10

EVERLY

Present day

That evening, Savannah’s riverfront bustled with activity as if it were a weekend, although it was only the first Tuesday in June. A stretch of cobblestones lined with flickering gas lanterns that cast a diffuse light ran parallel to the river. I turned to Maddox, standing at my side. We were both lost in imagining that June morning in 1838 when the luxurious and beautiful Pulaski had been tied to these very docks, the Longstreet buildings tall behind the wharf.

What hadn’t existed then, and now dominated the scenery, was the soaring bridge that crossed the Savannah River north into South Carolina, a sailboat of an iron structure that curved like the arched spine of a great sea creature. Just under the bridge on the same bank stood the largest port in the East, where barge ships as big as town squares docked and cranes looked monstrously out of place against the quaint city. Further inland were smokestacks spewing gray smoke from the paper mill.

But when I looked right, the barges, the docks and the dark plumes disappeared and the wild Savannah River curved and swayed past Tybee Lighthouse to the sea. Along the riverfront sat restaurants and bars, tourist shops and candy stores; benches to sit on while gazing at the water. Small children ran about selling handmade flowers fashioned from palm branches; men and women playing instruments with their cases open for money crooned into the evening. Couples and singles, groups of families and hordes of adolescents, strode along the walkway looking for anything from trouble to love.

We’d been silent for a while when I pointed behind us up the bluff to the city. “You need to know a bit about the city and the time period if you’re going to know about the passengers and the ship.”

“Tell me.” His voice sounded sincere, full of interest.

“Savannah was founded in 1733 as a philanthropic trust. You might hear about how the debtors came first, but that’s only partly true. Originally we were founded to help the working poor.”

“How so?”

“Gardens were planted with mulberry trees to be harvested for silk. Farmland was given to each settler. The policy was meant to encourage the creation of a community of working yeomen. Slavery was outlawed. In fact, the founders knew that if they allowed slavery it would encourage wealthy landowners and that was the opposite of what they wanted.”

“So much for what they wanted. Things have changed a bit.”

I nodded. “Of course they changed. Their good intentions didn’t last. Slavery was legalized by 1755.”

“On plantations.”

“Not just there. There were house slaves in town and plantation slaves in the country. House slaves did kitchen tasks, housecleaning, laundry and of course there were nursemaids and seamstresses. When the Pulaski left in 1838, Matthew Hall McAllister was mayor. The city had already survived the yellow fever epidemic of 1819 and the great fire of 1820. Hopes were high for brighter days to come. Short staple cotton was shipped down from the upcountry and Sea Island cotton from St. Simons brought double the money of short staple. Both were in huge demand in Europe. Money flowed in and the city thrived.”

“Except for the enslaved harvesting the cotton.”

“Exactly,” I said. “All that wealth pouring in was made on the backs of enslaved people.”

A grave look crossed Maddox’s face. “It’s hard to imagine how this was tolerated for so long.”

“Rationalization is mighty strong. Humans haven’t changed that much.”

“Yes.” He paused. “Tell me why so many were willing to travel on the Pulaski—why so many took chances on steamships that sometimes blew up and sank. It seems a terrible gamble.”

“Before the modern day, before air-conditioning, Savannah in summer could be a horror. The summer flies, the stinging gnats—we call them no-see-ums—the heat, the fevers, the malaria. The theaters shut down. The racetrack was closed. No balls and concerts. The city emptied out. Those who could leave, did. The wealthy, and the ones who had places to go and a means to get there.”

Maddox closed his eyes as if he could see it. “I’ve read about that morning. They came to the wharf in buggies and on horseback because trains didn’t reach south from Baltimore to Savannah. They could ride the rails north after Baltimore, but they had to get there first.”

“Yes,” I confirmed. “Water travel was the fastest. To go by land took three or four days; it was arduous and dirty and there weren’t many places to stay along the way. There were rumors of robbery, too. So even though everyone knew steam travel wasn’t the safest, it was faster. And as a bonus, the Pulaski was advertised as ‘only one night at sea.’ So all bets were taken—what could go wrong in one night? This ship was made for speed and safety and luxury. Though I guess it doesn’t much matter what we’re made for. It matters what happens when the boiler explodes.”

Maddox tipped back his head and let out a bellow of a laugh. “Touché and so true! Now, should we get something to eat? And drink?” He patted a leather satchel flung over his shoulder. “I have some things for us to go over.”

“I want to show you something first.” I led him to the right, past the World War II monument featuring a world globe split in half and beneath it the names of those from Chatham County who had served and died. A short distance farther on was a five-foot-tall bronze statue of a woman whose skirts ballooned in an unseen wind. She faced the river, her body turned slightly toward the Atlantic. In her arms she held a baby swaddled in a blanket.

Maddox’s large presence walking so close unsettled me. I felt the space between us shrinking. I walked faster; he kept up. I wanted to push him a few feet from me, and yet when I looked he wasn’t all that near. We reached the statue as I took two steps away from him.

“This is a memorial to Lilly Forsyth and all those who suffered when the Pulaski sank. She was rumored to have survived but was never seen again. Since we don’t have a list of all those who lived, her survival could be a myth; just one woman to represent the horror of that night.” The statue stood surrounded by a small pool where spouts of water shot upward from the edges of a concrete basin and splashed the bottom of her skirt. I reached into my purse and grabbed a loose penny, tossing it into the pool.

“Your wish?” he asked.

I stepped back. I wouldn’t tell this stranger my wish—to find Mora’s killer—any more than I would tell anyone else. It was the one wish that I carried with me every day. “Can’t tell.” I shrugged. “Or it won’t come true.”

“So, what’s her story?” He walked to the edge of the statue.

“No one knows. She was part of the Longstreet family and married a man named Adam Forsyth, and they were both on the ship to Baltimore. Honestly, until I saw her name as Lady Forsyth on the manifest yesterday, I wasn’t sure she was a real woman. When we were kids, my grandfather would make up stories about where she went.” With my palm, I shielded my eyes from the sinking sun beginning to glint off the river. “Hers is one of many stories that was lost along with that sunken ship. She probably drowned. There’s always confusion in such situations. Hell, on that manifest, women don’t even have first names. But here she stands, representing all that was lost, and all the mystery surrounding the wreck.”

Maddox gazed off to the river as if he could see something I could not, as if he knew the answers already. “It’s awful.”

I paused and then told Maddox how the Noble Boy and the Red Devil were one and the same, how Charles Longstreet sailed on the Pulaski and then commandeered the horrific slave ship the Wanderer.

“You mean”—he pointed at Lilly—“she was part of the same family? And all of them were on that journey?”

“Yes.”

“Wow. Damn.”

“I did some more research on Charles. Listen to this—he became the last man to die in the Civil War. Literally the last man in a battle called Wilson’s Raid in Columbus, Georgia. Shot through the heart.”

“Can we use the word ‘karma’ here?” Maddox brushed at the air as if to clear it of Charles’s memory and then came so close I could see the freckles on his ears. “Let me get this straight. There are six kids. He’s the oldest. He survives and is given the moniker Noble Boy. Twenty years later he finances and sends a schooner to pick up over four hundred enslaved people from the Congo. He is never convicted. Then he goes on to fight in the Civil War—most likely to defend this exact way of life—and is shot through the heart, the last Confederate soldier to die in the war.”

“You got it.” I tucked my hair behind my ear and delivered the punch line. “Six days after Lee surrendered to Sherman at Appomattox. The war was over and he died anyway.”

“Holy shit.”

“Very eloquent.” I laughed and he stuck his hands in his back pockets and stared out toward the river.

“And you want to know what happened to him. To that family and to Lilly,” he said.

“Yes.”

He took a few steps toward the concrete edge of the riverside, the stanchions for the larger ships big as chairs. He placed a foot on one and stood as if posing. Now that Maddox was leaving space between us, I felt I could take in a larger breath. I let him be as he watched a tour riverboat designed to emulate earlier styles, the Queen of Savannah, slide into dock. Mates on board were dressed in 1800s costumes, just like on the carriage rides.

I wanted to holler to the passengers holding their sweating wineglasses and cell phones that the pretense didn’t come close to the reality of that time period. But I let them be, looking past Tybee Lighthouse toward where the mouth of the river opened to the Atlantic. Maddox stepped back as a mate from the boat jumped out to catch the rope being tossed.

“You know,” he said finally, “not everyone who survives trauma becomes a better person. The idea that surviving brings everyone to a new and better place is a lie told by people who need the world to make sense.”

My breath caught and I repeated his words as if he’d spoken in another language. “By people who need the world to make sense.”

He spun around to face me. “Yes.”

I glanced once more at the river moving toward the sea, sloshing against the seawall, and everyone on the riverfront going about their lives as if the water could not take them, as if life could not take them. “Let’s go talk,” I said. “I want to see what you’ve got in the bag.”

We took a few steps toward the restaurants when a laugh, one I recognized, echoed across the plaza; I turned to it, and there sat Oliver. For a year, I’d not once run into him or seen him—maybe because I’d turned into the slightest bit of a recluse—but there he sat at a table with his back to me. His dark curls and blue T-shirt were familiar, but I didn’t recognize the woman who sat with him. My first thought was how pretty she was. Very pretty. Curly blond hair worn loose: it looked alive in the breeze. She wore glasses with purple frames and took a long swig from her large glass of white wine. Oliver set his hands on the table and leaned toward her. I couldn’t hear a word they said, but the body language was as clear as if there were tiny cartoon bubbles above their heads that said “We’re flirting.”

My stomach lurched and tears sprang to my eyes. For what? For proof that life moved on? That Oliver had moved on? I didn’t know, but sadness swamped me.

Maddox had moved a few steps ahead and turned back to me. “You coming?”

“Sorry. Yes.” I hustled to catch up.

“I asked earlier for an outdoor table with a river view. I think that’s important.”

He understood, and that pleased me. If we were to talk of the Pulaski we must be near the place where the passengers had boarded. I’d always believed that one can’t understand the past without visiting the places where events took place. At their best, curated exhibits told stories, and those stories were best understood in the landscape where it all happened. In this case, that was here in Savannah and at the bottom of the sea.

We found a table and Maddox brought our chairs around so we could sit next to each other while facing the river. He moved aside the place settings and dropped papers onto the table. We ordered Prosecco for me and whiskey on the rocks for him and sipped our drinks.

“Let’s start with what you need to know.” He handed me a data sheet. “You can read this later. It’s all about the Baltimore shipyard where the Pulaski was built for the Savannah and Charleston Steam Packet Company. Here are measurements, all the brass tacks.”

I glanced at the paper scattered with facts and figures: a side-wheeler steamboat with two masts, one promenade deck, and an aft deck. Two lifeboats on the promenade and two hanging on the sides. Two hundred and three feet long. Twenty-five feet wide. Sixty-eight tons. Two hundred and twenty-five horsepower. Two low-pressure boilers.

“Only four lifeboats. I noticed that on the model. My God.” I folded the paper and pushed it aside. “Let’s talk about the passengers. I’ve found the best way to make an exhibit interesting is to make sure to follow a story. And this Longstreet family seems to be waiting for their story to be told. What happened to them all? How did a young boy survive such tragedy to become so . . . despicable?”

Maddox leaned forward so I could smell the mixture of whiskey and mint on his breath. The lines near his eyes and mouth had formed around a smile that rarely left his face, but did now. He stared at me long enough for it to become uncomfortable before he spoke again. “There are many reasons we bring up these shipwrecks. Gold, for sure. The thrill of the chase. The pursuit of something intangible and ineffable. But for me, it is this, too—the stories of people long gone and lost to history. I do it for the challenge—for me, there’s nothing as exciting as deep-water salvaging. And we literally rewrite history with what we find.”

“Rewrite history.” I broke eye contact and looked back to the pile of photos and papers. “I wish I could do that.”

Our waiter, a young man with a crew cut and a wide smile, arrived at the table. “Have we decided what we’ll have to eat tonight?”

Maddox rubbed his eyes as if awakening. “Just bring us the fish of the day blackened and the freshest vegetables you’ve got.” He handed the menus to the young man without once glancing at them. “Another round of these.” He pointed at our drinks.

Our waiter walked away and I asked, “Do you always take charge that way?”

“Oh, God. I’m sorry.” He paused. “I’m an ass. I just didn’t want to stop the conversation and . . . forgive me. Would you like something different?”

“No, keep talking.”

“That I can do.” He smiled again. “Why would you like to rewrite your history?”

“What?” I took a sip of my drink, pretending I didn’t know what he was asking.

“See? That’s why I rushed him off. I knew it would stop whatever you meant to say.” He brushed his hand through the air. “Talking about wrecks allows us to also talk about ourselves. That’s the other part I love. How it opens us up to life.”

“I don’t really know what I meant, so let’s get back to the ship’s victims and survivors.”

“Yes, back to that.” He sounded disappointed. “She exploded at eleven at night when most people were already in their rooms, settled down for their one night at sea. Although they were gone two nights, only one night was spent at sea.”

“One night . . .”

“That’s the hell of it, right? People chose this ship because its owners boasted that it was the fastest and most luxurious, and for those frightened of sea travel, especially after what had happened to the steamship Home, only one night at sea seemed a safe bet.”

The waiter arrived with our food. I took a bite of the blackened snapper and found myself secretly glad Maddox had ordered it.

“What happened to Home?” I asked.

Maddox used a napkin to wipe his face before settling back in his chair. “Home plied the water between New York and Charleston. It sank on October 9, 1837, less than a year before the Pulaski sailed on its ill-fated journey. She carried a hundred and thirty-five of the who’s who of Charleston society. It, too, was a steam-powered side-wheeler. The big difference is that it was originally made for river trade and then converted for seagoing passengers. It sailed directly into a storm called the Racer off the coast of North Carolina. They didn’t see it coming.”

“We rarely do.”

He smiled but kept talking. “Home had been outfitted with mahogany and skylights and all the best of everything, but it had only three lifeboats and two life preservers. Ninety-five people lost their lives off Ocracoke Island.”

“Almost sounds like you’re talking about the same ship.”

“Right. So, passengers boarding the Pulaski were already leery but willing to place their faith in the new technology.”

The second glass of Prosecco was coursing through me. “I think they also trusted the Longstreet family. We don’t know about the others yet, but in local lore Lilly is already everything from a ghost to a hero. The Forsyth plantation is a historic site. Some say she never boarded the Pulaski at all, or maybe she got off in Charleston and ran away with a lover. I want to find out what happened to her. Maybe she died mid-explosion . . . who knows.”

“If she boarded that ship, we might prove it by finding something that belonged to her.”

I wiggled my fingers in a swimming motion toward the ground. “I’m going down there with you.”

He laughed, but it was deep and kind, not mocking. “No, you’re not.”

“I’m an expert diver. It’s part of the reason Oliver asked me to do this project.”

“It’s a double-tank technical hundred-foot dive.”

“Been there. Done that.”

He leaned back and stared at me. “We’ll see.”

We sat for a long while listening to the cries of sea gulls and a guitar player strumming a song about love. Finally I turned back to Maddox. “Are you thrilled you finally found this wreck? I mean, there must have been false starts and failures . . .”

“Yes. I’m thrilled. In this business there are countless disappointments. But after years of charting the waters and weather of that night, I knew we had the right spot. We were ten miles farther out than the original estimates and when we found it—I felt both vindicated and ecstatic. The ship sank so quickly, with no time to retrieve possessions, so we know there will be plenty of gold and jewelry. We’ve been careful. We aren’t even using a suction dredge to move sand around. We’re doing the job by hand and with metal detectors. We want to keep everything intact.”

“How long will it take to bring it all up?”

“Years. But we can create an exhibit without having all of it. Down so deep, visibility is only about seventy feet and the water is fifty-eight degrees. It’s a difficult retrieval to do by hand—without the machines and diving submarines we use in much deeper dives.”

“What does it look like?” My heart picked up its pace as I imagined the skeletal remains of the ship under water, its deteriorated body folded into the sand.

“Because wood rots, it now looks like a sixty-foot-by-ninety-foot pile of copper.”

“The boilers,” I guessed.

“Yes. There are so many things left to find.”

“This is going to be so interesting.” I flipped through the photos and ate dinner while the present ebbed away and the past took shape before me, as if rising from the water.