Glory In The Name

hands and arms, oblivious.

Die, please, God, why don’t y’all die? He wanted them to stop, he wanted their pain to stop. He crawled on. He did not want to see them.

He skirted around the condenser, stepped into the open space between the engine room and boiler room, blinked away the tears, held the lantern up. The exploding boiler had blasted the other lanterns away-his was the only light below. Its feeble flame glinted on the wet deck, the jagged edges of the shattered boiler, the twisted fire tubes and flues, the insane web of mangled piping.

Screaming, screaming, it was like a physical thing. Taylor could see one of them, off to the side, writhing on the deck, and from the place where the dying man had fallen, right by the reversing levers, he knew it had to be Burgess.

“Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God!!” Taylor sobbed, more frightened, more sick, more desperate than he thought a sane mind could endure. He ran over to his workbench, reached up to the shelf above, laid his hand on his sawed- off shotgun. It was wet with boiler water, the metal warm to the touch. He grabbed up a box of cartridges, a box of percussion caps, shoved them in his pocket.

The hatch overhead opened, a voice shouted, “What’s happened here?”-the question hardly cutting through the screams of the scalded men. Taylor tried to put a percussion cap on the nipple of his shotgun. His hands shook and he dropped it, heard it ping on the deck plate, grabbed another. In six tries he managed to get two caps on, one for each barrel, and all the time the screaming, the horrible screaming, more awful than any pain Taylor had ever endured.

He picked up the lantern, crossed the engine room. The glow from the port boiler’s firebox threw an orange light on the deck plates and the pile of coal. Taylor moved quick, stopped. Took a step forward. Made himself look down at the man in the pool of light on the deck, who had to be Burgess.

Every bit of exposed flesh had been scalded from Burgess’s body, but he had been too far from the boiler to die instantly. Instead, the lantern revealed wet, bloody, pulped flesh, reds and pinks, the hideous form of a man with nothing recognizable as human save for his shape and the frantic, thrashing movements.

Taylor blinked hard, trying to see, and his sobs were nearly as loud now as the shrieking man at his feet. He lifted the shotgun, cocked the hammer.

“Please forgive me, oh, Lord God, please forgive me!” he wailed and pulled the trigger. The gun jolted his shoulder, filled the place with the sharp crack of the gunshot, a good, honest sound. Burgess jerked once, lay still. The screaming was cut by one third.

Taylor grabbed up the lantern, turned toward the boiler. Two bodies, lying still, killed mercifully in the blast. Taylor could not tell who they had been.

He moved around the port boiler, still intact. Two men were tossed up there, one of them, or what was left of him, a coal heaver named Collins they had picked up in Yazoo City. Flayed alive, and still alive; Taylor could see white teeth through the horror that was his face, the dark hole of his mouth as he screamed. Taylor lifted the gun, aimed, closed his eyes, squeezing the tears out, fired the gun.

The blast of the shotgun, then quiet. He swung the lantern around, around to where the third screaming voice had been. One of the men sent by Mallory, Travis something. His pants were shredded, the skin nearly gone, nothing of his leg but half-boiled muscle and skin draping off. He looked at Taylor, his eyes wild, a trapped animal look.

“Don’t kill me, Chief! Please, God, don’t kill me!”

Taylor looked at the boy. He lowered his gun. “I won’t kill you, boy. Gonna hurt like a son of a bitch, getting you outta here, but I won’t kill you.”

“Chief Taylor! Captain wants to know what’s goin on!” The voice from the hatch. Taylor turned, saw Ruffin Tanner drop from the ladder to the deck plates, saw his eyes move around the shattered engine room.

“Lost the starboard boiler, whole black gang’s dead, but me and him.” Taylor jerked a thumb at Travis. “We need some hands to get that poor bastard out of here.”

Tanner nodded. “Fire hose is working, they’re getting the fire down some. You need more hands down here?”

Taylor looked around. One boiler, one engine. “How much longer you think we gonna keep up this fight?”

“Not long. We ain’t long for it now.”

Taylor nodded. “No. You don’t want to send any of them poor bastards down here.”

Tanner nodded, stuck out his hand. Taylor took it, shook. Tanner disappeared up the ladder.

Taylor looked around. The firebox on the one remaining boiler was gaping open, the fire glowing red. Red meant too cold; it should be white-hot. He grabbed up a shovel, dug it into the pile of coal on the deck plate, heaved it into the boiler.

Coal passer. Twenty-five years ago he had begun his engineering career as a coal passer, the first lesson in years of education, formal and otherwise. Runaway from affluence, lured by a passion for machinery that his parents could not understand. Changed his clothes, changed his accent, been playing the peckerwood so long he did not know how to play any other part.

He dug up another shovelful, tossed it in, spread it around, watched with satisfaction as the fire began to change color. Twenty-five years, coal passer to chief and back to coal passer, and now it would end like this. All right, then. He would die like a man, with a coal shovel in his hand. That would do. He did not want to live anyway, not with the things he had in his head now.

They were really getting pounded this time. One of the big Yankees alongside, Bowater did not know which. Brooklyn, perhaps. It did not matter. She was moving slow upriver, giving back double what the Yazoo River could deal out.

The fire was raging in the forward end of the casement, Babcock leading his pathetic bucket brigade against it, the fire hose lying limp and useless on the deck. The ironclad shuddered with the impact of shells against her sloped sides, shuddered with the recoil of her own guns as Tanner kept his men at it, despite the fire and the carnage around them.

And there was carnage. Like nothing Bowater had ever seen or imagined. He once thought, having fought in Mexico, that he knew what war was. That memory embarrassed him now. He had had no notion. At Elizabeth City he had had a taste. Now he was having the main course, more bitter than he could have imagined.

Black smoke and the stink of burning paint and burning men roiled out of the blaze, the light from the fire revealed it all; the half-bodies, the sprays of blood, the odd limbs. Men lying as if asleep, save for the fact that their heads were gone. Bowater could not count the dead, the bodies were not intact enough for that, nor could he tell how many were being consumed by the flames. His officers were gone. He had seen what was left of Quillin. He had not seen the second officer or Worley for some time.

He looked at the hose. If the water did not start running soon, they would have to abandon ship. He was not sure how they would do that. Run her aground, he supposed.

Another shell struck, not the casement this time, but low, under his feet, somewhere aft. He turned, and as he did he felt the entire ship shudder, shudder in her guts, heard a muffled blast, and a whoosh and gasp, like the last breath of some giant beast. The hatch to the engine room lifted on its hinges, a great rush of gray steam blowing up in a hot wet blast from below.

Boiler… Bowater closed his eyes. A shell had hit a boiler. He could not imagine what horror it had done below. He could not imagine that anyone in the engine room had lived through that.

He heard the note of the engine change, the sound running through the casement drop off as one of the engines faltered and died. He had to get back to the pilothouse, could no longer remain below, directing the firefighting, but all his officers were gone.

“Babcock! Take over here! Do your best-I don’t think we’ll get fire hoses now. Tanner! Drop down to the engine room, see what’s happening, report to me in the pilothouse!”

He had turned to head for the pilothouse when he saw the fire hose jerk and twist, like some animal one had thought dead suddenly springing to life. Water spurted, hissed, then streamed from the end, and Babcock snatched it up, charged the fire like a knight with a lance.

Incredible… Bowater thought. But too late…

He climbed back to the pilothouse. “Starboard engine’s gone, Captain,” Risley said. “Rudder’s hard over, just keeping her going straight.”