George Martin - Fevre Dream

“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…”

“I can,” he said, “and will. Well, Toby?”

The cook raised his head, saw York’s eyes, and nodded slowly. “Well, maybe… if they seed you wasn’t…”

Joshua studied the two black men for a long time. “Very well,” he said at last. “I will dine with you tomorrow afternoon, then. Have a place set for me.”

“Well I’ll be damned,” said Abner Marsh.

Aboard the Steamer Fevre Dream, New Orleans, August 1857

Joshua wore his white suit down to dinner, and Toby outdid himself. Word had gotten around, of course, and virtually the entire crew of the Fevre Dream was on hand. The waiters, neat as pins in their smart white jackets, glided to and fro, bearing Toby’s feast out from the kitchen on big steaming platters and fine china bowls. There was turtle soup and lobster salad, stuffed crabs and larded sweetbreads, oyster pie and mutton chops, terrapin, pan-fried chicken, turnips and stuffed peppers, roast beef and breaded veal cutlets, Irish potatoes and green corn and carrots and artichokes and snap beans, a profusion of rolls and breads, wine and spirits from the bar and fresh milk in from the city, plates of new-churned butter, and for dessert plum pudding and lemon pie and floating islands and sponge cake with chocolate sauce.

Abner Marsh had never had a better meal in his life. “Damn,” he said to York, “I wish you came to dinner more often, so we’d eat like this most every day.”

Joshua barely touched his food, however. In the bright light of day, he seemed a different person; shrunken somehow, less imposing. His fair skin took on an unhealthy pallor beneath the skylights, and Marsh thought there was a chalky grayish tinge to it. York’s movements seemed lethargic, and occasionally jerky, with none of that grace and power that was normally so much a part of him. But the biggest difference was in his eyes. Beneath the shade of the widebrimmed white hat he wore, his eyes appeared tired, infinitely tired. The pupils were shrunken down to tiny black pinpricks, and the gray around them was pale and faded, without the intensity Marsh had seen in them so often.

But he was there, and that seemed to make all the difference in the world. He had come out of his cabin in broad daylight, and walked across the open decks and down the stairs, and set himself down to dine before God, the crew, and everyone. Whatever stories and fears his night hours had given birth to seemed damned silly now, as the good light of day washed down on Joshua York and his fine white suit.

York was quiet through most of the meal, though he gave diffident answers whenever someone asked a question of him, and infrequently tossed a comment of his own into the table talk. When the desserts were served, he pushed his plate aside and put down his knife wearily. “Ask Toby to come out,” he said.

The cook came forward from the kitchen, spotted with flour and cooking oil. “Din’ you like the food, Cap’n York?” he asked. “You hardly et none of it.”

“It was fine, Toby. I’m afraid I don’t have much appetite at this time of day. I am here, however. I trust I’ve proved something.”

“Yessuh,” said Toby. “Won’t be no trouble now.”

“Excellent,” York said. When Toby had returned to his kitchen, York turned to Marsh. “I’ve decided to lay over another day,” he said. “We’ll steam out of here tomorrow at nightfall, not tonight.”

“Well, sure, Joshua,” Marsh said. “Pass me down another piece of that pie, will you?”