George Martin - Fevre Dream

“Yes? What?”

“The fever, sir. We heard yellow fever broke out on the Fevre Dream down to Bayou Sara. Folks were dyin’ like flies, we heard, just like flies. Mister Jeffers and you, we heard you had it, too. That’s why I never expected… with everyone dyin’ and all, we thought they’d burn her, Cap’n. The steamer.” He slipped off his eyeshade and scratched his head. “I guess you got over the fever, Cap’n. Glad to hear it. Only… if the Fevre Dream ain’t with you, where is she? Are you sure you didn’t come in on her, and maybe forget? I hear the fever can make a man awful absentminded.”

Abner Marsh scowled. “I ain’t had the fever, and I sure as hell can tell one steamboat from another, Mister Green. I came in on the Princess. I was sick for a week or so, all right, but it wasn’t no fever. I had the chills, on account of fallin’ in the goddamn river and almost drownin’. That’s how I lost the Fevre Dream, and now I aim to find her again, you hear me?” He snorted. “Where’d you hear all this stuff about yellow fever?”

“The crew, Cap’n, the ones who left her down in Bayou Sara. Some of ’em came in when they arrived in St. Louis, oh, ’bout a week ago it was. Some of ’em asked about jobs on the Eli Reynolds, Cap’n, but of course she’s all full up, so I had to let ’em go. I hope I done right. You weren’t here, of course, nor Mister Jeffers, and I thought maybe you was both dead, so I couldn’t get no instructions.”

“Never mind about that,” Marsh said. The news heartened him somewhat. If Julian and his pack had taken over Marsh’s steamer, at least some of his crew had gotten clear. “Who was here?”

“Why, I saw Jack Ely, the second engineer, and some waiters, and a couple of your strikers-Sam Kline and Sam Thompson, it was. There was a few others.”

“Any of them still around?”

Green shrugged. “When I didn’t hire ’em, they went looking around to other boats, Cap’n. I don’t know.”

“Damn,” Marsh said.

“Wait!” the agent said, raising a finger. “I know! Mister Albright, the pilot, he was one of ’em told me about the fever. He was here about four days ago, and he didn’t want no job-he’s a lower river pilot, you know, so the Eli Reynolds wasn’t for him. He said he was taking a room at the Planters’ House until he could find a position on one of the classier boats, a big side-wheeler like.”

“Albright, eh,” Marsh said. “What about Karl Framm? You see him?” If Framm and Albright had both left the Fevre Dream, the steamer shouldn’t be hard to find. Without qualified pilots, she couldn’t move.

But Green shook his head. “No. Ain’t seen Mister Framm.”

Marsh’s hopes sank. If Karl Framm was still aboard her, the Fevre Dream could be anywhere along the river. She might have gone off any one of a number of tributaries, or maybe the Fevre Dream had even steamed back down to New Orleans while he was laid up in that woodyard south of Bayou Sara. “I’m goin’ to pay a call on Dan Albright,” he told the agent. “While I’m gone, I want you to write some letters. To agents, pilots, anybody you know along the river, from here to New Orleans. Ask about the Fevre Dream. Somebody has got to have seen her. Steamer like that don’t just vanish. You write those letters up this afternoon, you hear, and get down to the landing and post them on the fastest boats you see. I aim to find my steamer.”

“Yes, sir,” the agent said. He got out a stack of paper and a pen, dipped it in the inkwell, and began to write.

The clerk at the Planters’ House desk bobbed his head in greeting. “Why, it’s Cap’n Marsh,” he said. “Heard about your misfortune, just awful, Bronze John’s a wicked one, that he is. I’m glad you’re better, Cap’n, I truly am.”

“Never mind about that,” Marsh said, annoyed. “What room is Dan Albright in?”

Albright had been polishing his boots. He let Marsh in with a cool, polite nod of greeting, took his seat again, stuck an arm into one boot, and resumed shining as if he’d never been called to the door.

Abner Marsh sat down heavily and wasted no time with pleasantries. “Why’d you leave the Fevre Dream?” he asked bluntly.

“Fever, Cap’n,” Albright said. He studied Marsh briefly, then went back to work on his boot without another word.

“Tell me about it, Mister Albright. I wasn’t there.”

Dan Albright frowned. “You weren’t? I understood you and Mister Jeffers found the first sick man.”

“You understood wrong. Now tell me.”

Albright polished his boots and told him; the storm, the supper, the body that Joshua York and Sour Billy Tipton and the other man had carried through the saloon, the flight of passengers and crew. He told it all in as few words as possible. When he was finished, his boots were gleaming. He slid them on.

“Everyone left?” Marsh said.

“No,” said Albright. “Some stayed. Some don’t know the fever as well as I do.”

“Who?”

Albright shrugged. “Cap’n York. His friends. Hairy Mike. The stokers and roustabouts, too. Reckon they were too scared of Mike to run off. Specially down in slave country. Whitey Blake might have stayed. You and Jeffers, I thought.”

“Mister Jeffers is dead,” said Marsh. Albright said nothing.

“What about Karl Framm?” Marsh asked.

“Can’t say.”

“You were partners.”

“We were different. I didn’t see him. I don’t know, Cap’n.”

Marsh frowned. “What happened after you took your wages?”

“I spent a day in Bayou Sara, then took a ride with Cap’n Leathers on the Natchez. I rode up to Natchez, looking over the river, spent about a week there, then came on up to St. Louis on the Robert Folk.”

“What happened to the Fevre Dream?”

“She left.”

“Left?”

“Steamed off, I figure. When I woke up, morning after the fever broke out, she was gone from Bayou Sara.”

“Without a crew?”

“Must have been enough left to run her,” Albright said.

“Where’d she go?”

Albright shrugged. “Didn’t see her from the Natchez. I could have missed her, though. Wasn’t looking. Maybe she went downstream.”

“You’re really quite a goddamn help, Mister Albright,” Marsh said.

Albright said, “Can’t tell you what I don’t know. Maybe they burned her. The fever. Never should have given her that name, I figure. Unlucky.”

Abner Marsh was losing patience. “She ain’t been burned,” he said. “She’s on the river somewhere, and I’m goin’ to find her. She ain’t unlucky neither.”

“I was the pilot, Cap’n. I saw it. Storms, fog, delays, and then the fever. She was cursed, that boat. If I was you, I’d give up on her. She’s no good for you. Godless.” He stood up. “That reminds me, I got something belongs to you.” He fetched out two books, and handed them to Marsh. “From the Fevre Dream library,” he explained. “I played a game of chess with Cap’n York back in New Orleans, and mentioned that I liked poetry, and he gave me these a day later. When I left, I took them along by mistake.”

Abner Marsh turned the books over in his hands. Poetry. A volume of poems by Byron and one by Shelley. Just what he needed, he thought. His steamboat was gone, vanished off the river, and all he had left to show of her were two goddamn books of poems. “Keep them,” he said to Dan Albright.

Albright shook his head. “Don’t want them. Not the kind of poems I like, Cap’n. Immoral, both of them. No wonder your boat got struck down, carrying books like those.”

Abner Marsh slid the books into his pocket and stood up, scowling. “I had about enough of that, Mister Albright. I won’t hear that kind of talk about my boat. She’s as fine a boat as any on the river, and she ain’t cursed. Ain’t no such thing as curses. The Fevre Dream ’s a real heller of…”