George Martin - Fevre Dream

Abner Marsh scowled. “You tell your boy Tom that he better stop telling such stories, or he’s goin’ to be stokin’ the middle larboard on somebody else’s steamer.” Hairy Mike nodded, brought his iron billet into his other hand with a meaty thwack, and turned to go. But Marsh stopped him. “No,” he said. “Wait. You tell him not to go spreadin’ no stories. But if he sees anything else funny, he should come to you, or to me. Tell him we’ll give him a half-dollar.”

“He’ll lie for the half-dollar.”

“Well, forget the half-dollar then, but you tell him the rest of it.”

The more Abner thought about Tom’s story, the more it bothered him. He was just as glad that Joshua York was going to install Simon as bartender, where he’d be out in public and a man could keep an eye on him. Marsh had never liked morticians, and Simon still reminded him of one something ungodly, when he didn’t remind him of one of their patrons, that is. He only hoped that Simon didn’t go licking up no mosquitoes while he was serving drinks to the cabin passengers. That kind of thing could ruin a boat’s reputation awful fast.

Marsh soon put the incident out of his mind, and plunged back into business. On the night before their scheduled departure, however, something else bothered him. He had called on Joshua York in his cabin to go over a few details of their trip. York was sitting at his desk, with his slim ivory-handled knife in hand, slicing an article out of a newspaper. He and Marsh chatted briefly for a few minutes about the business at hand, and Marsh was about to take his leave when he noticed a copy of the Democrat on York’s desk. “They were supposed to run one of our advertisements today,” Marsh said, reaching for the paper. “You finished with this, Joshua?”

York dismissed the paper with a wave of his hand. “Take it if you’d like,” he said.

Abner Marsh carried the paper under his arm to the main cabin, and paged through it while Simon made him a drink. He was annoyed. He couldn’t locate their advertisement. Of course, it might not be an omission; York had sliced out a story on the page that backed up the shipping news, so there was a hole just in the prime place. Marsh drained his glass, folded up the paper, and went forward to the clerk’s office.

“You got the latest number of the Democrat?” Marsh asked Jeffers. “I think that damn Blair left out my advertisement.”

“It’s there yonder,” Jeffers replied, “but he didn’t. Look on the shipping page.”

And sure enough, there it was, a box smack in the middle of a column of similar boxes:

The splendid fleet steamer Fevre Dream will leave for New Orleans, Louisiana, and all intermediate points and landings, on Thursday, making the best time and manned by all experienced officers and crew. For freight or passage, apply on board or at the company office at the foot of Pine St.

– Abner Marsh, presdn’t

Marsh inspected the advertisement, nodded, and flipped back a page, to see what Joshua York had cut out. The item looked to be a reprint lifted from some downriver paper, about some old no-count woodyard man found dead in his cabin on the river north of New Madrid. The mate of a steamer that had put in for wood found him, when no one answered their calls. Some thought that Indians did it, some others said wolves, since the body had been all ripped up, and half eaten. That was just about all it said.

“Something wrong, Cap’n Marsh?” Jeffers asked. “You got a queer look on your face.”

Marsh folded up Jeffers’ Democrat and stuck it under his arm with York’s. “No, nothin’, damn paper just spelled a couple things wrong.”

Jeffers smiled. “Are you certain? I know spelling isn’t your strong suit, Cap’n.”

“Don’t you go joshing me about that again, or I’ll chuck you over the side, Mister Jeffers,” Marsh replied. “I’m going to be takin’ your paper, if you don’t mind.”

“Go ahead,” Jeffers said, “I’d finished.”

Back at the bar Marsh reread the story about the woodyard man. Why should Joshua York be cutting out some item about some fool trash killed by wolves? Marsh couldn’t figure an answer, but it bothered him. He looked up and noticed Simon’s eyes on him in the big mirror over the bar. Marsh quickly folded up the Democrat again and stuffed it into a pocket. “Let me have a little glass of whiskey,” he said.

Marsh drank the whiskey straight down, and made a long “Aaaaaaah” as the burning spread down through his chest. It cleared his head a mite. There were ways he could find out more about this, but then again it wasn’t rightly his business what kind of newspaper stories Joshua York liked to read. Besides, he had given his word not to go prying into York’s business, and Abner Marsh fancied himself a man of his word. Resolute, Marsh set down his glass and moved away from the bar. He clomped down the grand, curving stair to the main deck, and tossed both newspapers into one of the dark furnaces. The deckhands looked at him strangely, but Marsh felt better immediately. A man shouldn’t go around entertaining suspicions about his partner, especially one as generous and well-mannered as Joshua York. “What are you lookin’ at?” he barked at the deckhands. “Ain’t you got no work to do? I’ll find Hairy Mike and see he gets you some!” Immediately the men were busy. Abner Marsh went back up to the main cabin and had himself another drink.

The next morning Marsh went over to Pine Street, to his company’s main office, and tended to business for several hours. He lunched at the Planters’ House, surrounded by old friends and old rivals, feeling grand. Marsh bragged up a storm about his steamer, and had to endure Farrell and O’Brien flapping their jaws about their boats, but that was all right, he just smiled and said, “Well, boys, maybe we’ll meet on the river. Wouldn’t that be grand?” Not a soul mentioned his previous misfortune, and three different men came up to his table and asked Marsh if he needed a pilot for the lower Mississippi. It was a fine couple of hours.

Strolling back to the river, Marsh chanced to pass a tailor’s shop. He hesitated, tugging at his beard thoughtfully while he mulled over an idea that had struck him real sudden. Then he went inside, grinning, and ordered up a new captain’s coat for himself. A white one, with a double row of silver buttons, just like Joshua’s. Marsh left two dollars on account, and arranged to pick up the coat when the Fevre Dream returned to St. Louis. He left feeling very satisfied with himself.

The riverfront was chaotic. A consignment of dry goods had arrived late, and the roustabouts were sweating to get it loaded up in time. Whitey had the steam up; tall white plumes were rising from the ’scape-pipes, and dark smoke rolled out of the chimneys’ flowered tops. The steamer to the left of the Fevre Dream was backing out, with great gouts of smoke and much whistle-blowing and shouting. And the big side-wheeler to the right was unloading freight onto its wharfboat, an old decrepit shell of a steamer tied permanently to the landing. All up and down the riverfront there were steamboats, as far as the eye could see in either direction, more boats than Marsh could count. Nine boats up was the luxurious, three-decked John Simonds, taking on passengers. Down from her was the side-wheeler Northern Light, with a picture of the Aurora painted gaudy on her paddle boxes; she was a brand new upper-Mississippi steamer, and the Northwestern Line said she was faster than any boat that had plied those waters yet. Coming downriver was the Grey Eagle, which the Northern Light was going to have to take to live up to her brag. There was the Northerner, and the crude, powerful stern-wheeler St. Joe, and the Die Vernon II, and the Natchez.