George Martin - Fevre Dream

“That she is,” Dan Albright interrupted. He stood, too. “I got to see about a berth,” he said, ushering Marsh toward the door. Marsh let himself be ushered. But as Albright was showing him out, the dapper little pilot said, “Cap’n Marsh, leave it be.”

“What?”

“That steamer,” Albright said. “She’s no good for you. You know the way I can smell a storm coming?”

“Yes,” Marsh said. Albright could smell storms better than anyone Marsh had ever known.

“Sometimes I can smell other things too,” the pilot said. “Don’t go looking for her, Cap’n. Forget about her. I figured you was dead. You’re not. You ought to be thankful. Finding the Fevre Dream won’t bring you no joy, Cap’n.”

Abner Marsh stared at him. “You can say that. You stood at her wheel, and took her down the river, and you can say that.”

Albright said nothing.

“Well, I ain’t lissening,” Marsh said. “That’s my steamboat, Mister Albright, and someday I’m goin’ to pilot her myself, I’m goin’ to run her against the Eclipse, you hear, and… and…” Red-faced and angry, Marsh found himself choking on his own tongue. He could not go on.

“Pride can be sinful, Cap’n,” Dan Albright said. “Leave it be.” He closed the door, leaving Marsh out in the hallway.

Abner Marsh took his lunch in the Planters’ House dining room, eating off by himself in the corner. Albright had shaken him, and he found himself thinking the same thoughts he had run through his head going upriver aboard the Princess. He ate a leg of lamb in mint sauce, a mess of turnips and snap beans, and three helpings of tapioca, but even that didn’t calm him. As he drank his coffee, Marsh wondered if maybe Albright wasn’t right. Here he was back in St. Louis, just like he’d been before he met Joshua York in this very same room. He still had his company, the Eli Reynolds, and some money in the bank, too. He was an upper river man; it had been a terrible mistake ever to go down to New Orleans. His dream had turned into a nightmare down there in slave country, in the hot fevered south. But now it was over, his steamer had gone and vanished, and if he wanted to he could just pretend that it had never happened at all, that there had never been a steamboat called the Fevre Dream, nor people named Joshua York and Damon Julian and Sour Billy Tipton. Joshua had come out of nowhere and now he was gone again. The Fevre Dream hadn’t existed in April, and it didn’t seem to exist now, as far as Marsh could see. A sane man couldn’t believe that stuff anyhow, blood-drinking and skulking about by night and bottles of some foul liquor. It had all been a fever dream, Abner Marsh thought, but now the fever was gone from him, now he could get on with his life here in St. Louis.

Marsh ordered up some more coffee. They will go on killing, he thought to himself as he drank it, they will go on with the blood-drinking and the murder with no one to stop them. “Can’t stop ’em anyway,” he muttered. He’d done his best, him and Joshua and Hairy Mike and poor old Mister Jeffers, who’d never raise an eyebrow or move a chessman again. It hadn’t gotten them anywhere. And it wouldn’t do no good to go to the authorities, not with a story about a bunch of vampires who stole his steamboat. They’d just believe that yellow fever yarn, and figure he’d gone soft in the head, and maybe lock him up someplace.

Abner Marsh paid his bill and walked back to the office of Fevre River Packets. The landing was crowded and bustling. Above was a clear blue sky, and below was the river bright and clean in the sunlight, and the air had a tang to it, a scent of smoke and steam, and he heard the whistles of the boats passing each other on the river, and the big brass bell of a side-wheeler pulling in. The mates were bellowing and the roustabouts were singing as they loaded freight, and Abner Marsh stood and looked and listened. This was his life, the other had been a fever dream indeed. The vampires had been killing for thousands of years, Joshua had told him, so how could Marsh hope to change it? Maybe Julian had been right, anyway. It was their nature to kill. And it was Abner Marsh’s nature to be a steamboatman, nothing more, he wasn’t no fighter, York and Jeffers had tried to fight and they’d paid for it.

When he entered the office, Marsh had just about decided that Dan Albright was dead right. He would forget about the Fevre Dream, forget everything that had happened, that was the sensible thing to do. He’d just run his company and maybe make some money, and in a year or two he might have enough to build another boat, a bigger one.

Green was scurrying around the office. “I got twenty letters out, Cap’n,” he said to Marsh. “Already posted, just like you said.”

“Fine,” said Marsh, sinking into a chair. He almost sat on the books of poems, jammed uncomfortably into his pocket. He pulled them out, leafed through them quickly, glancing at a few titles, then set them aside. They were poems all right. Marsh sighed. “Fetch out the books, Mister Green,” he said. “I want to take a look at ’em.”

“Yes, Cap’n,” Green said. He went over and pulled them out. Then he saw something else, picked it up, and brought it over to Marsh with the ledgers. “Oh,” he said, “I almost forgot about this.” He handed Marsh a large package, wrapped with brown paper and cord. “Some little man brought this by about three weeks back, said you was supposed to pick it up but never showed. I told him you were still off with the Fevre Dream and paid him. I hope that was all right.”

Abner Marsh frowned down at the package, snapped the cord with a twist of his bare hand, and ripped away the paper to open the box. Inside was a brand new captain’s coat, white as the snow that covered the upper river in winter, pure and clean, with a double row of flashing silver buttons, and Fevre Dream written in raised letters on every damn one. He took it out and the box fell to the floor and suddenly, finally, the tears came.

“Get out!” roared Marsh. The agent took one look at his face and was gone. Abner Marsh rose and put on the white jacket, and buttoned up the silver buttons. It was a beautiful fit. It was cool, much cooler than the heavy blue captain’s coat he’d been wearing. There was no mirror in the office, so Marsh couldn’t see what he looked like, but he could imagine. In his mind he looked like Joshua York, he looked fine and regal and sophisticated. The cloth was so brilliantly white, he thought.

“I look like the cap’n of the Fevre Dream, ”Marsh said loudly, to himself. He stamped his stick hard on the floor, and felt the blood run to his face, and he stood there remembering. Remembering the way she’d looked in the mists of New Albany. Remembering the way her mirrors gleamed, remembering her silver, remembering the wild call of her steam whistle and stroke of her engine, loud as a thunderstorm. Remembering how she’d left the Southerner far behind her, how she’d gulped down the Mary Kaye. He remembered her people as well; Framm and his wild stories, Whitey Blake spotted with grease, Toby killing chickens, Hairy Mike roaring and cussing at the roustabouts and deckhands, Jeffers playing chess, defeating Dan Albright for the hundredth time. If Albright was so smart, Marsh thought, how come he could never beat Jeffers at chess?

And Marsh recalled Joshua most of all, Joshua all in white, Joshua sipping his liquor, Joshua sitting in the darkness and spinning out his dreams. Gray eyes and strong hands and poetry. “We all make our choices,” whispered the memory. Morn came and went, and came, and brought no day.

“GREEN!” Abner Marsh roared at the top of his lungs.

The door opened and the agent poked his head in nervously.

“I want my steamboat,” Marsh said. “Where the hell is she?”