Fevre Dream Read online

  “I know exactly what it was, Abner,” Joshua replied. He did not sound especially angry. “I have been here nearly the whole time. When I noticed that Valerie had left the saloon, I went in search of her, and I heard your voices as I came up the stairs.”

  “I never heard you,” Marsh said.

  Joshua smiled. “I can be very quiet when it suits my purposes, Abner.”

  “That woman,” Marsh said. “She’s . . . she offered to . . . hell, she’s just a goddamned . . .” The words would not come. “She ain’t no lady,” he finished weakly. “Put her off, Joshua, her and Ortega both.”

  “No.”

  “Why the hell not?” Marsh roared. “You heard her!”

  “It makes no difference,” Joshua said calmly. “If anything, what I heard makes me cherish her all the more. It was for me, Abner. She cares for me more than I had hoped, more than I dared expect.”

  Abner Marsh cussed furiously. “You ain’t makin’ one goddamned bit of sense.”

  Joshua smiled softly. “Perhaps not. This is not your concern, Abner. Leave Valerie to me. She will not cause trouble again. She was only afraid.”

  “Afraid of New Orleans,” Marsh said. “Of vampires. She knows.”

  “Yes.”

  “You sure you can handle whatever we’re steamin’ into?” Marsh said. “If you want to skip New Orleans, say so, damn it! Valerie thinks . . .”

  “What do you think, Abner?” York asked.

  Marsh looked at him for a long, long time. Then he said, “I think we’re going to New Orleans,” and both of them smiled.

  And so it was that the Fevre Dream steamed into New Orleans the next morning, with dapper Dan Albright at her wheel and Abner Marsh standing proudly out on her bridge in his captain’s coat and his new cap. The sun burned hot in a blue, blue sky and every little snag and bluff reef was marked by golden ripples on the water, so the piloting came easy and the steamer made crack time. The New Orleans levee was jammed with steamers and all manner of sailing ships; the river was alive to the music of their whistles and bells. Marsh leaned on his walking stick and watched the city loom large ahead, listening to the Fevre Dream call out to the other boats with her landing bell and her loud, wild whistle. He had been to New Orleans many a time in his days on the river, but never like this, standing on the bridge of his own steamer, the biggest and fanciest and fleetest boat in sight. He felt like the lord of creation.

  Once they had tied up on the levee, though, there was work to do; freight to unload, consignments to hunt up for the return trip to St. Louis, advertisements to take in the local papers. Marsh decided that the company ought to see about opening a regular office down here, so he busied himself looking at likely sites and making arrangements for starting a bank account and hiring an agent. That night he dined at the St. Charles Hotel with Jonathon Jeffers and Karl Framm, but his mind kept wandering away from the food to the dangers that Valerie had seemed so afraid of, and he wondered what Joshua York was up to. When Marsh returned to the steamer, Joshua was talking with his companions in the texas parlor, and nothing seemed amiss, though Valerie—seated by his side—looked somewhat sullen and abashed. Marsh went to sleep and put the whole thing from his mind, and in the days that followed he hardly thought on it at all. The Fevre Dream kept him too busy by day, and by night he dined well in the city, bragged up his boat over drinks in taverns near the levee, strolled through the Vieux Carré admiring the lovely Creole ladies and all the courtyards and fountains and balconies. New Orleans was as fine as he remembered, Marsh thought at first.

  But then, gradually, a disquiet began to grow in him, a vague sense of wrongness that made him look at familiar things from new eyes. The weather was beastly; by day the heat was oppressive, the air thick and wet once you shut yourself off from the cool river breezes. Day and night, fumes rose up stinking from the open sewers, rich rotten odors that wafted off the standing water like some vile perfume. No wonder New Orleans was so often taken by yellow fever, Marsh thought. The city was full of free men of color and lovely young quadroons and octaroons and griffes who dressed as fine as white women. But it was full of slaves as well. You saw them everywhere, running errands for their masters, sitting or milling forlornly in the slave pens on Moreau and Common streets, going in long chained lines to and from the great exchanges, cleaning out the gutters. Even down by the steamer landing, you couldn’t escape the signs of slavery; the grand side-wheelers that plied the New Orleans trade were always taking black folks up and down the river, and Abner Marsh saw them come and go whenever he went down to the Fevre Dream. The slaves rode in chains as often as not, sitting together miserably amidst the cargo, sweating in the heat of the furnaces.

  “I don’t like it none,” Marsh complained to Jonathon Jeffers. “It ain’t clean. And I tell you, I won’t have none of it on the Fevre Dream. Nobody is goin’ to stink up my boat with that kind of stuff, you hear?”

  Jeffers gave him a wry look of appraisal. “Why, Cap’n, if we don’t traffic in slaves, we stand to lose a pile of money. You’re sounding like an abolitionist.”

  “I ain’t no damned abolitionist,” Marsh said hotly, “but I mean what I said. If a gentleman wants to bring a slave or two along, servants and such, that’s fine. I’ll take ’em cabin passage or deck passage, don’t matter none to me. But we ain’t goin’ to take ’em as freight, all chained up by some goddamned trader.”

  By their seventh night in New Orleans, Abner Marsh felt strangely sick of the city, and anxious to be off. That night Joshua York came down to supper with some river charts in his hand. Marsh had seen very little of his partner since their arrival. “How do you fancy New Orleans?” Marsh asked York as the other seated himself.

  “The city is lovely,” York replied in an oddly troubled voice that made Marsh look up from the roll he was buttering. “I have nothing but admiration for the Vieux Carré. It is utterly unlike the other river towns we’ve seen, almost European, and some of the houses in the American section are grand as well. Nonetheless, I do not like it here.”

  Marsh frowned. “Why’s that?”

  “I have a bad feeling, Abner. This city—the heat, the bright colors, the smells, the slaves—it is very alive, this New Orleans, but inside I think it is rotten with sickness. Everything is so rich and beautiful here, the cuisine, the manners, the architecture, but beneath that . . .” He shook his head. “You see all those lovely courtyards, each boasting an exquisite well. And then you see the teamsters selling river water from barrels, and you realize that the well water is unfit to drink. You savor the rich sauces and the spices of the food, and then you learn that the spices are intended to disguise the fact that the meat is going bad. You wander through the St. Louis and cast your eyes upon all that marble and that delightful dome with the light pouring through it down onto the rotunda, and then you learn it is a famous slave mart where humans are sold like cattle. Even the graveyards are places of beauty here. No simple tombstones or wooden crosses, but great marble mausoleums, each prouder than the last, with statuary atop them and fine poetic sentiments inscribed in stone. But inside every one is a rotting corpse, full of maggots and worms. They must be imprisoned in stone because the ground is no good even for burying, and graves fill up with water. And pestilence hangs over this beautiful city like a pall.

  “No, Abner,” Joshua said with an odd, distant look in his gray eyes, “I love beauty, but sometimes a thing lovely to behold conceals vileness and evil within. The sooner we are quit of this city, the better I shall like it.”

  “Hell,” said Abner Marsh. “Damned if I can say why, but I feel just the same way. Don’t fret, we can get out of here real quick.”

  Joshua York grimaced. “Good,” he said. “But first, I have one final task.” He moved aside his plate and opened the chart he had brought to the table with him. “Tomorrow at dusk, I want to take the Fevre Dream downriver.”

  “Downriver?” Marsh said in astonishment. “Hell, ain’t nothin’ downstream of here for
us. Some plantations, lots of Cajuns, swamps and bayous and then the Gulf.”

  “Look,” said York. His finger traced a path down the Mississippi. “We follow the river down around through here, turn off onto this bayou and proceed about a half-dozen miles to here. It won’t take us long, and we can return the next night to pick up our passengers for St. Louis. I want to make a brief landing here.” He jabbed.

  Abner Marsh’s ham steak was set in front of him, but he ignored it, leaning over to see where Joshua was pointing.

  “Cypress Landing,” he read from the chart. “Well, I don’t know.” He looked around the main cabin, three-quarters empty now with no passengers aboard. Karl Framm, Whitey Blake, and Jack Ely were eating down to the far end of the table. “Mister Framm,” Marsh called out, “come on down here a minute.” When Framm arrived, Marsh pointed out the route York had traced. “Can you pilot us downriver, and up this here bayou? Or do we draw too much?”

  Framm shrugged. “Some of them bayoux is pretty wide and deep, others you’d have trouble gettin’ up with a yawl, let alone a steamer. But probably I can do it. There’s landings and plantations down there, and other steamers get to ’em. Most of ’em ain’t so big as this lady, though. It’ll be slow goin’, I know that. We’ll have to sound all the way, and be real careful of snags and sandbars, and likely as not we’ll have to saw off a mess of tree limbs if we don’t want ’em knockin’ off our chimneys.” He leaned over to look at the chart. “Where we goin’? I been down that way once or twice.”

  “Place called Cypress Landing,” said Marsh.

  Framm pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Shouldn’t be too bad. That’s the old Garoux plantation. Steamers used to put in there regular, takin’ sweet potaters and sugar cane to N’Orleans. Garoux died, though, him and his whole family, and Cypress Landing ain’t been heard of much since. Although, now that I recollect, there’s some funny stories about them parts. Why we goin’ there?”

  “A personal matter,” said Joshua York. “Just see that we get there, Mister Framm. We’ll leave tomorrow at dusk.”

  “You’re the cap’n,” Framm said. He went on back to his meal.

  “Where the hell is my milk?” Abner Marsh complained. He looked around. The waiter, a slender Negro youth, lingered at the kitchen door. “Come on with my supper,” Marsh bellowed at him, and the boy started visibly. Marsh turned back to York. “This trip,” he said. “Is it—part of that thing you told me about?”

  “Yes,” York said curtly.

  “Dangerous?” Marsh asked.

  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 . . .”