CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

St. Louis,
September 1857

Abner Marsh slammed the door behind him when he came stomping into the Pine Street office of the Fevre River Packet Company. “Where is she?” Marsh demanded, striding across the room and leaning on the desk to stare down at the startled agent. A fly buzzed around his head, and Marsh brushed it away impatiently. “I said where is she?”

The agent was a gaunt, dark young man in a striped shirt and a green eyeshade. He was very flustered. “Why,” he said, “why, Cap’n Marsh, why it’s a pleasure, I never thought, that is, we didn’t expect you, no sir, Cap’n, not a bit. Is the Fevre Dream come in, Cap’n?”

Abner Marsh snorted, straightened, and stamped his walking stick on the bare wooden floor in disgust. “Mister Green,” he said, “quit your goddamn babblin’ and pay attention now. I asked you, where is she? Now, what do you think I was asking about, Mister Green?”

The agent swallowed. “I reckon I don’t know, Cap’n.”

“The Fevre Dream!” Marsh bellowed, red in the face. “I want to know where she is! She ain’t down by the landing, I know that much, I got eyes. And I didn’t see her anywhere along the goddamn river. Did she come in and leave again? Did she steam up to St. Paul, or the Missouri? The Ohio? Don’t look so damn thunderstruck, just tell me. Where’s my goddamn steamer?”

“I don’t know, Cap’n,” said Green. “I mean, if you didn’t bring her in, I got no idea. She’s never been in St. Louis, not since you took her down the river back in July. But we heard … we …”

“Yes? What?”

“The fever, sir. We heard yellow fever broke out on the Fevre Dream down to Bayou Sara. Folks were dyin’ like flies, we heard, just like flies. Mister Jeffers and you, we heard you had it, too. That’s why I never expected … with everyone dyin’ and all, we thought they’d burn her, Cap’n. The steamer.” He slipped off his eyeshade and scratched his head. “I guess you got over the fever, Cap’n. Glad to hear it. Only … if the Fevre Dream ain’t with you, where is she? Are you sure you didn’t come in on her, and maybe forget? I hear the fever can make a man awful absentminded.”

Abner Marsh scowled. “I ain’t had the fever, and I sure as hell can tell one steamboat from another, Mister Green. I came in on the Princess. I was sick for a week or so, all right, but it wasn’t no fever. I had the chills, on account of fallin’ in the goddamn river and almost drownin’. That’s how I lost the Fevre Dream, and now I aim to find her again, you hear me?” He snorted. “Where’d you hear all this stuff about yellow fever?”

“The crew, Cap’n, the ones who left her down in Bayou Sara. Some of ’em came in when they arrived in St. Louis, oh, ’bout a week ago it was. Some of ’em asked about jobs on the Eli Reynolds, Cap’n, but of course she’s all full up, so I had to let ’em go. I hope I done right. You weren’t here, of course, nor Mister Jeffers, and I thought maybe you was both dead, so I couldn’t get no instructions.”

“Never mind about that,” Marsh said. The news heartened him somewhat. If Julian and his pack had taken over Marsh’s steamer, at least some of his crew had gotten clear. “Who was here?”

“Why, I saw Jack Ely, the second engineer, and some waiters, and a couple of your strikers—Sam Kline and Sam Thompson, it was. There was a few others.”

“Any of them still around?”

Green shrugged. “When I didn’t hire ’em, they went looking around to other boats, Cap’n. I don’t know.”

“Damn,” Marsh said.

“Wait!” the agent said, raising a finger. “I know! Mister Albright, the pilot, he was one of ’em told me about the fever. He was here about four days ago, and he didn’t want no job—he’s a lower river pilot, you know, so the Eli Reynolds wasn’t for him. He said he was taking a room at the Planters’ House until he could find a position on one of the classier boats, a big side-wheeler like.”

“Albright, eh,” Marsh said. “What about Karl Framm? You see him?” If Framm and Albright had both left the Fevre Dream, the steamer shouldn’t be hard to find. Without qualified pilots, she couldn’t move.

But Green shook his head. “No. Ain’t seen Mister Framm.”

Marsh’s hopes sank. If Karl Framm was still aboard her, the Fevre Dream could be anywhere along the river. She might have gone off any one of a number of tributaries, or maybe the Fevre Dream had even steamed back down to New Orleans while he was laid up in that woodyard south of Bayou Sara. “I’m goin’ to pay a call on Dan Albright,” he told the agent. “While I’m gone, I want you to write some letters. To agents, pilots, anybody you know along the river, from here to New Orleans. Ask about the Fevre Dream. Somebody has got to have seen her. Steamer like that don’t just vanish. You write those letters up this afternoon, you hear, and get down to the landing and post them on the fastest boats you see. I aim to find my steamer.”

“Yes, sir,” the agent said. He got out a stack of paper and a pen, dipped it in the inkwell, and began to write.

The clerk at the Planters’ House desk bobbed his head in greeting. “Why, it’s Cap’n Marsh,” he said. “Heard about your misfortune, just awful, Bronze John’s a wicked one, that he is. I’m glad you’re better, Cap’n, I truly am.”

“Never mind about that,” Marsh said, annoyed. “What room is Dan Albright in?”

Albright had been polishing his boots. He let Marsh in with a cool, polite nod of greeting, took his seat again, stuck an arm into one boot, and resumed shining as if he’d never been called to the door.

Abner Marsh sat down heavily and wasted no time with pleasantries. “Why’d you leave the Fevre Dream?” he asked bluntly.

“Fever, Cap’n,” Albright said. He studied Marsh briefly, then went back to work on his boot without another word.

“Tell me about it, Mister Albright. I wasn’t there.”

Dan Albright frowned. “You weren’t? I understood you and Mister Jeffers found the first sick man.”

“You understood wrong. Now tell me.”

Albright polished his boots and told him; the storm, the supper, the body that Joshua York and Sour Billy Tipton and the other man had carried through the saloon, the flight of passengers and crew. He told it all in as few words as possible. When he was finished, his boots were gleaming. He slid them on.

“Everyone left?” Marsh said.

“No,” said Albright. “Some stayed. Some don’t know the fever as well as I do.”

“Who?”

Albright shrugged. “Cap’n York. His friends. Hairy Mike. The stokers and roustabouts, too. Reckon they were too scared of Mike to run off. Specially down in slave country. Whitey Blake might have stayed. You and Jeffers, I thought.”

“Mister Jeffers is dead,” said Marsh. Albright said nothing.

“What about Karl Framm?” Marsh asked.

“Can’t say.”

“You were partners.”

“We were different. I didn’t see him. I don’t know, Cap’n.”

Marsh frowned. “What happened after you took your wages?”

“I spent a day in Bayou Sara, then took a ride with Cap’n Leathers on the Natchez. I rode up to Natchez, looking over the river, spent about a week there, then came on up to St. Louis on the Robert Folk.”

“What happened to the Fevre Dream?”

“She left.”

“Left?”

“Steamed off, I figure. When I woke up, morning after the fever broke out, she was gone from Bayou Sara.”

“Without a crew?”

“Must have been enough left to run her,” Albright said.

“Where’d she go?”

Albright shrugged. “Didn’t see her from the Natchez. I could have missed her, though. Wasn’t looking. Maybe she went downstream.”

“You’re really quite a goddamn help, Mister Albright,” Marsh said.

Albright said, “Can’t tell you what I don’t know. Maybe they burned her. The fever. Never should have given her that name, I figure. Unlucky.”

Abner Marsh was losing patience. “She ain’t been burned,” he said. “She’s on the river somewhere, and I’m goin’ to find her. She ain’t unlucky neither.”

“I was the pilot, Cap’n. I saw it. Storms, fog, delays, and then the fever. She was cursed, that boat. If I was you, I’d give up on her. She’s no good for you. Godless.” He stood up. “That reminds me, I got something belongs to you.” He fetched out two books, and handed them to Marsh. “From the Fevre Dream library,” he explained. “I played a game of chess with Cap’n York back in New Orleans, and mentioned that I liked poetry, and he gave me these a day later. When I left, I took them along by mistake.”

Abner Marsh turned the books over in his hands. Poetry. A volume of poems by Byron and one by Shelley. Just what he needed, he thought. His steamboat was gone, vanished off the river, and all he had left to show of her were two goddamn books of poems. “Keep them,” he said to Dan Albright.

Albright shook his head. “Don’t want them. Not the kind of poems I like, Cap’n. Immoral, both of them. No wonder your boat got struck down, carrying books like those.”

Abner Marsh slid the books into his pocket and stood up, scowling. “I had about enough of that, Mister Albright. I won’t hear that kind of talk about my boat. She’s as fine a boat as any on the river, and she ain’t cursed. Ain’t no such thing as curses. The Fevre Dream’s a real heller of …”

“That she is,” Dan Albright interrupted. He stood, too. “I got to see about a berth,” he said, ushering Marsh toward the door. Marsh let himself be ushered. But as Albright was showing him out, the dapper little pilot said, “Cap’n Marsh, leave it be.”

“What?”

“That steamer,” Albright said. “She’s no good for you. You know the way I can smell a storm coming?”

“Yes,” Marsh said. Albright could smell storms better than anyone Marsh had ever known.

“Sometimes I can smell other things too,” the pilot said. “Don’t go looking for her, Cap’n. Forget about her. I figured you was dead. You’re not. You ought to be thankful. Finding the Fevre Dream won’t bring you no joy, Cap’n.”

Abner Marsh stared at him. “You can say that. You stood at her wheel, and took her down the river, and you can say that.”

Albright said nothing.

“Well, I ain’t lissening,” Marsh said. “That’s my steamboat, Mister Albright, and someday I’m goin’ to pilot her myself, I’m goin’ to run her against the Eclipse, you hear, and … and …” Red-faced and angry, Marsh found himself choking on his own tongue. He could not go on.

“Pride can be sinful, Cap’n,” Dan Albright said. “Leave it be.” He closed the door, leaving Marsh out in the hallway.

Abner Marsh took his lunch in the Planters’ House dining room, eating off by himself in the corner. Albright had shaken him, and he found himself thinking the same thoughts he had run through his head going upriver aboard the Princess. He ate a leg of lamb in mint sauce, a mess of turnips and snap beans, and three helpings of tapioca, but even that didn’t calm him. As he drank his coffee, Marsh wondered if maybe Albright wasn’t right. Here he was back in St. Louis, just like he’d been before he met Joshua York in this very same room. He still had his company, the Eli Reynolds, and some money in the bank, too. He was an upper river man; it had been a terrible mistake ever to go down to New Orleans. His dream had turned into a nightmare down there in slave country, in the hot fevered south. But now it was over, his steamer had gone and vanished, and if he wanted to he could just pretend that it had never happened at all, that there had never been a steamboat called the Fevre Dream, nor people named Joshua York and Damon Julian and Sour Billy Tipton. Joshua had come out of nowhere and now he was gone again. The Fevre Dream hadn’t existed in April, and it didn’t seem to exist now, as far as Marsh could see. A sane man couldn’t believe that stuff anyhow, blood-drinking and skulking about by night and bottles of some foul liquor. It had all been a fever dream, Abner Marsh thought, but now the fever was gone from him, now he could get on with his life here in St. Louis.

Marsh ordered up some more coffee. They will go on killing, he thought to himself as he drank it, they will go on with the blood-drinking and the murder with no one to stop them. “Can’t stop ’em anyway,” he muttered. He’d done his best, him and Joshua and Hairy Mike and poor old Mister Jeffers, who’d never raise an eyebrow or move a chessman again. It hadn’t gotten them anywhere. And it wouldn’t do no good to go to the authorities, not with a story about a bunch of vampires who stole his steamboat. They’d just believe that yellow fever yarn, and figure he’d gone soft in the head, and maybe lock him up someplace.

Abner Marsh paid his bill and walked back to the office of Fevre River Packets. The landing was crowded and bustling. Above was a clear blue sky, and below was the river bright and clean in the sunlight, and the air had a tang to it, a scent of smoke and steam, and he heard the whistles of the boats passing each other on the river, and the big brass bell of a side-wheeler pulling in. The mates were bellowing and the roustabouts were singing as they loaded freight, and Abner Marsh stood and looked and listened. This was his life, the other had been a fever dream indeed. The vampires had been killing for thousands of years, Joshua had told him, so how could Marsh hope to change it? Maybe Julian had been right, anyway. It was their nature to kill. And it was Abner Marsh’s nature to be a steamboatman, nothing more, he wasn’t no fighter, York and Jeffers had tried to fight and they’d paid for it.

When he entered the office, Marsh had just about decided that Dan Albright was dead right. He would forget about the Fevre Dream, forget everything that had happened, that was the sensible thing to do. He’d just run his company and maybe make some money, and in a year or two he might have enough to build another boat, a bigger one.

Green was scurrying around the office. “I got twenty letters out, Cap’n,” he said to Marsh. “Already posted, just like you said.”

“Fine,” said Marsh, sinking into a chair. He almost sat on the books of poems, jammed uncomfortably into his pocket. He pulled them out, leafed through them quickly, glancing at a few titles, then set them aside. They were poems all right. Marsh sighed. “Fetch out the books, Mister Green,” he said. “I want to take a look at ’em.”

“Yes, Cap’n,” Green said. He went over and pulled them out. Then he saw something else, picked it up, and brought it over to Marsh with the ledgers. “Oh,” he said, “I almost forgot about this.” He handed Marsh a large package, wrapped with brown paper and cord. “Some little man brought this by about three weeks back, said you was supposed to pick it up but never showed. I told him you were still off with the Fevre Dream and paid him. I hope that was all right.”

Abner Marsh frowned down at the package, snapped the cord with a twist of his bare hand, and ripped away the paper to open the box. Inside was a brand new captain’s coat, white as the snow that covered the upper river in winter, pure and clean, with a double row of flashing silver buttons, and Fevre Dream written in raised letters on every damn one. He took it out and the box fell to the floor and suddenly, finally, the tears came.

“Get out!” roared Marsh. The agent took one look at his face and was gone. Abner Marsh rose and put on the white jacket, and buttoned up the silver buttons. It was a beautiful fit. It was cool, much cooler than the heavy blue captain’s coat he’d been wearing. There was no mirror in the office, so Marsh couldn’t see what he looked like, but he could imagine. In his mind he looked like Joshua York, he looked fine and regal and sophisticated. The cloth was so brilliantly white, he thought.

“I look like the cap’n of the Fevre Dream,” Marsh said loudly, to himself. He stamped his stick hard on the floor, and felt the blood run to his face, and he stood there remembering. Remembering the way she’d looked in the mists of New Albany. Remembering the way her mirrors gleamed, remembering her silver, remembering the wild call of her steam whistle and stroke of her engine, loud as a thunderstorm. Remembering how she’d left the Southerner far behind her, how she’d gulped down the Mary Kaye. He remembered her people as well; Framm and his wild stories, Whitey Blake spotted with grease, Toby killing chickens, Hairy Mike roaring and cussing at the roustabouts and deckhands, Jeffers playing chess, defeating Dan Albright for the hundredth time. If Albright was so smart, Marsh thought, how come he could never beat Jeffers at chess?

And Marsh recalled Joshua most of all, Joshua all in white, Joshua sipping his liquor, Joshua sitting in the darkness and spinning out his dreams. Gray eyes and strong hands and poetry. “We all make our choices,” whispered the memory. Morn came and went, and came, and brought no day.

“GREEN!” Abner Marsh roared at the top of his lungs.

The door opened and the agent poked his head in nervously.

“I want my steamboat,” Marsh said. “Where the hell is she?”

Green swallowed. “Cap’n, like I said, the Fevre Dream—”

“Not her!” Marsh said, stamping his stick down hard. “My other steamboat. Where the hell is my other steamboat, now that I need her?”