Thieves Of Mercy

General Page seemed to fly downriver, leaving the Yankee in the hail of fire from Fort Pillow. The stern chaser, loaded and ready, fired upriver. They were almost up to their anchorage before the gun fired a second time.

Bowater conned the steamer to a place between the Colonel Lovell and the Little Rebel and ordered the anchor let go. The Yankee had turned on his heel and was steaming back upriver, with nothing to show for his efforts.

Doc appeared at the wheelhouse door. Dried blood formed a new layer of stains on his apron, on top of the rest of the filth. There was a smear of blood on his worried-looking face as well. “Cap’n Bowater?” he asked with more deference than Bowater would have thought he had in him. “Cap’n Sullivan, he’s askin for ya.”

“Very well.” Bowater looked into the cook’s blue eyes and saw trouble. “Have you been ministering to him? How is he?”

“He ain’t good. Well… hell, I don’t know. Gut wound’s a bad thing. Reckon you know that. Sullivan says he’ll be fine, but hell, I don’t see how.”

Bowater nodded. “Guthrie?”

“Still out cold.”

“Very well.” He gestured toward the forward ladder and Doc led the way down to the boiler deck, then aft to Sullivan’s cabin. Bowater stepped into the familiar room where he and Mississippi Mike had created their masterwork, then into the sleeping cabin beyond.

Sullivan was stretched out on his bunk, his shirt torn open, a pile of bloody bandage on his stomach. His skin looked white and waxy, and the dim lantern light shone on the film of perspiration that covered his body.

“Cap’n Bowater,” Sullivan said, his voice lacking the drive and timbre that Bowater had come to expect. “I would sure admire a drink of water.”

“No water!” Doc shrieked from behind Bowater’s back. “I done told you, no water!”

“Aw, hell, is he here?” Sullivan said. “How’s a fella supposed to live with no water?”

“I don’t know,” Doc said, with more of the old cussedness back in his voice. “I just know gut wound means no water.”

Sullivan let his head roll back in a way that implied resignation. “Doc told me you took command up there. What happened, Cap’n? With the Yankee, an all?”

Samuel stepped closer. He felt himself growing solicitous, as if it was all right to be genuine and caring in this instance, since the man was going to die anyway. He told him about the trap upriver, and the firing from the fort and their escape below Fort Pillow’s guns.

Sullivan nodded weakly. “You done a good job, Cap’n,” he said, and though Bowater found that Sullivan’s patronizing compliment rankled, he kept silent because of his current forgiving mood.

“Now see here,” Sullivan continued, his voice weak, his tone conspiratorial, “I need you to do me a favor, Cap’n, need it more’n I ever needed anything. You can’t tell Thompson or Montgomery or nobody about me being laid up here. You do, they’ll put me on

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the beach, give my boat to someone else, an I can’t have that.

Couldn’t live with it.”

You probably won’t be living with anything for long, Bowater thought.

“You got to take over fer me, Cap’n, least until I’m on my feet,” Sullivan continued. He reached out a hand-the move seemed almost delicate and fluttery-and clutched Bowater’s arm. “Send Tarbox over to the flag boat, have him tell Montgomery we gots to go to Memphis fer somethin. Need boiler parts or some such. Jest so’s we’re out of here whiles I convalesce.”

“Sullivan… you need a doctor. A real doctor. You should be in a hospital.”

“Ain’t a thing…” Sullivan stopped, gritted his teeth, then sighed as the pain passed. “Ain’t a thing they can do in a hospital I can’t have done here. But if we gets to Memphis, I’ll get me a doctor to take a look. All right?”

Bowater frowned. A dying man’s last request, or near enough. How could he refuse? “Very well.”

Sullivan gave a smile of sorts, and seemed to shrink back into his pillow.

“Here, now, that’s enough of the damned chitchat,” Doc interrupted, his reserve of pleasantness now expended. “You get the hell out of here.” He half pushed Bowater across the cabin and toward the door. It wasn’t until he had actually shoved Bowater out onto the side deck that he grudgingly added, “Cap’n.”

Hieronymus Taylor sat amid the hissing, the clanging, the popping, the groaning, the leit motif of his life since he had spit on the refinement and wealth of his birthright and, at fifteen, picked up a shovel and begun heaving coal on a New Orleans side-wheel tug.

He sat on a stool, his wood slat-encased leg thrust out straight. It hurt, but not so bad. It was mending fast. He wondered if he would live long enough for it to actually heal.

His eyes moved naturally to the boilers, and in the dim illumination from the skylight on top of the fidley and from the few lanterns, he could see the pressure gauges and water gauges. All was where it should be, or near enough, but what was going on in the inside? In his mind he moved through the iron shells of the scotch boilers, probed the sides for weak spots, looked for stuck gauges, rusty corners, fire tubes ready to give out, pipes on the verge of blowing apart.

What was hiding in there, waiting to kill them all?

They had been under way, Bowater frantically ringing up three bells when he knew there was barely steam for one, some great emergency. And now they were anchored. Why that was, what was going on topside, Taylor did not know and did not ask. Not his concern. Just keep the steam up. Try not to kill us all. But could he do that?

On the ships where Hieronymus Taylor had served as chief engineer, and even as second and third, the machines became an extension of himself. He could feel a problem as surely as he could feel a pain in his own body or the onset of some illness. It was that realization, that he possessed such mechanical empathy, that drove him down into the engine rooms in the first place. His father had indulged him for years, seeing him tutored in the theoreticals of mechanical engineering, the emerging science of steam. He had hoped that his son would manifest his love of mechanics at a desk or drafting table, and not in an engine room. He had hoped young Hieronymus would not reject the station to which he was bred.

But in the end he had. Because he was an ornery son of a bitch by nature, and because engineering did not happen in drawing rooms, but in engine rooms.

Eli Taylor, you old, pretentious, holier than thou bastard… He and his father had been at loggerheads since as early as Hieronymus could recall, and the prodigal son was pleased to reject everything the old man stood for-wealth, privilege, refinement. He resented the old man, and loathed him.

Or at least he had. But as the years mounted, the sharp edge of those passions dulled, and he began to see that maybe his father was not so wrong in everything. Eli, after all, had not inherited his wealth, but had fought tooth and nail for it, every penny, had pulled himself up from the docks around New Orleans, had made himself into a sophisticated man of the world. Only to see his son take exactly the opposite trajectory.

Hieronymus Taylor began to wonder how his father was doing, and his mother, began to toy with the idea of visiting them. Take a leave, Lord knew he had earned it.

He heard a pop and a hiss. Aw, hell, Guthrie, what the hell have you done now?

The second engineer, a hopped-up fireman named Burgoyne, ducked around the condenser. “Got a steam gauge broke here,” he said.

“Can you fix her?”

“Reckon.”

“Go on, then.”

What in damnation else is waiting to let go? Taylor was sorry to see Mississippi Mike gored on that big bowie knife-and the emotion surprised him. He was more than happy to see Guthrie take a hard one to the head. He didn’t mind an engineer who was a whining, sniveling malcontent, but he could not tolerate one who let his engines go to hell.