"Fevre Dream" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin George R. R.)

CHAPTER EIGHT

Aboard the Steamer Fevre Dream, Mississippi River, July 1857

Abner Marsh cut a wedge of cheddar from the wheel on the table, positioned it carefully atop what remained of his apple pie, and forked them both up with a quick motion of his big red hand. He belched, wiped his mouth with his napkin and shook a few crumbs from his beard, and sat back with a smile on his face.

“Good pie?” asked Joshua York, smiling at Marsh over a brandy snifter.

“Toby don’t bake no other kind,” Marsh replied. “You should of tried a piece.” He pushed away from the table and stood up. “Well, drink up, Joshua. It’s time.”

“Time?”

“You wanted to learn the river, didn’t you? You ain’t goin’ to learn it settin’ to table, I’ll tell you that much.”

York finished his brandy, and they went up to the pilot house together. Karl Framm was on duty. He was lounging on the couch, smoke curling up from his pipe, while his cub-a tall youth with lank blond hair hanging down to his collar-worked as steersman. “Cap’n Marsh,” Framm said, nodding. “And you must be the mysterious Cap’n York. Pleased to meet you. Never been on a steamer with two captains before.” He grinned, a wide lopsided grin that flashed a gold tooth. “This boat got almost as many captains as I got wives. Of course, it stands to reason. Why, this boat got more boilers and more mirrors and more silver than any boat I ever seen, so it ought to have more captains too, I figure.” The lanky pilot leaned forward and knocked some ashes from his pipe into the belly of the big iron stove. It was cold and dark, the night being hot and thick. “What can I do for you gentlemen?” Framm asked.

“Learn us the river,” said Marsh.

Framm’s eyebrows rose. “Learn you the river? I got myself a cub here. Ain’t that right, Jody?”

“Sure is, Mister Framm.”

Framm smiled and shrugged. “Now, I’m learnin’ Jody here, and it’s all been arranged, I’m to get six hundred dollars from the first wages he gets after he’s been licensed and taken into the association. I’m only doin’ it so cheap cause I know his family. Can’t say I know your families, though, can’t say that a-tall.”

Joshua York undid the buttons on his dark gray vest. He was wearing a money belt. He brought out a twenty-dollar gold piece, and placed it on top of the stove, the gold gleaming softly against the black iron. “Twenty,” said York. He set another gold piece atop it. “Forty,” he said. Then a third. “Sixty.” When the count reached three hundred York buttoned up his vest. “I’m afraid that is all I have on me, Mister Framm, but I assure you I am not without funds. Let us agree to seven hundred dollars for yourself, and an equal amount for Mister Albright, if the two of you will instruct me in the rudiments of piloting, and refresh Captain Marsh here so he can steer his own boat. Payable immediately, not from future wages. What say you?”

Framm was real cool about it, Marsh thought. He sucked on his pipe thoughtfully for a moment, like he was considering the offer, and finally reached out and took the stack of gold coins. “Can’t speak for Mister Albright, but for myself, I was always fond of the color of gold. I’ll learn you. What say you come on up tomorrow during the day, at the start of my watch?”

“That may be fine for Captain Marsh,” York said, “but I prefer to begin immediately.”

Framm looked around. “Hell,” he said. “Can’t you see? It’s night. Been learning Jody for near a year now, and it’s only been a month I been lettin’ him steer by night. Running at night ain’t never easy. No.” His tone was firm. “I’ll learn you by day first, when a man can see where’s he runnin’ to.”

“I will learn by night. I keep strange hours, Mister Framm. But you need not worry. I have excellent night vision, better than yours, I suspect.”

The pilot unfolded his long legs, stood up, and stalked over and took the wheel. “Go below, Jody,” he said to his cub. When the youth had gone, Framm said, “Ain’t no man sees good enough to run a bad stretch of river in the dark.” He stood with his back to them, intent on the black starlit waters ahead. Far up the river they could see the distant lights of another steamer. “Tonight is a good clear night, no clouds to speak of, a half decent moon, good stage on the river. Look at that water out there. Like black glass. Look at the banks. Real easy to see where they’re at, ain’t it?”

“Yes,” said York. Marsh, smiling, said nothing.

“Well,” said Framm, “it ain’t always like that. Sometimes there ain’t no moon, sometimes there’s clouds covering everything. Gets awful black then. Gets so a man can’t see much of nothin’. The banks pull back so you can’t see where they are, and if you don’t know what you’re doin’ you can steer right into ’em. Other times you get shadows that hulk up like they were solid land, and you got to know they ain’t, otherwise you’ll spend half the night steerin’ away from things that ain’t really there. How do you suppose a pilot knows such things, Cap’n York?” Framm gave him no chance to reply. He tapped his temple. “By memory is how. By seeing the dern river by day and rememberin’ it, all of it, every bend and every house along the shore, every woodyard, where it runs deep and where it’s shallow, where you got to cross. You pilot a steamer with what you know, Cap’n York, not with what you see. But you got to see before you can know, and you can’t see good enough by night.”

“That’s the truth, Joshua,” Abner Marsh affirmed, putting a hand up on York’s shoulder.

York said quietly, “The boat up ahead of us is a side-wheeler, with what appears to be an ornate K between her chimneys, and a pilot house with a domed roof. Right now she’s passing a woodyard. There’s an old rotten wharf there, and a colored man is sitting on the end of it, looking out at the river.”

Marsh let go of York’s shoulder and moved to the window, squinting. The other boat was a long way ahead. He could make out that she was a side-wheeler right enough, but the device between her chimneys… the chimneys were black against a black sky, he could barely see them, and then only because of the sparks flying from them. “Damn,” he said.

Framm glanced around at York with surprise in his eyes. “I can’t make out half that stuff myself,” he said, “but I do believe you’re right.” A few moments later the Fevre Dream steamed past the woodyard, and there was the old colored man, just like York had described. “He’s smokin’ a pipe,” Framm said, grinning. “You left that out.”

“Sorry,” Joshua York said.

“Well,” said Framm thoughtfully, “well.” He chewed on his pipe, his eyes on the river ahead. “You surely do have good night eyes, I’ll give you that. But I’m still not sure. It ain’t hard to see a woodyard up ahead on a clear night. Seein’ an old darkie is a mite harder, with the way they blend in and all, but still, that’s one thing, and the river is another. There’s lots of little things a pilot has got to see that your cabin passenger would never notice a-tall. The look of the water when a snag or a sawyer is hidin’ underneath it. Old dead trees that’ll tell you the stage of the river a hundred miles farther on. The way to tell a bluff reef from a wind reef. You got to be able to read the river like it was a book, and the words is just little ripples and eddies, sometimes all faded so they can’t be made out properly, and then you got to rely on what you remember about the last time you read that page. Now you wouldn’t go try readin’ a book in the dark, would you?”

York ignored that. “I can see a ripple on the water as easily as I can see a woodyard, if I know what to look for. Mister Framm, if you can’t teach me the river, I’ll find a pilot who can. I remind you that I am the owner and master of the Fevre Dream.”

Framm glanced around again, frowning now. “More work by night,” he said. “If you want to learn by night, it’ll cost you eight hundred.”

York’s expression melted into a slow smile. “Done,” he said. “Now, let us begin.”

Karl Framm pushed back his slouchy hat until it sat on the back of his head, and gave a long sigh, like a man who was inordinately put upon. “All right,” he said, “it’s your money, and your boat too. Don’t come botherin’ me when you tear out her bottom. Now listen up. The river runs pretty straight from St. Louis down to Cairo, before the Ohio comes in. But you got to know it anyhow. This here stretch is called the graveyard from time to time, cause a lot of boats went down here. Some, you can still see the chimneys peeping up above the water, or the whole damn wreck lyin’ in the mud if the river’s low-the ones that are down under the waterline, though, you better know where they lie, or the next damn boat comin’ down is goin’ to have to know where you lie. You got to learn your marks, too, and how to handle the boat. Here, step on up and take the wheel, get the feel of her. You couldn’t touch bottom with a church steeple right now, it’s safe enough.” York and Framm changed places. “Now, the first point below St. Louis…” Framm began. Abner Marsh sat himself down on the couch, listening, while the pilot went on and on, meandering from the marks to tricks of steering to long stories about the steamers that lay sunken in the graveyard they were running. He was a colorful storyteller, but after every tale he’d recollect the task at hand and meander back to the marks again. York drank it all in, quietlike. He seemed to pick up the knack of steering quickly, and whenever Framm stopped and asked him to repeat some bit of information, Joshua just reeled it back at him.

At length, after they’d caught and passed the side-wheeler that had been running ahead of them, Marsh found himself yawning. It was such a fine sharp night, though, that he hated to go to bed. He hoisted himself up and went down to the texas-tender, coming back with a pot of hot coffee and a plate of tarts. When he returned, Karl Framm was spinning the yarn about the wreck of the Drennan Whyte, lost above Natchez in ’50 with a treasure aboard her. The Evermonde tried to raise her, caught fire and went to the bottom. The Ellen Adams, a salvage steamer, came looking for the treasure in ’51, struck a bar and half sank. “The treasure’s cursed, y’see,” Framm was saying, “either that or that old devil river just don’t want to give it up.”

Marsh smiled and poured the coffee. “Joshua,” he said, “that story’s true enough, but don’t you go believing everything he says. This man’s the most notorious liar on the river.”

“Why, Cap’n!” Framm said, grinning. He turned back to the river. “See that old cabin yonder, with the tumbly-down porch?” he said. “Good, cause you got to recollect it…” and he was off again. It was a solid twenty minutes before he got distracted by the story of E. Jenkins, the steamer that was thirty miles long, with hinges in the middle so it could make the turns in the river. Even Joshua York gave Framm an incredulous look for that one. But he was smiling.

Marsh retired about an hour after he’d eaten the last of the tarts. Framm was amusing enough, but he’d take his lessons by day, when he could damn well see the marks the pilot was talking about.

When he woke, it was morning and the Fevre Dream was at Cape Girardeau, taking on a load of grist. Framm had elected to put in there sometime during the night, he learned, when some fog closed in around them. Cape Girardeau was a haughty town perched up on its bluffs, some 150 miles below St. Louis, and Marsh did some figuring and was pleased with their time. It was no record, but it was good.

Within the hour the Fevre Dream was back on the river, heading downstream. The July sun was fierce overhead, the air thick with heat and humidity and insects, but up on the texas deck it was cool and serene. Stops were frequent. With eighteen big boilers to keep hot, the steamer ate wood like nobody’s business, but fuel was never a problem; woodyards dotted both banks regularly. Whenever they got low the mate would signal up to the pilot, and they’d put in near some ramshackle little cabin surrounded by big stacks of split beech or oak or chestnut, and Marsh or Jonathon Jeffers would go ashore and dicker with the woodyard man. When they gave the signal, the deckhands would swarm ashore at those cords of wood, and in three blinks of your eye it would be gone, stowed aboard the steamer. Cabin passengers always liked to watch the wooding operations from the railings on the boiler deck. Deck passengers always liked to get in the way.

They stopped at all manner of towns as well, causing no end of excitement. They stopped at an unmarked landing to discharge one passenger, and a private dock to pick one up. Around noon they stopped for a woman and child who hailed them from a bank, and close to four they had to slow and back their wheels so three men in a rowboat could catch them and clamber aboard. The Fevre Dream didn’t run far that day, or fast. By the time the westering sun was turning the broad waters a deep burnished red, they were in sight of Cairo, and Dan Albright chose to tie up there for the night.

South of Cairo the Ohio flowed into the Mississippi, and the two rivers made an odd sight. They wouldn’t merge all at once, but kept each to itself, the clear blue flow of the Ohio a bright ribbon down the eastern bank, against the murkier brown waters of the Mississippi. Here too was where the lower river took on its own peculiar character; from Cairo to New Orleans and the Gulf, a distance of nearly 1100 miles, the Mississippi coiled and looped and bent round and about like a writhing snake, changing its course at the merest whim, eating through the soft soil unpredictably, sometimes leaving docks high and dry, or putting whole towns under water. The pilots claimed the river was never the same twice. The upper Mississippi, where Abner Marsh had been born and had learned his trade, was an entirely different place, confined between high, rocky bluffs and running straight as often as not. Marsh stood up on the hurricane deck for a long time, looking at the passing scenery and trying to feel the difference of it, and the difference it would make to his future. He had crossed from the upper river to the lower, he thought, and into a new part of his life.

Shortly after, Marsh was jawing with Jeffers in the clerk’s office when he heard the bell sound three times, the signal for a landing. He frowned, and looked out Jeffers’ window. Nothing was visible except densely wooded banks. “I wonder why we’re landin’,” Marsh said. “New Madrid’s the next stop. I may not know this part of the river, but this sure ain’t New Madrid.”

Jeffers shrugged. “Perhaps we were hailed.”

Marsh begged his pardon and went on up to the pilot house. Dan Albright was at the wheel. “Was there a hail?” Marsh asked.

“No, sir,” answered Albright. He was a laconic sort. He answered what you asked him, barely.

“Where we stopping?”

“Woodyard, Cap’n.”

Marsh saw there was indeed a woodyard up ahead, on the west bank. “Mister Albright, I do believe we wooded up not an hour ago. We can’t have burned it all already. Did Hairy Mike ask you to land?” The mate was supposed to keep track of when a steamer needed wood.

“No, sir. This is Captain York’s order. The word was passed along that I was to put in at this particular woodyard, whether we wanted wood or not.” Albright glanced over. He was a trim little fellow, with a thin dark moustache, a red silk tie, and patent leather boots. “Are you telling me to pass by?”

“No,” Abner Marsh said hastily. York might have warned him, he thought, but their bargain gave Joshua the right to give queer orders. “You know how long we’re goin’ to be here?”

“I hear York has business ashore. If he don’t get up till dark, that’s all day.”

“Damn. Our schedule-the passengers will be askin’ no end of bothersome questions.” Marsh frowned. “Well, I suppose there’s no help for it. We might as well take on some more wood long as we’re here. I’ll go see to it.”

Marsh struck up a bargain with the boy running the woodyard, a slender Negro in a thin cotton shirt. The boy wasn’t much for dickering; Marsh got beech from him at cottonwood prices, and made him throw in some pine knots too. As the roustabouts and deckhands meandered over to load up, Marsh looked the colored boy square in the eye, smiled, and said, “You’re new at this, ain’t you?”

The boy nodded. “Yassuh, Cap’n.” Marsh nodded, and was starting to turn back to the steamer, but the boy continued, “I jest been here a week, Cap’n. Ol’ white man useta be here got hisself et up by wolves.”

Marsh looked at the boy hard. “We’re only a couple miles north of New Madrid, ain’t we, boy?”

“Thass right, Cap’n.”

When Abner Marsh returned to the Fevre Dream, he was feeling very agitated. Damn Joshua York, he thought. What was the man up to, and why did they have to waste a whole day at this fool woodyard? Marsh had a good mind to go storming up to York’s cabin and give him a good talking to. He considered the idea briefly, then thought better of it. It was none of his business, Marsh reminded himself forcibly. He settled down to wait.

The hours passed slowly as the Fevre Dream lay dead in the water off the woodyard. A dozen other steamers slid by downriver, much to Abner Marsh’s annoyance. Almost as many came struggling upstream. A brief knife fight between two deck passengers in which no one was injured provided the afternoon’s excitement. Mostly the passengers and crew of the Fevre Dream lazed about on her decks, chairs tilted back in the sun, smoking or chewing or arguing politics. Jeffers and Albright played chess in the pilot house. Framm told wild stories in the grand saloon. Some of the ladies started talk of getting up a dance. And Abner Marsh grew more and more impatient.

At dark, Marsh was sitting up on the texas porch, drinking coffee and swatting mosquitoes, when he happened to glance toward shore in time to see Joshua York leave the steamer. Simon was with him. They stopped by the cabin and talked briefly to the woodyard boy, then vanished down a rutted mud road into the woods. “Well, I’ll be,” Marsh said, rising. “With not even a by-your-leave or a hello.” He frowned. “No supper neither.” That reminded him, though, and he went on down to the main cabin to eat.

The night went by; passengers and crew alike grew restless. Drinking was heavy around the bar. Some planter started up a game of brag, and others began to sing, and one stiff-necked young man got himself hit with a cane for calling for abolition.

Near midnight, Simon returned alone. Abner Marsh was in the saloon when Hairy Mike tapped him on the shoulder; Marsh had left orders to be summoned as soon as York came back. “Get your roustas aboard and tell Whitey to get our steam up,” he snapped at the mate, “we got us some time to make up.” Then he went to see York. Only York wasn’t there.

“Joshua wants you to go on,” Simon reported. “He will travel by land, and meet you in New Madrid. Wait for him.” Heated questioning drew nothing more out of him; Simon only fixed Marsh with his small, cold eyes and repeated the message, that the Fevre Dream was to wait for York at New Madrid.

Once steam was up, it was a short, pleasant voyage. New Madrid was a bare few miles downriver from the woodyard where they had been tied up all day. Marsh gladly bid the desolate place farewell as they steamed off into the night. “Damn that Joshua,” he muttered.

They lost almost two full days in New Madrid.

“He’s dead,” Jonathon Jeffers opined when they had been tied up for a day and a half. New Madrid had hotels, billiard parlors, churches, and diverse other recreations not available in woodyards, so the time spent at the landing was not near as boring, but nonetheless everyone was anxious to be off. A half-dozen passengers, impatient with the delay when the weather was good-the boat seemed in fine fettle, and the stage was high-came up to Marsh and demanded a refund of their passage money. They were indignantly refused, but Marsh still seethed and wondered aloud where Joshua York had got himself to.

“York ain’t dead,” Marsh said. “I’m not sayin’ he ain’t goin’ to wish he was dead when I get ahold of him, but he ain’t dead yet.”

Behind the gold spectacles, Jeffers’ eyebrow arched. “No? How can you be so sure, Cap’n? He was alone, on foot, going through the woods by night. There are scoundrels out there, and animals, too. I do believe there have been a number of deaths around New Madrid the last few years.”

Marsh stared at him. “What’s that?” he demanded. “How do you know?”

“I read the papers,” said Jeffers.

Marsh scowled. “Well, it don’t make no difference. York ain’t dead. I know that, Mister Jeffers, I know that for a fact.”

“Lost, then?” suggested the clerk, with a cool smile. “Shall we get up a party and go look for him, Cap’n?”

“I’ll think on that,” said Abner Marsh.

But there was no need. That night, an hour after the sun had set, Joshua York came striding up to the landing. He did not look like a man who had spent two days off by himself in the woods. His boots and trouser legs were dusty, but other than that his clothing looked as elegant as on the night he had left. His gait was rushed but graceful. He bounded up the stage, and smiled when he saw Jack Ely, the second engineer. “Find Whitey and get the steam up,” York said to Ely, “we’re leaving.” Then, before anyone could question him, he was halfway up the grand staircase.

Marsh, for all his anger and restlessness, found himself remarkably relieved at Joshua’s return. “Go ring the goddamned bell so them that went ashore know we’re leaving,” he told Hairy Mike. “I want to get us out on the river again soon as we can.”

York was in his cabin, washing his hands in the basin of water that sat atop his chest of drawers. “Abner,” he said politely when Marsh came rushing in after a brief, thunderous knock. “Do you think I might trouble Toby for a late supper?”

“I’ll trouble you to ask why we been wastin’ all this time,” Marsh said. “Damn it, Joshua, I know you said you’d act queer, but two days ! Ain’t no way to run a steam packet, I tell you that.”

York dried his long, pale hands carefully, and turned. “It was important. I warn you that I may do it again. You will have to accustom yourself to my ways, Abner, and see that I am not questioned.”

“We got freight to deliver, and passengers who paid for passage, not for loungin’ around at woodyards. What do I tell them, Joshua?”

“Whatever you choose. You are ingenious, Abner. I provided the money in our partnership. I expect you to provide the excuses.” His tone was cordial but firm. “If it is any solace, this first trip will be the worst. On future trips, I anticipate few if any mysterious excursions. You’ll get your record run without any trouble from me.” He smiled. “I hope you can be satisfied with that. Take hold of your impatience, friend. We’ll reach New Orleans eventually, and then things will go easier. Can you accept that, Abner? Abner? Is anything wrong?”

Abner Marsh had been squinting hard, and scarcely listening to York at all. He must have had an odd look on his face, he realized. “No,” he said quickly, “just two days, that’s all that’s wrong. But it’s no matter. No matter at all. Whatever you say, Joshua.”

York nodded, seemingly satisfied. “I am going to change, and bother Toby for a meal, and then go on up to the pilot house to learn more of your river. Who has the after-watch tonight?”

“Mister Framm,” said Marsh.

“Good,” York said. “Karl is very entertaining.”

“That he is,” replied Marsh. “Excuse me, Joshua. Got to get down below and see to things, if we’re goin’ to get underway tonight.” He turned abruptly and left the cabin. But outside, in the heat of the night, Abner Marsh leaned heavily on his walking stick and stared off into the star-flecked darkness, trying to summon up the thing he thought he’d seen across the cabin.

If only his eyes were better. If only York had lit both oil lamps, instead of just one. If only he had dared to walk closer. It had been hard to make out, all the way over there on the chest of drawers. But Marsh couldn’t get it out of his mind. The cloth on which York had been wiping his hands had stains on it. Dark stains. Reddish.

And they’d looked too damn much like blood.