George Martin - Fevre Dream

It was a dance hall like all the others, a hellhole surrounded by other hellholes. Marsh pushed his way inside. The interior was crowded, smoky, and dim. Couples moved through the bluish haze, shuffling vaguely in time to the loud, cheap music. One of the men, a thickly-built unshaven lout in a red flannel shirt, staggered around the dance floor with a partner who looked to be unconscious. The man was squeezing her breast through her thin calico dress as he supported her and dragged her about. The other dancers all ignored them. The women were all typical dance hall girls, in faded calico shifts and tattered slippers. As Marsh looked on, the man in the red shirt stumbled and dropped his partner and collapsed on top of her, and a hoot of laughter went up. He cussed and got unsteadily to his feet while the woman lay sprawled out. Then, as the laughing subsided, he leaned over her and grabbed her by the front of her dress, and pulled. The cloth ripped, and he yanked the garment off and tossed it aside, grinning. She had nothing on underneath except for a red garter around one white, meaty thigh, with a little dagger stuck through it. The pommel was pink and heart-shaped. The man in the red shirt had started unbuttoning his pants when two bouncers moved in on either side of him. They were massive red-faced men with brass knuckles and thick wooden clubs. “Take ’er upstairs,” one of them growled. The man in the red shirt started cussing a streak, but finally he lifted the woman onto a shoulder and staggered off through the smoke, accompanied by more laughter.

“Want to dance, Mister?” a slurred female voice whispered in Marsh’s ear. He turned and scowled. The woman must have weighed as much as he did. She was pasty white and naked as the day she was born, except for a little leather belt with two knives hanging from it. She smiled and stroked Marsh’s cheek before he turned away from her abruptly and pushed through the crowd. He made a circuit of the room, trying to find Joshua. In one particularly noisy corner a dozen men were crowded around a wooden box, belching and swearing as they watched a rat fight. Around the bar men stood two deep, near every one of them armed and glowering. Marsh muttered apologies and pushed past a weedy looking fellow with a garrote looped through his belt, who was talking intently to a short man wearing a brace of pistols. The man with the garrote stopped and eyed Marsh unpleasantly, until the other shouted something at him and drew him back into conversation. “Whiskey,” Marsh demanded, leaning against the bar.

“This whiskey will rot a hole in your stomach, Abner,” the barkeeper said softly, his quiet voice penetrating right through the din. Abner Marsh let his mouth fall open. The man behind the bar smiling at him wore rough-woven baggy trousers held up by a cord belt, a white shirt so dirty it was almost gray, and a black vest. But the face was the same as it had been thirteen years before, pale and unlined, framed by that straight white hair, a bit messy now. Joshua York’s gray eyes seemed to shine with their own light in the dimness of the dance hall. He extended his hand across the bar, and clasped Marsh on the arm. “Come upstairs,” he said urgently, “where we can talk.”

As he came around the bar, the other barkeep stared at him, and a wiry weasel-faced man in a dark suit charged up to him and said, “Where the hell you goin’? Git back there an’ pour them whiskeys!”

“I quit,” Joshua told him.

“Quit? I’ll hev yer damned throat slit!”

“Will you?” said Joshua. He waited, looking around the suddenly hushed room and challenging them all with his eyes. No one moved. “I’ll be upstairs with my friend if any of you care to try,” he said to the half-dozen bouncers who lined the bar. Then he took Marsh by the elbow and led him through the dancers to a narrow back stair. Upstairs was a short hall lit by a single flickering gas jet, and a half-dozen rooms. Noises were coming from behind one closed door, grunting and moaning. Another door was open, and a man was sprawled in front of it, face down, half-in and half-out of the room. As he stepped over him, Marsh saw that it was the red-shirted man from downstairs. “What the hell happened to him?” Marsh said loudly.

Joshua York shrugged. “Bridget probably woke up, clubbed him, and took his money. She is a real darling. I believe she’s killed at least four men with that little knife of hers. She carves notches on that heart.” He grimaced. “When it comes to bloodshed, Abner, my people have very little to teach your own.”

Joshua opened the door to an empty room. “In here, if you will.” He shut it behind them, after turning on one of the lamps.

Marsh sat heavily on the bed. “Goddamn,” he said, “this is a hell of a place you got me to, Joshua. This is as bad as Natchez-under-the-hill was twenty, thirty years ago. Damned if I ever expected to find you in a place like this.”

Joshua York smiled and sat down in a frayed old armchair. “Neither will Julian or Sour Billy. That is the point. They are searching for me, I know. But even if they think to search Gallatin Street, it will be difficult. Julian would be attacked for his obvious wealth, and Sour Billy is known here by sight. He has taken off too many women who have never returned. Tonight there were at least two men in the Green Tree who would have killed him on sight. The streets outside belong to the Live Oak Boys, who might beat Billy to death just for the fun of it, unless they decided to help him.” He shrugged. “Even the police won’t come to Gallatin Street. I am as safe here as I would be anywhere, and on this street my nocturnal habits draw no notice. They are commonplace.”

“Never mind about that,” Marsh said impatiently. “You sent me a letter. Said you’d made your choice. You know why I come, but I ain’t sure why you sent for me. Maybe you better tell me.”

“I scarcely know where to begin. It has been a long time, Abner.”

“For both of us,” Marsh said gruffly. Then his tone softened. “I looked for you, Joshua. For more goddamned years than I care to think about, I tried to find you and that steamboat of mine. But there was just too goddamned much river and not enough time nor money.”

“Abner,” said York, “you might have had all the time and money in the world, and you would never have found us on the river. For the past thirteen years, the Fevre Dream has been on dry land. She is hidden near the old indigo vats on the plantation that Julian owns, some five hundred yards from the bayou, but quite thoroughly concealed.”

Marsh said, “How the hell…”

“It was my doing. Let me start from the beginning, and tell you all of it.” He sighed. “I must go back thirteen years, to the night I took my leave from you.”

“I remember.”

“I went upriver as quickly as I could,” Joshua began, “anxious to get back, worried that the thirst would come upon me. Travel was difficult, but I reached the Fevre Dream on the second night after my departure. She had moved only slightly. She now stood well away from the shore, the dark water rushing around her on both sides. It was a cold, foggy night when I approached her, and she was absolutely dead and dark. No smoke, no steam, not a flame showing anywhere, so silent that I almost missed her for the fog. I did not want to return, but I knew I must. I swam out to her.” He hesitated briefly. “Abner, you know the sort of life I have led. I have seen and done many terrible things. But nothing prepared me for that steamer the way I found her, nothing.”

Marsh’s face grew hard. “Go on.”

“I told you once that I thought Damon Julian was mad.”

“I recollect it.”

“Mad and heedless and dreaming of death,” Joshua said. “And he had proven it. Oh, yes. He had proven it. When I pulled myself up onto deck, the steamer was deathly quiet. No sound, no movement, just the river rushing past. I wandered through the boat unmolested.” His eyes were fixed on Abner Marsh, but they had a far-off glazed look, as if they were seeing something else, something they would always see. York stopped.