Dear everyone,

We came home on Thursday. Lock 11 sits right at the top of town, so you come out of it and there's Dubuque all at once: the bluffs, the church steeples, the old Shot Tower by the water, the bridges. I have seen that view from the bridge a thousand times. I had never once seen it from the river, at six miles an hour, coming home. Marion put on his good cap.

Tonya was waiting on the dock in the Ice Harbor with both boys and a bedsheet that said WELCOME HOME RECESS in poster paint. Jared, who is six, had painted the R backwards and was very proud of it. William, who is seven, wanted to know if we had seen any pirates. I told him no, but we'd seen a beaver, and he said that was almost as good, which I think is generous. They have been all over the boat every day since, pushing every button Marion will let them push and several he won't.

My friend Francine Snell from the operating room came down to the harbor the first evening with a pan of scotcheroos and half the gossip from the third floor. I worked next to Francine for twenty-two years. I have handed her a thousand instruments and she has handed me a thousand, and we have stood together through some very long nights, and on Thursday she sat on the back deck of my houseboat with her shoes off and her feet up and said, "Annie, look at you." I didn't know what she meant at first. Then I did. I've lost the line between my eyebrows. I had it for twenty-eight years and it went away somewhere around Lake Pepin.

It is a strange thing to be home and not home. We drove past our house on Wednesday evening in Tonya's car, very slowly, like burglars. The young doctor's wife has put two pots of yellow mums on the front step, and there was a tricycle in the driveway that wasn't ours. I cried a little, and Marion patted my knee and said, "Good mums," and that was exactly the right thing to say, and I don't know how he always knows.

Lance drove over from Des Moines today and the five of us ate supper on the boat, all squeezed in around the little table, and Lance said he couldn't believe we actually did it. He said he'd figured we'd talk about it until we were ninety. So did I, son. So did I.

We'll be here through next Sunday. Then on south. Our love to all of you, and especially to everyone who came down to the harbor this week. You made a couple of old river rats very happy.

Anne

Ten days in home port. Work done: oil and filter changed. New fuel filter. Checked the outdrive oil for water (none, good). Greased everything that takes grease. Replaced the float switch on the bilge pump, which had been sticking since Winona. Topped off the fuel. Washed the boat twice because William wanted to.

On Friday I went up to the high school to say hello to the new shop teacher. School starts Wednesday. He's a good young man, 26, and he has my old room, and he's moved my desk to the other wall, which is where it should have been all along. He asked if I wanted to take anything. I didn't. I stood in the doorway a minute and smelled the sawdust, and then we went and got coffee and I told him which of the table saws pulls to the left.

We leave tomorrow at first light. Next stop below Lock 12.

Lock 12, no wait. Lock 13, a 2-hour-40-minute wait behind a fifteen-barge tow going down in two cuts. Longest wait yet.

While they were putting the tow back together below the lock, a deckhand on the lead barge stood up, looked at us, and hollered across the water, "MR. McFARLAND!" It was Brett Noble, class of '94. He took small engines from me two years running and rebuilt a Briggs & Stratton lawnmower engine on the bench by the window that I would put up against anybody's. He's been working on towboats for three years. He works a month on and two weeks off and lives on the boat.

He asked what we were running. I told him. He asked about the outdrive. I told him. He said, "You taught me to check the impeller every season." I said I did. Then they blew the horn and he had to go to work.

Anne will tell the rest. She talked to him longer than I did.

Dear everyone,

About Brett. He was a quiet boy in high school, Marion says, the kind who sat in the back and didn't say anything until you put an engine in front of him. He isn't quiet now. While the towboat was waiting to tie the second half back on, he sat down on the edge of the barge with his legs hanging over, about twenty feet away from us, and we talked across the water for half an hour like we were on a front porch.

He told us about life on the boat. There are nine of them aboard: the captain, the pilot, the engineers, the deckhands and the cook, and the cook is the most important person on the boat and everybody knows it. They work six hours on and six hours off, around the clock, for a month at a time, in all weather, and the barges are slick with rain and ice in November, and the lines can take your hand off if you aren't careful. He makes more money than his father ever did. He's saving for a house. He's engaged to a girl in Davenport who works at a bank, and he showed us her picture from his wallet, held it up across the water, and of course we couldn't see a thing, and we said she was beautiful, and he said she was.

Then he got quiet and said the hardest part is the month away. He said you miss birthdays and you miss Christmas some years, and you lie in your bunk at three in the morning listening to the engines and think about the people on shore who are sleeping and don't know you're out there. I said I knew something about the night shift. He said, "Yes, ma'am, I bet you do."

When the horn blew he stood up and shook Marion's hand across the gap between the barge and our rail, which made me very nervous, and he said, "Thank you, Mr. McFarland," and he didn't say for what, and he didn't have to. Marion was quiet the rest of the afternoon. I know you'll understand when I tell you that this is what thirty-one years were for.

Yesterday we came through Locks 14 and 15 into the Quad Cities. Lock 15 is right at the Rock Island Arsenal, with the old Government Bridge right beside it, which swings open for the big boats. We came out of the lock with the bridge open over us and the city on both sides, Iowa on the right and Illinois on the left, and a riverboat full of people waving at us from the casino dock as if we were somebody. We waved back. We are somebody.

Jim and Anna Beals and their trawler are two slips over from us here. Anna and I walked into Davenport this morning and found a bakery, which was her advice from La Crosse, and it was good advice.

Love,
Anne

Sunday was our longest day: Muscatine to Burlington, 51 miles, Locks 17 and 18. Eight and a half hours at the wheel. On Monday a man John Hindman recommended came down to the dock at Burlington and looked at the outdrive for an hour and charged me for twenty minutes. Said it was a good unit, kept up right. Also met a fellow named Mike Barron at the fuel dock there who runs a little marina on Kentucky Lake in the winters and says he can find us a slip if we want one. We may want one.

Today: Lock 19. This is the big one. The chamber is 1,200 feet long, twice the size of the ones upriver, so a full tow goes through in one piece. It opened in 1957. The old power dam beside it has been making electricity since 1913. The lift is about 38 feet, about four times the drop at most of the locks upriver.

Going down that far in a lock is not like the others. The walls come up around you, concrete, wet and dark green with moss and dripping, and the sky gets small, and the gates at the bottom end are as tall as a building. It takes a while. It's very quiet except for the water. Anne held the bow line with both hands and didn't talk, which I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen. When the gates opened at the bottom it was like coming out of a tunnel.

From here to St. Louis, Locks 20, 21, 22, 24 and 25 are the regular 600-foot size. Mel Price and 27 are big ones, like this.

Dear everyone,

Just a short one. We left Iowa this morning. Just below Keokuk the Des Moines River comes in from the west, and that's the line: Iowa above it, Missouri below. Marion slowed down so I could look. I've lived in Iowa all my life, every day of it except a honeymoon, and I sat on the back deck and watched it go by on the right until it was gone around the bend, and then I watched Missouri for a while, and it looked like Iowa, and that made me feel better.

Quincy is a pretty town, up on a bluff on the Illinois side with grand old houses along the top of it. We walked up the hill this evening to look at them and walked back down very slowly. I am fifty-nine years old and I had forgotten about hills. Iowa has hills, of course. I just don't usually climb them.

Tomorrow, Hannibal. I have been looking forward to Hannibal since 1971.

Love,
Anne