George Martin - Fevre Dream

Damon Julian turned to Joshua York, ignoring Framm’s grin. “You will catch them for me, Joshua. Or I shall have Billy cast your bottles into the river, and you will thirst with the rest of us. Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” said York. He called down for a full stop on both wheels, then set the larboard paddle slow forward, the starboard in reverse. The Fevre Dream began to come about again, assisted by the current. The Eli Reynolds was rushing away from her, stern-mounted paddle kicking wildly while sparks and flame poured from her stacks.

“Good,” said Damon Julian. He turned to Sour Billy. “Billy, I am going to my cabin.” Julian spent a lot of time in his cabin, sitting all alone in the dark without so much as a candle, sipping brandy and staring off at nothing. More and more he was leaving the running of the boat to Billy, just like he had let Billy run the plantation while he sat in his dark dusty library. “Stay here,” Julian continued, “and see that our pilot does as I’ve told him. When we catch that steamer, bring Captain Marsh to me.”

“What about the others?” Billy asked uncertainly.

Julian smiled. “I’m sure you’ll think of something,” he said.

When Julian had gone, Sour Billy turned to watch the river. The Eli Reynolds had sped downriver a good stretch while the Fevre Dream made her turn, and was several hundred yards ahead, but it was plain to see that it wouldn’t last long. The Fevre Dream was surging forward like she hadn’t done in months, both wheels turning full speed, the furnaces roaring, the decks pounding to the long massive stroke of the engines below. Even as Billy watched, the distance between the two boats seemed to diminish; the Fevre Dream was just eating up the river. Marsh would be paying a call on Damon Julian in no time at all. Sour Billy Tipton was looking forward to that, looking forward to it real keen.

Then Joshua York had them ease up on the starboard paddle, and began to turn the wheel.

“Hey!” Billy protested. “You’re lettin’ them get away! What are y’ doin’?” He reached behind him and flicked out his knife, brandishing it at York’s back. “What are y’ doin’?”

“Crossing the river, Mister Tipton,” answered York flatly.

“You turn that wheel right back. Marsh ain’t doin’ no crossin’, not so I can see, and he’s gettin’ further ahead.” York ignored the command, and Billy got angrier. “Turn back, I said.”

“A moment ago we passed a creek,” said York, “with a dead cottonwood by its mouth. That is the mark. At that mark, I must cross. If I kept straight on, I’d lose the deep water and sink us. There’s a bluff reef on ahead there, too deep to show much of a sign on the water, but not so deep that it couldn’t tear out our bottom. Isn’t that right, Mister Framm?”

“Couldn’t have said it better myself.”

Sour Billy glared around suspiciously. “I don’t believe you,” he said. “Marsh didn’t cross, and he didn’t get his bottom tore out neither, not so I could notice.” He flourished the knife. “You ain’t goin’ to let him get away,” he said. The Eli Reynolds had already put another hundred feet between herself and the Fevre Dream. Only now was the smaller steamer starting to angle a bit to starboard.

“Some mate,” Karl Framm said with contempt. “Hell, that little stern-wheeler we’re chasin’ don’t draw nothin’. After a good rain, she could steam halfway across the city of N’Orleans without ever noticin’ that she’d left the river.”

“Abner is no fool,” said Joshua York, “and neither is his pilot. They knew that reef was too deep to bother them, even with this stage on the river. They steamed right across it, hoping we would follow them and wreck ourselves. At best we’d have been grounded until dawn. Now do you understand, Mister Tipton?”

Sour Billy scowled, suddenly feeling like a fool. He put away his knife, and as he did Karl Framm laughed. It was a chuckle, kind of, but that was enough for Billy to hear. He snapped, “Shut up, or I’ll call your missus.” Then it was his turn to snicker.

The Eli Reynolds had gone around a point, but her smoke was still hanging in the air, and you could see her lights burning on the far side of the trees. Sour Billy stared off at the lights in silence.

“Why do you care so much if Abner escapes?” York asked quietly. “What has the captain ever done to cause you harm, Mister Tipton?”

“I don’t care for warts,” said Billy coldly, “and Julian wants him. I do like Julian wants.”

“Whatever would he do without you,” said Joshua York. Sour Billy didn’t care for the way he said it, but before he could protest York was going on. “He is using you, Billy. Without you, he would be nothing. You think for him, act for him, you protect him by day. You make him what he is.”

“Yeah,” said Billy, proudly. He knew how important he was. He liked it just fine. It was even better on the steamer. He liked being a mate. The niggers he’d bought and the white trash he’d hired were all terrified of him, they called him “Mister Tipton” and rushed to do like he said, without him ever having to raise his voice or even stare at them. Some of the white rivermen had been unruly early on, till Sour Billy slit one open and stuffed him in a furnace with his belly hanging out. After that they got real respectful. The niggers were no trouble at all, except at landings, when Billy chained them up to the manacles he’d rigged on the main deck, so they couldn’t run off. It was better than being a plantation overseer. An overseer was white trash, everybody looked down on him. But on the river, a steamer’s mate was a man of substance, an officer, somebody you had to be polite to.

“The promise Julian has made you is a lie,” York was saying. “You will never be one of us, Billy. We are different races. Our anatomy is different, our flesh, our very blood. He cannot make you over, no matter what he says.”

“You must think I’m pretty damn stupid,” Billy said. “I don’t got to lissen to Julian. I heard the stories. I know how vampires can make other vampires. You were like me once, York, no matter what you say. Only you’re weak, and I ain’t. Are you afraid?” That was it, Billy thought. York wanted him to betray Julian so Julian wouldn’t make him over, because once he was one of them, he’d be stronger than York, maybe as strong as Julian. “I scare you, Josh, don’t I? You think you’re so damn fine, but you wait till Julian makes me over, and I make you come crawlin’ to me. Wonder what it tastes like, that blood of yours? Julian knows, don’t he?”

York said nothing, but Sour Billy knew he’d struck a sore spot. Damon Julian had tasted York’s blood a dozen times since that first night aboard the Fevre Dream. In fact, he had drunk of no one else. “Because you are so beautiful, dear Joshua,” he would say with a pale smile, as he handed York a glass to be filled. It seemed to amuse him to make York submit.

“He is laughing at you all the time,” York said after a time. “Every day and every night. He mocks you, he despises you. He thinks you are ugly and ludicrous, no matter how useful you may be. You are nothing but an animal to him, and he will cast you aside like so much trash if he finds a stronger beast to serve him. He will make sport of it, but by then you will be so corrupt and so rotten through that you will still believe, still grovel for him.”

“I ain’t no groveler,” Billy said. “Shut up! Julian ain’t lyin’!”

“Then ask him when he intends to make you over. Ask him how he will perform this miracle, how he will lighten your skin and make over your body and teach your eyes to see in darkness. Ask Julian if you think he is not lying. And listen, Mister Tipton. Listen to the mockery in his voice when he talks to you.”