Fevre Dream Read online

  Karl Framm fought on the river, too. Marsh heard that he died in the fighting at Vicksburg, but he never knew for sure.

  When peace came, Marsh returned to St. Louis, and took the Eli Reynolds into the upper Mississippi trade. He formed a brief association with the owner/captains of four rival boats, setting up a packet line with regular schedules to compete more effectively with the larger companies that ruled the upper river. But they were all strong-willed, stubborn men, and after a half year of quarrels and bluster the company was dissolved. By that time Abner Marsh found he had no appetite for the steamboat business anymore. The river had changed, somehow. After the war, there didn’t seem to be a third as many steamers as there had been before it, yet the competition was fiercer, since the railroads were taking up more and more of the trade. Now when you steamed into St. Louis, you found maybe a dozen steamers along the levee, where once they had been crammed in for more than a mile. There were other changes as well, in those years following the war. Coal began to crowd out wood just about everywhere except on the wilder reaches of the Missouri. Federal regulators moved in with rules and laws that had to be followed, safety checks and registers and all manner of stuff, and even tried to prohibit racing. The steamboatmen changed too. Most of the men Marsh had known were dead or retired now, and those who took their places were strangers with strange ways. The old boisterous, cussing, free-spending, wild riverman who slapped you on the back, bought you drinks all night, and told you outrageous lies was a dying breed now. Even Natchez-under-the-hill was only a ghost of its former self, Marsh heard, nearly as sedate as the city on top of the hill with all its proper mansions with their fancy names.

  One night in May of 1868, more than ten years after he had last seen Joshua York and the Fevre Dream, Abner Marsh took a walk along the levee. He thought back on the night when he and Joshua had first met, and walked along this same landing—the steamers had been crowded in then, great proud big side-wheelers and tough little stern-wheelers, old boats and new ones, and the Eclipse had been there among them, tied up to her wharfboat. Now the Eclipse had become a wharfboat herself, and there were boys on this river who called themselves strikers and mud-clerks and cub pilots who had never laid eyes on her. And the landing was nearly empty. Marsh stood and counted. Five boats. Six, if you counted the Eli Reynolds. The Reynolds was so old now that Marsh was half-afraid to take her out on the river. She must be the oldest damn steamboat in the world, he thought, with the oldest captain, and him and her were both just as tired.

  The Great Republic was taking on freight. She was a huge new side-wheeler that had come out of some Pittsburgh boatyard the year before. They said she was 335 feet long, which made her the biggest steamer on the river now that the Eclipse and the Fevre Dream were both gone and forgotten. She was grand, too. Marsh had looked her over a dozen times, and gone aboard her once. Her pilot house was surrounded with all kinds of fancy trim and had an ornate cupola on top of it, and the paintings and glass and polished wood and carpets inside her were enough to break your heart. She was supposed to be the finest, prettiest steamboat ever built, luxurious enough to put all the older boats to shame. But she wasn’t especially fast, Marsh had heard, and she was said to be losing money at a frightening rate. He stood with his arms folded against his chest, looking gruff and stern in his severe black coat, and he watched the roustabouts load her up. The rousters were black, every man among them. That was another change. All the roustabouts on the river were blacks now. The immigrants who’d worked as rousters and stokers and deckers before the war were gone, Marsh didn’t know where, and the freedmen had taken their places.

  As they worked, the rousters sung. Their song was a low, melancholy chant. The night is dark, the day is long, it went. And we are far from home. Weep, my brothers, weep. Marsh knew the chant. There was another verse, one that went, The night is past, the long day done, And we are going home. Shout, my brothers, shout. But they were not singing that verse. Not tonight, here on the empty steamer landing, loading up a boat that was spanking new and plush as any but still couldn’t get enough trade. Watching them, listening, it seemed to Abner Marsh as if the whole river was dying, and him with it. He had seen enough dark nights and long days for the rest of his time on earth, and he was no longer certain he even had a home.

  Abner Marsh walked slowly away from the landing back to his hotel. The next day he discharged his officers and crew, dissolved Fevre River Packets, and put the Eli Reynolds up for sale.

  Marsh took what money he had, left St. Louis entirely, and bought a small house in his old hometown, Galena, within sight of the river. Only it wasn’t the Fevre River any more. They’d gone and changed it to the Galena River, years ago, and now everyone was calling it that. The new name had better associations, folks said. Abner Marsh went on calling it the Fevre, like it was called when he was a boy.

  He didn’t do much in Galena. He read a lot of newspapers. That had gotten to be a habit with him, during the years he was searching for Joshua, and he liked to keep up with the fast boats and their times. There were still a few of them. The Robert E. Lee had come out of New Albany in 1866, and was a real heller. The Wild Bob Lee, some rivermen called her, or just the Bad Bob. And Cap’n Tom Leathers, as tough and mean and cussed a riverman as ever captained a steamer, had launched a new Natchez in 1869, the sixth of that name. Leathers named all his steamboats Natchez. The new Natchez was faster than any of the earlier ones, according to the papers. She cut through the water like a knife, and Leathers was bragging all up and down the river how he was going to show up Cap’n John Cannon and his Wild Bob Lee. The newspapers were full of it. He could smell a race coming on even clear up in Illinois, and it sounded like one they’d talk about for years. “I’d like to see that goddamned race,” he said to the woman he’d hired to clean house for him one day. “Neither of ’em would have a chance against the Eclipse, though, you got my word on that.”

  “Both of ’em got better times than your ol’ Eclipse,”she said. She liked to sass him, that woman.

  Marsh snorted. “Don’t mean nothin’. River’s shorter now. River gets shorter every year. Pretty soon you’ll be able to walk from St. Louis to New Orleans.”

  Marsh read more than just newspapers. Thanks to Joshua, he’d worked up a taste for poetry, of all the damn things, and he looked at an occasional novel, too. He also took up wood carving, and made himself detailed models of his steamboats, as he remembered them. He painted them and everything, and did them all to the same scale, so you could put them alongside each other and see how big they’d been. “That was my Elizabeth A.,”he told his housekeeper proudly the day he finished the sixth and biggest model. “As sweet a boat as ever moved down the river. She would have set records, except for that damned ice jam. You can see how big she was, near three hundred feet. Look at how she dwarfs my ol’ Nick Perrot there.” He pointed. “And that’s the Sweet Fevre, and the Dunleith—had a lot of trouble with the larboard engine on her, a lot of trouble—and next to her that’s my Mary Clarke. She blew her boilers.” Marsh shook his head. “Killed a lot of people, too. Maybe it was my fault. I don’t know. I think about it sometimes. The little one on the end is the Eli Reynolds. Not much to look at, but she was a tough ol’ gal. She took everything I could give her, and a lot more, and kept her steam up and her wheel turning. You know how long she lasted, that little ugly stern-wheeler?”

  “No,” the housekeeper said. “Didn’t you have some other boat, too? A real fancy one? I heard—”

  “Never mind what you heard, goddamn it. Yes, I had another boat. The Fevre Dream. Named her after the river.”

  The housekeeper made a rude noise at him. “No wonder this ain’t never become the town it might have, with folks like you goin’ on about the Fevre River. They must think we’re all sick up here. Why didn’t you call it right? It’s named the Galena River now.”

  Abner Marsh snorted. “Changing the goddamn name of the goddamn river, I never heard of such goddamned foolishness. Far
as I’m concerned it’s the Fevre River and it’s goin’ to stay the Fevre River no matter what the hell the goddamned mayor says.” He scowled. “Or you neither. Hell, the way they’re lettin’ it silt up pretty soon it’s goin’ to be the goddamned Galena Creek!”

  “Such language. I’d think a man who reads poetry would be able to keep a civil tongue in his head.”

  “Never mind about my goddamned tongue,” Marsh said. “And don’t go yapping that poetry around town neither, you hear? I knew a man who liked those poems, that’s the only reason I got them books. You just stop buttin’ your nose in and keep my steamboats clean of dust.”

  “Certainly. Will you be making a model of that other boat, do you think? The Fevre Dream?”

  Marsh settled into a big overstuffed chair and frowned. “No,” he said. “No, I ain’t. That’s one boat I just want to forget about. So you just get to dusting and stop pesterin’ me with your damned fool questions.” He picked up a newspaper and began to read about the Natchez and Leathers’s latest boast. His housekeeper made a clucking noise and finally commenced to dusting.

  His house had a high round turret facing south. At evening, Marsh would often go up there, with a glass of wine or a cup of coffee, sometimes a piece of pie. He didn’t eat like he used to, not since the war. Food just didn’t seem to taste the same. He was still a big man, but he had lost at least a hundred pounds since his days with Joshua and the Fevre Dream. His flesh hung loose on him everywhere, like he’d bought it a couple sizes too large, expecting it to shrink. He had big droopy jowls, too. “Makes me even uglier than I used to be,” he would growl when he glanced in a mirror.

  Sitting by his turret window, Marsh could see the river. He spent a lot of nights there, reading, drinking, and looking out on the water. The river was pretty in the moonlight, flowing past him, on and on, like it had flowed before he was born, like it would flow after he was dead and buried. Seeing it made Marsh feel peaceful, and he treasured that feeling. Most of the time he just felt weary or melancholy. He had read one poem by Keats that said there wasn’t nothing as sad as a beautiful thing dying, and it seemed to Marsh sometimes that every goddamned beautiful thing in the world was withering away. Marsh was lonely, too. He had been on the river so many years that he had no real friends left in Galena. He never had visitors, never talked to anyone but his damned annoying housekeeper. She vexed him considerably, but Marsh didn’t really mind; it was about all he had left to keep his blood hot. Sometimes he thought his life was over, and that made him so angry he turned red. He still had so many goddamned things he’d never done, so much unfinished business . . . but there was no denying that he was getting old. He used to carry that old hickory walking stick to gesture with, and be fashionable. Now he had an expensive gold-handled cane to help him walk better. And he had wrinkles around his eyes and even between his warts, and a funny kind of brown spot on the back of his left hand. He’d look at it sometimes and wonder how it had got there. He’d never noticed. Then he would cuss and pick up a newspaper or a book.

  Marsh was sitting in his parlor, reading a book by Mister Dickens about his travels on the river and through America, when his housekeeper brought in the letter to him. He grunted with surprise, and slammed down the Dickens book, muttering under his breath, “Goddamn fool of a Britisher, like to chuck him in the goddamn river.” He took the letter and ripped it open, letting the envelope flutter to the floor. Getting a letter was pretty rare by itself, but this one was queerer still; it had been addressed to Fevre River Packets in St. Louis, and forwarded on up to Galena. Abner Marsh unfolded the crisp, yellowing paper, and suddenly sucked in his breath.

  It was old stationery, and he remembered it well. He’d had it printed up some thirteen years before, to put in the desk drawer of every stateroom on his steamer. Across the top was a fancy pen-and-ink drawing of a great side-wheel steamer, and FEVRE DREAM in curved, ornate letters. He knew the hand too, that graceful, flowing hand. The message was short:

  Dear Abner,

  I have made my choice.

  If you are well and willing, meet me in New Orleans as soon as possible. You will find me at the Green Tree on Gallatin Street.

  —Joshua

  “Goddamn it to hell!” Marsh swore. “After all this time, does that damned fool think he can just send me some goddamned letter and make me come all the goddamned way down to New Orleans? And with never a word of explanation, neither! Who the hell does he think he is?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know!” his housekeeper said.

  Abner Marsh pulled himself to his feet. “Woman, where the hell did you go and put my white coat?” he roared.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  New Orleans,

  May 1870

  Gallatin Street by night looked like the main road through hell, Abner Marsh thought as he hurried along it. It was lined with dance halls, saloons, and whorehouses, all of them crowded, filthy, and raucous, and the sidewalks seethed with drunks and whores and cut-purses. The whores called after him as he walked, mocking invitations that turned to jeers when he ignored them. Rough, cold-eyed men with knives and brass knuckles appraised him with open contempt, and made Marsh wish he didn’t look quite so prosperous and quite so goddamned old. He crossed the street to avoid one throng of men standing in front of a dance hall and hefting live oak cudgels, and found himself in front of the Green Tree.

  It was a dance hall like all the others, a hellhole surrounded by other hellholes. Marsh pushed his way inside. The interior was crowded, smoky, and dim. Couples moved through the bluish haze, shuffling vaguely in time to the loud, cheap music. One of the men, a thickly-built unshaven lout in a red flannel shirt, staggered around the dance floor with a partner who looked to be unconscious. The man was squeezing her breast through her thin calico dress as he supported her and dragged her about. The other dancers all ignored them. The women were all typical dance hall girls, in faded calico shifts and tattered slippers. As Marsh looked on, the man in the red shirt stumbled and dropped his partner and collapsed on top of her, and a hoot of laughter went up. He cussed and got unsteadily to his feet while the woman lay sprawled out. Then, as the laughing subsided, he leaned over her and grabbed her by the front of her dress, and pulled. The cloth ripped, and he yanked the garment off and tossed it aside, grinning. She had nothing on underneath except for a red garter around one white, meaty thigh, with a little dagger stuck through it. The pommel was pink and heart-shaped. The man in the red shirt had started unbuttoning his pants when two bouncers moved in on either side of him. They were massive red-faced men with brass knuckles and thick wooden clubs. “Take ’er upstairs,” one of them growled. The man in the red shirt started cussing a streak, but finally he lifted the woman onto a shoulder and staggered off through the smoke, accompanied by more laughter.

  “Want to dance, Mister?” a slurred female voice whispered in Marsh’s ear. He turned and scowled. The woman must have weighed as much as he did. She was pasty white and naked as the day she was born, except for a little leather belt with two knives hanging from it. She smiled and stroked Marsh’s cheek before he turned away from her abruptly and pushed through the crowd. He made a circuit of the room, trying to find Joshua. In one particularly noisy corner a dozen men were crowded around a wooden box, belching and swearing as they watched a rat fight. Around the bar men stood two deep, near every one of them armed and glowering. Marsh muttered apologies and pushed past a weedy looking fellow with a garrote looped through his belt, who was talking intently to a short man wearing a brace of pistols. The man with the garrote stopped and eyed Marsh unpleasantly, until the other shouted something at him and drew him back into conversation. “Whiskey,” Marsh demanded, leaning against the bar.

  “This whiskey will rot a hole in your stomach, Abner,” the barkeeper said softly, his quiet voice penetrating right through the din. Abner Marsh let his mouth fall open. The man behind the bar smiling at him wore rough-woven baggy trousers held up by a cord belt, a white shirt so dirty
it was almost gray, and a black vest. But the face was the same as it had been thirteen years before, pale and unlined, framed by that straight white hair, a bit messy now. Joshua York’s gray eyes seemed to shine with their own light in the dimness of the dance hall. He extended his hand across the bar, and clasped Marsh on the arm. “Come upstairs,” he said urgently, “where we can talk.”

  As he came around the bar, the other barkeep stared at him, and a wiry weasel-faced man in a dark suit charged up to him and said, “Where the hell you goin’? Git back there an’ pour them whiskeys!”

  “I quit,” Joshua told him.

  “Quit? I’ll hev yer damned throat slit!”

  “Will you?” said Joshua. He waited, looking around the suddenly hushed room and challenging them all with his eyes. No one moved. “I’ll be upstairs with my friend if any of you care to try,” he said to the half-dozen bouncers who lined the bar. Then he took Marsh by the elbow and led him through the dancers to a narrow back stair. Upstairs was a short hall lit by a single flickering gas jet, and a half-dozen rooms. Noises were coming from behind one closed door, grunting and moaning. Another door was open, and a man was sprawled in front of it, face down, half-in and half-out of the room. As he stepped over him, Marsh saw that it was the red-shirted man from downstairs. “What the hell happened to him?” Marsh said loudly.

  Joshua York shrugged. “Bridget probably woke up, clubbed him, and took his money. She is a real darling. I believe she’s killed at least four men with that little knife of hers. She carves notches on that heart.” He grimaced. “When it comes to bloodshed, Abner, my people have very little to teach your own.”

  Joshua opened the door to an empty room. “In here, if you will.” He shut it behind them, after turning on one of the lamps.