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  • Riverboat Pilot
  • James S. Brown (bio)

The growth of courage in the pilot-house is steady all the time, but it does not reach a high and satisfactory condition until some time after the young pilot has been “standing his own watch,” alone and under the staggering weight of all the responsibilities connected with the position. When an apprentice has become pretty thoroughly acquainted with the river, he goes clattering along so fearlessly with his steamboat, night or day, that he presently begins to imagine that it is his courage that animates him; but the first time the pilot steps out and leaves him to his own devices he finds out it was the other man’s.

— Mark Twain, Life On The Mississippi

Extreme circumstances sometimes evolve from minor incidents, and so it was that a trivial encounter set off a series of events that led to one of the most unusual nights of my life. It all began on the Ohio River when another towboat began to pass the towboat I was on. Unlike harbor tugs that pull or tow their loads, river towboats push theirs, and for that reason it would be several minutes before their pilothouse caught up with ours. Looking over at their lead barge, we could see it riding high in the water, a telltale sign it had no cargo. That would explain why our heavily loaded tow could not keep up; but, regardless of any speed advantage they might have had, it was still embarrassing to have another tow pass us. This was because people on the river adhered to values more reminiscent of the hard-nosed spirit of the old West than they did to the current standards of sixties America. River crews tended to view issues in black or white, with little room for gray. Rightly or wrongly, allowing another boat to pass was seen as a loss of face.

Our boat, the Carole Brent, had a crew of five—a captain, pilot, two deckhands, and a cook. Being a deckhand, I happened to be in the engine room checking oil levels when I noticed the prow of the other tow beginning its pass. Although I had been on the river [End Page 561] for only a month, I already knew enough about towboat culture to suspect that our captain, Billy Joe Fox, would be affronted. Hastily completing my duties, I hurried to the pilothouse to see how he would react.

Billy Joe was a twenty-year veteran of the river, forty years old, a clean-cut man with blond hair who appeared to be of Scandinavian descent. Well built and powerful, his most distinguishing feature was a scar that ran down the right side of his face from just below the eye to his jawline. It flushed scarlet whenever he was irritated and so was a barometer of his mood. He had acquired the scar in a fight, an activity to which he was no stranger, and rumor held that he and his four brothers deliberately provoked confrontations when they went out drinking. If they could not find someone to fight, they fought one another, and the most recent story making the rounds concerned Billy Joe’s last shore leave when he had bitten off someone’s ear. Such a world was new to me, having come from a small town where such goings-on rarely happened. As a college student, I had taken this job hoping to find a bit more adventure than summer employment typically provided. It didn’t take me long to realize river life was much wilder than I had envisioned.

When I reached the pilothouse, Billy Joe was steering somberly, while the off-duty pilot and second in charge sat wordlessly on the raised bench behind the helm. This high-backed seat was wide enough for three people, but I chose not to go in when I saw their icy stares. Their steely silence made the background hum of the engines seem unusually loud, and no one spoke or even looked my way. Billy Joe was scowling in a way I had never seen before, and he would not look at the passing tow. I had...

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