Chapter 1: The King Ranch Connection

      Safely docked and the threat of a damaging collision averted, the young Captain Richard King could now vent the boilers. No, I am not meaning the boilers on the “Colonel Cross.” I mean the volatile boilers of his own soul. You see, Richard was a perfectionist through and through. That was the one human trait that defined his character the most. Like every perfectionist, he was convinced that the pursuit of perfection would save him and eventually be the vehicle that would get him to a place where he could fill the sinkhole in his soul. It was a sinkhole that had grown greatly after being abandoned by his poverty-stricken parents at the age of nine. Richard had since come to believe that striving to do a thing perfectly was the one thing that would allow him to not only survive but to thrive in what he had found to be a very hostile world. For Richard, the pursuit of perfection was akin to righteousness. It had curried the favor of those who had made his life easier, and it was responsible for taking him from being a stowaway to cabin boy and from being a cabin boy to a riverboat pilot, and finally from a pilot to a riverboat captain and the owner of his very own riverboat, the "Colonel Cross." Like all satanic lies, the belief that success in life can be achieved by working hard at being perfect is partly true, but only partly.

     Now, Richard was about to exhibit in no uncertain terms the outward manifestation of the frustration that comes to a perfectionist when he crosses paths with imperfection. You see, perfectionists expect everyone else to be perfect too. When that doesn't happen, a perfectionist can get very mad, and Richard was now as mad as mad could be. Whoever parked the “Whiteville” in his way was not perfect, or they would have moored the boat elsewhere to give other boats more room to dock. This is what Richard would have done, and this is what Richard was thinking should have been done. In a perfect world of his own making, this other boat would not have been where it was. Now, in a loud voice, he was going to let the entire world know how he felt.

     An angry spirit arose within Richard like an obedient servant. His face flushed, and his big burly hands turned white as he grasped the side rails on the deck beside the wheelhouse. He bent slightly forward, looking directly at the “Whiteville” as if it were a person before he “let fly.” Then, out it came. It was a string of the same cursing comments, spewing forth, that had been used on the waterways of America for years, and that I am sure are still being used today. Isn’t it strange how those curse words never change? As his loud barrage blasted verbal shrapnel across the decks of the “Ole Whiteville,” no one on the “Whiteville” dared to answer back or even look his way. I can imagine some mothering souls grasping their children and leading them into the interior of the "Ole Whiteville" in a desperate attempt to shield them from such language. At this point, however, there was one person on the old steamboat who was not willing to ignore such a public display of vile behavior, and she certainly was not going to run from it. Henrietta's brown eyes flashed as the first vulgar rantings from Richard’s booming voice struck her ears. As others cowered before this disgusting display of filthy bellowing, she immediately acted. In my imagination, I can still see her running from the afterdeck to a spot on the “Whiteville’s” midsection and then stopping directly across from the cussing captain as she initiated her one-woman counterattack. Standing straight, with hands on her hips, in my mind's eye, I see her immediately delivering a returning salvo of well-chosen words, while looking across the way directly into the captain’s eyes. Those few piercing words, whatever they were, spoken in grammatically perfect English and delivered in the tone and phrasing of a rebuking angel, instantly penetrated the very core of Richard’s black heart. It was as though he had been struck by the hand of God, and Richard King’s life would never be the same again while in the presence of the woman who now stood before him. Humbled, he stood silent. What could he say? He just gazed into the young woman’s eyes for an instant before turning away. A strange sensation of calmness now came over him, defying all human logic. Like an enraged beast, which had been rebuked by the voice of its master, he simply slinked away from the young woman's view, maneuvering behind some stacked cargo crates to hide from that piercing angelic voice. The shadows on the other side of the wheelhouse concealed him, blending well with the darkness of his soul. This was the first meeting of the beauty and the beast, and it was a meeting that would have enormous consequences for the men of the 1/18th Infantry Battalion and me. Also, just like in the story of “The Beauty and the Beast,” Richard instantly fell passionately in love with Henrietta.