George Martin - Fevre Dream

“We can learn together, Abner,” York replied.

York’s companions were growing restless. They wandered from window to window, Brown shifting the lantern from one hand to the other, Simon as grim as a cadaver. Smith said something to York in their foreign tongue. York nodded. “We must be going back,” he said.

Marsh glanced around one final time, reluctant to leave even now, and led them from the pilot house.

When they had trudged partway through the boatyards, York turned and looked back toward their steamboat where she sat on her pilings, pale against the darkness. The others stopped as well, and waited silently.

“Do you know Byron?” York asked Marsh.

Marsh thought a minute. “Know a fellow named Blackjack Pete used to pilot on the Grand Turk. I think his last name was Brian.”

York smiled. “Not Brian, Byron. Lord Byron, the English poet.”

“Oh,” said Marsh. “Him. I’m not much a one for poems. I think I heard of him, though. Gimp, wasn’t he? And quite a one for the ladies.”

“The very one, Abner. An astounding man. I had the good fortune to meet him once. Our steamboat put me in mind of a poem he once wrote.” He began to recite.

She walks in Beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that’s best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes:

Thus mellowed to that tender light

Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.

“Byron wrote of a woman, of course, but the words seem to fit our boat as well, do they not? Look at her, Abner! What do you think?”

Abner Marsh didn’t quite know what to think; your average steamboatman didn’t go around spouting poetry, and he didn’t know what to say to one who did. “Very interesting, Joshua,” was all he managed.

“What shall we name her?” York asked, his eyes still fixed on the boat, and a slight smile on his face. “Does the poem suggest anything?”

Marsh frowned. “We’re not going to name her after any gimp Britisher, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he said gruffly.

“No,” said York, “I wasn’t suggesting that. I had in mind something like Dark Lady, or-”

“I had somethin’ in mind myself,” Marsh said. “We’re Fevre River Packets, after all, and this boat is all I ever dreamed come true.” He lifted his hickory stick and pointed at the wheelhouse. “We’ll put it right there, big blue and silver letters, real fancy. Fevre Dream. ”He smiled. “ Fevre Dream against the Eclipse, they’ll talk about that race till all of us are dead.”

For a moment, something strange and haunted moved in Joshua York’s gray eyes. Then it was gone as swiftly as it had come. “Fevre Dream,” he said. “Don’t you think that choice a bit… oh, ominous? It suggests sickness to me, fever and death and twisted visions. Dreams that… dreams that should not be dreamed, Abner.”

Marsh frowned. “I don’t know about that. I like it.”

“Will people ride in a boat with such a name? Steamboats have been known to carry typhoid and yellow fever. Do we wish to remind them of such things?”

“They rode my Sweet Fevre, ”Marsh said. “They ride the War Eagle, and the Ghost, even boats named after Red Indians. They’d ride her.”

The gaunt, pale one named Simon said something then, in a voice that rasped like a rusty saw and a language strange to Marsh, though it was not the one Smith and Brown babbled in. York heard him and his face took on a thoughtful cast, though it still seemed troubled. “Fevre Dream,” he said again. “I had hoped for a-a healthier name, but Simon has made a point to me. Have your way then, Abner. The Fevre Dream she is.”

“Good,” Marsh said.

York nodded absently. “Let us meet tomorrow for dinner at the Galt House. At eight. We can make plans for our voyage to St. Louis, discuss crew and provisioning, if that is agreeable to you.”

Marsh voiced a gruff assent, and York and his companions went off toward their boat, vanishing into the mists. Long after they had gone Marsh stood in the boatyards, staring at the still, silent steamer. “Fevre Dream,” he said loudly, just to test the taste of the words on his tongue. But oddly, for the first time, the name seemed wrong in his ears, fraught with connotations he did not like. He shivered, unaccountably cold for a moment, then snorted and set off for bed.

Aboard the Steamer Fevre Dream, Ohio River, July 1857

The Fevre Dream left New Albany by dark, on a sultry night early in July. In all his years on the river, Abner Marsh had never felt so alive as he did that day. He spent the morning attending to last minute details in Louisville and New Albany; hiring a barber and lunching with the men from the boatyards and posting a handful of letters. In the heat of the afternoon, he settled into his cabin, made a last check round the steamer to make certain everything was right, and greeted some of the cabin passengers as they arrived. Supper was a rushed affair, and then he was off to the main deck to check the engineer and the strikers checking the boilers, and to supervise the mate as he supervised the loading of the last of the cargo. The sun beat down relentlessly and the air hung thick and still, so the roustabouts gleamed with sweat as they carried crates and bales and barrels up the narrow loading planks, the mate cussing at them all the while. Across the river to Louisville, Marsh knew, other steamers were departing or loading up as well: the big, low-pressure Jacob Strader of the Cincinnati Mail Line, the swift Southerner of the Cincinnati amp; Louisville Packet Company, a half-dozen smaller boats. He watched to see if any of ’em went down the river, feeling awful good despite the heat and the swarms of mosquitoes that had risen from the river when the sun went down.

The main deck was crammed with cargo fore and aft, filling most all the space not taken up by the boilers and furnaces and engines. She was carrying a hundred-fifty tons of bale leaf tobacco, thirty tons of bar iron, countless barrels of sugar and flour and brandy, crates of fancy furniture for some rich man in St. Louis, a couple blocks of salt, some bolts of silk and cotton, thirty barrels of nails, eighteen boxes of rifles, some books and papers and sundries. And lard. One dozen big barrels of the finest lard. But the lard wasn’t cargo, properly; Marsh had bought it himself and ordered it stowed on board.

The main deck was crammed with passengers as well, men and women and children, thick as the river mosquitoes, swarming and milling amid the cargo. Near three hundred of ’em had crowded on, paying a dollar each for passage to St. Louis. Passage was all they got; they ate what food they brought on board with them, and the lucky ones found a place to sleep on the deck. They were mostly foreigners, Irish and Swedes and big Dutchmen all yelling at each other in languages Marsh didn’t know, drinking and cussing and slapping their kids. A few trappers and common laborers were down there as well, too poor for anything but deck passage at Marsh’s bargain rates.

The cabin passengers had paid a full ten dollars, at least those who were going all the way to St. Louis. Almost all the cabins were full, even at that rate; the clerk told Marsh they had one hundred seventy-seven cabin passengers aboard, which Marsh figured had to be a good number, with all those sevens in it. The roster included a dozen planters, the head of a big St. Louis fur company, two bankers, a rich Britisher and his three daughters, and four nuns going to Iowa. They also had a preacher on board, but that was all right since they weren’t carrying no gray mare; it was well known among rivermen that having a preacher and a gray mare on board was an invitation to disaster.

As for the crew, Marsh was right pleased with it. The two pilots, now, were nothing special, but they were only hired on temporary to take the steamer to St. Louis, since they were Ohio River pilots and the Fevre Dream was going to work the New Orleans trade. He had already written letters to St. Louis and New Orleans, and he had a couple of lightning lower Mississippi pilots waiting for them at the Planters’ House. The rest of the crew, though, were as good as any steamboatmen on any river anywhere, Marsh was sure. The engineer was Whitey Blake, a peppery little man whose fierce white whiskers always had grease stains in ’em from the engines. Whitey had been with Abner Marsh on the Eli Reynolds, and later on the Elizabeth A. and the Sweet Fevre, and there wasn’t no one understood a steam engine better than he did. Jonathon Jeffers, the clerk, had gold spectacles and slicked-back brown hair and fancy button gaiters, but he was a terror at ciphering and dickering, never forgot anything, struck a mean bargain and played a meaner game of chess. Jeffers had been in the line’s main office until Marsh had written him to come down to the Fevre Dream. He’d come right away; for all of his dandified appearance, Jeffers was a riverman through to his dark ciphering soul. He carried a gold-handled sword cane too. The cook was a free colored man named Toby Lanyard, who had been with Marsh fourteen years, ever since Marsh tasted his cooking down in Natchez, bought him, and gave him his freedom. And the mate-who was named Michael Theodore Dunne though nobody ever called him anything but Hairy Mike except for the roustabouts, who called him Mister Dunne Sir-was one of the biggest and meanest and stubbornest men on the river. He was well over six foot tall, with green eyes and black whiskers and thick black curly hair all over his arms and legs and chest. He had a foul mouth and a bad temper and never went noplace without his three-foot-long black iron billet. Abner Marsh had never seen Hairy Mike hit anyone with that billet, except once or twice, but it was always wrapped in his hand, and there was talk among the roustabouts that he’d once split open the head of a man who’d dropped a cask of brandy in the river. He was a hard, fair mate, and no one dropped anything when he was watching. Everyone on the river respected the hell out of Hairy Mike Dunne.