Frederick Busch: The Night Inspector

“We should have known each other years ago,” he said.

It occurred to me that no one knew him. And I wondered if that was also true of me. It seemed to me, in that dark and soaking night of so many disappointments, that I wished for anyone to say that I was not unknown to them.

The wind beat at us in such a way as to drive us landward, and M required that Sam ship his oar while I row so as to bring us away. The rowing was even more difficult, and the water came over the prow upon us with considerable weight. The power of the tide propelled us, but endangered us as well, for, always, we seemed in danger of losing control. Still, Sam and I pressed on against the waves.

“Drive!” M called. “Bend , men!”

Adam, squatting in the stern beside him, said, “Is that the literary part or the workingman part?”

“Great heavens,” Sam said. “I could tell him.”

“Tell what? Tell who?” I asked. “What are,” I panted, “all these words you are slinging about?”

“Their fire has gone out,” M said. “Or, anyway, it has diminished. They cannot progress unless they make sail. To do so — well, let us hope that they do not do so. It is the price of empiricism, shipmates. The motors in the world, each and every one, are subject to the laws of motors: They must be started, and they will , willy-nilly, come to rest. Each and every one. As here, tonight. Now bend , lads! With a will! Will you break your backs, my fellows? Will you crack your spines?”

And instead of repudiating his hyperbole, Sam and I did bend to the oars and press and pull and then press again, stroking with our shoulders and arms, pushing with our knees down into our legs, leaning forward, pulling back, and driving us on, even faster, despite the higher waves and harder wind, than we had previously gone.

“Will you bend,” he begged us, as if more, even than the lives of the children, even more than our outrage and pride, were at stake. And we bent. And, scrutinizing us, he leaned back his large, shaggy head, and his eyes rolled up as he bent at the knees and laughed his soundless laughter, mouth open to the nighttime skies.

And then, of a sudden, he ceased to be that person who all but lashed us to row, and he appeared to be more like the night inspector who used to write books. He peered beyond us, and Sam and I rowed, and Adam, clambering past us to the prow, said, “I see ’em better. We’re closer now.”

“With a will,” M growled at us, and I waited for him to shift his being once again, and to become whomever he was when he drove a boat’s crew onward. But he said nothing more, and I rowed as if my life were at stake.

It was M, then, the sailor, and the officer upon the Hudson, who said, “Did you hear about the coal barge?”

“It is like a blessing, Sam,” I whispered. “I swear it. Like a sign.”

“Broke her moorings,” M said, “and filled and sank. Well, partly sank. Where they were dredging, do you know?”

Sam gasped, “Good thing, Billy?”

“Yes. The best. Shallow.” And then I had to stop because I couldn’t breathe.

M said, “Drafts in the thirties of feet there, when dredging’s complete. But the barge sank because it wasn’t complete. The vessel turned over on top of the dredger’s barge, and they’re both down there, like a reef. It’s not the engine that defeats them so much as the life of the river itself. They’re fast on the topmost barge, and they’ve driven themselves snug!”

Adam called back, “They are working, all of them. Everybody’s dancing. No! But everybody’s moving around.”

“I must get up front,” I told M. “I have a marksman’s eyes, and excellent night vision.”

“How much you have missed with them,” he said sadly, but then he suggested that we ship our oars, that Adam return to rowing, and that I, in the prow, report on what approached.

He asked of Adam, “Are you sound? Hands and arms are fit? Your back, poor fellow?”

“That’s free,” Adam said, to none of us in particular. “When they ax.”

He and Sam began the stroke, and I lay on my belly, legs splayed under the thwart that shifted beneath their weight as they rowed. I could feel the power of the river beneath my legs as I put my sore, puffy hands above my eyes, as if the visor of a cap, and attempted to concentrate my vision upon the thick, dark ship. Adam had been correct, I thought, for there did appear to be a kind of orchestrated movement about the cargo and back and forth; I thought I saw Jessie, her exposed head floating above the darkness of her cloak. It was she who led the dance. We drew closer. Every shape but hers that was the size of an adult was now my target, and I sighted on the silhouettes.

I heard a large-bore pistol shot. M was encouraging Sam and Adam to press a little harder at the oars, for we did make progress. When I looked over my shoulder at him, I saw that his expression was sorrowful. I returned my study to the boat we pursued, and foaming splashes became evident, I surmised, from the far side of their ship. Jessie was no longer visible in her dance, and Porter and North seemed not to be in sight, although the splashes came more quickly.

One of them lost his stroke, and we began to spin in the tide. I looked back. M said nothing. He pointed at Sam, plunging his hands down, and Sam understood, placing his oar unmoving in the river so that the other side of our craft came around again, and then Adam and he knew to take up their rhythm of rowing once more, and we began again to progress toward the lighter, ferrying our own cargo — the dull, fat cartridges we carried in the chambers of my gun. I saw no sparks at the stack, and I grew optimistic. That was just before I sighted the first.

I called to M, and he soon enough made it out as well. They had, it eventuated, not unsealed all of the great casks, for one came down to us — or, rather, we came to it while it whirled very slowly in a stately manner, dipping in the drive of the current that pitched it against the drive of the tide. It made its progress sideways more than down the river, and as golden light broke through the serried ranks of cloud, I could see the heat, trailing vapors, drift up. In the ribbons and then curtains of what seemed to be steam, as dawn came upon us, I saw the tun.

I said, “Not so.”

M, in the stern, used his gaff and leaned to bring it closer. Adam ceased his rowing and took hold of M’s waist lest he be pulled over. I scrambled past Sam, who sat, his mouth open, his chest heaving, slowly shaking his head. The great cask was open, and in it was Jessie, with a foolish expression at her mouth because of the blood that had filled it and then leaked out along her ruined lips. She glared at us from her death. I saw at last where the bullet had entered, in the back of her neck, where the hair was damp and heated, as if she were a sweaty child at play outside the school in Florence, Florida, free for a time of the minister and his instruction — if all or any of that was true. The bullet had emerged from her mouth, shattering teeth and lips. I thought: Cruel joke upon us, Jessie, for you, had you lived, would also have needed a mask. I held her head while M held the tun fast to us, and I at last patted her cheek once and let her go. Below her were dead children, their limbs jammed into place, the stench of their vomitus and excrement a kind of terrible sweet sourness: Lydia Pinkham’s in the juices of fruit. They probably had never wakened, and now Jessie, whose waking I had more than once watched — a taut peacefulness going watchful and engaged — also would not waken. Neither would Delgado, who had sought at the end to protect her, I wagered; for we could see his black hair and pale forehead underneath a small, dark child.