Backstory: Navigating the 'wiggles'

Though Trout has driven lighter craft on this stretch of river, he aspires to captain a big boat like the Patricia Gail.

That dream has cost him much, including his marriage. Four years ago his wife divorced him, saying his work kept him away from home too much. In essence, he says, she asked him to choose, and he chose the river.

"She was a pretty girl, don't get me wrong," he says. "But this is my life, here."

After an afternoon spent napping and unpacking, Trout follows Byrd to the pilothouse, where they will drive the boat until midnight. Trout, it turns out, is a talker. Born in southern Illinois, he started out delivering express packages after high school. But the job wasn't for him. "I just don't feel comfortable on land, 'less I'm hunting or fishing," he says.

An avid small-game hunter, he has inherited more than one beloved family recipe for squirrel gravy. Between shifts on the river, Trout leads turkey hunting trips. He can imitate a turkey call with remarkable accuracy; once, he inadvertently fooled his employer, an incident that left 18 BBs embedded in his hand, arm, and neck.

As the boat slips over the dark water, Trout points out the features of the nighttime riverscape: the red left-hand buoys, called "nuns" for their pointy tops, and the "cans," or flat-topped, green right-handers. Before these buoys were set and channels dug in the 1960s, Byrd adds, the Mississippi was a different river - a lot more barges ran aground.

This is Byrd's final year on the river; he has promised his wife of 43 years so. Actually, he confides, she wants him to retire now, but he's not ready to leave the river. The couple plans to spend their retirement touring national parks in a new camper. "Forty-three years," Trout marvels. "Now she knows what river life is about."

***

As the Patricia Gail approaches a corner called Point Lookout, Trout's eyes widen. The boat and its cumbersome tow are now less than 60 feet from the right bank and the same distance from shallows to the left. "See, we're taking it right in on the bank," Trout says. "Now here, where I might back up..." he trails off suggestively.

Byrd shuts off the engines and lets the 10-m.p.h. current carry the boat - seemingly, to the untrained eye, directly into a bluff. "He'll steer this here on experience," Trout continues uncertainly. In moments, the solid bank has melted away, and the boat glides into the next stretch of the channel. "See, you let Mother Nature help you all you can," Trout says, recovered. "You don't want to fight her, do you, Robert?"

"It's a hard fight," the captain says, smiling. He throttles up again, pulling the head of the tow around to shoot across a dark stretch of river where all the buoys are missing.

He speeds the boat up to 10 m.p.h., approaching her maximum speed of 12 m.p.h. Heading downstream like this, it would take three-quarters of a mile to bring the load to a halt. Across the river, towboats heading upstream pull over in acknowledgment of how quickly a tow pushed by the current can get out of control.

"I spent over an hour here," Trout whispers. "That be me, my hands would be sweating. Him, he just knows, and what he knows, he goes."

They drive in silence for awhile, until the red and green buoys reappear. "We made it," says Byrd.

"We made it," agrees Trout - and, for once, he has nothing to add.

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