George Martin - Fevre Dream

Joshua York had collapsed on the river bank, his red, burned hand clawing at the mud. “God damn, ”Marsh roared. “Toby!”

Toby came running, and together they pulled York into the shade. His eyes were closed. Marsh fetched out the bottle and forced some down his throat. “Drink it, Joshua, drink it. Goddamn you anyway.” Finally York began to swallow. He didn’t stop swallowing until the bottle was empty. Abner Marsh held it in his hand, frowning. He turned it upside down. A last drop of Joshua York’s private liquor ran out and fell on Marsh’s mud-caked boot. “Hell,” said Marsh. He flung the empty bottle into the river. “Stay with ’em, Toby,” he said. “I’m goin’ to fetch some help. Must be somebody round here.”

“Yessuh, Cap’n Marsh,” Toby replied.

Marsh started off across the field. The sugar cane had all been harvested. The fields were wide and empty, but off over a rise Marsh saw a thin trail of smoke. He walked toward it, hoping it was a house and not another goddamned pile of burning bagasse. He hoped in vain, but a few minutes past the fire he saw a bunch of slaves working in the fields, and called out to them, breaking into a run. They took him to the plantation house, where he told the overseer his sad story about the boiler explosion that had sunk their steamboat and killed everyone aboard, except for a few who’d gotten away in the sounding yawl. The man nodded and brought down the planter. “Got a couple folks burned bad,” Marsh told him. “We got to be quick about it.” A couple of minutes later, they’d hitched a pair of horses to a wagon and were off across the fields.

When they arrived at the overturned yawl, Karl Framm was standing up, looking dazed and weak. Abner Marsh jumped down from the wagon and gestured. “Get movin’,” he said to the men who’d come with him, “we got them what was burned under there. Got to get ’em inside.” He turned to Framm. “Are you all right, Mister Framm?”

Framm grinned weakly. “I been better, Cap’n,” he said, “but I been a hell of a lot worse, too.”

Two men were carrying Joshua York to the wagon. His white suit was stained with mud and wine, and he did not move. The third man, the planter’s youngest son, came crawling out from under the yawl and wiped his hands on his pants, frowning. He looked a little sick. “Cap’n Marsh,” he said, “That woman you got under there is burned to death.”

Gray Plantation, Louisiana, October 1857

Two of the houseboys lifted Joshua York from the back of the wagon, and carried him inside and up the wide, curving staircase to a bedroom. “A dark one!” Abner Marsh yelled up at them. “And pull the goddamned curtains, you hear me? I don’t want no goddamned sunlight in there.” He turned to his companions briefly, while the planter and his sons and a couple more slaves went back outside to see to Valerie’s corpse. Framm had thrown an arm around Toby’s shoulders to keep himself erect. “You get some damn food into you, Mister Framm,” Marsh said.

The pilot nodded.

“And remember what happened. We was on the Eli Reynolds, and her boiler blew. Killed everybody, it did, except us. She sunk clean out of sight, a long ways upriver, where there’s no bottom. That’s all you know, you hear? Let me tell the rest.”

“That’s more’n I know,” Framm said. “How the hell did I get here?”

“Never you mind about that. Just listen to what I told you.” Marsh turned and stomped up the stairs while Toby helped Framm to a chair.

They had laid Joshua York on a wide canopied bed, and were undressing him when Marsh came in. Joshua’s face and hands were the worst, seared horribly, but even beneath his clothing his pale white skin had reddened a bit. He moved feebly as they pulled off his boots, and moaned. “Lawd, this man burned up bad, ”one of the slaves said, shaking his head.

Marsh scowled and went to the windows, which were thrown wide. He pulled them shut and closed the shutters. “Fetch me a blanket or something,” he ordered, “to hang across here. Too damn much light. And close them drapes round the bed, too.” His tone was the bellow of a steamer captain, and brooked no argument.

Only when the room was black as Marsh could make it, and a gaunt haggard black woman had come up to tend to York’s burns with herbs and healing salves and cold towels, did Abner Marsh leave. Downstairs, the planter-a bluff, stone-faced, lantern-jawed man who introduced himself as Aaron Gray-and two of his sons were sitting to table with Karl Framm. The scent of food made Marsh realize how long it had been since he’d eaten. He felt ravenous. “Do join us, Cap’n,” Gray said, and Marsh gladly pulled out a chair and let them pile up fried chicken and cornbread and sweet peas and taters on his plate.

Joshua had been right about the questions, Marsh reflected as he wolfed down his food. The Grays asked a hundred of them, and Marsh answered as best he could, when his mouth wasn’t full of food. Framm excused himself just as Marsh was taking seconds-the pilot was still looking poorly-and let himself be led to a bed. The more questions Marsh answered, the less comfortable he got. He wasn’t a natural-born liar like some rivermen he knew, and that became more obvious with every damned word he uttered. Somehow, though, he made it through the meal, although Marsh fancied that Gray and his eldest boy were both looking at him kind of queer by the time he had done with dessert.

“Your nigger is fine,” the second son said as they left the table, “and Robert has gone off to bring back Doctor Moore to attend to the other two. Sally will take care of ’em in the meanwhile. No sense you frettin’, Cap’n. Maybe you’d like to rest up, too. You’ve been through a lot, losin’ your steamboat and all those friends of yours.”

“Yeah,” said Abner Marsh. No sooner had the suggestion been made than Marsh felt incredibly weary. He hadn’t slept in something like thirty hours now. “I’d appreciate that,” he said.

“Show him to a room, Jim,” the planter said. “And Cap’n, Robert will pay a call on the undertaker, too. For that unfortunate woman. Most tragic, most. What did you say her name was?”

“Valerie,” Marsh said. For the life of him, he couldn’t recall what last name she’d been using. “Valerie York,” he improvised.

“She’ll get a good Christian burial,” Gray said, “unless you want to take her to her family, perhaps?”

“No,” said Marsh, “no.”

“Fine. Jim, take Cap’n Marsh upstairs. Put him near that poor burned-up friend of his.”

“Yessuh, Daddy.”

Marsh hardly bothered glancing at the room they gave him. He slept like a log.

When he woke, it was dark.

Marsh sat up in bed stiffly. The rowing had taken its toll. His joints creaked when he moved, he had a terrible cramp in his shoulders, and his arms felt like somebody had beaten on them with a big oak club. He groaned and edged slowly to the side of the mattress, lowering his bare feet to the floor. Every step sent pains through him as he went to the window and opened it wide to let some cool night air into the room. Outside was a small stone balcony, and beyond it a fringe of China trees and the fields, desolate and empty in the moonlight. In the distance Marsh could make out the dim glow of the bagasse, still sending up its veil of smoke. Beyond it, only a faint glimmering from here, was the river.

Marsh shivered, closed the window and went back to bed. It was chilly in the room now, so he pulled the blankets over himself and rolled onto his side. The moonlight etched darks and shadows everywhere, and the furniture, all strange to him, became stranger still in the faint light. He could not sleep. He found himself thinking of Damon Julian and the Fevre Dream, and worrying about whether the steamer was still where he’d left her. He thought of Valerie as well. He had gotten a good look at her when they’d pulled her out from under the yawl, and she hadn’t been a pretty sight. You’d never have thought that she’d been beautiful, pale and graceful and sensual, with those great violet eyes. Abner Marsh felt sorry for her, and thought that was strange of him, seeing as how it was only last night around this time that he’d tried to kill her with that buffalo gun of his. The world was an awful queer place, he thought, when so goddamned much could change in a day.