The Skipper's Scheme

A garrulous riverboat captain—equal parts P. T. Barnum and river-rat Sisyphus—transforms his creaking stern-wheeler into a roving carnival of commerce, plastering every pier post, tavern door, and hitching rail with gaudy handbills that trumpet an imminent auction of ‘unimaginable marvels.’ Between whistle stops he stage-manigans passenger ire into ticket sales, promising treasures that may be nothing more than dented trombones and moth-chewed petticoats. The voyage itself becomes a floating bazaar: deckhands hawk chestnuts, the barkeep doubles as auctioneer, and Wilna Wilde’s wide-eyed stowaway—half gamine, half Cassandra—watches the skipper’s hucksterism metastasize into minor myth. By the time the soot-belching boat wheezes back to the depot, the auction has metastasized into a referendum on appetite itself: who will bid, who will bluff, who will jump ship when the boiler finally coughs its last?