“It’s your job to be a parson,” Buck laughed. “If it wasn’t for men like us, that need reforming, you’d be up against it for something to look out for. You aren’t much used to the river, and I’ll suggest that when you drop down you land in eddies sheltered from the west and south winds. They sure do tear things up sometimes. I’ve had the roof tore off a boat I was in, and I saw sixty-three boats sunk at Cairo’s Kentucky shanty-boat town one morning after a big wind.”
“I’ll keep a-lookin’,” Rasba assured him, “but I’ve kind-a lost the which-way down heah. One day I had the sun ahead, behind, and both sides––”
“There’s maps in that pile of stuff in the corner,” Buck said, going to the duffle. “You’re on Sheet 4 now. Here’s Caruthersville.”
“Yas, suh. Those red lines?”
“The new survey. You see, that sandbar up in Little Prairie Bend has cut loose from Island No. 15, and moved down three miles, and we’re at the foot of this bar, here. That’s moved down, too, and that big bar down there was made between the surveys. You see, they had to move the levee back, and Caruthersville moved over the new levee––”
“Sho!” Rasba gasped. “What ails this old riveh?”
“She jes’ wriggles, same’s water into a muddy road downhill,” Kippy laughed. “Up there in Little Prairie Bend hit’s caved right through the old levee, and they had to loop around. Now they’ve reveted it.” 149
“Reveted?”
“They’ve woven a willow mattress and weighted it down with broken rock from up the river—more than a mile of it, now, and they’ll have to put down another mile before they can head the river off there.”
“Put a carpet down. How wide?”