Thieves of Mercy Read online

  “Fresh air?” Guthrie exclaimed. “What the hell kind of engineer are you?” he asked, but that was yet another question that Taylor did not care to explore.

  The General Page was twenty-eight hours from Greenville to Memphis, steaming upriver against a one-to two-knot current, negotiating the wild, serpentine bends of the Mississippi River. Small towns and huge plantations slipped past, but the Page did not belong to the land. She was a citizen of another place, the riverborne community of the paddle wheelers and rafts and tugs and canoes that moved as languidly as the current on the wide brown water. The Mississippi River was like a whole other nation, with different geography, different customs, different history than the land through which it ran—one single, narrow, twisting nation smack in the middle of another.

  Bowater was beginning to appreciate this unique quality of the river, to understand how the riverboat men came to be a separate breed from the deepwater sailors. During his long confinement at the naval hospital in Norfolk he had come upon and read a copy of Charles Darwin’s new Origin of Species, and though he viewed the work as predominantly a bunch of irreligious claptrap, there had been a few ideas that he fixed on, and found intriguing.

  He wondered now how natural selection might have led to the species of men who worked the river. Certainly, he thought, the environment of the river community would have weeded out his own species, or any species of man with any sort of refinement or sensibilities.

  These pointless and meandering thoughts drifted through Bowater’s head as he in turn drifted around the side wheeler, trying always to avoid Mike Sullivan, but still Sullivan hunted him like a hound dog on the scent of coon. Mississippi Mike was in a literary frenzy, so taken with the artistic merits and genuine originality of Bowater’s ideas on plot and character that he seemed unable to concentrate on anything else.

  Sullivan finally caught him on the fantail, caught him alone. A moment before, Bowater had been talking with Ruffin Tanner about allocating crew on the new ironclad, the Tennessee, once she was under way. As long as he was with someone else, Bowater knew he was safe, because Sullivan wanted to keep his literary aspirations secret, and would not approach if a third party was there.

  But no sooner had Tanner left, and Bowater begun considering with whom he could speak next, than Sullivan appeared around the corner of the deckhouse. So quickly, in fact, that Bowater had to imagine he was lurking there, waiting for Tanner to leave.

  “Cap’n Bowater, there you are! I been working like a sum bitch, wrote it up the way you said.” Sullivan was smiling wide, holding a sheaf of paper in his hand. “Here, let me read you some—”

  “Ahh…” There was no escape. Samuel Bowater had seen enough combat to know when there was nothing you could do but stand and take it. “All right…”

  Mike, grinning harder, held the papers in front of him. “‘The Adventures of Mississippi Mike and the Murdering Dogs,’” he read.

  “‘Chapter One—A Ghostly Tale. On the whole of the Mississippi, there ain’t no one who dare cross Mississippi Mike, best of the riverboat men—’”

  “Isn’t anyone.”

  “What?”

  “There isn’t anyone who dares cross Mississippi Mike. That’s how it should read. Or better yet, there’s no man who would dare cross Mississippi Mike.”

  Mike nodded. “Yeah, that sounds real sweet, like the way them fancy French whores talk. All right, we’ll fix that up.” Mike licked the end of a pencil, scribbled awkwardly on the page.

  …no man who would dare cross Mississippi Mike, best of the riverboat men. And of all of them, you’d reckon it was his kin would know best that the hardest drinkin, hardest fightin man on Western Waters was not a fellow to be done dirty. So Mike, being generous of spirit and not a fellow to think bad of another fellow, especially his kinfolk, never even thought that when his pa died it might have been at the hands of a murdering dog.

  “What do you think?” Mike asked.

  “Good, good,” Samuel said. “A little foreshadowing. Some nice alliteration. Is there much more of this…ah…introductory material?”

  “No, no, I get right at it. Even used the names you come up with, for the other fellows. Here, listen up.” Mike cleared his throat and read:

  This was in the early days, when Mississippi Mike had not yet got command of his own riverboat, but was mate on board the Belle of the West, which his pa was captain on. Paddy Sullivan was the best riverboat man there was, until his son inherited that mantle and even surpassed the former.

  “I read that thing about ‘inheriting that mantle’ somewhere, don’t recall where, and I always liked it,” Sullivan explained. “Is that all right—you know, borrowin’ from another writer an all?”

  “Generally, no, but I think we can let that stand. Go on.”

  When Paddy Sullivan died, gentle in his sleep, it was a sad day on the river, and a sadder day for Mississippi Mike. But it was not for two months more, on a foggy morning watch, that Mike would find out the dirty deed that was done his pa.

  The Belle of the West was anchored just south of Natchez and waiting for the fog to lift, when Horatio, a free Negro and Mike’s longtime pard, was on the deck watch.

  “You seen it? Two times you seen it?” Horatio asked his shipmates, Barney and Mark, who had the watch with him.

  “That’s right. We seen it twice. And if you don’t believe in ghosts, pard, you best bet you would if you seen this.”

  Horatio’s eyes was like saucers. “Oh, Lawd, I surely do believe in ghosts, and I surely hope we don’t see one now!”

  “Look, y’all!” Mark shouted.

  The three men looked up. Right out of the fog, like a man-shaped cloud, and all shiny, stepped a spirit from another world, a world of the dead!

  “Oh, Lawdy, Lawdy! Dat surely is de ghost of ol’ Paddy Sullivan! An don’t it look jest like him!” Horatio held tight to his shotgun, his ebony finger on the trigger, his eyes bulging from their sockets.

  “Talk to him, Horatio!” Barney whispered.

  “No, suh, I ain’t talking to no ghost!”

  “Go on!” Mark said next, pushing Mike’s sable pard toward the apparition.

  Horatio held the gun in front of him and the barrel trembled like a leaf in a breeze. “What you want, Paddy Sullivan?” he shouted in a hoarse voice. “What you coming around here for, scaring decent folk?” Horatio spoke bravely, for even though the Negro race is more afraid of ghosts and such than regular folk, Mike’s old shipmate was no coward. But the ghost would not talk to him, but instead floated free across the deck.

  Sullivan looked up. “What do you think?”

  “Excellent, Sullivan. Perfect,” Bowater said. He was impressed. It was not nearly as awful as he had imagined it would be, with a few bits that seemed genuinely inspired. He could see his enthusiasm reflected on Mike’s face.

  “Really?”

  “Oh, yes. You captured the mood of the thing very nicely. But see here, I had another idea, something that might really give the book some bite, you know.”

  “Yeah?” Mike took a step closer, a conspiratorial move.

  “Here’s what I was thinking. How about if Mississippi Mike’s uncle, along with becoming captain of the Belle of the West…”

  “Yeah?”

  “How about if he marries Mike’s mother!”

  Mike stood up straight, his eyes like saucers. “Marries his mother?”

  “Yes. Just think on it. Wouldn’t that get Mike hot for revenge?”

  “Yeah, it would do that….” Mike looked away, trying to absorb the enormity of it. “But…the way I wrote it, Mike’s pa ain’t been dead but two months.”

  “I know. Shocking, isn’t it?”

  “Shocking? It’s damned indecent is what it is.”

  “Of course.” Bowater lowered his voice. “You think people want to read about decency? Why don’t you write a book about a cloistered nun, see how many people buy that?”

  “You got a point….”

>   “Just think about it,” Bowater encouraged. “That’s all I ask.”

  “All right….” Mike muttered. He wandered off, his eyes on the deck. His lips were moving, but Bowater could not hear what he was saying, and he guessed—he hoped—he had bought himself a few hours of peace.

  As it turned out, the notion that frailty’s name might be woman so rattled Mississippi Mike that Bowater had little discourse with him for the rest of the afternoon and evening, until he was safely ensconced in his cabin with the door bolted. The next morning he stepped onto the side deck carefully, looked fore and aft to see the way clear.

  “Captain Bowater!” Mike’s voice was like a thunderclap, and like a thunderclap it came from overhead. Bowater turned and looked up. Mike was standing on top of the wheel box, leaning on the rail, looking down. “Come on up to the wheelhouse! Take your breakfast up here! This is your big day, Captain!”

  Bowater trudged wearily, grudgingly, up to the hurricane deck and across to the wheelhouse. Mississippi Mike was outside the wheelhouse, grinning, shouting, flying back and forth. It was not the Mississippi Mike who sheepishly asked Bowater’s advice on writing. It was hard drivin, hard drinkin, most dangerous son of a whore riverboat man on the Western Waters Sullivan, the preliterary Mississippi Mike.

  “Good morning, Captain,” Bowater said. His every cell was crying out for coffee, hot and black.

  “Coffee, Captain?” Sullivan said, and without waiting for a reply turned to the deckhand polishing the bell and said, “Berry, light along to the galley and get the captain here some coffee!”

  Berry took off, returned, and Sullivan had the decency not to speak until Bowater had taken at least two good sips.

  “Outskirts of Memphis here, Captain,” Sullivan said, nodding toward the shore. It was a gray morning, overcast and humid. Bowater could see that the shoreline was more crowded than it had been downriver: docks, warehouses, clusters of dilapidated shacks. Riverboats were tied up at various angles to wharves and to the shore itself. He could see wagons moving along like tiny models in a diorama.

  Memphis…The voyage had been so wild he had almost lost sight of the destination. Life like the chapters of a book—one ends, move on to the next.

  The Adventures of Samuel Bowater, Naval Officer.

  Chapter the Thirty-fourth, In which our hero is shed of Mississippi Mike Sullivan at last, and sees his new command for the first time, and comes to understand into what new nightmare he has been plunged….

  Bowater stared over the brown water and played with the idea.

  “Just a couple miles or so upriver’s the yard where your ship’s a’buildin, Captain. Mr. John T. Shirley’s yard. That fella’s a whirlwind, don’t get in his way. Got a wharf there, we can drop you and your men off right at the shipyard.”

  “Oh…” Bowater had not thought that far ahead. “That would be marvelous, Captain Sullivan.”

  “Least I can do.”

  Bowater was silent for a moment, finished his coffee, felt much restored. “I’ll go and alert my men to be ready to disembark,” he said.

  “No, no need, Captain,” Sullivan said, then leaned into the wheelhouse, shouted, “Come right, you stupid son of a whore! Do you see that raft? Are you blind, you dumb bastard?” and from inside the wheelhouse, unseen by Bowater, the helmsman replied, “I see the raft. Shut your mouth, you fat bastard!”

  The General Page swung slightly to starboard, and Sullivan grinned as if the helmsman’s reply had been part of some witty repartee. “No need, Captain, I’ll have one of my boys do it,” and with a shout, Sullivan dispatched the put-upon Berry to gather Bowater’s men.

  “Nothin like gettin the first sight of a new command, huh, Captain Bowater?” Sullivan said. “I would be honored to share that moment with you.” It wasn’t sincerity in his voice, but something meant to sound like it.

  “Yes, indeed…”

  They steamed on, the shipping and the buildings, the wharves and the traffic growing thicker as Memphis opened up around them, and the General Page inched her way toward the eastern bank of the Mississippi River.

  They were less than two hundred yards off when Sullivan shouted, “Here we are, Baxter, come right, now!”

  The General Page swung across the river, her bow pointing at a makeshift shipyard sprawling along a landing near a desultory-looking fort that Bowater had been told was Fort Pickering. A great brown earthen plot of land, scattered with stacks of blond, fresh-cut wood, piles of iron with a patina of rust turning them ruddy brown, carts and men and huffing steam engines. There were two sawmills spitting out clouds of dust, several buildings that might be ironworks, black smoke roiling from forge chimneys, a dock with a small tug tied alongside.

  There were two ships on the stocks, sister ships, around one hundred and seventy feet in length, thirty-five feet on the beam, and perhaps twelve feet in depth. Bowater could see elegant curved fantail sterns, a shallow deadrise, a nice run fore and aft. The casemates rose straight up from the sides, nearly vertical like the sides of a house. Only the fore and aft ends of the casemates were slanted, the way he had come to think an ironclad’s casemate should be.

  They were good-looking vessels, identical in proportion, very different in their state of completion. One of them was finished in her planking, her casemate covered in thick oak, pierced for guns, two aft and three on the broadside that Bowater could see. The shafts of her twin screws were in place, parallel to her waterline, the big propellers already mounted on either side of the barn door rudder. She had her first few runs of iron on as well, the plating covering her sides nearly to the level of the main deck.

  She was far from complete, but she was well on her way, and a month or so of diligent effort might see her launched and commissioned, an operational man-of-war.

  The other ship was not nearly so far along. She was no more than a wooden frame, the skeleton of a ship, with the first few runs of planking along her bottom. The stacks of wood on either side of her would no doubt become the rest of her planking, but as it was they were just stacks of wood. Through the space between frames Bowater could see there were no engines, no shafts, no boilers.

  “There she is, Captain, the ironclad Tennessee!” Sullivan made a wide gesture, taking in the entire yard.

  “I see two vessels, Sullivan. Which is the Tennessee?” As if he had to ask.

  “It’s the one with the good ventilation.” He pointed to the ship in frame. “You’re a lucky man, Captain. Ventilation’s real important in a hot climate like we got here!”

  Sullivan was enjoying himself. He turned, shouted orders at the helmsman, grinned, and stuffed a cigar in his mouth as the helmsman cursed him and spun the wheel. Sullivan rang up turns astern and with a creaking protest the paddle wheels stopped, then thrashed astern, and the General Page settled against the dock, the barge of coal trailing away downstream at the end of the towrope.

  The brow had just gone over the side when the horseman rode up, hard pounding across the shipyard, making the yard workers pause and look up. He dismounted in a flourish, ran the length of the dock, and leaped aboard. A minute later he was standing, breathless, on the hurricane deck.

  “Captain Sullivan, a good job you come now,” the man said when his breath returned. A young man, he had the look of the river on him.

  “What’s up?” Sullivan asked, cigar in mouth.

  “Captain Montgomery says best get your hide upriver! Council of war for the captains tonight. Most of ’em are hot to go after the Yankees at dawn!”

  “Well, damn! That’s some damned good news!” Mississippi Mike was wearing his dime-novel grin. “What say you, Captain Bowater? You and your men want to join us in the fun?” His eyes flickered toward Shirley’s yard. “Or do you want to take your own boat to the fight?”

  NINE

  May 8.—Meridian to 3 P.M.: Steamed up abreast of Sewell’s Point batteries, preceded by the Naugatuck, Monitor, Seminole, and Susquehanna. The squadron then opened fire. President Lincoln p
assed us in a steam tug. At 5:45 mustered at quarters.

  The Merrimack returned to her anchorage off Craney Island.

  LOG OF THE USS DACOTAH

  Wendy Atkins had been in a play once. She had played Ophelia in a production of Hamlet staged by the Culpepper Community Players. Her performance had not been so bad, she believed, fending off the melancholy Dane’s lewd suggestions, staggering around with a wild-eyed look, strumming her lute. There had always been a little extra burst of applause as she stepped onstage for her curtain call.

  Of course, there were always a number of suitors in the audience who had wanted to make love to her, and they no doubt accounted for some of the enthusiasm. That was before she had alienated half the eligible young men in town, and frightened off the remainder. Still, she was not bad.

  She recalled the many sensations that had come with her time onstage. The sick fright, waiting for her moment to step from behind the curtain and into the light, where all eyes would be on her, every ear listening to her speak her speech.

  “Do you doubt that?”

  It was the first line Ophelia spoke, and as the line passed from her lips, it carried with it all that fear and doubt, as if the emotions had been shackled to the words, and, bound together, they were all expelled at once. After the first words were out, she became the master of her domain. The stage was her home, as comfortable as her sitting room, and she moved about it with ease, spoke her lines with confidence, and even on occasion stepped in and helped one of her fellow players find their way when they had lost the thread of their speech.

  She thought of that as she mounted the side of the tug, the young lieutenant taking her hand, because that was how she felt now. With those first words, her step onto the stage of deception, she had felt the fear melt away, and with it, a new confidence arise, a feeling that she was as much the person she pretended to be as she was Wendy Atkins.