Fevre Dream (5 page)

They settled themselves into the two leather chairs, York putting the tray on the low table between them. Marsh handed over the bottle of wine, or whatever it was. From somewhere within the pristine folds of his white suit, York produced a skinny little knife, with an ivory handle and a long silver blade. He sliced away the wax, and with one single deft twist flicked the knife point into the cork and brought it out with a pop. The liquor poured slowly, flowing like red-black honey into the silver goblets. It was opaque, and seemed full of tiny black specks. Strong, though; Marsh lifted his goblet and sniffed at it, and the alcohol in it brought tears to his eyes.

“We ought to have a toast,” York said, lifting his own goblet.

“To all the money we’re going to make,” Marsh joked.

“No,” York said seriously. Those demon gray eyes of his had a kind of grave melancholy in them, Marsh thought. He hoped that York wasn’t going to start reciting poetry again. “Abner,” York continued, “I know what the
Fevre Dream
means to you. I want you to know that she means much to me, as well. This day is the start of a grand new life for me. You and I, together, we made her what she is, and we shall go on to make her a legend. I have always admired beauty, Abner, but this is the first time in a long life that I have created it, or helped in its creation. It is a good feeling, to bring something new and fine into the world. Particularly for me. And I have you to thank for it.” He lifted his goblet. “Let us drink for the
Fevre Dream
and all she represents, my friend—beauty, freedom, hope. To our boat and a better world!”

“To the fastest steamer on the river!” Marsh replied, and they drank. He almost gagged. York’s private drink went down like fire, searing the back of his throat and spreading warm tendrils in his innards, but there was a kind of cloying sweetness to it as well, and a hint of an unpleasant smell that all its strength and sweetness could not quite conceal. Tasted like something had rotted in the bottle, he thought.

Joshua York drained his own goblet in a single long motion, his head thrown back. Then he set it aside and looked at Marsh and laughed again. “The look on your face, Abner, is wonderfully grotesque. Don’t feel you have to be polite. I warned you. Why don’t you have some sherry?”

“I believe I will,” Marsh replied, “I do believe I will.”

Later, when two glasses of sherry had wiped the aftertaste of York’s drink from Marsh’s mouth, they got to talking.

“What is our next step after St. Louis, Abner?” York asked.

“The New Orleans trade. Ain’t no other run for a boat as grand as this one.”

York gave an impatient shake of his head. “I know that, Abner. I was curious about how you intend to realize your dream of beating the
Eclipse
. Will you seek her out and issue a challenge? I’m willing, so long as it does not delay us unduly or take us out of our way.”

“Wish it were that simple, but it ain’t. Hell, Joshua, there’s thousands of steamers on the river, and all of them would like to beat the
Eclipse
. She’s got runs to make, just like we do, passengers and freight to move. Can’t be just racing all the time. Anyhow, her cap’n be a fool to lissen to any challenge from us. Who’re we anyway? Some new steamer fresh out of New Albany that nobody ever heard of.
Eclipse
’d have everything to lose and nothin’ to gain by racing us.” He emptied another glass of sherry and held it out to York for a refill. “No, first we got to work our trade, build ourselves a reputation. Get known up and down the river as a fast boat. Pretty soon folks will get to talkin’ about how fast she is, and get to wonderin’ how
Fevre Dream
and
Eclipse
would match up. Maybe we run into her on the river a couple times, say, and pass her up. We build up the talk, and folks start to betting. Maybe we make some of the runs the
Eclipse
makes, and we beat her time. A fast steamer gets the trade, y’know. The planters and shippers and such, they want to get their wares to market soon as they can, so they go with the fastest boat around. And passengers, why they all love to ride on a famous boat if they got the money. So what happens, you see, is that after a time people start thinking we’re the fastest boat on the lower river, and the trade starts moving our way, and the
Eclipse
gets hurt a little where it counts, in the purse. Then you just watch how easy we get us a race, to prove once and for all who’s faster.”

“I see,” said York. “Is this run to St. Louis going to start our reputation, then?”

“Well, I ain’t trying for no record time. She’s a new boat, and we got to break her in. Don’t even have our regular pilots on board yet, no one is real familiar with how she handles, and we got to give Whitey time to work out all the little problems with the engines and get his strikers trained proper.” He set down his empty glass. “Don’t mean we can’t start in some other ways, though,” he said, smiling. “Got something or other in mind along those lines. You’ll see.”

“Good,” said Joshua York. “More sherry?”

“No,” Marsh said. “We ought to get on down to the saloon, I think. I’ll buy you a drink at our bar. Guarantee you it’ll taste better than that damned stuff of yours.”

York smiled. “My pleasure,” he said.

That night was not like other nights for Abner Marsh. It was a magic night, a dream. There seemed to be at least forty or fifty hours in it, he could have sworn, and each of them was priceless. He and York were up till dawn, drinking and talking up a storm, wandering all over the wonder of a boat they had built. The day after, Marsh woke with such a head that he could barely recall half of what he’d done the night before. But some moments were indelible in his memory.

He remembered entering the grand saloon, and it was better than entering the finest hotel in the world. The chandeliers were brilliant, lamps aglow and prisms glittering. The mirrors made the long narrow cabin seem twice as wide as it really was. A crowd was gathered around the bar, talking politics and such, and Marsh joined them for a while and listened to them complain about abolitionists and argue over whether Stephen A. Douglas ought to be president, while York said hello to Smith and Brown, who were at one of the tables playing cards with some planters and a notorious gambler. Someone was tinkling on the grand piano, stateroom doors opened and closed all the time, and the whole place was bright with light and laughter.

Later they went down to a different world on the main deck; cargo piled everywhere, roustabouts and deckers asleep on coils of rope and bags of sugar, a family gathered around a little fire they’d built cooking something or other, a drunk passed out behind the stairs. The engine room was awash in the hellish red glow of the furnaces, and Whitey was in the middle of it all, with his shirt soaked by sweat and grease in his beard, bellowing at his strikers to be heard above the hiss of the steam and the
chunkachunka
of the wheels churning water. The rods were awesome, moving back and forth in their long powerful strokes. They watched for a while, York and he, until the heat and smell of machine oil got to be too much for them.

Some time later they were up on the hurricane deck, passing a bottle between them, strolling and talking in their own cool wind. The stars were bright as a lady’s diamonds overhead, the Fevre River banner was flapping on both fore and verge flagpoles, and the river around them was blacker than the blackest slave Marsh had ever seen.

They ran all night, Daly standing the long watch up in the pilot house, keeping them moving at a smart clip—though nothing to what they could do if pressed, Marsh knew—along the dark Ohio, with nothingness all around them. It was a charmed run, with no snags or sawyers or sandbars to bedevil them. Only twice did they have to send out a yawl ahead of them for soundings, and both times they found good water when they dropped lead, and the
Fevre Dream
steamed on. A few houses were glimpsed on the shore, most dark and shuttered for the night, but one with a light burning in a high window. Marsh wondered who was awake up there, and what they thought when the steamer went on by. She must have been a fine sight, with her decks all lit and the music and laughter drifting out over the water, the sparks and smoke from her chimneys, and her name big on the wheelhouse,
Fevre Dream
done all in thick fancy blue lettering with silver trim around it. He almost wished he was on shore just to see it.

The big excitement of the night came just before midnight, when they first sighted another steamer churning water ahead of them. When Marsh saw, he took York by the elbow and led him on up to the pilot house. It was crowded up there, Daly still at the wheel, sipping coffee, two other pilots and three passengers sitting on the couch behind him. The pilots weren’t nobody hired by Marsh, but pilots rode free if they wanted to, that was a custom of the river, and they usually rode in the pilot house to chat with the man at the wheel and keep up on the river. Marsh ignored them. “Mister Daly,” he said to his pilot, “there’s a steamer up ahead.”

“I see it, Cap’n Marsh,” Daly replied with a laconic grin.

“Wonder what boat that is? You got any idea, Daly?” Whatever boat it was, it wasn’t much; some squat stern-wheeler with a pilot house square as a cracker box.

“Sure don’t,” the pilot replied.

Abner Marsh turned to Joshua York. “Joshua,” he said, “you’re the real captain, now, and I don’t want to be givin’ you too many suggestions. But the truth is, I’m awful curious as to what steamer that is on up ahead of us. Why don’t you tell Daly here to catch her for us, so I can relax a bit.”

York smiled. “Certainly,” he said. “Mister Daly, you heard Captain Marsh. Do you think the
Fevre Dream
can catch that boat on ahead?”

“She can catch
anything,
”the pilot said. He called down to the engineer for more steam, and pulled the steam whistle again, and the wild banshee scream echoed over the river, as if to warn the steamer up ahead that the
Fevre Dream
was coming after her.

The blast was enough to bring all the passengers out of the main saloon onto the deck. It even got the deck passengers up off their bags of flour. A couple of passengers came wandering up and tried to enter the pilot house, but Marsh chased ’em all down below again, along with the three who’d already been up there. As passengers will, all of them rushed to the front of the boat, and later to the larboard side, when it became clear that was the side they’d pass the other boat on. “Damn passengers,” Marsh muttered to York. “Never will trim boat. One of these days they’ll all rush to the same side and tip some poor steamer right on over, I swear it.”

For all his complaining, Marsh was delighted. Whitey was chucking in more wood down below, the furances were roaring, and the big wheels moved faster and faster. It was over in hardly no time at all. The
Fevre Dream
seemed to eat up the miles between her and the other boat, and when she passed her a ragged cheer came up from the lower decks, sweet music to Marsh’s ears.

As they surged past the small stern-wheeler, York read her name off the pilot house. “She seems to be the
Mary Kaye,
”he said.

“Well, boil me for an egg!” Marsh said.

“Is she a well-known boat?” York asked.

“Hell no,” said Marsh. “I never heard of her. Can you beat that?” Then he laughed uproariously and clapped York on the back, and before long everyone in the pilot house was laughing.

Before the night was over, the
Fevre Dream
had caught and passed a half-dozen steamers, including one side-wheeler near as big as she was, but it never got as exciting as that first time, catching the
Mary Kaye
. “You wanted to know how we’d begin it,” Marsh said to York when they left the pilot house. “Well, Joshua, it’s begun.”

“Yes,” said York, glancing back behind them, where the
Mary Kaye
was growing small in the distance. “Indeed it has.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Aboard the Steamer
Fevre Dream,
Ohio River,
July 1857

Headache or no, Abner Marsh was too good a riverman to sleep away the day, especially a day as important as this one. He sat up in bed around eleven, after a scant few hours sleep, splashed some tepid water on his face from the basin on the nightstand, and dressed. There was work to be done, and York wouldn’t be up and around till dusk. Marsh set his cap on his head, scowled at himself in the mirror and fluffed out his beard a little, then gathered up his walking stick and lumbered on down from the texas to the boiler deck. He visited the washrooms first, then ducked back to the kitchen. “Missed breakfast, Toby,” he said to the cook, who was already preparing dinner. “Have one of your boys fix me up a half-dozen eggs and a slab of ham, and send it on up to the texas, will you? Coffee, too. Lots of coffee.”

In the grand saloon, Marsh had a quick drink or two, which made him feel somewhat better. He mumbled a few polite words at passengers and waiters, then hastened back to the texas to wait for his food.

After he’d eaten, Abner Marsh felt like his old self again.

He climbed on up to the pilot house after breakfast. The watch had changed, and the other pilot was at the wheel, with only one of the freeloaders keeping him company. “Morning, Mister Kitch,” Marsh said to his pilot. “How’s she drawin’?”

“I ain’t complainin’,” the pilot replied. He glanced at Marsh. “This here boat of yours is a frisky one, Cap’n. You take her down to New Orleans, you better get yourself some good pilots. She takes a good hand at the wheel, she does.”

Marsh nodded. That wasn’t unexpected; frequently the faster boats were hard to handle. It didn’t bother him. No pilot who didn’t know what he was about was going to get anywhere near the
Fevre Dream
’s wheel.

“What kind of time we makin’?” Marsh asked.

“Smart enough,” the pilot replied with a shrug. “She can do better, but Mister Daly said you weren’t in no hurry, so we’re just lazing along.”

“Put in at Paducah when we get there,” Marsh ordered. “Got a couple passengers to set off and some freight to discharge.” He spent a few minutes chatting with the pilot and finally went on back down to the boiler deck.

The main cabin had been set up for dinner. Bright noon sunlight was pouring from the skylights in a cascade of colors, and beneath it a long row of tables ran the length of the cabin. The waiters were setting silverware and china; crystal glasses gleamed brilliantly in the light. From the kitchen, Marsh caught hints of the most marvelous, mouth-watering smells. He paused and found himself a menu, glanced over it and decided he was still hungry. Besides, York wasn’t about yet, and it was only fitting that one of the captains join the cabin passengers and other officers for dinner.

The dinner, Marsh thought, was excellent. Marsh put away a big plate of roast lamb in parsley sauce, a small pigeon, lots of Irish potatoes and green corn and beets, and two pieces of Toby’s famous pecan pie. By the time dinner was over, he was feeling quite amiable. He even gave the preacher permission to give a little lecture on bringing Christianity to the Indians, though he didn’t normally hold with no bible-thumping on his boats. Had to keep the passengers amused somehow, Marsh figured, and even the prettiest scenery got boring after a while.

Early in the afternoon, the
Fevre Dream
put into Paducah, which lay on the Kentucky side of the river, where the Tennessee emptied into the Ohio. It was their third stop on the run, but the first lengthy one. They’d put in briefly at Rossborough during the night, to drop off three passengers, and they’d taken on wood and a small amount of freight at Evansville while Marsh had been asleep. But they had to discharge twelve tons of bar iron at Paducah, as well as some flour and sugar and books, and there was supposed to be some forty or fifty tons of lumber waiting there to be loaded. Paducah was a big lumbering town, with log rafts all the time coming down the Tennessee, clogging up the river and getting in the way of the steamboats. Like most steamboatmen, Marsh didn’t have much use for rafters. Half the time they didn’t show no lights at night, and they got run over by some unlucky steamer, and then they had the gumption to cuss and yell and throw things.

Fortunately, there were no rafts about when they put into Paducah and tied up. Marsh took one look at the cargo waiting on the riverfront—which included several towering stacks of crates and some bales of tobacco—and decided that it would be easy to get some more freight onto the main deck. It would be a shame, he decided, to steam away from Paducah and leave all this custom to some other boat.

Already the
Fevre Dream
was secure to the wharf, and swarms of roustabouts were laying down planks and starting to unload. Hairy Mike moved out among them, yelling “Quick now, you ain’t no cabin passenger out for no stroll,” and “You drop that, boy, and I’m gone drop this here iron right longside you head,” and other such things. The stage came down with a
whunk,
and a few Paducah passengers began to disembark.

Marsh made up his mind. He went to the clerk’s office, where he found Jonathon Jeffers working over some bills of lading. “You got to do those now, Mister Jeffers?” he asked.

“Hardly, Cap’n Marsh,” Jeffers replied. He removed his spectacles and wiped them on a neckerchief. “These are for Cairo.”

“Good,” Marsh said. “Come on with me. Going to go ashore and find out who owns all that freight settin’ out there in the sun, and where it’s bound to. Figure it’s got to be going St. Louis way, some of it, and maybe we can make ourself some money.”

“Excellent,” Jeffers replied. He got off his stool, straightened his neat black coat, checked to make sure the big iron safe was locked, and picked up his sword cane. “I know a fine grog shop in Paducah,” he added as they left.

Marsh’s venture proved well worthwhile. They found the tobacco shipper easily enough, and took him to the grog shop, where Marsh persuaded him to consign his goods to the
Fevre Dream
and Jeffers dickered out a good price. It took some three hours, but Marsh was feeling damned pleased with the bit of work when he and Jeffers came strolling back to the riverfront and the
Fevre Dream
. Hairy Mike was lounging on the wharf, smoking a black cigar and talking with the mate from some other boat, when they returned. “That’s ours now,” Marsh told him, pointing out the tobacco with his stick. “Get your boys to load it quick, so we can get underway.”

Marsh leaned on the railing of the boiler deck, shaded and content, watching them scramble and tote the bales while Whitey got the steam up. He chanced to notice something else; a line of horse-drawn hotel omnibuses waiting on the road just off the steamboat landing. Marsh stared at them curiously for a moment, pulling at his whiskers, then went on up to the pilot house.

The pilot was having a slice of pie and a cup of coffee. “Mister Kitch,” Marsh told him, “don’t take her out until I tell you so.”

“Why’s that, Cap’n? She’s almost loaded, and the steam’s up.”

“Look out there,” Marsh said, lifting his stick. “Them omnibuses are bringing passengers to the landing, or waiting for ’em to arrive. Not our passengers, neither, and they don’t meet every little stern-wheeler that puts in. I got myself a hunch.”

A few moments later, his hunch was rewarded. Spewing steam and smoke and sparkling down the Ohio fast as the devil, a long classy side-wheeler came into sight. Marsh recognized her almost at once, even before he could read her name; the
Southerner,
of the Cincinnati & Louisville Packet Company. “I knew it!” he said. “She must have left Louisville a half-day after we did. She made better time, though.” He moved to the side window, brushed aside the fancy curtains that were shutting out the hot afternoon sun, and watched the other steamer pull in, tie up, and begin to discharge passengers. “She won’t take long,” Marsh said to his pilot. “No freight to load or unload, just passengers. You let her pull out first, you understand? Let her get down the river a bit, then you back out and go after her.”

The pilot finished his last forkful of pie and wiped a bit of meringue from the corner of his mouth with his napkin. “You want me to let the
Southerner
get ahead of us and then try to catch her? Cap’n, we’ll be breathin’ her steam all the way to Cairo. After that she’ll be out of sight.”

Abner Marsh clouded up like a thunderhead about to break. “What do you think you’re sayin’, Mister Kitch? I don’t want to lissen to no talk like that. If you ain’t pilot enough to do it, just say so, and I’ll kick Mister Daly out of bed and get him on up here to take the wheel.”

“That’s the
Southerner,
”Kitch insisted.

“And this is the
Fevre Dream,
and don’t you forget it!” Marsh shouted. He turned and stormed from the cabin, scowling. Damn pilots all thought they were kings of the river. Of course they were, once the boat was on the river, but that didn’t give them no cause to go bellyaching about a little race and doubting his steamer.

His fury faded when he saw that the
Southerner
was taking on passengers already. He had been hoping for something like this from the minute he spied the
Southerner
over across the river back in Louisville, but he hadn’t dared hope too hard. If
Fevre Dream
could catch the
Southerner,
her reputation was halfway made, once folks along the river heard about it. The other steamer, and her sister boat the
Northerner,
were the pride of their line. They were special boats, built back in ’53 especially for speed. Smaller than the
Fevre Dream,
they were the only steamers Marsh knew of that didn’t carry freight, only passengers. He couldn’t see for a minute how they turned a profit, but that wasn’t important. What was important was how fast they were. The
Northerner
had set a new record for the Louisville—St. Louis run back in ’54. The
Southerner
broke it the following year, and still had the fastest time; one day and nineteen hours even. High up on her pilot house, she wore the gilded antlers that marked her as the fleetest steamer on the Ohio.

The more he considered the prospect of taking her on, the more excited Abner Marsh grew. All of a sudden it occurred to him that this was not something Joshua would care to miss, beauty sleep or no. Marsh stomped forward to York’s cabin, determined to roust him out. He rapped sharply on the door with the head of his walking stick.

No answer. Marsh rapped again, louder and more insistently. “Hallo in there!” he boomed. “Get yourself out of bed, Joshua, we’re goin’ to run us a race!”

Still no sound came from within York’s cabin. Marsh tried the door and found it locked. He rattled it, pounded on the walls, knocked on the shuttered window, shouted; all to no avail. “Damn you, York,” he said, “get yourself up or you’re goin’ to miss it.” Then he had an idea. He walked back near the pilot house. “Mister Kitch, sir,” he shouted up. Abner Marsh could shout with the best of them when he put his lungs into it good. Kitch popped his head out the door and looked down at him. “You blow that whistle,” Marsh told him, “and keep blowing it till I wave at you, you hear?”

He returned to York’s locked door and began pounding again, and suddenly the steam whistle began to shriek. Once. Twice. Three times. Long angry blasts. Marsh flailed away with his stick.

York’s cabin door came open.

Marsh took one look at York’s eyes and his mouth hung open in mid-shout. The steam whistle sounded again, and he waved hurriedly. It fell silent.
“Get in here,”
Joshua York said in a cold whisper.

Marsh entered, and York swung the door shut behind him. Marsh heard him throw the lock. He didn’t see it. He didn’t see anything. Once the door closed, York’s cabin was black as the pit. Not even a crack of light snuck in through the door or the shuttered, curtained windows. Marsh felt like he’d gone blind. But in his mind’s eye, a vision lingered, the last thing he’d seen before the darkness closed in: Joshua York, standing in the doorway naked as the day he was born, his skin deathly white as alabaster, his lips drawn back in animal rage, his eyes like two smoky gray slits opening onto hell.

“Joshua,” Marsh said, “can you turn on a lamp? Or pull back a curtain, or something? I can’t see.”

“I can see just fine,” York’s voice replied from the darkness behind him. Marsh hadn’t heard him move. He turned, and blundered into something.
“Hold still,”
York commanded, with such force and fury in his tone that Marsh had no choice but to obey. “Here, I’ll give you a light, before you wreck my cabin.”

A match flared across the room, and York touched it to his reading candle, then seated himself on the edge of his rumpled bed. He’d donned a pair of trousers, somehow, but his face was hard and terrible. “There,” he said. “Now,
why are you here?
I warn you, you had better have a reason!”

Marsh began to grow angry. No one talked to him that way, no one. “The
Southerner
is next to us, York,” he snapped. “The fastest damn boat on this river, got the horns and everything. I’m fixin’ to run
Fevre Dream
after her, and I thought you’d want to see. If you don’t think that’s reason enough for getting you out of bed, then you ain’t no steamboatman and you never will be! And you watch your manners with me, you hear?”

Something flared in Joshua York’s eyes, and he started to rise, but even as he did he checked himself, and turned away. “Abner,” he said. He paused, frowning. “I am sorry. I did not intend to treat you with disrespect, or to frighten you. Your intent was good.” Marsh was startled to see his hand clench violently, before he steadied it. York crossed the dim cabin with three quick, purposeful strides. On his desk rested the bottle of his private drink, the one Marsh had caused him to open the night before. He poured out a full goblet of it, tossed back his head, and drained it straightaway. “Ah,” he said softly. He swung about to face Marsh again. “Abner,” he said, “I’ve given you your dream boat, but not as a gift. We struck a bargain. You are to obey such orders as I give, respect my eccentric behavior, and ask no questions. Do you mean to live up to your half of our bargain?”