Backstory: A river runs through them

Each year, 800 million tons of the raw materials bound for American gas tanks and dinner tables travel to consumers by river, contributing $5 billion to the US economy. Nearly half of these commodities spend time on the Mississippi. Season after season, busy inland ports like St. Louis and Pittsburgh handle more coal and petroleum, lumber and soy, than large coastal ones like Boston and Seattle.

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The Patricia Gail is a big new towboat by Mississippi River standards - a "brand-new Cadillac boat," according to first mate Ben Bolden. On this trip downriver, she is pushing the back end of a raft of 35 barges, each carrying 2,000 tons of cargo. Lashed together with inch-thick steel cables, this tow is longer than the Titanic was, and twice as wide. In the tightest riverbends, it could scrape a bank either end.

The boat's crew is divided into two shifts, doubling every job but cook for the 10-day journey from Cairo, Ill., to Baton Rouge, La., and back again. Two novice deckhands take turns manning the tow, each mentored by a veteran mate or watchman. In the engine room, in the belly of the boat, the chief engineer is spelled by an apprentice, while up in the pilothouse, Byrd and a less experienced pilot take turns driving.

All day and into the night, the Patricia Gail has been on a "milk run" downriver toward New Orleans, pausing nearly as often as a delivery truck might to leave or take on coal or grain. At each stop, deckhands hurry to the far end of the tow to meet the crew of a smaller approaching tugboat. There, amid the sweet, fermenting smell of their cargo, the four hands work together to loose the massive cables that lash one barge to the next. The tug draws away a barge or two for delivery to a local mill or river port, often returning with replacements, which deckhands ratchet to the tow so tightly their wires groan like whale song.

"Yeah, they're talkin' a little bit tonight," says watchman Mike Evans.

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In a few days, crew members who have been aboard for a month will head home, scrubbed and excited, to their wives, girlfriends, babies, and grandkids. In two weeks the remainder of the crew will begin a month's vacation. But the end of a shift puts a man in mind of partings.

Down in the deck locker, a narrow antechamber where deckhands brood over the tow and watch the clock, the talk tonight is of the passing of comedian Richard Pryor, of Christmasses lost to boat work, of ex-wives who couldn't take the strain of being married to towboat men.

Down in the engine room, the radio sputters to life. Chief engineer Melvin "J.R." Harville Jr., answers. It is Byrd, calling from the pilothouse to tell him of the loss of their mutual friend. Mr. Harville and Byrd brought the Patricia Gail out together - rode her on her first trip out of the boatyard in Houma, La., in 1998 - and have worked her together ever since.

Harville hadn't heard the news either. He lingers with Byrd over the shame of it.

"He's a good man, Arthur was," Byrd says, "a good pilot."

They sit together in silence for a while.

"Come to all of us, though," Harville radios back, by way of good night.

• Part 2 Wednesday: Who works the river.

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