Fevre Dream (21 page)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Aboard the Steamer
Fevre Dream,
New Orleans,
August 1857

It seemed as though half the steamers in New Orleans had decided to leave that afternoon, Abner Marsh thought as he stood upon the hurricane deck and watched them all depart.

The custom was for boats going upriver to make their departure from the levee about five o’clock. At three the engineers would fire the furnaces and start to get the steam up. Rosin and pitch-pine would get chucked into the steamers’ hungry maws, along with wood and coal, and from one boat after another the black smoke would start to rise, ascending from the lofty flowered chimneys in tall hot columns, dark pennants of farewell. Four miles of steamboats packed solid along the levee can generate a lot of smoke. The sooty columns would start to blend together into one massive black cloud a couple hundred feet above the river; a cloud shot through with ash, full of hot bright cinders, adrift on the wind. Larger and larger the cloud would swell as still more steamers fired up and poured out smoke, until the pall blotted out the sun and began to creep across the face of the city.

From Abner Marsh’s vantage point on the hurricane deck, it looked as though the whole city of New Orleans was going up in flames, and all the steamers were about to flee. It made him feel uneasy, as if somehow the other captains knew something he did not, as if the
Fevre Dream,
too, ought to be getting up her steam and making ready to back out. Marsh was anxious to be off. For all the wealth and glamour of the New Orleans trade, he yearned for the rivers he knew: for the upper Mississippi with its bluffs and dense woods, for the wild muddy Missouri that ate steamers like nobody’s business, for the narrow Illinois and the silty, bustling Fevre. The
Fevre Dream
’s maiden voyage down the Ohio seemed almost idyllic to him now, a remembrance of simpler, better days. Not even two months gone, it seemed an eternity ago. Ever since they’d left St. Louis and come downriver, things had been going wrong, and the farther south they’d come the worse they’d gotten. “Joshua is right,” Marsh muttered to himself as he looked out over New Orleans. “There’s something rotten here.” It was too damn hot, too damn wet, with too damn many bugs, enough to make a man think there was a curse on the whole damn place. And maybe there was, on account of the slavery, though Marsh wasn’t sure about that. All he was sure of was that he wanted to tell Whitey to fire up the boilers, and roust Framm or Albright up to the pilot house, so he could back the
Fevre Dream
clear of the landing and get her upriver. Now. Before sunset. Before
they
arrived.

Abner Marsh wanted to shout those orders so bad he could taste the words, lying bitter and unspoken on his tongue. He felt a kind of superstitious dread about this evening, though he told himself over and over that he was not a superstitious man. Still, he wasn’t blind either—the sky was hot and suffocating, and west of them a storm was building, a big one, a ripper, the storm that Dan Albright had smelled a couple days back. And the steamers were leaving, one after another, dozens of them, and as Marsh watched them recede upriver and vanish in the shimmering waves of heat, he felt more and more alone, as if each steamboat that faded into the distance carried a small bit of him aboard her, a piece of courage, a hunk of his certainty, a dream or a small, sooty hope. Lots of steamers left New Orleans every day, Marsh thought to himself, and today is no different, it’s just a day like any other day on the river in August: hot and smoky and lazy, everyone moving slow, waiting, maybe for a breath of cool air or for the clean, fresh rain that would wash the smoke from the sky.

But another part of him, an older and deeper part, knew that what they waited for was neither cool nor clean, and it would bring no relief from the heat, the dampness, the bugs, the fear.

Down below, Hairy Mike was roaring at his roustabouts, and making threatening gestures with his black iron billet, but the noises from the landing and the bells and whistles of the other steamers drowned out his words. A mountain of cargo waited on the levee, almost a thousand tons, the
Fevre Dream
’s top capacity. Hardly a quarter of it had been carried across the narrow planks to the main deck. It would take hours to get the rest aboard. Even if he wanted to, Marsh could not take them out, not with all that freight a-waiting on the landing. Hairy Mike and Jeffers and the rest would think he’d gone mad.

He wished he’d been able to tell them, like he’d intended to, to make plans with them. But there wasn’t time. Everything had begun to move so quickly, and tonight after dark this Damon Julian would come aboard the
Fevre Dream
to dine. There was no time to talk to Hairy Mike or Jonathon Jeffers, no time to explain or persuade or deal with the doubts and questions they’d surely have. So tonight Abner Marsh would be alone, or almost alone, just him and Joshua in a room full of
them,
the night folks. Marsh did not count Joshua York with the others. He was different, somehow. And Joshua said that everything would go well, Joshua had his drink, Joshua was full of fine sounding words and dreams. But Abner Marsh had his misgivings.

The
Fevre Dream
was quiet, almost deserted. Joshua had sent almost everyone ashore; the dinner tonight would be as private as he could make it. That wasn’t the way Abner Marsh would have liked it, but there was no arguing with Joshua when he got a notion in his head. In the main cabin, the table was already set. The lamps had not been lighted yet, and the smoke and steam and building storm outside had all conspired to make the illumination that poured through the skylights dim and somber and tired. It seemed to Marsh as if twilight had already come to the saloon, and to his steamer. The carpets looked almost black, the mirrors were full of shadows. Behind the long black marble bar, a man was cleaning glasses, but even he was indistinct somehow, faded. Marsh nodded to him nonetheless, and made his way to the kitchen, aft of the wheelhouse. Behind the kitchen doors he found activity; a couple of Toby’s kitchen boys were stirring big copper pots or pan-frying chicken, while the waiters lounged around and joked with each other. Marsh could smell pies baking in the huge ovens. It made his mouth water, but he pushed past, resolute. He found Toby in the starboard galley, surrounded on all sides by stacks of cages full of chickens and pigeons and here and there some robins and ducks and such. The birds were making a terrible racket. Toby looked up when Marsh entered. The cook had been killing chickens. Three headless birds were piled up by his elbows, and a fourth was on the block in front of him, struggling fitfully. Toby had the cleaver in hand. “Why, Cap’n Marsh,” he said, smiling. He brought the cleaver down smartly, with a solid
thunk
. Blood spurted, and the headless chicken thrashed crazily when Toby released it. His hard black hands were drenched with blood. He wiped them on his apron. “What kin I do fer you?” he asked.

“I just wanted to tell you, tonight, when dinner’s done, I want you off the boat,” Marsh said. “You serve us up good and proper, and then you get. And take your kitchen boys and them waiters with you. You understand, do you? You hear what I’m sayin’?”

“I surely do, Cap’n,” Toby said with a grin. “I surely do. Goin’ to have a lil’ party, is you?”

“Never you mind about that,” Marsh said. “Just see that you get ashore when you’re done workin’.” He turned to go, stern-faced. But something made him turn back. “Toby,” he said.

“Yessuh?”

“You know I never held much with slavery, even if I never done much against it neither. I would of, but those damned abolitionists were such Bible-thumpers. Only I been thinkin’, and it seems to me maybe they was right after all. You can’t just go . . . usin’ another kind of people, like they wasn’t people at all. Know what I mean? Got to end, sooner or later. Better if it ends peaceful, but it’s got to end even if it has to be with fire and blood, you see? Maybe that’s what them abolitionists been sayin’ all along. You try to be reasonable, that’s only right, but if it don’t work, you got to be ready. Some things is just wrong. They got to be ended.”

Toby was looking at him queerly, still absent-mindedly wiping his hands across the front of his apron, back and forth, back and forth. “Cap’n,” he said softly, “you is talkin’ abolition. This here is slave country, Cap’n. You could git kilt fo’ sech talk.”

“Maybe I could, Toby, but right is right, that’s what I say.”

“You done good by ol’ Toby, Cap’n Marsh, givin’ me my freedom and all so’s I could cook fo’ you. That you did.”

Abner Marsh nodded. “Toby,” he said, “why don’t you go fetch me a knife from the kitchen. Don’t say nothing about it, you hear? Just go fetch me a good sharp knife. It ought to be able to slide down into my boot, I think. Can you get me a knife?”

“Yessuh, Cap’n Marsh,” said Toby. His eyes narrowed just a little in his worn black face. “Yessuh.” Then he ran to obey.

Abner Marsh walked a little strangely for the next couple hours, with the long kitchen knife snugly tucked into his high leather boot. By the time dark had fallen, however, the blade had begun to feel damned comfortable, and he almost forgot that it was there.

The storm came just before sunset. Most of the steamers headed upriver were long gone by then, although others had come to take their places along the New Orleans levee. The storm broke, with a terrible roaring sound like a steamer’s boilers going up, and the lightning flashed overhead, and the rain came a-screaming down, torrential as a spring flood. Marsh stood beneath the cover of the boiler deck promenade, listening to the water pound against his steamer and watching folks on the landing scramble for cover. He had been standing there for the longest time, leaning on the rail and thinking, when suddenly Joshua York was there beside him. “It’s rainin’, Joshua,” Marsh said, pointing his stick out into the storm. “Maybe this Julian won’t be coming tonight. Maybe he don’t want to get wet.”

Joshua York wore a strange solemn look. “He will come,” he said. That was all. Just, “He will come.”

And—finally—he did.

The storm had subsided by then. The rain still came down and down, but it was gentler, softer, hardly more than a mist. Abner Marsh was still on the boiler deck, and he saw them coming, striding across the deserted, rain-slick levee. Even at a distance, he knew it was them. There was something about the way they walked, something graceful and predatory, full of a terrible beauty. One of them walked different, swaggering and sliding like he was trying to be one of them but couldn’t and when they came closer Marsh saw that it was Sour Billy Tipton. He was carrying something awkwardly.

Abner Marsh went on into the grand saloon. The others were all at table: Simon and Katherine, Smith and Brown, Raymond and Jean and Valerie and all the others that Joshua had gathered along the river. They were talking softly, but they fell silent when Marsh entered. “They’re coming,” Marsh said. Joshua York rose from his seat at the head of the table and went to meet them. Abner Marsh went to the bar and poured himself a whiskey. He drained it in a gulp, had another quickly, then went to the table. Joshua had insisted Marsh sit right up by the head, on his left-hand side. The chair to his right was saved for this Damon Julian. Marsh plopped down heavily and scowled at the empty place across from him.

And then they entered.

Only the four night folks came into the saloon, Marsh noted. Sour Billy had been left behind somewhere, which suited him just fine. There were two women, and a huge white-faced man who frowned darkly and shook the moisture from his coat. And the other,
him,
Marsh knew him instantly. He had a smooth ageless face framed by black curls, and he looked like some kind of lord in his dark burgundy suit, with a loose-collared silk shirt all ruffled down the front. On one finger he wore a gold ring with a sapphire the size of a sugar cube, and fastened to his black vest was a headlight, a polished chunk of black diamond in a soft web of yellow gold. He moved across the room and then—rounding the table—he paused, and stood by Joshua’s place, behind the chair at the head of the table. He put his smooth white hands up on the chair back, and he
looked
at them, one by one, all along the table.

And they rose.

The three who had come with him first, and then Raymond Ortega, and then Cara, and then the rest, in ones and twos, Valerie last of all. Everyone in the room was standing, everyone but Abner Marsh. Damon Julian smiled a charming, warm smile. “It is good to be together with all of you once again,” he said. He looked especially at Katherine. “My dear, how many years has it been? How very many years?”

The grin that lit her vulture-face was terrible to behold, Marsh thought. He decided to take matters into his own hands. “Sit down,” he barked up at Damon Julian. He tugged him by the sleeve. “I’m hungry, and we’ve waited supper just about long enough.”

“Yes,” said Joshua, and that broke the spell, and everyone took seats again. But Julian took Joshua’s seat, the seat at the head of the table.

Joshua came and stood over Julian. “You are in my seat,” he said. His voice seemed flat and tense. “This one is yours, sir. If you will be so kind.” York gestured. His eyes were fixed on Damon Julian, and Marsh glanced up at Joshua’s face and saw the power there, the cold intensity, the determination.

Damon Julian smiled. “Ah,” he said softly. He shrugged slightly. “Pardon.” Then, never looking up at Joshua York for even an instant, he rose and moved to the other seat.

Joshua seated himself stiffly, and made an impatient motion with his fingers. A waiter came hurrying from the shadows and deposited a bottle on the table in front of York. “Kindly leave the room,” Joshua told the youth.

The bottle was unlabeled. Beneath the chandeliers, surrounded by gleaming crystal and silver, it seemed dark and threatening. It had been opened. “You know what this is,” Joshua York said flatly to Damon Julian.

“Yes.”

York reached out, took up Julian’s wine glass, and poured. He filled the glass to the brim, and put it down again squarely in front of the other. “Drink,” he ordered.