He looked at her.
"When you looked at me," she said, "before the radio. When you held my card up to the light. What did you think I was?"
It was a long time before he answered. She watched him decide not to lie. She watched it happen on his face, the way she had watched the bow come up into the wind on the screen, slow, and against something, and then all the way.
"I thought you couldn't be what you said," he said. "That's the God's honest truth. I couldn't get a picture of it in my head. A pilot, and a woman, and in a, in that. All three. The pictures I had didn't go together. So I figured somebody was messing with me, because that was easier than... than figuring I didn't know what I was looking at." He rubbed his face with one hand. "I been on this channel twenty-six years and I thought I knew everybody who belonged on it. Turns out I just knew everybody who looked like me."
She nodded slowly.
"My father used to take me to the Lynchburg Ferry," she said. "In Houston. On Saturdays, when I was little. We'd ride it back and forth across the ship channel and watch the pilot boats come alongside, and the pilot would climb up the ladder on the side of the ship, way up, and go over the rail. My father would say, that's the one who knows the river. I asked him once if a girl could do that. He said, why not." She looked at Wade. "That's all it was. Somebody asking why not, for a very long time. Thirty years. There's no trick in it. I'm not anybody's joke, Mr. Toups. I'm the one who knows the river."
"Yes ma'am," he said quietly. "I know that now."
"Good." She put her hard hat back on her head and adjusted the chinstrap. "Open the gate, please. My car's at Berth Four. I'd like to go home and see my daughter before she wakes up."
He pressed the button. The arm went up.