab anyplace he could. He needed to get John on his back and see if he was breathing. Grabbing John's crotch, he rolled him back. Frank was surprised at how easily John rolled. His first glance at John's paper white face with open mouth and staring eyes shook Frank pretty badly. When his gaze fell on the gaping wounds on either side of Frank's hands, where John's legs should have been, he completely lost control.

Emptying his bowels on one end and his stomach from the other, Frank released the fearful thing in his hands and desperately crabbed backwards away from it. His screams of horror were muffled by vomit.

[Bigguy]

"Don't drop him!" the chief hollered. He dropped the gaff pole and fell to his knees trying to grab John's body as it came floating past. Getting his first look, the chief almost repeated Frank's reaction. He did manage to hang on and pulled what was left of John on deck just as the captain approached from forward.

The captain's hands shook as he took the radio from the chief. "Bob," he said, voice quavering. "forget the barges. We've got a dead man here. Head for ..." He stopped as he tried to think of the closest landing.

"Rosedale harbor is ten miles back." came Bob's voice on the radio.

They had passed Rosedale harbor almost eight hours ago. Now, with the current working with them instead of against them, they could be back there in a little more than an hour. "OK then," said the captain weakly. "Rosedale harbor."

[Bigguy]

— — —
Of the eight barges McNeece had been pushing, two were grounded immediately after the accident. The dropping water eventually left them hard aground, waiting for the salvage crew. Two of the three still attached to McNeece were tied up along the bank and were also later recovered by salvage crews. The fourth was kept faced up to McNeece and accompanied her home. Two more were swept back through Victoria bend and later recovered by boats down stream. The last barge, carrying the unusual cargo of two human legs and forty-thousand pounds of fertilizer took a different path. It was swept well out of the channel above the bend, but somehow missed the sandbars and mud flats. The water at record height, carried it behind a hill along the bank that was usually 20 feet above the river. A small tree at the mouth of the inlet was pushed under by the passing barge, then popped back up effectively hiding it.


The McNeece, occupied with other problems never looked for it. By the time the towing company sent salvage crews out, the barge was aground, twenty-feet up the bank, behind a hill, three miles further upriver than anyone expected it to be. The towing company filed a claim and left the problem to the insurance company. The insurance company expected the barge to eventually be found by a towboat. As the weeks passed and there was no sign of it, they assumed that it must have sunk. The fertilizer would have been ruined, and the barge didn't represent enough value in scrap metal to be worth searching for, so they just wrote it off as a loss. Vines and creepers grew up around the metal structure. Eventually spindly trees flanked it and it became a thing of the land.

[Bigguy]

That is the end of the prologue. If you found it interesting, you can find the book on Amazon:
From The Delta Mud. (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075WG9VVR)

35500

From The Delta Mud. (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075WG9VVR)

[Bigguy]

I was originally only going to post the prologue, but as the story takes place 30 years later, I've decided to post the first chapter as well.
I hope you enjoy it as well.

[Bigguy]

Chapter 1

February 2020

The wind was coming from the southeast, blowing against the current of the southbound water. The Mississippi river was narrow here, and the current was faster than at other spots along its path. The wind blowing against the current created a choppy surface that was pounding the bottom of the flat bottom aluminum boat. The thirty horse Mercury Engine pushed the light craft along at almost twenty miles-per-hour at bone jarring pace.

Tom kept the throttle wide open as he nosed the boat back toward the west bank and into smoother water. He was still a quarter of a mile above his objective, but he had no intention of landing any closer. He didn't want to draw unwanted attention to that particular spot. He nosed the boat up behind a revetment out of easy sight from the river, tied it up and climbed out. He slung a small haversack over his shoulder, then headed for a spot down river where there was small draw on the backside of a large sandbar.

This was a fairly isolated area, an island just south of the old White River on the Mississippi River. It was accessible only by boat or plane. Most of the land here was owned by a timber company, but leased to a hunting club. Several well paved roads crossed the irregularly shaped island as well as a short, but paved airstrip. Crops were planted in a couple of small fields. Tom suspected the crops were to provide food and enticement to deer rather than for the purpose of harvest. People didn't just wonder in without an invitation. It also meant that Tom, lacking an invitation, had to be careful about his coming and going.

[Bigguy]

At night he would have just walked down the sandbar, but it was still early afternoon so he stayed in the woods to avoid being seen. In this low wetland, any opening was quickly filled with some green thing hungrily devouring every photon the sun offered. Even at this time of year there were enough leaves still on the trees, though most of them were brown, to obscure any view into the woods. The bramble along the tree line at the back of the bar was almost a solid wall. Just a few yards into the woods, it was fairly open. This space was taken up by the trunks of gum, cottonwood and cypress trees. A few vines clung to them trying to climb above the leafy canopy to reach sunlight. Walking here was easy, and Tom was safe from being seen by anyone on the river.

His black rubber boots didn't leave footprints in the spongy ground. He sloshed through some brackish puddles, and went around others that were deeper than his boot tops. Eventually the ground between him and the river began to rise. He came to a place where the thicket on the rising land was most dense. Tom knew the reason for this was because there was a slash, or draw into the hill from the river side providing sunlight. The ground here was also more fertile than usual.

He had cut a path through the thicket, but purposefully left the opening to it grown up and hard to spot. He didn't want anyone who might be hunting this area to see it. He found the opening and made his way up the path, over the top of the hill and down into the draw.

Even standing within arm's length of its metal side, the barge was hard to see. It was completely covered in dense growth. Small trees were growing up around it and they in turn were thickly covered with vines. Detritus from dead tree limbs and vines were piled up the sides to a height of two-and-a-half feet. What little metal was visible through the tangle was rusted an earthy reddish brown.

[Bigguy]

Tom walked around one end of the barge to the river side. Here a small inward swinging door was hidden behind a stack of limbs and vines. He had stumbled across this little retreat five years ago when everything else in his life had gone to pot. At that time, he still owned a machine shop and was still married. He had fished here for decades, and the large sandbar on the west bank provided a large clear place to layout trot lines and barrel nets. Tom had frequently used it for that purpose. He had been unaware of the draw and the barge until one day when the call of nature and modesty had driven him into the thicket at the back of the bar. He had finished his business, then looked with wonder at the barge.

It was so well hidden, it almost seemed to have been placed there on purpose. He couldn't imagine how it had been moved to this spot. The River would have had to have been at record height for it to have floated in. However, it came to be here, it was obviously abandoned. Hundreds of bags of fertilizer were piled on top. Many of the outer bags in the pile had split and their contents had poured out enriching the surrounding soil, promoting the vigorous growth of concealing vegetation. But hundreds of bags in the center of the pile remained unopened. The fertilizer was ammonium nitrate, originally in the form of white granules. Over time, the granules had melded together until each bag was basically a fifty-pound plastic wrapped block.


At the time he discovered it, Tom needed money. He considered trying to sell the fertilizer, but after the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, ammonium nitrate was no longer just fertilizer. Someone suddenly trying to sell tens of thousands of pounds of it would certainly attract attention. Ultimately, he could never find a discrete way of selling it and eventually gave up on the idea.

[Bigguy]

The metal of the barge was another commodity he intended to use. The business he owned was a farm equipment repair shop. He worked with a lot of metal, and selling scrap would not have been a problem. He began bringing tools, a cutting torch, and welder out to the spot a few items at a time. He always came after dark and only carried what he could unobtrusively stow in his boat on any one trip.

He cut the door into the barge to have a place to store his tools, out of the weather.
 Before he had the chance to start actually cutting up the barge, things with the business had gotten worse. When it became obvious he was going to lose the shop, he decided to leave the barge where it was. He could start selling scrap after things settled down. He certainly wasn't going to bust his butt bringing it in, just to lose it to the bank. He also wasn't going to bring the welder and other tools back for the bank to get.

He even moved more equipment out to the spot, including a generator. When he had moved everything he intended to keep hidden to the barge, he busted into the shop one night then claimed the place had been robbed. No one believed him of course, but they couldn't prove otherwise. He stayed away from the barge for six months to be sure that no one following him would find it. During that time the bank foreclosed. He lost the business, his house, his car, and the wife who couldn't follow him into poverty.


[Bigguy]

Jennifer was a beautiful woman. She had definitely been out of his league throughout high school. She was what he and his friends had called a "high maintenance" woman. She had dated the most popular boys from well to do farm families. By senior year, she was attached to Marshall Bennington.

The elder son of the wealthy Bennington clan, Marshall attended college at an Ivy league school and spent his summers in Washington as an intern. Jennifer, from a less well off family, attended a more humble in-State school. Even though separated, she foolishly thought Marshall was hers. She believed that after college they would be married. Marshall did nothing to dissuade her belief. He was stringing her along, to keep her available for when he was in town.

He stayed in Washington for a year after college. Jennifer finally learned why he refused to bring her to the Capitol with him when his wedding announcement came out. He married the daughter of a powerful Senator, and Jennifer became something unusual in southeast Arkansas. A beautiful 23-year-old single woman.


[Bigguy]

Tom had taken a different path. Coming from the lower end of the social spectrum, college had never been a consideration for Tom. But uneducated doesn't equal stupid. In fact, Tom was brilliant. As expected, he went to work as a farmhand right out of high school. His gift with machinery quickly became apparent, and he began earning extra money doing repairs. Tom enjoyed working with machinery.

He lived modestly at first. Most of his contemporaries spent their money on alcohol and loose women, Tom's went into tools and equipment. In little more than a year after high school, Tom owned a modestly equipped machine shop and had developed a reputation as a miracle worker. Farmers would gladly pay Tom a couple of thousand dollars to coax another year or two of life out of a piece of equipment that would cost a hundred-thousand dollars or more to replace. He was highly paid for his labor, and had more business than he could accept. Farmers were actually competing with each other to get their equipment into Tom's shop.


As the years went by, a subtle yet profound change occurred in the general perception held of, and by Tom. He was no longer a farmhand. He was now a business man. In the feudal society of agrarian Arkansas County, it represents the difference in peasantry and nobility.
 Tom was invited to join the Farmers and Businessmen's club. It was an organization that, in form and function, followed the Chamber of commerce found in more urban areas. Its members were also members of the boards of directors for the banks, business, and cooperatives in the area. These were the people who controlled the economy and destiny of the region, and Tom was now a junior member. In his youth Tom had accepted his place in the social order, never expecting or seeking the respect of the "high fluting," folks. Now, their opinions began to matter.

He bought a large house that had potential as a fixer-upper. He began attending the Methodist church because it was where most of the Farmers and Businessmen went. He received and accepted invitations to Sunday school parties, and through the people he met there, was eventually invited to join the country club. That was when things really changed, and two people he had know only distantly became entangled in his life

[Bigguy]

Tom was making his appearance on the social scene at the same time reality was knocking so rudely on Jennifer's door. Her crash to earth was hard, but she was as pragmatic as she was attractive. Realizing that there would be no Marshall, she took stock of the situation. Her father owned a few hundred acres, but his holding weren't anywhere near adequate for her expectations. She'd spent almost five years expecting to become "Lady Bennington." Even with that post unattainable, she wasn't going to settle for being a farm wife on a farm the size of her father's. Unfortunately, during the years she'd spent chasing Marshall, the heirs to all the other farms had been snatched up. Surveying the landscape now, she found her best prospect to be an unlikely candidate. Tom.


Her first interactions with Tom were tentative. She would accompany him to a social function, but rarely allowed him to take her someplace alone. Tom had very little in the way of social skills, but he was a quick and willing learner. It became obvious to both of them that they shared common goals. Tom was getting a beautiful companion who raised his social status, and Jennifer had the raw material for making the kind of husband she wanted. Physically, Tom had plenty to offer. He was ruggedly good looking, and in superb condition. His intelligence and industry had already taken him to heights unimaginable for most people born in his class.

She helped him dress for social occasions and knocked off most of the rough edges. When she started noticing gleams of envy in the eyes of other women, she knew she was on the right track. With Jennifer's guidance and connections, they could become leading citizens with only a few families like the Benningtons more influential.

[Bigguy]

They came together in a union that was more of a business merger than a marriage.
 Tom was making plenty of money from his shop, but now he had a farm to mange. His father-in-law was too old to run it any more, and Jennifer was an only child. Tom hired some farmhands and took his place among the landed gentry. 
With Jennifer at his side, Tom became less deferential and more predatory. He charged every cent he could get for work at the shop. Gone were the days when he only aimed to please. Now, he wanted cash.

He hired help for the shop also, but paid minimum wages and was careful not to train his competition. Any kid showing too much promise was moved out of the shop and onto the farm. They poured money into the house until it was one of the more lavish homes in the area. But most of the money went into the only real measure of wealth in agrarian culture, land.

No one sells land willingly. Sometimes someone will die, and there is no one to leave the land to, but most often land only comes available when someone loses it. Buying land at a bank auction is not something you can schedule at your convenience. You have to get it when it's available. Even with the money Tom was making, they had to go into debt for some of the purchases.

Owing money for land is usually not a bad thing. Tom spent less money on equipment than most people because he could keep old equipment running. They were making enough off of the land they bought to make payments, and profits from Jennifer's land and Tom's shop kept them in good financial shape. With no outside forces, they would have paid off their debts, bought more land, and paid it off in a growing cycle of wealth and power. The outside force was the other person with whom Tom was reacquainted at the country club. Marshall Bennington.

[Bigguy]

Marshall kept a home in Washington, but the family's base of power was still Southern Arkansas County. It was the money made in the Mississippi delta that provided the access in Washington. Even as he was studying law and preparing for the bar exam, Marshall had to spend enough time in Arkansas to keep his place as heir apparent to the family throne. Part of those duties involved spending time at the country club, and that is where Tom crossed his path again.

While Tom was beginning to be accepted as an equal by many in the area, nothing in Marshall's makeup left room for such status for Tom. Marshall was born into his position. Even as a child he had been treated deferentially. The difference was subtle, but noticeable. In playground brawls, Marshall would never be singled out as an instigator. He would inevitably be given the benefit of any doubt. Teachers, coaches, and Sunday school teachers were always a little quicker to praise, and much slower to criticize Marshall.


This didn't mean that Marshall was without discipline. Far from it. Another of the differences was that adults always seemed to keep an eye on him. He soon learned there were boundaries he couldn't cross without word getting back to his father. And his father was disciplinarian enough to make up for any trepidation from the other adults.
 Marshall was expected to take leadership roles. His coaches and teachers expected it and his father demanded it. If it required extra help or coaching, then Marshall got it. Other children picked up on the cues from the adults and also began to expect Marshall to take the role of leader. Though there were other boys with slightly more skill, Marshall took his place as quarterback and captain of the football team as the birth right it was. The future farmers and business men on the team were being trained to accept Marshall as leader.

While the position was thrust upon Marshall, it wasn't exactly given. As quarterback, he was expected to perform. What ever he lacked in native skill he made up for with hard work. His father expected him to excel and drove him to do so. Marshall's life, while privileged, wasn't easy.


The reality of Marshall's world was that some people were born into a ruling class while others were born to be workers. He understood that workers had to be given the illusion of equality, but still needed to understand their place on the food chain. Only within certain limitations could people change their status. Someone like Tom could earn a little money, but nothing would ever change the limitations of his birth. If Tom wanted to dress up and play "grownup." then Marshall could watch with amusement, as long as Tom didn't get too uppity.


[Bigguy]

The amusement changed to something else when Jennifer started to notice Tom. It truly wasn't jealousy. Jennifer had been nothing more than a pleasant distraction. There had been no love to fuel jealousy. If she had found someone in her class, Marshall would never have thought about her again. But even though she wasn't in the same social league with Marshall, she was still from a land owning farm family. Her intimacy with Tom was a profanity, made even worse by Marshall's own past with her. The uncleanliness Tom was smearing on her also infected Marshall by association.


Marshall treated Tom with unusual disdain. As Tom and Jennifer bought more land, his uneasiness grew. They also bought stock in the bank and Jennifer was lobbying stock holders to elect Tom to the board of directors. Unspoken, and largely unrecognized, a conviction grew in Marshall's mind that he was going to have to put Tom in his place. An opportunity to do so presented itself in the form of a broken levee disk.

[Bigguy]

The Bennington farm shop was easily as well equipped as Tom's. The Benningtons also had workers with enough skill to fix such a problem. But like the Alpha male in any pack, Marshall instinctively recognized an opportunity to reinforce his rank. He had one of his boys haul the broken disk assembly to Tom's shop and tell them he'd pick it up in the morning.

Tom stood, wiping grease from his hands as he glared at the disk. "I've got a lot of stuff ahead of you." he told the Bennington employee. “It's going to be a few days before I can get to it.” The other man's jaw dropped in shock.
"I don't think you understand!" he stuttered. "Mr. Bennington wants this in the morning."

Tom understood completely. He'd be damned if he'd let that prick yank him around like a dog on a chain. "You tell Mr. Bennington he can come get it when ever he wants to, but it ain’t going to to fixed before Wednesday!"

Financially it was a fatal mistake. Marshall's hostility toward Tom had been somewhat ambiguous. He had never allowed himself to admit that he noticed Tom enough to be hostile toward him. Now he was willing to admit that Tom annoyed him. A nebulous dislike solidified into a decision. 


Farming was no longer the profitable business it had been. That was part of the reason land occasionally came available at auction. The land Tom and Jennifer owned was barely making enough to make the bank payments, but the shop was keeping then afloat. All they had to do was hang on until things turned around. Once they paid off the bank, they would own almost a thousand acres. It wasn't the largest farm in the area, but it was respectable. The key to success was Tom's ability to bring money in from the shop.

Depriving Tom of that ability was child's play for Marshall. He opened up another shop. His pockets were much deeper than Tom's. He could and did operate at a loss. The other farmers realized that Tom had incurred Marshall's wrath. This was a fight in which there was no middle ground. As soon as someone needed a piece of equipment fixed, they had to choose a side. The outcome of this conflict was inevitable. It had been decreed at the participants births. The business flooded to Marshall's shop and Tom's income dried up. Tom had friends, but they weren't willing to risk their livelihood in Tom's fight.

[Bigguy]


Tom would have let the land go, but Jennifer wouldn’t hear of it. The farm wasn't producing enough to make payments. At her insistence, they took out mortgages on everything including Tom's shop. As their finances began to fracture, so did the illusion of their marriage. Tom started fishing again and spent more time on the river. He was able to get a little cash from fishing that was easy to hide from both Jennifer and the bank.


On the day they filed for bankruptcy, Jennifer asked for a divorce. Tom agreed and simply signed the papers her lawyer sent over. Under the terms of the divorce he assumed responsibility for the debts. Jennifer lost most of her father's land, but did manage to keep the old homestead. Jennifer and Tom’s wasn't the only marriage to end in divorce, and she eventually found an eligible divorced farmer. She remarried and became a farmwife on a farm some what smaller than her father's had been.

Tom took a small apartment for which he paid a hundred-dollars per month. He was able to keep his pickup. The money he earned from fishing paid the rent on his apartment and bought gas and groceries. The barge took on a new importance in his life. Originally a place to stash away the stuff he was hiding from the bank, it started to become a retreat.

[JimCunn]

There's a typo, It's "double paned", not "double pained"

Where is that paved airstrip?
Back in the 1960's I did Search and Rescue along the Mississippi between Memphis and Greenville. I used to fly into Double E Terry's airstrip on the west bank of the Mississippi just south of Montgomery Point, but it was grass rather than paved, and I believe it is gone now. I think there is still an airstrip in another location on Montgomery Island, but it isn't paved either. That said, it was a long time ago, and my memory of it is spotty.

[Bigguy]

Jim. Thanks for the heads up. I've changed it in my manuscript. As a self edited indie author, the occasional typo or misspelling is not unheard of. I change them when I find them.
This being a work of fiction, I've taken some geographical liberties. I don't think there is an airstrip on Montgomery island. Also, I have it about 3 miles down from the mouth of the White River, where as it is actually just below it. I hope that doesn't ruin the story for you.

[JimCunn]

Grass Airstrip on Montgomery Island perhaps at
33°55'06"N
91°02'14"W
Next time I'm down that way, I'll check it out.

As an aside, due to the S&R flying decades ago, I've landed on most of the sandbars, islands, and levees between Memphis and Greenville, so the whole mess looks pretty much like a landing strip to me :-)

Re typos, I'm on the Board of Directors of a Foundation that owns some of the author Robert A Heinlein's copyrights, and I have xerox copies of a couple of his manuscripts at home, so I know all too well how easy it is for typos to slip through (they're still doing it). And I have no problem at all with fictional liberties.

[Bigguy]

His original plan was to use the material hidden at the barge to start another business. But he had to wait for the fallout from the bankruptcy, and during that time he discovered that he didn't want to start again. His life on the river was surprisingly peaceful and without stress. Marshall had casually taken away everything he'd had. He and all of his friends had held their possessions only with Marshall's indulgence. In that light, what he had accomplished seemed less impressive. The people he once respected now appeared mere toddies. Those not required to pay open homage to Marshall, were simply beneath his notice. Tom no longer had any desire to be counted as one of them.


There never was a specific day when Tom decided to fix the barge up. Over time he simply brought stuff in and made minor improvements until now, five years later, it was quite comfortable. The barge was originally divided into eight water tight compartments. Tom cut a door between the first two compartments making two rooms. He removed the bulkheads between the remaining compartments, using the material for shelving and cabinets in the front rooms. The floor was rusting through allowing moister in. He covered the floor with plastic, then poured a few sacks of ready mix cement. Paint on the wall finished it off. It certainly wasn't going to appear in better homes and gardens, but it was better than the apartment in town. He had lights and a TV/DVD player that ran on twelve volts. The generator from the shop provided power for for occasional use of 120-volt equipment. The welder was gas powered and a propane shop heater, camp stove, and refrigerator supplied all of his needs.

[Bigguy]

He kept the apartment. It wasn't very expensive and it gave him an address. He had a full sized refrigerator and freezer there to store food, but he spent a lot of time at the barge. It was convenient to the river and best of all, it was isolated. He didn't seek out company anymore. To his former friends, he became something of an enigma. Out of sight, he dropped from most of their minds.


Tom held no animosity for Jennifer. Like Marshall, he had never been in love with her. There wasn't the depth of emotion attached to her to generate hate. She was simply something that belonged to his past. He also had few hard feeling for his former friends. They were still prisoners in a place he had escaped. Right out of high-school, he'd felt inferior to them. Now, he felt pity for them. Most of them were decent people who simply lacked the courage to live without what Marshall allowed them to keep. Tom was honest enough with himself to admit that, under different circumstances, he would still be one of them.

His attitude toward Marshall was less generous. He hated Marshall. Not for depriving him of property. Tom didn't really miss that. It was the vindictiveness of the attack that rankled Tom. The bastard had attacked him, and it was personal. He had tried to subjugate Tom. His arrogant assumption that Tom should have submitted, was a personal affront that Tom couldn't ignore.

[Bigguy]

There wasn't much Tom could do about it though. Marshall had won a seat in congress, and moved off to Washington. He pretty much dropped out of the local scene. Tom didn't follow politics and was rarely confronted with anything to do with Marshall. His hatred moved, undiminished, to the back of his mind where Tom almost forgot about it.

But like most smoldering fires, the rage grew unnoticed getting hotter and hotter until something suddenly released it. That something was a headline in the local paper. "Native Son aims for White House," the headline read. It didn't take a lot of imagination to figure out who the "Native son." was. Tom forced himself to read the entire article. Every word hit him between the eyes like a ball-pine hammer. His head was pounding and his ears were ringing by the time he finished. The world seemed to retreat and his senses were muted. He felt numb, as though some sort of circuit breaker had been thrown on his emotions. He seemed to be watching himself from a distance. He became aware of the fact that he was in the apartment throwing canned goods into a haversack. He wasn't particularly surprised to find himself heading for the barge.

[Bigguy]

He opened the pad lock and stepped through the door. He dumped the contents of the haversack on the table. He had brought crackers, cans of potted meat, and Vienna Sausages, as well as the newspaper and a bottle of Black Velvet. He left the door open, but the sun was on the other side of the barge and didn't do much to illuminate the interior. He flipped on the lights, but the four battery bank was low, and they didn't provide enough light to read. That was all right. The pertinent information was burned in his brain. He'd flip the generator on after dark and recharge the batteries, but for now he didn't want to risk the noise.


[Bigguy]

He poured a healthy slug of the whiskey in a plastic cup then sat in the gloom letting his mind retrace the events that had brought him here. As he relived it in his mind, he sometimes altered the past pulling some financial miracle that allowed him to survive. Bennington finally had to throw in the towel as Tom and Jennifer weathered the crisis with even more land. He got his spot on the bank’s board of directors and faced Bennington on equal terms.


But his flights of fancy all ways came crashing back to reality. And every time they did, it was like losing again. Each cycle enraged him all the more until all he could think of was how much he hated Bennington. He scrutinized the past trying to see if there was something he could have done differently. But any money he could have come up with would have only delayed the inevitable. And there wasn't much money he could have gotten.

[Bigguy]

The best opportunity he'd had would have been if he could have sold the fertilizer still piled on top of the barge a few feet over his head. But there'd never been much chance of that. People were too skittish about fertilizer now. Nobody wanted to be caught with that much that they couldn’t explain. Hell, all anybody could think about when ever he mentioned that much ammonium nitrate was of blowing something up.

Suddenly his eyes, glassy from the whiskey, blazed. His gaze moved to the ceiling, but he was really seeing past the metal over his head. He had twenty or thirty thousand pounds of the stuff sitting there. He took another sip of whiskey. Some of the liquid ran thinly from the corners of his lips as he began to smile.

[Bigguy]

And This brings us to the end of Chapter 1. Chapter 2 starts with Gibb. I hope you've enjoyed the sample. You can find it as ebook of paperback on Amazon. (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075WG9VVR)

35565

[Bigguy]

You can find it as ebook of paperback on Amazon. (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075WG9VVR)

https://www.amazon.com/Mr-Guy-B-Wheatley/e/B016KS2L2U
I don't know why the link above won't work, but you can copy it into your address bar and it will.