Fevre Dream (14 page)

Joshua York shrugged.

“I don’t like this none,” Marsh said, “this vampire stuff.” He dropped his voice to a whisper when he said
vampire
.

“It will soon be over, Abner. I will make a call at this plantation, attend to some business, bring some friends back with me, and that will be the end of it.”

“Let me go with you,” Marsh said. “On this business of yours. I ain’t sayin’ I don’t believe you, but it’d all be easier to credit if I could see one of these—you know—with my own eyes.”

Joshua looked at him. Marsh glanced into his eyes briefly, but something in there seemed to reach out and touch him, and suddenly without meaning to he had looked away. Joshua folded up the river chart. “I do not think it would be wise,” he said, “but I will think about it. Excuse me. I have things to attend to.” He rose and left the table.

Marsh watched him go, unsure of what had just passed between them. Finally he muttered, “Damn him anyhow,” and turned his attention to his ham steak.

Hours later, Abner Marsh had visitors.

He was in his cabin, trying to sleep. The soft knock on his door woke him as if it had been a thunderclap, and Marsh could feel the pounding of his heart. For some reason he was scared. The cabin was pitch dark. “Who is it?” he called out. “Damn you!”

“Jest Toby, Cap’n,” came the soft whispered reply.

Marsh’s fear suddenly melted away and seemed silly. Toby Lanyard was the gentlest old soul ever set foot on a steamboat, and one of the meekest as well. Marsh called out, “Comin’,” and lit a lamp by his bedside before going to open the door.

Two men stood outside. Toby was about sixty, bald but for a fringe of iron gray hair around his black skull, his face worn and wrinkled and black as a pair of old comfortable boots. With him was a younger Negro, a short stout brown man in an expensive suit. In the dim light, it was a moment before Marsh recognized him as Jebediah Freeman, the barber he had hired up in Louisville. “Cap’n,” said Toby, “we wants to talk to you, private, if we kin.”

Marsh waved them in. “What’s this about, Toby?” he asked, closing the door.

“We’s kind of spokesmen,” said the cook. “You knowed me a long time, Cap’n, you knows I wouldn’t lie to you.”

“Course I do,” said Marsh.

“I wouldn’t run off neither. You done give me my freedom and all, jest fer cookin’ fer you. But some of them other niggers, the stokers and sech, they won’t lissen to Jeb and me here ’bout what a fine man you is. They’s scared, and likely to run off. The boy at supper tonight, he heard you and Cap’n York a-talkin’ about goin’ down to this Cypress place, and now all the niggers is talkin’.”

“What?” Marsh said. “You never been down here before, neither of you. What’s Cypress Landing to you?”

“Nuthin’ a-tall,” Jeb said. “But some of these other niggers heard of it. There’s stories ’bout this place, Cap’n. Bad stories. All the niggers run off from that place, cause of things went on there. Terrible things, Cap’n, jest terrible.”

“We come to ask you not to go on down there, Cap’n,” Toby said. “You know I never ast you for nuthin’ before.”

“No cook and no barber are goin’ to tell me where to take my steamboat,” Abner Marsh said sternly. But then he looked at Toby’s face, and softened. “Ain’t nothin’ goin’ to happen,” he promised, “but if you two want to wait here in New Orleans, you go ahead. Won’t need no cookin’ or no barberin’ on a short run like this.”

Toby looked grateful, but said, “The stokers, though . . .”

“Them I need.”

“They ain’t goin’ to stay, Cap’n, I tell you.”

“I reckon Hairy Mike will have a thing or two to say about that.”

Jeb shook his head. “Them niggers is scared o’ Hairy Mike sure ’nough, but they’s more scared of this place you’re fixin’ to take us. They’ll run off, sure as anythin’.”

Marsh swore. “Damn fools,” he said. “Well, we can’t get up steam without no stokers. But it was Joshua wanted to make this trip, not me. Give me a few moments to dress, boys, and we’ll hunt up Cap’n York and speak to him about this.”

The two black men exchanged looks, but said nothing.

Joshua York was not alone. When Marsh strode up to the door of the captain’s cabin, he heard his partner’s voice, loud and rhythmic, from within. Marsh hesitated, then groaned when he realized that Joshua was reading poetry. Aloud, even. He hammered at the door with his stick, and York broke off his reading and told them to come in.

Joshua sat calmly with a book in his lap, a long pale finger marking his place, a glass of wine on the table beside him. Valerie was in the other chair. She looked up at Marsh and quickly away; she had been avoiding him since that night on the texas, and Marsh found it easy to ignore her. “Tell him, Toby.” he said.

Toby seemed to have far more difficulty finding words than he had with Marsh, but he finally got it all out. When he was done he stood with his eyes downcast, twisting his old battered hat in his hands.

Joshua York wore a grim look. “What do the men fear?” he asked in a polite, cold tone.

“Gettin’ et, suh.”

“Give them my word that I will protect them.”

Toby shook his head. “Cap’n York, no disrespeck, but them niggers is ’fraid of you, too, ’specially now that you want us to go down
there
.”

“They think you’s one of
them,
”Jeb put in. “You and you friends, lurin’ us down there to the others, like it were. Them stories say those folks there don’t come out by day, and you’s the same, Cap’n, jest the same. Course, me and Toby knows better, but not them others.”

“Tell ’em we’ll double their wages for the time on the bayou,” Marsh said.

Toby didn’t look up, but shook his head. “They don’t care ’bout no money. They’s goin’ to run off.”

Abner Marsh swore. “Joshua, if neither money nor Hairy Mike can get ’em to do it, they ain’t a-goin’ to do it. We’ll have to discharge ’em all and get us some new stokers and roustas and such, but that’ll take us some time.”

Valerie leaned forward and laid her hand on Joshua York’s arm. “Please, Joshua,” she said quietly. “Listen to them. This is a sign. We were not meant to go. Take us back to St. Louis. You’ve promised to show me St. Louis.”

“I shall,” Joshua said, “but not until my business is concluded.” He frowned at Toby and Jeb. “I can reach Cypress Landing overland easily enough,” he said. “No doubt that would be the quickest and simplest way to accomplish my goals. But that does not satisfy me, gentlemen. Either this is my steamer or it is not. Either I am captain here or I am not. I will not have my crew distrusting me. I will not have my men afraid of me.” He set the book of poems on the table with an audible thump, clearly frustrated. “Have I done anything to harm you, Toby?” Joshua demanded. “Have I mistreated any of your people? Have I done anything at all to earn this suspicion?”

“No, suh,” Toby said softly.

“No, you say. Yet they will desert me despite that?”

“Yessuh, Cap’n, ’fraid so,” Toby said.

Joshua York took on a hard, determined look. “What if I proved I was not what they think me?” His eyes went from Toby to Jeb and back again. “If they saw me in daylight, would they trust me?”

“No,”
Valerie said. She looked aghast. “Joshua, you can’t . . .”

“I can,” he said, “and will. Well, Toby?”

The cook raised his head, saw York’s eyes, and nodded slowly. “Well, maybe . . . if they seed you wasn’t . . .”

Joshua studied the two black men for a long time. “Very well,” he said at last. “I will dine with you tomorrow afternoon, then. Have a place set for me.”

“Well I’ll be damned,” said Abner Marsh.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Aboard the Steamer
Fevre Dream,
New Orleans,
August 1857

Joshua wore his white suit down to dinner, and Toby outdid himself. Word had gotten around, of course, and virtually the entire crew of the
Fevre Dream
was on hand. The waiters, neat as pins in their smart white jackets, glided to and fro, bearing Toby’s feast out from the kitchen on big steaming platters and fine china bowls. There was turtle soup and lobster salad, stuffed crabs and larded sweetbreads, oyster pie and mutton chops, terrapin, pan-fried chicken, turnips and stuffed peppers, roast beef and breaded veal cutlets, Irish potatoes and green corn and carrots and artichokes and snap beans, a profusion of rolls and breads, wine and spirits from the bar and fresh milk in from the city, plates of new-churned butter, and for dessert plum pudding and lemon pie and floating islands and sponge cake with chocolate sauce.

Abner Marsh had never had a better meal in his life. “Damn,” he said to York, “I wish you came to dinner more often, so we’d eat like this most every day.”

Joshua barely touched his food, however. In the bright light of day, he seemed a different person; shrunken somehow, less imposing. His fair skin took on an unhealthy pallor beneath the skylights, and Marsh thought there was a chalky grayish tinge to it. York’s movements seemed lethargic, and occasionally jerky, with none of that grace and power that was normally so much a part of him. But the biggest difference was in his eyes. Beneath the shade of the widebrimmed white hat he wore, his eyes appeared tired, infinitely tired. The pupils were shrunken down to tiny black pinpricks, and the gray around them was pale and faded, without the intensity Marsh had seen in them so often.

But he was there, and that seemed to make all the difference in the world. He had come out of his cabin in broad daylight, and walked across the open decks and down the stairs, and set himself down to dine before God, the crew, and everyone. Whatever stories and fears his night hours had given birth to seemed damned silly now, as the good light of day washed down on Joshua York and his fine white suit.

York was quiet through most of the meal, though he gave diffident answers whenever someone asked a question of him, and infrequently tossed a comment of his own into the table talk. When the desserts were served, he pushed his plate aside and put down his knife wearily. “Ask Toby to come out,” he said.

The cook came forward from the kitchen, spotted with flour and cooking oil. “Din’ you like the food, Cap’n York?” he asked. “You hardly et none of it.”

“It was fine, Toby. I’m afraid I don’t have much appetite at this time of day. I am here, however. I trust I’ve proved something.”

“Yessuh,” said Toby. “Won’t be no trouble now.”

“Excellent,” York said. When Toby had returned to his kitchen, York turned to Marsh. “I’ve decided to lay over another day,” he said. “We’ll steam out of here tomorrow at nightfall, not tonight.”

“Well, sure, Joshua,” Marsh said. “Pass me down another piece of that pie, will you?”

York smiled and passed it to him.

“Cap’n, tonight’d be better’n tomorrow,” said Dan Albright, who was cleaning his teeth with a bone toothpick. “I smell a storm comin’ up.”

“Tomorrow,” York said.

Albright shrugged.

“Toby and Jeb can stay behind. In fact,” York continued, “I want to take only the bare complement necessary to man the boat. Any passengers who boarded early are to be put ashore for a few days, until our return. We won’t be taking on any freight, so the roustabouts can be given a few days off as well. We’ll take only one watch with us. Can that be done?”

“I reckon,” Marsh said. He glanced down the long table. The officers were all looking at Joshua curiously.

“Tomorrow at nightfall, then,” York said. “Excuse me. I must rest.” He stood up, and for a brief instant seemed unsteady on his feet. Marsh got up from the table hurriedly, but York waved him away. “I’m fine,” he said. “I’ll be retiring to my cabin now. See that I am not disturbed until we are ready to leave New Orleans.”

“Won’t you be down for supper tonight?” Marsh asked.

“No,” said York. His eyes moved up and down the cabin. “I do think I prefer it by night,” he said. “Lord Byron was right. Day is far too gaudy.”

“Eh?” Marsh said.

“Don’t you remember?” York said. “The poem I recited to you at the boatyards in New Albany. It fits the
Fevre Dream
so well.
She walks in beauty
. . .”

“. . . like the night,”
said Jeffers, adjusting his spectacles. Abner Marsh looked at him, flabbergasted. Jeffers was a demon for chess and ciphering and even went to plays, but Marsh had never heard him recite no poetry before.

“You know Byron!” Joshua said, delighted. For an instant, he looked almost like his own self.

“I do,” Jeffers admitted. One eyebrow arched as he regarded York. “Cap’n, are you suggesting that our days are spent in goodness here on the
Fevre Dream
?” He smiled. “Why, that’ll sure come as news to Hairy Mike and Mister Framm here.”

Hairy Mike guffawed, while Framm protested, “Hey, now, three wives don’t mean I ain’t good, why most every one of ’em ’ud vouch for me!”

“What the hell you talkin’ about?” Abner Marsh put in. Most of the officers and crew looked as confused as he was.

Joshua played with an elusive smile. “Mister Jeffers is reminding me of the final stanza of Byron’s poem,” he said. He recited:

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,

                  
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,

The smiles that win, the tints that glow,

                  
But tell of days in goodness spent,

A mind at peace with all below,

                  
A heart whose love is innocent!

“Are we innocent, Cap’n?” Jeffers asked.

“No one is entirely innocent,” Joshua York replied, “but the poem speaks to me nonetheless, Mister Jeffers. The night
is
beautiful, and we can hope to find peace and nobility in its dark splendor as well. Too many men fear the dark unreasoningly.”

“Perhaps,” said Jeffers. “Sometimes it ought to be feared, though.”

“No,” said Joshua York, and with that he left them, breaking off the verbal fencing match with Jeffers abruptly. As soon as he was gone, others began to leave the table to attend to their duties, but Jonathon Jeffers remained in his place, lost in thought, staring off across the cabin. Marsh sat down to finish his pie. “Mister Jeffers,” he said, “I don’t know what’s goin’ on along this river. Damn poems. What good did all that fancy talk ever do anyhow? If this Byron had somethin’ to say, why didn’t he just out and say it in plain, simple language? Answer me that.”

Jeffers looked over at him, blinking. “Sorry, Cap’n,” he said. “I was trying to remember something. What was it you said?”

Marsh swallowed a forkful of pie, washed it down with some coffee, and repeated his question.

“Well, Cap’n,” Jeffers said, with a wry smile, “the main thing is that poetry is pretty. The way the words fit together, the rhythms, the pictures they paint. Poems are pleasant when said aloud. The rhymes, the inner music, just the way they
sound
.” He sipped some coffee. “It’s hard to explain if you don’t feel it. But it’s sort of like a steamer, Cap’n.”

“Ain’t never seen no poem pretty as a steamer,” said Marsh gruffly.

Jeffers grinned. “Cap’n, why does the
Northern Light
have that big picture of the Aurora on her wheelhouse? She don’t need it. The paddles would turn just as smartly without it. Why is our pilot house, and so many others, all fancied up with curlicues and carvings and trim, why is every steamer worth her name full of fine wood and carpets and oil paintings and jigsaw carpentry? Why do our chimneys have flowered tops? The smoke would come out just as easy if they were plain.”

Marsh burped, and frowned.

“You could make steamers plain and simple,” Jeffers concluded, “but the way they are, that makes them finer to look at, to ride on. It’s the same with poetry, Cap’n. A poet could maybe say something straight out, sure enough, but when he puts it in rhyme and meter it becomes grander.”

“Well, maybe,” Marsh said dubiously.

“I bet I could find a poem even you would like,” Jeffers said. “Byron wrote one, in fact. ‘The Destruction of Sennacherib,’ it’s called.”

“Where’s that?”

“It’s a who, not a where,” Jeffers corrected. “A poem about a war, Cap’n. There’s a marvelous rhythm to it. It gallops along as lively as ‘Buffalo Gals.’ ” He stood up and straightened his coat. “Come with me, I’ll show you.”

Marsh finished the dregs of his coffee, pushed off from the table, and followed Jonathon Jeffers aft to the
Fevre Dream
’s library. He collapsed gratefully in a big overstuffed armchair while the head clerk searched up and down the bookcases that filled the room and rose clear to the high ceiling. “Here it is,” Jeffers said at last, pulling down a fair-sized volume. “I knew we had to have a book of Byron’s poems somewhere.” He leafed through the pages—a few had never been cut, and he sliced them apart with his fingernail—until he found what he was looking for. Then he struck a pose and read “The Destruction of Sennacherib.”

The poem did have quite a rhythm to it, Marsh had to admit, especially with Jeffers reciting it. It wasn’t no “Buffalo Gals,” though. Still, he kind of liked it. “Not bad,” he admitted when Jeffers had finished. “Didn’t care for the end, though. Damn Bible-thumpers got to drag the Lord in most everywhere.”

Jeffers laughed. “Lord Byron was no Bible-thumper, I can assure you,” he said. “He was immoral, in fact, or so it was said.” He took on a thoughtful look and began turning pages again.

“What are you lookin’ for now?”

“The poem I was trying to recollect at the table,” Jeffers said. “Byron wrote another poem about night, quite at odds with—ah, here it is.” He glanced up and down the page, nodded. “Listen to this, Cap’n. The title is ‘Darkness.’ ” He commenced to recite:

I had a dream, which was not all a dream,

The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars

Did wander darkling in the eternal space,

Rayless, and pathless, and the icy Earth

Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;

Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day,

And men forgot their passions in the dread

Of this their desolation; and all hearts

Were chill’d into a selfish prayer for light. . . .

The clerk’s voice had taken on a hollow, sinister tone as he read; the poem went on and on, longer than any of the others. Marsh soon lost track of the words, but they touched him nonetheless, and cast a chill that was somehow frightening over the room. Phrases and bits of lines lingered in his mind; the poem was full of terror, of vain prayer and despair, of madness and great funeral pyres, of war and famine and men like beasts.

. . . —a meal was brought

With blood, and each sate sullenly apart

Gorging himself in gloom; no Love was left;

All earth was but one thought—and that was Death

Immediate and inglorious; and the pang

Of famine fed upon all entrails—men

Died and their bones were tombless as their flesh;

The meagre by the meagre were devour’d, . . .

and Jeffers read on, evil dancing after evil, until at last he concluded:

They slept on the abyss without a surge—

The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,

The Moon, their mistress, had expired before;

The winds were wither’d in the stagnant air,

And the clouds perish’d; Darkness had no need

Of aid from them—She was the Universe.

He closed the book.

“Ravings,” Marsh said. “He sounds like a man taken with fever.”

Jonathon Jeffers smiled wanly. “The Lord didn’t even put in an appearance.” He sighed. “Byron was of two minds about darkness, it seems to me. There’s precious little innocence in
that
poem. I wonder if Cap’n York is familiar with it?”

“Of course he is,” Marsh said, hoisting himself out of his chair. “Give that here.” He extended his hand.

Jeffers handed him the book. “Taking an interest in poetry, Cap’n?”

“Never you mind about that,” Marsh replied, slipping the book into his pocket. “Ain’t there any business to attend to in your office?”

“Certainly,” said Jeffers. He took his leave.

Abner Marsh stood in the library for three or four minutes, feeling mighty odd; the poem had had a very unsettling effect on him. Maybe there was something to this poetry business after all, he thought. He resolved to look into the book at his leisure and figure it out for himself.

Marsh had his own errands to run, however, and they kept him busy through most of the afternoon and early evening. Afterward he forgot all about the book in his pocket. Karl Framm was going into New Orleans to sup at the St. Charles, and Marsh decided to join him. It was almost midnight when they returned to the
Fevre Dream
. Undressing up in his cabin, Marsh came upon the book again. He put it carefully on his bedside table, donned his nightshirt, and settled down to read a bit by candlelight.

“Darkness” seemed even more sinister by night, in the dim loneliness of his little steamer cabin, although the words on the page didn’t have quite the cold menace that Jeffers had given them. Still, they disquieted him. He turned pages and read “Sennacherib” and “She Walks in Beauty” and some other poems, but his thoughts kept wandering into “Darkness.” Despite the heat of the night, Abner Marsh had gooseflesh creeping up his arms.

In the front of the book, there was a picture of Byron. Marsh studied it. He looked pretty enough, dark and sensual like a Creole; it was easy to see why the women went for him so, even if he was supposed to be a gimp. Of course, he was a nobleman too. It said so right beneath his picture: