"The sleeping cabin," I said, correcting her.

"Uh-uh." She shook her head. "I mean the bedroom. The guy who rents it said you don't use nautical terms for a houseboat. It's bedroom and kitchen and bathroom, instead of cabin and galley and head."

"Why's that?"

"Marketing," she said wisely. Everything she knew about marketing you could have written on the back of a postage stamp with a Magic Marker. "They didn't want houseboats to sound like submarines. They don't want the customers to think about sinking."

"Where's the owner?"

"Skiing. In Chile. He won't be back before the first of September."

We went aboard. The forward six feet of the lower deck were open, with a rail to keep drunken passengers from going overboard. Inside, the cabin was divided into halves. The front half was the general living area, with built-in bench seats along the walls, a television cabinet with a stereo, and a general-purpose dining- and work-table. At the very front was a set of boat controls with a pilot's chair, looking out through windows over the bow.

The back half of the cabin was a warren of small rooms and storage cubbyholes. The galley had everything most kitchens have, and it all fitted into a space the size of a closet. There was a minimal bath, with a shower, a fold-down sink, and a head. But the main attraction was the bedroom.

"It looks like a whorehouse," I said when I saw it. I was awestruck; the owner's taste was. unique. "That's the only purple-flocked wallpaper I've ever seen – I mean, done in plastic like that."

"How about the smoked mirrors?" LuEllen asked. Mirrors covered two walls and the ceiling. "And notice the electric swivel mount for the video camera. We can make our own movies."

The aft six feet of the deck, like the forward six feet, were open. The engine housing was back there, and the access ladder to the cabin's roof, which served as an upper deck. There was another set of controls on the upper deck, along with mounts for a couple of chairs, a bench seat, and a sunbathing well with removable privacy panels.

"All right, I admit it," I said finally. "It's perfect. Where do we sign?"

The agent was a stocky woman who wore what appeared to be a wrought-iron girdle. She asked a lot of questions, took some bank references, and two days later showed us a contract. She also showed us her husband, a grizzled cigar-smoking river rat named Fred. We spent the next three days pushing the Fanny up and down the St. Croix under Fred's watchful eye.

On the third day we nosed out into the Mississippi, took it through Lock and Dam No. 2 at Hastings, and fooled around in the current below St. Paul.

"I guess you can handle her," Fred grudgingly allowed at the end of the day. We were standing on the dock, and he handed me the keys. "When are you leaving?"

"Couple of days."

"Good luck. You take care in that Chain-of-Rocks Canal." He glanced at LuEllen on the upper deck. "And try not to wear out them mirrors."

The phone lines were burning up. John to Bobby to me to Marvel, out into her network, and back to John. I was piling up detail. Names. Leverage. John called that night. He was in Longstreet.

"We've got the Reverend Mr. Dodge by the balls. And we got him separate from the rest of the council."

"How'd you do it?" We'd decided to keep Dodge on the council while we dumped the rest of it. Since he was tied to the machine, that might not be easy.

"Remember how Marvel said he's been trying to get into her pants since she was a kid? She got to thinking, maybe he's been doing that with other kids. And he has. We got two, so far, young girls. Marvel's gonna have a talk with him."

"Don't push him too hard," I warned. "Don't ask too much. He's a Baptist, and if he thinks he's a sinner, he might decide a public confession is the only way to go. That'd fuck us, along with him."

"She'll handle it," John said confidently.

"All right. I hope you're staying out of sight," I said.

"I'm down here only a couple of hours at a time and only at night," he said. "We never go anyplace in town."

"It's gotta be that way," I said. "Have you got your costume?"

"Yeah. And the motherfuckin' hairpiece looks great, man. I look like Fred Hampton. How about you guys?"

We were getting it together. A crystal for LuEllen, dangling from a gold chain. Her tools, and a small but outrageously expensive Leitz photo enlarger, some basic darkroom gear, and her Nikon F4. She sometimes takes photographs of places and things that she wouldn't want a photo lab to get curious about.

We'd fallen back in bed together, though it took a while. After my spasm of honesty on the morning I drew her sleeping, she'd been walking circles around me. I let it go. There was something new in our relationship, but I wasn't sure what it was or if I wanted it.

Three days before we left, LuEllen made a quiet trip down to Longstreet, flying into Memphis, then rolling down the river road in a rented car. She was carrying a fairly expensive piece of electronic equipment from a friend on the West Coast. She got back late that night and checked back onto the couch.

Then, the day before we left, I hauled a carload of personal stuff and computer printouts down to the boat and stowed it. With nothing much left to do, we rented a movie – Jeremiah Johnson with Robert Redford – and sat on my couch with a bowl of popcorn between us. About the time the Indians started hunting Jeremiah around the mountains, she picked up the bowl, moved it to the other side, said, "Fuck it," and plopped her ass down beside me.

I couldn't think of anything to say, and she said, "Don't say anything clever."

So I didn't. We sat on the couch, watched the end of the movie, and then fell to necking like kids. Later we moved into the bedroom. LuEllen usually made love the way she wore clothes: like a cowgirl. Lots of enthusiasm, not much finesse. This time she seemed small. Fragile. When we went to sleep, I had my arm around her, and when I woke, eight hours later, we were still like that. She felt too good to move, but the little man in the back of my head was getting nervous: What the fuck is going on here, Kidd?

We left in the early afternoon, still not talking much. LuEllen took the Fanny out, while I got a gin and tonic from the bar, put my feet up, and watched Wisconsin go by. It was a fine day, with sailboats batting around Lake St. Croix, China blue sky with mare's tails trailing across it, and just enough breeze to ruffle the Fanny's dispirited pennant.

The St. Croix enters the Mississippi below St. Paul, at river mile 811.5. From there it was six days to Memphis. One of the days was a hot, unpleasant transit of the Chain-of-Rocks Canal around St. Louis. We were wedged between two river tows, bathed in the fumes of their oversize diesels.

The other five days were as good as days get. The sun was shining from clear pale dawns to rose madder dusks. I painted or tinkered with a little junk shop laser while LuEllen ran the boat, or I ran the boat while LuEllen read or sunbathed. LuEllen would peel off her bathing suit in the most provocative possible manner, warn me to mind my own business, and then roll around nude on the white foam sunbathing pad. Her browning body would relax and open and build a shiny patina of perspiration under the brilliant river sun. I'd keep one eye on the water as we chugged along, another on LuEllen. When I couldn't stand it, I'd drop the anchor and jump in with her. We went along that way until the bad day at Chain-of-Rocks Canal and picked up again on the other side.

Fifty or sixty river miles south of St. Louis, beautiful white sand beaches stretch along the Illinois side of the Mississippi. They are cut off from land access by the marshes along levees and so are virtually untouched by humans. We stopped at a bar on the fifth afternoon, and LuEllen jogged naked along the water's edge, a small woman with a gymnast's body running in a shimmer of heat and sand. She stopped here to look at a piece of driftwood, there to examine the desiccated remnants of a fish or animal that had washed up on the beach.