George Martin - Fevre Dream

“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.”