played out in Memphis.
After the police managed to bring the brawling to a stop, and the only ones left in the theater were those who had not tried to run, or could not, Bowater had looked out over a scene much like the aftermath of battle. Men were sprawled on the floor or draped over seats or leaning against walls nursing wounds.
Mississippi Mike Sullivan had a cut lip and a laceration over his eye that had smeared his face with blood and made his grin look even more maniacal. Bowater found Taylor propped up against the stage. He was sweating, barely conscious. His frock coat was torn and his hands were bloody, but the splint on his leg seemed to have held. His crutch was broken in two, and he still clutched the short end in his hand.
The police had tried to arrest Bowater and Sullivan and Taylor, but Bowater would have none of it. Instead, he ordered the police officers to fetch a litter and take Taylor to a hospital. And because Bowater was a Confederate officer, and because he was so well practiced at issuing orders in a voice that did not admit of argument, and because he approached the situation with an entirely unfeigned attitude of moral, social, and military superiority, the police officers obeyed. They called him “sir.” They did not mention arresting him a second time.
Once Bowater had Taylor secured in the hospital with another healthy dose of laudanum in his stomach, he staggered back to his hotel, stumbled into his room. He picked up the bottle of merlot that his father had sent, pulled the cork, and slugged it right out of the bottle. He drained it, and did not even care that he had degenerated to the point where he could do such a thing. To complete his descent into barbarism, he wiped his mouth on his sleeve, then shuffled out of his frock coat and let it fall to the floor.
The next morning, aching, sore, he crawled out of bed. He did not bother going to the shipyard. He could not endure it. Instead he went to check on Taylor. It was not at all unheard of that someone should die from a broken bone, especially someone who had behaved as stupidly as Taylor. He wondered, as he humped his weary body uphill, what he would find.
He found the chief engineer asleep and looking bad, damned bad. His face had a grayish pallor, his eyes had dark circles around them. There was a sheen of perspiration on his skin. Bowater did not wake him, but sought out his doctor to get the prognosis.
The doctor frowned and shrugged his shoulders. “Fifty-fifty chance that the fever will break, and there’s no mortification. That’s if he stays put. He wanders off again and starts brawling, he’s a dead man for certain.”
Bowater returned to the engineer’s bed, and now Taylor was stirring. He looked up at Bowater through half- closed lids and managed a weak smile. “Cap’n… you gettin to be quite a hand at brawlin… make a river rat outta you…”
“My highest ambition.”
They remained silent for a moment. Taylor closed his eyes and Bowater thought he was asleep again, but a moment later Taylor said, “I know that performance weren’t worth horseshit, but why’d Sullivan git s’all-fired mad?”
“I don’t know.”
Another long silence, and then Taylor said, “Well, it made fer a pleasant evenin, anyhow.”
Bowater did not respond, and soon Taylor was breathing deeply and rhythmically, so Bowater walked silently away. He paused just inside the front door, stared out through the heavy glass, tried to make up his mind what to do.
Duty called him to the shipyard, but only because that was where his men and ship were. There was no work for him to do, not while the men were laboring under Shirley’s frantic oversight. And for all their hard work, neither he nor Shirley nor any of the men really believed they would get the ship finished. But of course they could not say that, and they could not give up trying. He found the whole thing so futile and depressing, he did not think he could drag himself down to the yard.
Coming up the walkway he saw Mississippi Mike Sullivan, stepping quickly, his lips pursed so Bowater guessed he was whistling, though he could not hear. Sullivan held something shaped very much like a whiskey jug in a crocker sack, a weak attempt at discretion. As usual, Sullivan did not look much worse for the beating he’d taken the night before. His lip was swollen with a nasty cut, and the gash over his eye was now a jagged line of dried blood, but beyond that he seemed quite robust.
Sullivan did not see Bowater there as he burst through the door and strode across the tiled floor, and Bowater considered letting him go. He was never enthusiastic for Sullivan’s company, even less so at that moment, with the blue devils tormenting him. But neither did he care to allow Sullivan to continue his recruitment efforts.
“Sullivan!” he called out, and Mississippi Mike whirled, paused, stammered, a guilty stammer.
“Damn, Brother Bowater! How the hell are you?”
“Fine, fine. What have you there?”
“Oh, this?” Sullivan looked at the burlap-wrapped jug as if he were surprised to see it. “Medicine, Cap’n, medicine for our beat-up engineer.”
“My engineer, Sullivan. Not ‘our’ engineer.”
“Did I say ‘our’? Well, of course, the man’s like a brother to me, always was. Known each other better’n ten years now.”
“In any event, Chief Taylor is sound asleep and he needs to stay that way. The doctor said something about having to keep him from drinking himself to death.”
“Doctor, hell… This here’s the finest Tennessee corn red-eye, aged in tin buckets fer the time it takes to get her from the still to the jug. Ain’t nothin sets a man up better.”
“An absolute panacea, I’m sure. Now let’s get out of here before the contents of that jug explodes and kills us all.” Bowater half led, half pushed Mississippi Mike out the door and down the path.
“It’s a fortunate thing, Cap’n, I ran into you,” Sullivan said. “I was gonna hunt you down, after I gave old Taylor the cure. I’m headin upriver on a little scoutin expedition, reckoned you might want to come along.”
“I think not.”
“Aw, hell, Cap’n, what better thing you got to do? Sit on your
ass an watch yer men work? You ain’t no shipwright. Ol’ Shirley’s
got them at it, and he’ll keep ’em at it.”
“Still, I cannot leave my command.”
“Look here, Cap’n. Whole reason you’re workin so damn hard is to get your ship ready to fight them Yankees. Am I right? You know you’re gonna have to fight ’em. So what’s a better way to spend yer time betwixt now and then, watchin a bunch of peckerwoods plank a boat up, or steamin upriver and seein what the enemy’s fixin to do?”
Bowater frowned.
“Very well,” Bowater said, sighing as he spoke. Sullivan was not wrong, it would be a great help to get a sense of the enemy’s force and disposition, and it was true that there was little he could do in Memphis. He had already come to that conclusion.
He could put up with Sullivan, he could put up with the damned penny dreadful, if it would get him closer to the enemy and allow him to feel, just a bit, that he was actually doing something of worth.
Wendy and Molly Atkins sat on the boat’s thwarts and pulled oar for as long as they were physically able. They worked the long looms fore and aft until their muscles burned with the effort, until their palms were slick with blood from hands rubbed raw, until their throats were parched. It was a big boat and would have been a handful for two experienced seamen to row. For the women, unused to such labor and unfamiliar with the art of rowing, it was torment.
It took ten minutes just to establish a rhythm, so that they were able to pull together and make the boat move forward, and not jerk side to side as first one, then the other, pulled her oar. They had managed to leave the Gosport Naval Shipyard astern, but just barely. They could still see it.
An hour of rowing, and then for the eighth time Wendy crabbed her oar-failed to raise it high enough on the forward sweep, so the blade caught the water and was pinned back against the boat-and she could do no more. She slumped forward on the handle of the oar, buried her head in her arms, let her aching hands dangle. “Forgive
