Thieves Of Mercy

faces.

Oh, hell, Taylor thought. He turned for the door, but Sullivan’s voice caught him before he could escape.

“ Taylor! Taylor, you son of a bitch, come down here, talk some sense into this damn mule-headed…”

There was no escape now. Taylor turned back, climbed down the ladder to the floor plates. Sullivan and Guthrie were near the workbench, standing close to one another. Sullivan had his hands on his hips, Guthrie had his arms folded. Sullivan was sweating profusely, sweat running down his face and staining his river driver shirt. He was a big, angry man, unused to engine room heat.

“How can I help you gentlemen?” Taylor drawled. His eyes darted to the steam gauge on the boiler. Eleven pounds, well within specs. The safety valves were untied.

“You can help me stuff this fat bastard back up the fidley,” Guthrie said.

“Hieronymus, talk some sense into the man,” Sullivan said. “He’s got the damned safety valves tied down, which is fine when we really need it, but there ain’t no call all the time!”

“Look at this!” Guthrie held up a fistful of old twine. “This son of a bitch comes down here on my watch below, cuts them away! Like he got a right to make decisions here!”

Taylor had to agree with Sullivan. He was not as enthusiastic as he once had been about tying safety valves shut. On the other hand, it was an offense against nature for the captain to come down to the engine room and interfere, particularly when the chief was not there.

He held his hands up, a gesture of surrender. “I ain’t got a dog in this here fight,” he said.

“What would you do, was you engineer?” Guthrie asked. The question was part challenge, part accusation.

“I would do as my heart commanded me,” Taylor said.

“Well, Guthrie here gonna do as I command him,” Sullivan said with finality. “You keep them safety valves free unless I say otherwise, or by God you’ll be on the beach in Memphis.” For emphasis he poked Guthrie in the chest with a sausage finger, then stormed off, leaving the engineer to hurl obscenities in his wake.

“Son of a bitch, big fat bastard, coming down here telling me what to do. To hell with him, the lazy… No, sir, he can go to the devil…”

Taylor was surprised. He would not have expected such good sense from anyone who called himself Mississippi Mike.

As Guthrie ranted and cursed-his verbal storm was his own personal safety valve, fully functional- Taylor ’s ears sorted out the various sounds of the engine and boiler rooms. He could not help it. He was not really even aware that he was doing it.

“… ain’t nothin but a chicken, thinks his whole damn boat’s gonna blow up…”

“You got a fire tube broken,” Taylor said.

“Huh?”

“I think you got a broken fire tube on the starboard boiler.” The fire tubes ran through the interior of the boilers, from one end to the other. The searing hot vapors of the coal fire in the firebox passed through the tubes and brought the water to a boil. Taylor could hear the irregular hissing and popping of spurting water on hot iron. When a tube was broken, water leaked from the boiler into the tube and into the firebox at one end, the smoke box at the other.

“Oh, horseshit, broken…” Guthrie said, with momentum still on his tirade, but he paused, cocked an ear, shut his mouth for a moment. “Well…”

With a scowl and a spit into the bilges he stepped over to the starboard boiler and threw open the door to the firebox. The coal was laid out in an even bed, glowing white hot, the heat shimmering and rising and hitting Guthrie and Taylor like a solid thing. No smoke. The shirtless, black-smudged fireman knew his business.

Taylor peered over Guthrie’s shoulder at the black circles that were the ends of the fire tubes. Third row down, second tube inboard, he could see the water dancing and sizzling and the gray vapor rising off it as the steam condensed. He opened his mouth, shut it, waited. A second later, Guthrie said, “There’s the son of a bitch… three rows down, second in from the starboard side…”

“Oh, yeah, sure enough.”

Guthrie straightened. “Well, I guess we’ll have to plug the bastard. Not like we got any spare tubes. Maybe when we’re tryin to get up steam with one tube left, someone’ll think to get us some more.”

Taylor nodded his understanding. He could see that four other tubes were already plugged. “I’ll get the other end,” he said.

“Huh?”

“The plug at the forward end. I’ll get it.”

“Why? You don’t even work on this bucket, and you better thank Jesus you don’t, son of a bitch rotten…”

“I know. But I reckon I best earn my keep.”

Guthrie shrugged. “Have it your way, pard.” They went over to the workbench. Taylor shed his frock coat, pulled on heavy leather gloves. They assembled wrenches, plugs, nuts. Taylor took a lantern, knowing the feeble light of the engine room would not extend to the far end of the boilers. “Let’s do it,” Taylor said.

Guthrie stepped over to the after end of the boiler. “Daniels, English,” he called to two of the firemen, “git some fire hoses rigged an charged. English, you go an help Taylor, there.”

Taylor went forward, skirting around the long, low iron tank, tons of iron of unknown integrity containing within it enough scalding water and steam to kill every man in the engine room- boiler explosions, the great terror of the steamship, to be feared like the wrath of God and defended against with a similar religious zeal. Taylor once had looked on the possibility of a boiler explosion the way most men looked upon sin-as something to worry about unless it was inconvenient. But no more.

His feet crunched on bits of coal spilled from the bunkers up against the starboard side of the ship. He walked sideways, through the narrow space between boiler and bunker, leaning away from the hot iron. He could feel the sweat on his brow and hands and recognized that it was not the sweat made by engine room heat, even though it was one hundred degrees at least in that space. His hands would be trembling if he had not been gripping his tools hard.

He skirted around a stanchion and the wrench slipped from his hand, clattered on the iron floor plate. Hell… He bent over, awkward in that narrow space, the burning metal of the boiler right beside him, picked the wrench up with slick fingers. He continued on, came out around the forward end of the boiler. In front of him there was only the black void of the coal bunker.

He found a hook in an overhead beam and hung the lantern, then applied the wrench to the nuts that secured the access plate to the smoke box. He was aware of the quiver in his fingers. He could smell the sweat from under his shirt.

He paused for a moment while English dragged the charged fire hose forward and opened it, letting the water gush into the bilge. While Taylor was actually plugging the tube, English would play the water over his hands. Otherwise the heat would be unbearable.

Most… goddamn routine… fucking simple job… Plugging fire tubes. It was a common enough task. He could not begin to recall how often he had done it in the course of his career. But that was before he had seen the power of the beast steam let loose.

He took the nuts off, dropped two, had to fumble around to find them, cursing.

“You done, there?” Guthrie called from the other end of the boiler.

“Hang on, hang on, got a froze nut,” Taylor shouted back. He was surprised by the anger in his voice. He pulled the plate free, opening up the smoke box and the end of the boiler, with its rows of tubes.

Water hissed and spit, jetting from the broken tube, steam condensing into swirling gray clouds. Ah, shit… The boilers were tipped forward, ever so slightly. It might have been the way they were mounted, or the trim of the vessel, or any number of factors. But the majority of the water leaking into the broken tube was running down toward Taylor, dancing and flying in the heat and with the motion of the ship.

Taylor felt the sharp insect bites of boiling water droplets lashing his face. The heat from the fire tubes was overwhelming. He took a step back, turned his head away. His breathing was becoming fast and shallow. He did not have to do this. It was not his engine room.

But he knew he had to do it. Especially now, after his great show of casually volunteering for the job. And it