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Sweethearts of Sleeping Bear Bay (Great Lakes Romances) (Volume 3)

By Donna Winters

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CHAPTER 1
May, 1898

“Now, Daddy, you aren’t really plannin’ to go on this ‘Sweetheart Cruise,’ are you?” Captain Mary Ellen Jenkins inquired with obvious disdain. From the tall chair in the glass and mahogany pilothouse where she commanded her Mississippi sternwheeler, the Delta Princess, she passed the handbill back to her father, similarly seated to her left. A few feet in front of her, the helmsman manned the wheel, so big it required an opening in the hardwood floor.
Twelve miles above New Orleans, low morning clouds cast shadows over the murky water, rippled by a gusty, balmy breeze. The white and gold pennant of the Princess cracked and snapped in the southwest wind that whisked through the larboard window to tousle the gold-en brown tendrils on Mary Ellen’s cheek and caress her straight, short nose with the river’s own brand of cologne—a hint of sewage diluted with the scent of an impending rain. Mary Ellen closed her eyes and drank in the smell, comforted by its familiarity and the throbbing of the engine, then set her gaze on the nearly indiscernible point along a shoreline adorned in unrelenting green.
The Delta Princess was “running the willows” near the east bank, taking advantage of slacker water—slower current that would make her progress upstream less arduous. Years of steamboating told Mary Ellen the current would change at the copse of China trees ahead, and she would soon need to cross over to the opposite side. Concentrating on the river’s surface, she read it for danger signals—a slick spot with circles and lines telling of a building up of the river bottom, boiling rings indicating a dissolving bar and change in the channel, or a long slanting line that could mean either a dangerous bluff reef or simply an innocent wind reef.
Running a hand through the grizzled curls above his right ear, Captain J.T. Jenkins concluded his second study of the handbill, stepped beside his daughter, and straightened to his full six foot-four inch height, shoulders erect, chest swelled. “Mary Ellen, honey, I’ve made up my mind. I’m agoin’ on this here ‘Sweetheart Cruise,’ and you’re goin’ with me!” he boomed, jabbing the paper so hard it nearly split.
Mary Ellen gazed into her father’s muddy blue eyes and in them read a resolve as steady, strong, and unrelenting as the river’s current. “I don’t mind tellin’ you I’m not fond of the idea. If the truth be known, I don’t understand how you could even consider such a journey.” Her blunt reaction did nothing to mask her acute apprehension at the thought of traveling North.
The whole of her twenty-nine years had been spent on and along the Mississippi— the last three as a licensed pilot and captain on the Great River. Mississippi water flowed in her veins, as it did her father’s. She couldn’t imagine sailing northern waters, nor making part of the trip by train, that God-forsaken, fire-spitting iron dragon that had scorched the profits of many steamboating men of the Mighty Miss, forcing them into premature retirement. Why, it was pure sacrilege even to consider patronizing the railroad.
She gauged the determined set of her father’s jaw, the depth of the furrows running either side of his clean-shaven upper lip into the thick white beard on his chin, and the length of the leathery cracks crossing his fore-head, and recognized the outward signs of the stubbornness that she herself had inherited in no small measure.
“Daddy, I mean no disrespect, but since you’ve reached your mid-sixties, I sometimes wonder if your advancing years have affected your judgment.” She stepped down from her tall chair, dismissed her helms-man, and took a stance behind the wheel, guiding the Delta Princess toward the western bank.
“It don’t pay to be so dad-burned outspoken, Mary Ellen. It ain’t becomin’ of a lady, you know,” J.T. scolded. Unseating himself, he shifted beside her from one foot to the other, tapping the handbill against his palm. “Now hear me out. I’ve got a plan. We could take the Delta Princess up to Jeffersonville ‘n leave her at the Howard Yard before goin’ on to Chicago. The hull’s due for some caulking. You said so yourself, just last week. The yard’ll be caught up with the spring repair work and eager for our business in mid-July. Won’t take ‘em but two weeks to do the job. You haven’t taken any time off since July of last year when you saw Charlie off to the Yukon. You deserve a vacation. After the cruise, we’ll spend a few days home in Natchez. By the end of the month, the Princess ‘ll be fit for another season, and so will you.”
At the mention of Charlie, Mary Ellen grimaced. Charles Tanner was tall and nice-looking, though not quite like Cinderella’s prince, being blond instead of dark-haired, and not exactly as handsome. He could come back any day with a cache of gold from the Klon-dike. Before he had departed last August for the Northwest, he had told Mary Ellen he planned to return within months. When he did, he would look her up.
He seemed to enjoy river travel and she enjoyed his friendship. Though he was a younger man, a woman at her age with her obvious lack of natural beauty couldn’t quibble over the four-year difference between them. Un-fortunately, Mary Ellen had heard nothing from him since his departure, though he had promised repeatedly that he would write.
Had he made false promises to please her father, who had a habit of trying to marry her off? Had he found someone younger and prettier? Maybe he had succumbed to the harsh environment of the Northwest Territory. The lack of news had made her wonder if he was poor in purse and health. She didn’t want to admit, even to herself, that she had missed him. It didn’t fit the self-image she tried arduously to uphold—that of a stalwart, independent, working woman of the river.
How well she knew she did not fit the mold of her mother, the typical Southern belle, beautiful and sweet and fragile and needing looking-after by the man in her life. Mary Ellen had loved her mother dearly, God rest her soul, but would not become enslaved to hearth and home and husband and children.
Mary Ellen eased the vessel nearer the west bank. “Daddy, I think it’s pure foolishness, takin’ that cruise!”
J.T. folded the handbill along old creases and careful-ly slid it into his inside jacket pocket. “It’s all settled then. I’ll write Cousin Jack and tell him to expect us.” He relaxed again on his tall chair, leaning back with hands clasped behind his head, elbows splayed. “I can hardly believe I’ll be seein’ the old cuss again after all these years. Why, you couldn’t a’ been more ‘n eight when he last laid eyes on ya’, Mary Ellen. He won’t know ya’!
“To think he’s remarried. He’s eager to have ya’ meet his wife’s niece, Lily. She’s about your age, a little younger, mayhaps. A widow with a new baby girl, she is, an’ runnin’ that there cruise line on Lake Michigan, the Sweetwater Line. If that don’t beat all. All but bein’ a captain and pilot on the Miss’ippi, that is.
“I understand Lily’s plannin’ to remarry soon. Mar-ryin’ the cap’n of her steamer, the Lily Belle. That’s what gave her the idea for this Sweetheart Cruise, Jack said in his letter. I figger you two steamboatin’ ladies ‘ll get along like fish in a school. Don’t ya’ know, Princess?”
Though it was a struggle, Mary Ellen maintained a judicious silence, allowing nothing but the soft stroke of a vibrating engine, the flapping of the silk pennant, and the distant rumble of approaching thunderstorms to fill the air.

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