Annie of Houseboat Chinquapin: A Novel

By John Parkes

Synopsis

ANNIE OF HOUSEBOAT CHINQUAPIN

Located on the St Johns River 18 miles inland of Florida's east coast is Jacksonville, a major city, shipping and fishing center in 1935. A main thoroughfare, Riverside Avenue, runs south from the city along the west side of the river. A half mile south of the city, Dora Street, a street of dirt and rubble, connects to Riverside Avenue and runs down a short distance to the river's edge onto a landing. From here, a wooden dock extends out about 150 feet over the water. Six houseboats, three on each side, connect to the dock by walkways. In one, named Houseboat Chinquapin, there lives a young woman named Annie. She lives here with her son, Curtis, daughter, Denise, and husband, Robert.
Annie now is 26 years old. Robert, much older, is 43, and Curtis and Denise, respectively are 9 and 7. Curtis, as boys are, is a problem, but Denise, as girls are, is sweet and nice. Robert's job is with the railroad, in the shop, where he works hard, long hours and comes home tired and spent at the end of each day. Annie is a dutiful wife and mother. Her family is her life. But Annie, young, comely, shapely and buxom, yearns yet for some spark in life.
The Depression is on. Times are tough. Money is tight and the family budget, a constant squabble. The houseboat has no electricity. Kerosene lamps provide light. Cooking is by a wood-burning stove. Perishables are kept in an icebox. Clothes are washed by scrub-board and tub. The big box radio plays by battery.
Annie, instilled with passion, wants to venture out, go to church, see movies, eat dinner out, be wooed, be wined, and be bedded. But Robert, aging and tired, at the end of the day wants only to eat dinner, read the paper, then at night pour himself a jigger of whiskey, listens to the radio, doze, then go to bed, while Annie in her nightie subtly nudges, snuggles, entices, tries to engage, arouse him, but in all is left emotionally and physically unsatisfied. So, for Annie, being young, to be wooed, to be satisfied emotionally, intimately is not to be.
Houseboat life and living on the dock is basic. Annie's houseboat, although it once floated on a barge, now sets on pilings over the water and by its walkway to the dock one goes from the river onto the landing to Dora Street. Annie's houseboat is small and simple. It is exactly the same as the other five, replicated three on each side of the dock, as noted. All are tenant houseboats and have names. Annie's neighbor, Mary Lou, lives across the dock in Houseboat Ivy.
Life on the St Johns River has its advantages. Swimming is good, as is fishing, crabbing, shrimping, and scavenging driftwood along the shore. Occasionally one snares floating in the river a stalk of bananas, it being lost overboard from a banana boat. There also are the dreaded hurricanes.
Annie had a longtime iceman. He was good, dependable, and delivered her ice daily, but he got old and slow, so the ice company replaced him by a younger iceman, who was good looking, muscular, and drawn to Annie. He made advances on her, but she rebuffed his advances repeatedly. Then one time, in a moment of weakness, at his persistence, she succumbs, has sex with him, and becomes pregnant.
Now Annie is a family woman, vested in her family, so she tries to abort the pregnancy, initially by jarring her stomach, jumping off a chair and landing stiff-legged to the floor. This didn't work, so she swallows a whole bottle of laxative pills to rumble her insides. This didn't work, so she petitions her family doctor to give her an abortion. He wouldn't because abortions are illegal. She is desperate and then tries in wily seductive manners to entice her husband to have sex with her. He does not.
The iceman who made her pregnant leaves town to nowhere known. Annie's husband then discovers she is pregnant, and knowing it is not his, within his right, presents his case to the divorce court, and divorces Annie.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098350536

John Parkes

JOHN PARKES has a lifelong fascination with beer and is the founder of Red Rock Brewery, a traditional family-run six-barrel brewer in Southwest England.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Jacksonville, Florida

1935

Riverside Avenue is an urban thoroughfare that runs south from downtown Jacksonville along the west side of the St. Johns River. A mile from downtown is Dora Street, a dirt road that connects to Riverside Avenue and runs a short grade down to the river’s shoreline and stops here at a landing, around which are piles of debris, broken bricks, old planks, general clutter, and here at the side, a large sycamore tree. A wooden dock, with no rails, extends from the landing straightaway out over the river for about 175 feet and ends at a tee, each leg going about 20 feet each way. Along the dock on each side are three tenant houseboats, each with a railed side-porch, a railed front-porch, and a short step-way to the dock.

The houseboats have three rooms each, a front room for sitting, a kitchen, and a bedroom. In addition, a small squeezed-in backroom suffices for sleeping.

The houseboats are old. Once they floated on barges but the barges have rotted and no longer are seaworthy. Therefore, the houseboats with their rotted barges are now supported in place over the water on wood pilings.

The tee at the of the dock’s end is a common area used by the tenants to reap the river’s spoils, its fish, its crabs, its shrimp, and an occasional snapping turtle.

Today on this warm spring day the sky is clear, sunny, and the view across the river stretches wide to the other side for more than a mile over a glittering surface. The water is brackish and smells of salt and rotting seaweed. Moderate waves roll in shoreward rhythmically against the dock piers and houseboat pilings and break along the sand and gravel shoreline. Hyacinths in bloom float about the river in clumps, moving gently along with the estuary tide. In from the shore, in the low areas, are patches of varicolored lilies. They grow wild, stand tall, and gently waver in the onshore breeze.

At this time, under branches of the sycamore tree are three young boys, each eight years old, and in their midst encircled is a young girl of six years. Her head hung down, she is sobbing, crying, and trembling. Her eyes are wide. She looks beseechingly at one of the boys, who, with a stern face, cocks a switch at her and snaps, You do it or I’ll switch you!

No! Please! she responds.

You do it now!

She looks at him. He shakes the switch at her. She winches and looks on, as tears run down her cheeks.

The two other boys, with curious eyes, now bend down, look at the girl, and wait in anticipation. Then the boy brings the switch down across the girl’s back. She yells. He barks, You do it!

Sobbing, she now pushes her overall straps from her shoulders and her overalls drop down to the ground. She stands now naked, sobbing, as the two boys move their curious eyes over her body, bend down evermore to look between her legs, and in awe, they look, while the boy with the switch, with a stern air of command, stands holding it cocked, at ready. The other two gape and inspect her over.

A loud crack sounds suddenly, as a large stick comes down and hits the boy across his head, and, dropping his switch, he falls to the ground, yelling in pain. No, no, Ma, Ma, he bellows, lying on the ground, with his hands up to ward off the stick.

What you think you’re doing? yells the woman in her Polish accent, looking down at the boy. She turns to the other two boys, and barks, You, you no-good trash, you git, you hear, or I hit you in the face with this stick, you git! The woman moves and stands threateningly over the two boys with the cocked stick ready to hit them. They exchange glances with each other, then quickly run away. You put your clothes on, she says to the sobbing girl. You put them on now! She looks at the boy on the ground, and says, What – you crazy boy – why you do this, this awful thing?

The boy, with blood oozing down the side of his face, answers, But Ma, Ma, the guys wanted to know what little girls look like.

You don’t have to know what little girls look like. You hear me! You don’t have to know. Now, you get up, you bad boy. You git in the house. No food for you tonight. She trails the boy and prods him, whimpering, from the landing onto the dock.

She is twenty-seven, comely, buxom and full breasted, with a cleavage exposed in her low-cut blouse. Her body, her thighs, her legs are shapely, firm and push against her faded calico dress. She walks slinkingly. She and her dress move as one. She is most feminine, and her face, attractive, when not mad. Beads of sweat now line her brow and wet hairline, and sweat stains her dress underarms.

Now, out on the dock, fuming, she pushes her son along, with her stick in hand. Shortly, they turn to the left to the middle houseboat, step onto the front porch, under the sign, HOUSEBOAT CHINQUAPIN, and go inside.

The day wears on, the sun drops, and in the early evening at 7:00 o’clock a bus travels along Riverside Avenue and stops at Dora Street. The man, forty-three, in work cloths, carrying a lunch pail, steps off the bus and trudges slowly down the dirt road, past the sycamore tree, onto the dock to the middle houseboat, turns left here onto the porch, opens the door, and goes inside.

Shortly, the man puts his lunch pail on the kitchen table. He sits down with a heavy sigh and rubs his hands. They are big and calloused with scared knuckles.

How you doing today, Robert? the woman asks.

He does not answer.

You doing okay?

I’m tired, he says, very tired.

You shouldn’t work so hard.

If I don’t, no money. No work, no money.

I mean, so hard. Let the younger men do the hard work.

Yes, that they will do, he says, resting. There are ten younger men, more maybe, waiting to get my job.

He sighs, and says, Railroad work, it’s a hard lot. The railroad yard, it’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. Always replacing worn wheels, that’s what I do. Always replacing wheels, their axels, fixing pressure hoses, and greasing bearings, I have to keep the boxcars running. Then in the shop, there’re coaches to repair, the seats, the windows, the toilets – all this I have to do. And it’s me, I’m the one to lift and move the heavy stuff. It’s my job. He takes off his ankle-high boots, and then rubs his feet. Annie, he says, stressing the ‘A’, You don’t understand how hard I work.

But, Robert, I do, she says. I do understand. She picks up his lunch pail, then at the sink cleans it out, and sets it to dry. She leans against the sink, looks at him, and says, Robert, maybe you can ask for more work inside, in the shop, to work on the passenger cars, and not so much the heavy lifting.

There is no job in the shop like that, Robert says, as he rubs his feet, not looking up. Annie looks on in silence. With his expression serious, he continues to rub his feet, saying nothing.

Later in the evening, the four sit around the kitchen table. A kerosene lamp sets in the middle and lights the area. Robert takes a platter and serves himself a large piece of liver, with onions, and fried potatoes. The boy speaks out, Liver, I hate liver.

You don’t eat liver, Annie says sharply to him. You don’t eat. No supper for you. You been a bad boy today. She now serves the young girl and pours her milk. The young girl begins to eat.

Robert chews and swallows a mouthful of food, and asks, Curtis is not eating? Why not?

He is a bad boy today. Annie looks at Curtis and says. You tell your father what you do today. Curtis sits at the table, saying nothing. He has no plate. Annie repeats, You tell him.

Tell me what? asks Robert.

He does not respect girls. He does not respect his sister.

So what did he do?

Annie looks a Curtis, who, at the table, sits shirking, saying nothing.

He make Denise take off her clothes up there under the tree so other boys can look and see her, see her private parts.

Oh, that, Robert says, pausing. Well ... well, boys will be boys. He then eats another mouthful of liver. He chews, then looks at Curtis, and chewing, asks, What’s wrong with your head?

I hit him, interjects Annie, for what he did.

So he’s been punished, Robert says, as he finishes his meal. Annie, give him some food. He has to eat.

She hesitates. Okay, but no cookies. No cookies for Curtis. Annie now gets up and goes over to the wood burning stove, opens its oven door, removes the cookies from the bake pan to a plate, which she sets on the table away from Curtis. She puts the bake pan in the sink and pours herself and Robert a mug of coffee. Robert quietly eats several cookies and drinks his coffee.

Afterwards, Robert goes to the front room, the living room, and lights the lamp. He opens a drawer, takes out his pipe, fills it with tobacco, lights it, and draws, contented. In a moment, he sits easy in his soft chair next to his big box radio. Shortly, he gets up, checks the battery connection behind, then turns the radio on, tunes it, adjusts it though the static to the sound, and eases back in his chair. While the radio plays soft music, Robert sits with half-closed eyes, and puffs occasionally on his pipe.

Chapter 2

Early morning of the next day, it is yet dark. In the kitchen, in the light of the kerosene lamp, Annie, in her nightgown, places a large sandwich, an orange, and several cookies in Robert’s lunch pail, then sets it on the kitchen table next to him. Robert now finishes his breakfast of grits, fried eggs, and bacon. He takes a last swallow of coffee from his mug, wipes his mouth with a napkin, and pushes away from the table.

Annie quickly sets down next to him. He pauses then, as she shows him on a crumpled paper her grocery lists. She has each item listed, its costs, and the total amount added at the bottom. You see here, Robert, she says, the bread, the potatoes, eggs, butter, collards, flour, bar of soap – you see all here, Robert – and I need five dollars and fifty cents.

Five dollars and fifty cents! he exclaims.

Everything goes up, the bread, it was a penny more last week, and the flour, too, it has gone up, two cents more now.

Getting up, showing only passing concern, Robert reaches into his wallet, takes out four one-dollar bills, and places them on the table. Then from his pocket, he retrieves a fifty-cent piece and puts it on top of the bills. He places his hand on his lunch pail.

Robert, that’s not enough. I need five dollars and fifty cents. Everything in the store is going up. Every week, the food costs more.

Robert pauses and states, I’m not made of money, Annie. I don’t have it. You’ll have to make do.

But, Robert, you don’t understand. You see my list – you can see here! She runs her finger down the list emphasizing each item, Eggs, you want eggs, and bread, we have to have bread, and soap, we need for washing – no, no, I can’t get by on four dollars and fifty cents.

Annie, you have to make do. I have to go to work now. He grabs his lunch pail with callused, scarred hands, and leaves.

Annie looks after him for a moment, as he closes the door. She then sits down at the kitchen table and counts the four one-dollar bills and puts them into her dress pocket. She remains sitting quietly at the table, lingering a moment, toying with her coffee cup, in thought. She takes a deep sigh. She picks up the fifty-cent piece from the table, looks around, then goes over to the cupboard, and from a far corner takes out a can marked flour, removes its lid, drops the coin inside with the other accumulated coins, replaces the lid, and puts the can back in its place. She now gathers the dirty dishes from the table and places them in the sink.

A half hour later, dawn breaks and the day’s light filters through the houseboat windows and brightens the rooms inside, while Annie moves about her chores.

She opens the icebox door, from inside takes the quart jar of milk and, closing the door, puts it on the table, removes its cap, and stirs in the cream on top. She places two clean plates with eating utensils on the table. She goes to the door of the back bedroom and speaks out, Denise – up, get up now. Curtis, you, too, up now for school. Denise, you first in the toilet, wash your face. Curtis, after Denise, you wash your face. Hurry for school, get your clothes on, get your books, now get up, hurry, you hear me. Annie turns back, and in the kitchen hears groaning and grumblings of the two, Curtis the most vocal, as they stir in their separate sleeping pads at opposite walls with Annie’s bed in between.

A half hour later, Annie sees Denise and Curtis out the door with their lunch pails and books. She watches them as they go from the house to the dock, to the landing, to Dora Street, then up to Riverside Avenue, and there to wait for their school bus to carry them to the Annie Lytle Grammar School.

Denise and Curtis now gone, Annie, in her bedroom, removes her nightgown, puts on her faded calico dress. It has a flower design, fits her snuggly, and is a little short, its hem breaking at her knees. She buttons it up the front, but the two top buttons, being tight over her bosom, she leaves unbuttoned, open there, revealing her full breast and cleavage. Now dressed, she continues her house chores, washing dishes, placing them to dry, mopping floors, picking up and putting dirty clothes in a wash hamper, cleaning the toilet’s sink, mirror, commode, and straitening up bed covers and sleeping pads.

Later, her house chores finished, she stands in the toilet at the mirror, touches a little lipstick to her lips, combs her hair, straightens the wrinkles from her dress, then back out in the kitchen she picks up her grocery list and with her money goes outside and locks the door. From the side porch she grabs the handle of the red wagon and with the wagon goes up Dora Street to Riverside Avenue. Here, on the sidewalk, with the traffic at her side, she pulls the wagon up ten blocks toward the City and stops at the A & P Grocery Store. She leaves the wagon in front and goes inside.

Annie, with her grocery cart, moves around the store with her list, selecting shelf items, checking their prices, and putting some but not all into her cart. Then later, in the back at the meat counter she checks the meat behind the glass case and taps the bell. The butcher now comes out from the back in his bloodstained apron and hat, sees Annie, smiles, and says, Ah, good morning to you, Mrs. Higgins, and what will it be today?

Good morning, Mr. McGregor. I see your country sausage here, she says with pointing finger. Is it fresh?

Yes, ma’am, it is. I made it this morning.

I take a pound of your sausage then. She looks further about the meat case, and says, And your, pork chops here, I take a pound.

Mr. McGregor retrieves, weighs out, wraps the sausage and pork chops, marks the price on each package, and places them on top of the counter for her. Will there be anything else? he asks.

Annie puts the two meat packages in her cart, and then stands at the counter, facing Mr. McGregor. She pauses, and asks, Mr. McGregor, would you perhaps have a big soup bone in the back?

He looks at her momentarily, then says, I’ll look. He goes into the back. Annie stands waiting. In a while, he returns to the counter with a large soup bone, which he wraps, marks on it NC, no charge, and places it on top of the counter.

Thank you, Mr. McGregor, Annie says, in grateful tone. Shortly, at the checkout counter she pays for the groceries with her four one-dollar bills and gets pennies back in change with her receipt. Outside, she puts her two bags of groceries in the red wagon and pulls it back down Riverside Avenue to Dora Street, turns there, goes down the dirt road past the sycamore tree, out onto the dock, and to her houseboat. Inside, she takes her groceries, puts the staples away in the cupboards and meat in the icebox.

Quietly Annie now sits down at the kitchen table and checks her grocery lists. With a stubbed pencil she marks off the items she got and circles those she did not. She views, reflects long on the items circled. Suddenly, distracted, she looks up, as the quietness is now broken by the sounds outside of a heavy truck’s grinding gears and screeching brakes. Annie gets up and checks at the front door, partially opens it, to see an ice truck backing, maneuvering its way down Dora Street, then stopping at the dock’s edge.

A young driver in his mid-twenties gets out. His hair is curly and thick. His face and jaw is square cut. He wears only an undershirt, showing his well-developed muscular arms and broad shoulders. Sweat soaks his undershirt, at its front and back, and his trousers at its waist. Industriously, he goes to the back of the truck, lifts up, and throws back the heavy rubber tarp from the ice column. With his ice pick, he chips off from the end a block of ice, grabs it with a set of tongs, and moves down the dock’s right side to the first houseboat. There, he knocks, yells out, Ice man. The door opens. He then goes inside, makes his ice delivery.

Shortly, the iceman continues, makes his second ice delivery to the second houseboat, and, afterwards, his third to the third houseboat; then on the left dockside, makes delivery to the first houseboat; then goes to second houseboat, knocks, calls out, Iceman! Annie then opens the door, lets him inside, and, with the block of ice in his ice tongs, he follows her back to the kitchen where she opens the icebox. From its dark inside, she removes the residual piece of ice, puts it the sink, while the iceman waits. Then he lifts, shoves the block of ice in the icebox, then turns, and faces Annie for payment.

She pauses, looks at him, and asks, Where is Sam. Is he sick?

Sam’s not your iceman any more. I’m Joe. I’m your iceman now, he replies.

But – did Sam retire?

Sam couldn’t do the work, couldn’t keep up, took too long on his deliveries. The company let him go.

Oh, I see, says Annie. She pauses, looks at him, then says, I have your money in here. From the kitchen, she goes to the front room, and there, on top of the big box radio, she gets her purse, and takes out some money. The iceman, Joe, with his tongs in hand, having followed her back to the front room, now stands directly behind her and waits for his payment. She turns around and places a dime in his open palm. For the ice, she says. She reaches back in her purse, retrieves three pennies, and puts these in his yet open palm, saying, For you. She looks up into his face. He nods. He stands there momentarily, looking at her, her face, her eyes, her dress, surveys her up and down, then rests his eyes on her bosom, her dress, the opening where her two buttons are unbuttoned, revealing her cleavage and full breast. Annie takes her hand and closes the button opening, looks away, and says, Thank you for the ice. She turns about quickly and goes back to the kitchen. Joe stands a moment with his money and tongs, then leaves.

In the kitchen, Annie reaches under the icebox, gets the pan of melt water, pours it into the sink, and puts the pan back.

Later in the afternoon, Denise and Curtis open the screen door, come into the houseboat, and put their books on the kitchen table. Annie, in her apron, pours them a glass of milk and places a cookie before them.

Curtis gulps his milk, chomps his cookie down, and then turns quickly to leave, saying, I’m going out and play now.

Annie grabs his arm as he is about to leave and says, No, you study first. You do your schooling work first. Then you play.

But the guys are waiting for me. I’ll do the work later, answers Curtis.

No, you do your schooling now. Then you play. You hear me.

Curtis grumbles, and then opens one of his schoolbooks on the kitchen table and reads, while Denise across from him at the table, eating her cookie and drinking her milk, looks on.

An hour passes. Denise, at the kitchen table with pencil and paper, works on her math problems. Curtis at the table reads his schoolbook. Annie, at the sink with the faucet water running, cleans her collard leaves and puts them in a pan of water for later cooking. Curtis suddenly snaps his book closed, and says, I’m finished. I’m going out to play now.

Okay, but you stay out of the big tree, Annie turns and says. No climbing. You will fall, maybe hit the bricks, and hurt yourself. No climbing. You stay out of the tree. You hear me.

Nana, nana, na-na...nana, nana, na-na, he says, mockingly, as he gets up and goes outside, letting the screen door slam behind. Annie, at the sink, on hearing the slamming of the door, pauses, and shakes her head in silence. Denise continues to work on her math problems.

Two hours later, Curtis is running barefoot with a ball about the shore’s yard area, the landing, around the big sycamore tree, as his two playmates chase after him. He jumps about, and dodges them, as he occasionally looks back at them trying to catch him. He runs under the sycamore tree, across its roots, around, over the yard debris, discarded cans and bottles, loose lying about board planks, and on a plank steps on an upturned rusty nail, it going into his foot, and he falls in pain to the ground, hollering.

Fifteen minutes later, Annie has Curtis’s foot in her apron lap. She looks at the puncture hole in the bottom of his foot. It is discolored, has turned yellowish brown. At her side on a table is a pan of water, a washcloth, a bottle of iodine, a small piece of salted bacon fat, and cloth bandages. She now washes the puncture wound with soap and water, applies the iodine, puts the piece of bacon fat on the wound, and wraps it in bandages. Cutis then gets up and hobbles around.

You sit down, Annie says to Curtis. Don’t walk on your foot. You sit. You hear me.

Later, at supper, a kerosene lamp throws light over the kitchen table, while the family sits about finishing the meal. Shortly Annie clears the dirty plates and puts them in the sink, then from the stove oven removes freshly baked cookies from the bake pan to a plate and puts it on the table. She then pours Robert a mug of coffee and one for herself. It is quiet, as they each reach over to the plate, take, and eat a cookie.

Robert drinks some coffee and, eating a cookie, remarks, Umm, good, different, this cookie, I haven’t eaten one of these before.

New, a new recipe, from the old country, remarks Annie.

A new recipe?

Yes, from Ma-ma. She sends me a new recipe in the mail today, with her letter.

Oh, your mother, a letter. I see, your mother. How’s she doing in Canada?

She is fine. It’s cold there.

Robert, relaxed, eats two cookies, then tips his mug and finishes his coffee. He wipes his mouth with a napkin. Curtis now gets up from the table and hobbles away. Robert, noticing his awkward