George Martin - Fevre Dream

Karl Framm pushed through the crowd, a brandy in his hand. “I know a story,” he said, sounding a little drunk. “ ’S true. There’s this steamboat named the Ozymandias, y’see…”

“Never heard of it,” somebody said.

Framm smiled thinly. “Y’better hope you never see it,” he said, “cause them what does is done for. She only runs by night, this boat. And she’s dark, all dark. Painted black as her stacks, every inch of her, except that inside she’s got a main cabin with a carpet the color of blood, and silver mirrors everywhere that don’t reflect nothing. Them mirrors is always empty, even though she’s got lots of folks aboard her, pale-looking folks in fine clothes. They smile a lot. Only they don’t show in the mirrors.”

Someone shivered. They had all gone silent. “Why not?” asked an engineer Marsh knew slightly.

“Cause they’re dead, ”Framm said. “Ever’ damn one of ’em, dead. Only they won’t lie down. They’re sinners, and they got to ride that boat forever, that black boat with the red carpets and the empty mirrors, all up and down the river, never touching port, no sir.”

“Phantoms,” somebody said.

“Ha’nts,” added a woman, “like that Raccourci boat.”

“Hell no,” said Karl Framm. “You can pass right through a ha’nt, but not the Ozymandias. She’s real enough, and you’ll learn it quick and to your sorrow if you come on her at night. Them dead folks is hungry. They drink blood, y’know. Hot red blood. They hide in the dark and when they see the lights of another steamer, they set out after her, and if they catch’er they come swarming aboard, all those dead white faces, smiling, dressed so fine. And they sink the boat afterward, or burn her, and the next mornin’ there’s nothing to see but a couple stacks stickin’ up out of the river, or maybe a wrecked boat full of corpses. Except for the sinners. The sinners go aboard that Ozymandias, and ride on her forever.” He sipped his brandy and smiled. “So if you’re out on the river some night, and you see a shadow on the water behind you, look close. It might be a steamer, painted black all over, with a crew white as ha’nts. She don’t show no lights, that Ozymandias, so sometimes you can’t see her till she’s right behind you, her black wheels kicking up the water. If you see her, you better hope you got a lightnin’ pilot, and maybe some coal oil on board, or a little lard. Cause she’s big and she’s fast, and when she catches you by night you’re finished. Listen for her whistle. She only sounds her whistle when she knows she’s got you, so if you hear it, start countin’ up your sins.”

“What does the whistle sound like?”

“ ’Zactly like a man screaming,” said Karl Framm.

“What’s her name agin?” a young pilot asked.

“Ozymandias,” said Framm. He knew how to say it right.

“What does that mean?”

Abner Marsh stood up. “It’s from a poem,” he said. “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair.”

The party crowd looked at him blankly, and one fat lady laughed a nervous, tittering sort of laugh. “There are curses and worse things on that old devil river,” a short clerk started in. While he was talking, Marsh took Karl Framm by the arm and drew him outside.

“Why the hell did you tell that story?” Marsh demanded.

“To make them afraid,” said Framm. “So if they see her, some damned night, they’ll have the sense to run.”

Abner Marsh considered that, and finally gave a reluctant nod. “I suppose it’s alright. You called her by Sour Billy’s name. If you’d said Fevre Dream, Mister Framm, I would have twisted your goddamned head off right then and there. You hear me?”

Framm heard, but it didn’t matter. The story was out, for good or for ill. Marsh heard a garbled version of it from another man’s lips a month later, while he was dining in the Planters’ House, and twice more that winter. The story got changed some in the telling, of course, even to the name of the black steamboat. Ozymandias was too strange and too hard for most of the tellers, it seemed. But no matter what they named the boat, it was the same damned story.

A little over half a year later, Marsh heard another story, one that changed his life.

He had just sat down to dinner in a small St. Louis hotel, cheaper than the Planters’ House and the Southern, but with good food. It was less popular with rivermen as well, which suited Marsh fine. His old friends and rivals looked at him queer in recent years, or avoided him as unlucky, or just wanted to sit down and talk about his misfortunes, and Marsh had no patience with any of that. He preferred to be left alone. That day in 186o he was sitting there peacefully, drinking a glass of wine and waiting for the waiter to fetch out the roasted duck and yams and snap beans and hot bread he’d ordered, when he got interrupted. “Ain’t seen you in a year,” the man said. Marsh recognized him vaguely. The man had been a striker on the A.L. Shotwell a few years back. Grudgingly, he invited him to sit. “Don’t mind if I do,” the ex-striker said, and immediately pulled out a chair and commenced to gabbing. He was a second engineer on some New Orleans boat Marsh had never heard of, and full of gossip and river news. Marsh listened politely, wondering when his food would show up. He hadn’t eaten all day.

The duck had just arrived, and Marsh was spreading butter over a chunk of good hot bread, when the engineer said, “Say, you heard ’bout that windstorm down to N’Orleans?”

Marsh chewed on his bread, swallowed, took another bite. “No,” he said, not very interested. Isolated as he’d been, he didn’t hear much talk of floods and windstorms and other like calamities.

The man whistled through a gap in his yellow teeth. “Hell, it was a bad’un. A bunch of boats tore loose and got busted up good. Eclipse was one of ’em. Smashed her up pretty bad, I hear.”

Marsh swallowed his bread and put down the knife and fork he’d lifted to attack the duck. “The Eclipse, ”he said.

“Yessuh.”

“How bad?” Marsh asked. “Cap’n Sturgeon’ll fix her up, won’t he?”

“Hell, she’s too busted up for that,” the engineer said. “I heard they’ll use what’s left as a wharfboat, up to Memphis.”

“A wharfboat,” Marsh repeated numbly, thinking of those tired old gray hulls that lined the landings in St. Louis and New Orleans and the other big river towns, boats gutted of engines and boilers, empty shells used only for stowing and transferring freight. “She ain’t.. . she’s…”

“Me, I figger that’s bout what she deserves,” the man said. “Hell, we would of beaten her with the Shotwell, only…”

Marsh made a strangled growling sound deep in his throat. “Get the hell out of here,” he roared. “If you weren’t a Shotwell man I’d kick your goddamned ass out in the street for what you just said. Now get out of here!”

The engineer got up real quickly. “You’re crazy as they say,” he blurted before he left.

Abner Marsh sat at that table for the longest time, his food untouched in front of him, staring off at nothing, a grim cold look settling over his face. Finally a waiter approached timidly. “Is somethin’ wrong with yo’ duck, Cap’n?”

Marsh looked down. The duck had gotten a little cold. Grease was starting to congeal around it. “I ain’t hungry no more,” he said. He pushed away the plate, paid his bill, and left.

He spent the following week going over his ledger books, adding up his debts. Then he called in Karl Framm. “It ain’t no goddamn use,” Marsh said to him. “She’ll never run against the Eclipse now, even if we find her, which we won’t. I’m tired of lookin’. I’m taking the Reynolds into the Missouri trade, Karl. I got to make some money.”