George Martin - Fevre Dream

York ignored that. “I can see a ripple on the water as easily as I can see a woodyard, if I know what to look for. Mister Framm, if you can’t teach me the river, I’ll find a pilot who can. I remind you that I am the owner and master of the Fevre Dream.”

Framm glanced around again, frowning now. “More work by night,” he said. “If you want to learn by night, it’ll cost you eight hundred.”

York’s expression melted into a slow smile. “Done,” he said. “Now, let us begin.”

Karl Framm pushed back his slouchy hat until it sat on the back of his head, and gave a long sigh, like a man who was inordinately put upon. “All right,” he said, “it’s your money, and your boat too. Don’t come botherin’ me when you tear out her bottom. Now listen up. The river runs pretty straight from St. Louis down to Cairo, before the Ohio comes in. But you got to know it anyhow. This here stretch is called the graveyard from time to time, cause a lot of boats went down here. Some, you can still see the chimneys peeping up above the water, or the whole damn wreck lyin’ in the mud if the river’s low-the ones that are down under the waterline, though, you better know where they lie, or the next damn boat comin’ down is goin’ to have to know where you lie. You got to learn your marks, too, and how to handle the boat. Here, step on up and take the wheel, get the feel of her. You couldn’t touch bottom with a church steeple right now, it’s safe enough.” York and Framm changed places. “Now, the first point below St. Louis…” Framm began. Abner Marsh sat himself down on the couch, listening, while the pilot went on and on, meandering from the marks to tricks of steering to long stories about the steamers that lay sunken in the graveyard they were running. He was a colorful storyteller, but after every tale he’d recollect the task at hand and meander back to the marks again. York drank it all in, quietlike. He seemed to pick up the knack of steering quickly, and whenever Framm stopped and asked him to repeat some bit of information, Joshua just reeled it back at him.

At length, after they’d caught and passed the side-wheeler that had been running ahead of them, Marsh found himself yawning. It was such a fine sharp night, though, that he hated to go to bed. He hoisted himself up and went down to the texas-tender, coming back with a pot of hot coffee and a plate of tarts. When he returned, Karl Framm was spinning the yarn about the wreck of the Drennan Whyte, lost above Natchez in ’50 with a treasure aboard her. The Evermonde tried to raise her, caught fire and went to the bottom. The Ellen Adams, a salvage steamer, came looking for the treasure in ’51, struck a bar and half sank. “The treasure’s cursed, y’see,” Framm was saying, “either that or that old devil river just don’t want to give it up.”

Marsh smiled and poured the coffee. “Joshua,” he said, “that story’s true enough, but don’t you go believing everything he says. This man’s the most notorious liar on the river.”

“Why, Cap’n!” Framm said, grinning. He turned back to the river. “See that old cabin yonder, with the tumbly-down porch?” he said. “Good, cause you got to recollect it…” and he was off again. It was a solid twenty minutes before he got distracted by the story of E. Jenkins, the steamer that was thirty miles long, with hinges in the middle so it could make the turns in the river. Even Joshua York gave Framm an incredulous look for that one. But he was smiling.

Marsh retired about an hour after he’d eaten the last of the tarts. Framm was amusing enough, but he’d take his lessons by day, when he could damn well see the marks the pilot was talking about.

When he woke, it was morning and the Fevre Dream was at Cape Girardeau, taking on a load of grist. Framm had elected to put in there sometime during the night, he learned, when some fog closed in around them. Cape Girardeau was a haughty town perched up on its bluffs, some 150 miles below St. Louis, and Marsh did some figuring and was pleased with their time. It was no record, but it was good.

Within the hour the Fevre Dream was back on the river, heading downstream. The July sun was fierce overhead, the air thick with heat and humidity and insects, but up on the texas deck it was cool and serene. Stops were frequent. With eighteen big boilers to keep hot, the steamer ate wood like nobody’s business, but fuel was never a problem; woodyards dotted both banks regularly. Whenever they got low the mate would signal up to the pilot, and they’d put in near some ramshackle little cabin surrounded by big stacks of split beech or oak or chestnut, and Marsh or Jonathon Jeffers would go ashore and dicker with the woodyard man. When they gave the signal, the deckhands would swarm ashore at those cords of wood, and in three blinks of your eye it would be gone, stowed aboard the steamer. Cabin passengers always liked to watch the wooding operations from the railings on the boiler deck. Deck passengers always liked to get in the way.

They stopped at all manner of towns as well, causing no end of excitement. They stopped at an unmarked landing to discharge one passenger, and a private dock to pick one up. Around noon they stopped for a woman and child who hailed them from a bank, and close to four they had to slow and back their wheels so three men in a rowboat could catch them and clamber aboard. The Fevre Dream didn’t run far that day, or fast. By the time the westering sun was turning the broad waters a deep burnished red, they were in sight of Cairo, and Dan Albright chose to tie up there for the night.

South of Cairo the Ohio flowed into the Mississippi, and the two rivers made an odd sight. They wouldn’t merge all at once, but kept each to itself, the clear blue flow of the Ohio a bright ribbon down the eastern bank, against the murkier brown waters of the Mississippi. Here too was where the lower river took on its own peculiar character; from Cairo to New Orleans and the Gulf, a distance of nearly 1100 miles, the Mississippi coiled and looped and bent round and about like a writhing snake, changing its course at the merest whim, eating through the soft soil unpredictably, sometimes leaving docks high and dry, or putting whole towns under water. The pilots claimed the river was never the same twice. The upper Mississippi, where Abner Marsh had been born and had learned his trade, was an entirely different place, confined between high, rocky bluffs and running straight as often as not. Marsh stood up on the hurricane deck for a long time, looking at the passing scenery and trying to feel the difference of it, and the difference it would make to his future. He had crossed from the upper river to the lower, he thought, and into a new part of his life.

Shortly after, Marsh was jawing with Jeffers in the clerk’s office when he heard the bell sound three times, the signal for a landing. He frowned, and looked out Jeffers’ window. Nothing was visible except densely wooded banks. “I wonder why we’re landin’,” Marsh said. “New Madrid’s the next stop. I may not know this part of the river, but this sure ain’t New Madrid.”

Jeffers shrugged. “Perhaps we were hailed.”

Marsh begged his pardon and went on up to the pilot house. Dan Albright was at the wheel. “Was there a hail?” Marsh asked.

“No, sir,” answered Albright. He was a laconic sort. He answered what you asked him, barely.

“Where we stopping?”

“Woodyard, Cap’n.”

Marsh saw there was indeed a woodyard up ahead, on the west bank. “Mister Albright, I do believe we wooded up not an hour ago. We can’t have burned it all already. Did Hairy Mike ask you to land?” The mate was supposed to keep track of when a steamer needed wood.

“No, sir. This is Captain York’s order. The word was passed along that I was to put in at this particular woodyard, whether we wanted wood or not.” Albright glanced over. He was a trim little fellow, with a thin dark moustache, a red silk tie, and patent leather boots. “Are you telling me to pass by?”