George Martin - Fevre Dream

Abner Marsh had a heavy churning in the pit of his stomach. Part of him was sick and furious at Julian’s plan to make the Fevre Dream some kind of demon steamer. But another part of him was entranced by the boldness of it, by the vision of his Fevre Dream showing up both of them, Cannon and Leathers and the whole damn world to boot. “Pilot, hell,” Marsh said. “Them two steamers are the fastest things on the goddamned river, Joshua. If he lets them get off first, he ain’t never goin’ to catch them, nor kill nobody.” But even as he said it, Marsh knew he did not really believe it.

“Julian thinks that makes it all the more amusing,” Joshua York replied. “If they can stay ahead of him, they live. If not…” He shook his head. “And he says he has the greatest faith in your steamboat, Abner. He intends to make her famous. Afterward, both boats are to be wrecked, and Julian says we will all escape to the shore and make our way to the east, to Philadelphia or perhaps New York. He is weary of the river, he claims. I believe that is so much empty talk. Julian is weary of life. If he carries through this plan, it will mean the end of my race.”

Abner Marsh got up off the bed and stamped his cane on the floor in fury. “Goddamn it to hell!” he roared. “She’ll catch ’em, I know she will, she could have caught the goddamned Eclipse if she’d been given the chance, I swear it. She ain’t goin’ to have no goddamned trouble outrunnin’ the likes of the Natchez and the Bad Bob. Hell, neither one of them could ever beat the Eclipse. Goddammit, Joshua, he ain’t goin’ to do this with my steamboat, I swear he ain’t!”

Joshua York smiled a thin, dangerous smile, and when Abner Marsh looked into his eyes he saw the determination he had once seen in the Planters’ House, and the cold anger he had once seen when he barged in on York by day. “No,” York said. “He isn’t. That’s why I wrote you, Abner, and prayed that you were still alive. I have thought a long time about this. I am decided. We will kill him. There is no other way.”

“Hell,” said Marsh. “Took you long enough to see that. I could have told you that thirteen goddamned years ago. Well, I’m with you. Only-” He pointed his cane at York’s chest. “-we don’t hurt the steamer, you hear? The only thing wrong with that goddamned plan of Julian’s is the part where everybody gets killed. The rest of it I like just fine.” He smiled. “Cannon and Leathers is goin’ to get such a goddamned surprise they ain’t goin’ to believe it.”

Joshua rose smiling. “Abner, we will do our best, I promise you, to see that the Fevre Dream remains intact. Be sure to caution your men.”

Marsh frowned. “What men?”

The smile faded from Joshua’s face. “Your crew,” he said. “I assumed that you came down here on one of your steamboats, with a party of men.”

Marsh suddenly recollected that Joshua had mailed his letter to Fevre River Packets, in St. Louis. “Hell,” he said, “Joshua, I ain’t got no steamers anymore, nor any men neither. I came down by steamboat, all right. Cabin passage.”

“Karl Framm,” Joshua said. “Toby. The others, those men you had with you on the Eli Reynolds…”

“Dead or gone, all of ’em. I was near dead myself.”

Joshua frowned. “I had thought we would attack in force, by day. This changes things, Abner.”

Abner Marsh clouded up like a thunderhead about to break. “The hell it does,” he said. “It don’t change one goddamned thing, far as I can see. Maybe you figured we was goin’ in there with an army, but I sure as hell knew better. I’m a goddamned old man, Joshua, and I’m probably goin’ to die soon, and Damon Julian don’t scare me no more. He’s had my steamboat for too goddamned long and I ain’t happy with what he’s done with her and I’m goin’ to get her back or die trying. You wrote that you made a choice, dammit. Now what is it? Are you comin’ with me or not?”

Joshua York listened quietly to Marsh’s furious outburst, and slowly a reluctant smile crept over his pale white features. “All right,” he said at last. “We’ll do it alone.”

Julian Plantation, Louisiana, May 1870

They left New Orleans in the middle of the night, rolling and clattering over dark, rutted roads in a wagon that Joshua York had purchased. Dressed in dark brown, a hooded cloak billowing behind him, Joshua looked as fine as in the old days as he snapped the reins and urged the horses onward. Abner Marsh sat grimly beside him, bouncing and jouncing as they rattled over rocks and holes, holding tight to the double-barreled shotgun across his knees. The pockets of his coat bulged with shells.

Joshua pulled off the main road almost as soon as they were out of the city, and left the secondary road quickly as well, so they moved swiftly down pathways little traveled, and deserted now in the dead of night. The roads became narrow, twisting lanes, through thick stands of yellow pine and heart pine, magnolia and cypress, sour gum and live oak. At times the trees twined together overhead, so it seemed as though they were plunging through a long black tunnel. Marsh found he was nearly blind at times, when the trees pressed close and shut out the moon, but Joshua never let the pace slacken. He had eyes for the dark.

At length the bayou appeared on their left, and the road ran along it for a long time. The moon shone pale and still on the black, quiet water. Fireflies were drifting through the lazy night, and Marsh listened to the deep croaking of bullfrogs and smelled the heavy, rich odors that drifted off the backwaters, where the water lilies grew thickly and the banks were dense with snow-white dogwoods and daddy graybeard beneath the old, towering trees. It might be the last night of his life, Abner Marsh thought. So he breathed it deeply, snorted up all the smells it had to offer, the sweet ones and the sour ones alike.

Joshua York looked straight ahead, and kept them thundering through the dark, oblivious and hard-faced, lost in his own thoughts.

Near dawn-a vague light had just appeared in the east, and some of the stars seemed to be fading-they passed around an ancient Spanish oak, dead now, trailers of gray moss dripping feebly from its withered limbs, and into a wide, overgrown field. Marsh saw a row of shanties off in the distance, black as rotten teeth, and close at hand stood the charred and roofless walls of an old plantation house, its empty windows gaping at them. Joshua York brought them to a halt. “We will leave the wagon here and proceed on foot,” he said. “It is not so far now.” He looked up toward the horizon, where the brightness was spreading and eating up the stars. “At full light, we will strike.”

Abner Marsh grunted assent and climbed down off the wagon, clutching the shotgun tightly. “Goin’ to be a nice day,” he said to Joshua. “Maybe just a trifle gaudy.”

York smiled and pulled his hat down over his eyes. “This way,” he said. “Remember the plan. I will smash the door in and confront Julian. When all his attention is fixed on me, step in and shoot for the face.”

“Hell,” said Marsh. “I ain’t goin’ to forget. I been shootin’ at that face for years, in my dreams.”

Joshua walked quickly, with long strides, and Abner Marsh moved heavily beside him, struggling to match his pace. Marsh had left his cane back in New Orleans. This morning, of all mornings, he felt young again. The air was sweet and cool and full of fragrance, and he was going to get his lady back, his sweet steamer, his Fevre Dream.

Past the plantation house. Past the slave shanties. Through another field, where indigo was growing wild in a profusion of pink and purple flowers. Around a tall old willow tree whose trailing tendrils brushed Marsh’s face as gently as a woman’s hand. Then into a denser stand of woods, cypress mostly, and some palmetto, with flowering reeds and dogwood and fleurs-de-lis of every color growing all about. The ground was damp, and grew damper as they walked. Abner Marsh felt the wetness soaking through the soles of his old boots.