No Good Deed 8

On Mercer Street, the cold was little mitigated by a brittle sun. Deciding to forego the pleasures of the horse drawn street car, I commenced walking toward the river. Towards the commercial wharves I stopped at the sign of a striped pole. Not one customer was inside the barber´s: the aproned one himself was asleep in the customary high chair. The fellow´s skin was mighty scrofulous and no great advertisement to his skills. His snores resounded through the empty shop. I was already turning away, when a dark-skinned hand´s finger beckoned me out of the establishment´s door once more.

Once outside I was confronted by a handsome negro in new leather boots and ragged hand-me-downs of uncertain fit.

´Haircut, suh?´ he asked, giving my waistcoat a keen look.

´It is a shave I am in need of young man.´ I rubbed a hand along my jaw, it rasped like a lucifer on sandstone.

´Yuh goin´on the boats?´

I almost changed my plans on the basis of yet another assumption made about them. On reflection, I decided that I would change the waistcoat for another at the earliest opportunity.

´That I am, though what business it is of yours, I cannot say, boy.´

´Boats got barbers, suh. Mah brutha is barber on the Gran´Turk.´

I laughed, admiring the young man´s enterprise.

´Let us go, then, to this Grand Turk.´

Thus, passage paid, I sat two hours later in the Barber´s chair aboard the Grand Turk, steam-driven riverboat, bound upriver along the Mississippi out of St. Louis. The boat itself had lost any pretensions to its title, if any it had had. Alongside, it had looked of middling size amid the many vessels intent on navigating the big river. The superstructure was badly in need of a coat of paint, the colours being the faded tones of a down-at-heel fairground attraction. There was little to see of the hull, for -in common with the other boats in evidence - it appeared to have little draught and no great evidence of any hull above the waterline. The paddles looked in poor repair, I noted the odd missing spoke in the great wheels.
The barber, sprucely turned out, was a tiresomely self-important fellow, much enamoured of recounting the peccadilloes of such passengers of quality as had travelled aboard the Grand Turk. Amid his salacious digressions, I learned that the tub was out of New Orleans, did not have a full complement of passengers, much less freight and would not provide much pickings, for a gambling man.

It was an inescapable truth; the waistcoat would have to go.

The boat had pulled away from the wharf at last. Upon the promenade deck what passengers there were stood waving at loved ones, or spitting over the side in good riddance. It was moving sluggishly turning as heavily a matron at a ball. The passengers on deck numbered around thirty or so, doubtless there were more below, or on other parts of the deck. A wind was blowing, no pleasant zephyr, it was as bitter as the still brittle sunlight. I buttoned up my frock-coat, as much to hide the waistcoat as against the cold. My eye perused the assembled passengers; choosing an expectorator rather than a waver, I accosted a squat fellow, whose stomach and florid cheeks betokened an acquaintance with the grape and grain. His moustaches were grandiose even by colonial standards; the hair on his head, if clean, might have been described as golden blond.

´Hullo´I thrust out a hand and attempted the more robust manners of the indigenous population.´Anson Northrup, pleased to meet you.´

´William Haycock, cain´t say likewise. But if yuh´ll stand me a drink, I´ll try to oblige.´