The Glorious Adventures of the Sunshine Queen Read Online Free PDF Page B

fifty tons of wood, rising in three grimy, mold-stained tiers toward the pilothouse, the twin prongs of its metal chimney stacks and the single curlicued word propped up on the roof: CALLIOPE . A single light glimmered on the hurricane deck, but the hiss of the rain obliterated any other sign of life.
    â€œAhoy there! Calliope! Room aboard for a few drowned rats?” shouted Curly, his voice squeaking with happiness.
    â€œIs that its name?” said Miss May, peaking her hands over her eyes to keep out the rain. “Are you sure?”
    â€œThat’s what’s writ on it, miss,” said Kookie patiently, gratified that here was a world where schoolteachers knew nothing useful at all.
    Up close, Calliope was not quite so big. She was not one of the great Mississippi cruise steamers, which had once carried hosts of passengers up and down the country to the sound of large orchestras and a forest of trees burning in the engine furnaces. Just as the Numchuck was a lesser version of the Missouri or Mississippi, so the Calliope was built with less ambition. But some time before the flood, it had been a beautiful craft, lovingly turned out. The refugees shinnied over the bull rails, scattering their bags and baggage on the deck, then climbed to the deck above. At the head of the ladder, a figure in a loose dress peered down into the gloom, struggling to make out who they were. To Cissy, she looked like an angel checking the rungs on Jacob’s ladder. All that red hair; those red gloves frayed at the fingers’ ends; the comforting shape of the pearl-handled pistol tucked high up above her waist.
    â€œOh, Miss Loucien!” cried Cissy, tripping over her own skirt, stumbling up the last few steps of the ladder and into the arms of her best friend in the world. Saltwater spurted miraculously from eyes that had not shed one tear, and out of her throat came the most unearthly, banshee wail. “Oh, Miss Loucien, it’s all gone! Everything’s gone! Ma’s as crazy as rabies and Sarah Waters is dead of the diphtheria and Poppy’s all beat up ’cause Fuller dropped the silo on us, and everything’s smashed to hell, and I’m not to go to school even when the plague’s over—an’ Pa’s busted past redemption, an’ I never learned the end of ‘The Lady of Shalott,’ an’ I missed you SOOO MUCH!”
    At the mention of diphtheria, the gloved hands gripped Cissy’s shoulders and pushed her sharply away, so that her head snapped back on her shoulders; a leak from the deckhead splashed directly in her face. She found herself looking up into features wearier than she had remembered them, wearier and more anxious.
    Then someone turned up the wick in those big lilac eyes, and fold upon fold of the cheesecloth dress enveloped Cissy, and cheesecloth sleeves drew her close. “Well, looky here, Everett—everybody,” murmured the voice. “We got visitors from our former lives—when times were easy and the beds were hard. Someone put on a kettle of water, and let’s share some news. Is that what we’ll do, folks? Is it?”
    Crouching with her face pressed hard in against Miss Loucien’s front, Cissy was dimly aware that the teacher’s familiar curvy uplands had been joined by a bigger hill lower down. After a moment’s thought, it was her turn to pull away.
    â€œSacray blue, Miss Loucien! It wasn’t Annie May at all! It’s you that’s ’specting the baby!”

Chapter Four
Calliope
    T wice a year, the Missouri rises. As it drinks down spring meltwater or summer rain, it loses its head and runs amok. It swells and throbs like the nightmares in Hulbert Sissney’s feverish head. Forgetting the maps drawn up by fastidious river pilots, ignoring the dry, baked levees, it simply gets up and stretches itself. Overspilling its banks, unpicking its neat embroidery of tributaries—tributaries like the