Fevre Dream Read online

  Days had passed since New Madrid, and Abner Marsh had done nothing, said nothing. But he had done a considerable amount of thinking about what he had seen, or what he hadn’t seen, in Joshua’s cabin. He couldn’t be sure he had seen anything, of course. Besides, what if he had? Perhaps Joshua had cut himself in the woods . . . though Marsh had looked closely at York’s hands the following night, and had seen no signs of a cut or scab. Perhaps he had butchered an animal, or defended himself against thieves; a dozen good reasons presented themselves, but all fell before the simple fact of Joshua’s silence. If York had nothing to hide, why was he so damn secretive? The more Abner Marsh thought on that, the less he liked it.

  Marsh had seen blood before, plenty of it; fistfights and canings, duels and shootings. The river ran down into slave country, and blood flowed easily there for those whose skin was black. The free states weren’t much better. Marsh had been in bleeding Kansas for a time, had seen men burned and shot. He had served in the Illinois militia when he was younger, and had fought in the Black Hawk War. He still dreamt at times of the Battle of Bad Axe, when they’d cut down Black Hawk’s people, women and children too, as they tried to cross the Mississippi to the safety of the western shore. That had been a bloody day, but needed; Black Hawk had come a-warring and a-raiding over to Illinois, after all.

  The blood that might or might not have been on Joshua’s hands was different, somehow. It left Marsh uneasy, disquieted.

  Still, he reminded himself, he had made a bargain. A bargain was a bargain to Abner Marsh, and a man was bound to keep those he made, whether good or bad, whether with a preacher or a sharper or the devil hisself. Joshua York had mentioned having enemies, Marsh recalled, and a man’s dealings with his enemies were his own business. York had been fair enough with Marsh.

  So he reasoned, and tried to put the whole matter from his mind.

  But the Mississippi turned to blood, and there was bleeding in his dreams as well. Aboard the Fevre Dream, the mood began to grow bored and somber. A striker got careless and was scalded by the steam, and had to be set ashore at Napoleon. A roustabout ran off at Vicksburg, which was crazy, it being slave country and him a free colored man. Fights broke out among the deck passengers. It was the boredom and the thick, suffocating wet heat of August, Jeffers told him. Trash gets crazy when it gets hot, Hairy Mike echoed. Abner Marsh wasn’t so sure. It seemed almost like they were being punished.

  Missouri and Tennessee vanished behind them, and Marsh fretted. Cities and towns and woodyards drifted by, days turned into tortuously slow weeks, and they lost passengers and cargo because of York’s layovers. Marsh went ashore, into saloons and hotels popular with steamboatmen, and listened, and didn’t like the gab he heard about his boat. For all her boilers, one story ran, the Fevre Dream was built too big and heavy, and wasn’t very fast at all. Engine trouble, another rumor claimed; seams near to bursting on the boilers. That was bad talk; boiler explosions were greatly feared. A mate from some New Orleans boat told Marsh in Vicksburg that the Fevre Dream looked sweet enough, but her captain was just some no-count upper-river man who didn’t have the courage to run her full out. Marsh nearly broke open his head. There was talk about York as well, him and his queer friends and their ways. The Fevre Dream was starting to get herself a reputation, sure enough, but it was not one that Abner Marsh was over-partial to.

  By the time they came steaming into Natchez, Marsh had had quite enough.

  It was an hour shy of dusk when they first sighted Natchez in the distance, a few lights burning already in the ruddy afternoon, shadows lengthening from the west. It had been a fine day, but for the heat; they’d made their best time since leaving Cairo. The river had a golden sheen to it, and the sun shimmered upon it like a burnished brass ornament, gaudy as all get-out, rippling and dancing when the wind breathed upon the water. Marsh had taken to bed that afternoon, feeling a bit under the weather, but he got himself out of the cabin when he heard the whistle shriek, in answer to the call of another steamer that came high and sweet over the water. They were talking to each other, Marsh knew, an ascending and a descending boat deciding which would pass to the right and which to the left when they met. It happened a dozen times each day. But there was something in the voice of the other boat that called to him, dragged him from his sweaty sheets, and he came out of the texas just in time to see her pass; the Eclipse, swift and haughty, the gilded device between her chimneys glittering in the sun, her passengers thick on her decks, smoke rolling and tumbling from her. Marsh watched her recede upriver until only her smoke could be seen, a strange tightness in his gut all the while.

  When the Eclipse had faded like a dream fades in the morning, Marsh turned, and there was Natchez up ahead of them. He heard the bells sounding the signal for a landing, and their whistle called again.

  A tangle of steamers crowded the landing, and beyond them two cities waited for the Fevre Dream. Up on its lofty, precipitous bluffs was Natchez-on-the-hill, the proper city, with its broad streets, its trees and flowers, and all its grand houses. Each one had a name. Monmouth. Linden. Auburn. Ravenna. Concord and Belfast and Windy Hill. The Burn. Marsh had been in Natchez a half-dozen times in his younger days, before he’d had steamers of his own, and he had made it a point to go walking up there and see all those storied houses. They were goddamned palaces, every one of them, and Marsh didn’t feel quite comfortable there. The old families who lived inside them acted like kings, too; aloof and arrogant, drinking their mint juleps and their sherry cobblers, icing their damned wine, amusing themselves by racing their highbred horses and hunting bears, dueling with revolvers and bowie knives over the slightest trifling affront. The nabobs, Marsh had heard them called. They were a fine lot, and every goddamned one of them seemed to be a colonel. Sometimes they showed up on the landing, and then you had to invite them aboard your steamboat for cigars and drinks, no matter how they behaved.

  But they were a curiously blind bunch. From their great houses on the bluffs, the nabobs looked out over the shining majesty of the river, but somehow they couldn’t see the things that were right underneath them.

  For beneath the mansions, between the river and the bluffs, was another city: Natchez-under-the-hill. No marble columns stood there, and there were precious few flowers either. The streets were mud and dust. Brothels clustered round the steamer landing and lined Silver Street, or what was left of it. Much of the street had caved into the river twenty years ago, and the walks that remained were half-sunken and lined with tawdry women and dangerous, cold-eyed, foppish young men. Main Street was all saloons and billiard rooms and gambling halls, and each night the city below the city steamed and seethed. Brawls and brags and blood, crooked poker and Spanish burials, whores who’d do most anything and men who’d grin at you and take your purse and slit your throat in the bargain, that was Natchez-under-the-hill. Whiskey and flesh and cards, red lights and raucous song and watered gin, that was the way of it by the river. Steamboatmen loved and hated Natchez-under-the-hill and its milling population of cheap women and cutthroats and gamblers and free blacks and mulattoes, even though the older men swore that the city under the bluffs today wasn’t nothing near as wild as it had been forty years back, or even before the tornado that God had sent to clean it out in 1840. Marsh didn’t know about that; it was wild enough for him and he’d spent several memorable nights there, years ago. But this time he had a bad feeling about it.

  Briefly Marsh entertained a notion to pass it by, to climb on up to the pilot house and tell Albright to keep on going. But they had passengers to land, freight to unload, and the crew would be looking forward to a night in fabled Natchez, so Marsh did nothing for all his misgivings. The Fevre Dream steamed in, and was made fast for the night. They quieted her down, damped her steam and let the fires die in her guts, and then her crew spilled from her like blood from an open wound. A few of them paused on the landing to buy frozen creams or fruit from the black peddlers with their carts, but most streamed right down Sil
ver Street toward the hot bright lights.

  Abner Marsh lingered on the texas porch until the stars began to peer out. Song came drifting over the water from the windows of the brothels, but it did not lighten his mood. At last Joshua York opened his cabin door and stepped out into the night. “You goin’ ashore, Joshua?” Marsh asked him.

  York smiled coolly. “Yes, Abner.”

  “How long will you be gone this time?”

  Joshua York gave an elegant shrug. “I cannot say. I will return as soon as I can. Wait for me.”

  “I’d sooner go with you, Joshua,” Marsh said. “That’s Natchez out there. Natchez-under-the-hill. It’s a rough place. We might be waitin’ here a month, while you lay in some gutter with your throat cut. Let me come with you, show you around. I’m a riverman. You ain’t.”

  “No,” York said. “I have business ashore, Abner.”

  “We’re partners, ain’t we? Your business is my business, where the Fevre Dream is concerned.”

  “I have concerns beyond our steamboat, friend. Some things you cannot help me with. Some things I must do alone.”

  “Simon goes with you, don’t he?”

  “At times. That is different, Abner. Simon and I share . . . certain interests that you and I do not.”

  “You mentioned enemies once, Joshua. If that’s what you’re about, takin’ care of those who wronged you, then tell me. I’ll help.”

  Joshua York shook his head. “No, Abner. My enemies might not be your enemies.”

  “Let me decide that, Joshua. You been fair with me so far. Trust me to be fair with you.”

  “I cannot,” York replied, sorrowfully. “Abner, we have a bargain. Ask me no questions. Please. Now, if you would, let me pass.”

  Abner Marsh nodded and moved aside, and Joshua York swept by him and started down the stairs. “Joshua,” Marsh called out when York was almost to the bottom. The other turned. “Be careful, Joshua,” Marsh said. “Natchez can be . . . bloody.”

  York stared up at him for a long time, his eyes as gray and unreadable as smoke. “Yes,” he said finally, “I will take care.” Then he turned and was gone.

  Abner Marsh watched him go ashore and vanish into Natchez-under-the-hill, his lean figure throwing long shadows beneath the smoking lamps. When Joshua York was quite gone, Marsh turned and proceeded forward to the captain’s cabin. The door was locked, as he had known it would be. Marsh reached in his ample pocket, and came out with the key.

  He hesitated before putting it in the lock. Having duplicate keys made and stored in the steamer’s safe, that was no betrayal, just plain sense. People died in locked cabins, after all, and it was better to have a spare key than to have to break the door in. But using the key, that was something else. He had made a bargain, after all. But partners had to trust each other, and if Joshua York would not trust him, how could he expect trust in return? Resolute, Marsh opened the lock, and entered York’s cabin.

  Inside, he lit an oil lamp, and locked the door behind him. He stood there uncertainly for a moment, looking around, wondering what he hoped to find. York’s cabin was just a big stateroom, looking like it had all the other times Marsh had visited it. Still, there must be something here that would tell him something about York, give him some clue as to the nature of his partner’s peculiarities.

  Marsh moved to the desk, which seemed the most likely place to begin, carefully eased himself into York’s chair, and began to sift through the newspapers. He touched them gingerly, noting the position of each paper as he slid it out for examination, so that he could leave all as he found it when he left. The newspapers were . . . well, newspapers. There must have been fifty of them on the desk, numbers old and new, the Herald and the Tribune from New York, several Chicago papers, all the St. Louis and New Orleans journals, papers from Napoleon and Baton Rouge and Memphis and Greenville and Vicksburg and Bayou Sara, weeklies from a dozen little river towns. Most of them were intact. A few had stories cut from them.

  Beneath the litter of newspapers, Marsh found two leather-bound ledger books. He eased them out slowly, trying to ignore a nervous clenching in his stomach. Perhaps here he had a journal or a diary, Marsh thought, something to tell him where York had come from and where he aimed to go. He opened the first ledger, and frowned in disappointment. No diary. Only stories, carefully cut from newspapers and mounted with paste, each one labeled as to date and place in Joshua’s flowing hand.

  Marsh read the story before him, from a Vicksburg paper, about a body that had been found washed up on the riverfront. The date placed it six months back. On the opposite page were two items, both from Vicksburg as well; a family found dead in a shanty twenty miles from the city, a Negro wench—probably a runaway—discovered stiff in the woods, dead of unknown causes.

  Marsh turned the pages, read, turned again. After a time he closed the book and opened the other. It was the same. Page after page of bodies, mysterious deaths, corpses discovered here and there, all arranged by city. Marsh closed the books and returned them to their place, and tried to consider. The newspapers had lots of accounts of deaths and killings that York hadn’t bothered to cut out. Why? He searched through a few newspapers and read over them until he was sure. Then Marsh frowned. It appeared that Joshua had no interest in shootings or knifings, in rivermen drowned or blown up by boiler explosions or burned, in gamblers and thieves hanged by the law. The stories he collected were different. Deaths no one could account for. Folks with throats tore out. Bodies all mutilated and ripped up, or else too far rotted for anyone to know just how they’d died. Bodies unmarked as well, found dead for no reason anyone could find, found with wounds too small to notice at first, found whole but bloodless. Between the two ledgers, there must have been fifty or sixty stories, nine months’ worth of death drawn from the whole length of the lower Mississippi.

  Briefly Abner Marsh was afraid, sick at heart at the thought that perhaps Joshua was saving accounts of his own vile deeds. But a moment’s thought proved that could not be. Some, perhaps, but in other cases the dates were wrong; Joshua had been with him in St. Louis or New Albany or aboard the Fevre Dream when these people met their ghastly ends. He could not be responsible.

  Still, Marsh saw, there was a pattern to the stops York had ordered, to his secretive trips ashore. He was visiting the sites of these stories, one by one. What was York looking for? What . . . or who? An enemy? An enemy who had done all this, somehow, moving up and down the river? If so, then Joshua was on the side of right. But why the silence, if his purpose was just?

  It had to be more than one enemy, Marsh realized. No single person could be responsible for all the killing in those ledgers, and Joshua had said “enemies,” after all. Besides, he had come back from New Madrid with blood on his hands, but that did not end his quest.

  He could not make sense of it.

  Marsh began to go through the drawers and storage nooks in York’s desk. Paper, fancy stationery impressed with a picture of the Fevre Dream and the name of the line, envelopes, ink, a half-dozen pens, a blotter, a map of the river system with marks on it, boot polish, sealing wax: in short, nothing useful. In one drawer he found letters, and turned to them hopefully. But they told him nothing. Two were letters of credit, the rest simple business correspondence with agents in London, New York, St. Louis, and other cities. Marsh did come on one letter from a banker in St. Louis bringing Fevre River Packets to York’s attention. “I think it best suited to your purposes as you describe them,” the man had written. “Its owner is an experienced riverman with a reputation for honesty, said to be exceedingly ugly but fair, and he has recently had reverses which should make him receptive to your offer.” The letter went on, but told Marsh nothing he had not already known.

  Replacing the letters as he had found them, Abner Marsh rose and moved about the cabin, looking for something else, something to enlighten him. He found nothing; clothing in the drawers, York’s vile-tasting drink in the wine rack, suits hung in the closet, books everywhere. M
arsh checked the titles of the volumes by York’s bedside; one was a book of poetry by Shelley, the other some sort of medical book he could scarcely understand a line of. The tall bookcase offered more of the same; much fiction and poetry, a fair amount of history, books on medicine and philosophy and natural science, a dusty old tome on alchemy, an entire shelf of books in foreign languages. A few untitled books, hand-bound in finely tooled leather with gold-leaf pages, presented themselves, and Marsh pulled one out, hoping this might be the diary or log to answer his questions. But if it was, he could not read it; the words were in some grotesque, spindly code, and the hand was clearly not Joshua’s airy script but rather crabbed and tiny.

  Marsh went through the cabin one final time, to make sure he had overlooked nothing, and finally determined to leave, not much wiser than he had come. He inserted the key in the lock, turned it carefully, snuffed the lamp, stepped outside, and relocked the door behind him. It had gotten a trifle cooler outside. Marsh realized that he was drenched in sweat. He slipped the key back into his coat pocket and turned to go.

  And stopped.

  A few yards away, the ghastly old woman Katherine was standing and staring at him, cold malevolence in her eyes. Marsh decided to brazen it out. He tipped his cap. “Good evening, ma’am,” he said to her.

  Katherine smiled slowly, a creeping rictus of a smile that twisted her vulpine face into a mask of terrible glee. “Good evening, Captain,” she said. Her teeth, Marsh noted, were yellow, and very long.

  CHAPTER TEN

  New Orleans,

  August 1857

  After Adrienne and Alain had departed on the steamer Cotton Queen, bound for Baton Rouge and Bayou Sara, Damon Julian decided to take a stroll along the levee to a French coffee stall he knew. Sour Billy Tipton walked uneasily beside him, casting suspicious glances at everyone they passed. The rest of Julian’s party followed; Kurt and Cynthia walked together, while Armand brought up the rear, furtive and ill-at-ease, already touched by the thirst. Michelle was back at the house.