Thieves Of Mercy

His mind raced over all the thousand things that could fail and make the boilers blow, like they had blown aboard the Yazoo River, and he felt the sweat standing out on his forehead, and he knew it was not the heat kind of sweat. At least no one else could know that, not when it was one hundred or more degrees down there. Damn it, goddamn it… It was bad enough without now having to be responsible for boilers that had been maintained by a lazy incompetent.

He heard steps on the ladder and was surprised to see Samuel Bowater climbing down the fidley.

“Chief,” Bowater said, stepping over to the workbench where Taylor sat, casting his eye around the dimly lit boiler room and engine room.

“Cap’n. What brings you to the Stygian depths?”

“Thought it was easier for me to come down to the underworld than for Hades to come topside with a broken leg. Everything all right here?”

Taylor scratched a lucifer on the bench, lit a cigar. “Good as can be expected.” His hand was trembling, but Bowater was looking the other way. “Hard to know for sure, with a beat like Guthrie, what’s ready to give out.”

Bowater nodded as he looked around. “Sullivan’s asked me to take command here, and not tell his commanding officer about his wound. He’s afraid he’ll be relieved of command.”

Taylor smiled at that, a genuine smile. “Hell, he’s gonna be dead in a day or so.”

“Most likely. Hard to say. He’s a tough one, and Doc says he might make it.”

“Doc? You mean the cook?”

Bowater cleared his throat. “Yes, well, in any event we can only wait and see. I agreed to Sullivan’s request. It seemed the only decent thing to do.”

“Decent. Sure.”

Bowater turned and met his eyes and there was a vulnerability there that Taylor had seen only once before, when he had helped Bowater lift the body of Thadeous Harwell, his young first officer killed at the Battle of Elizabeth City, onto the boat that had come for them.

“I’ll be honest, Chief,” Bowater said. “I can’t stand the thought of being on the shore and watching the fight. I can’t stand looking at that damned Tennessee one more minute, wasting time trying to finish her when we never will.”

Aw, hell, don’t go’n tell me none of this, I don’t want to hear any god-damned confessions, Taylor thought. But he remained silent.

“I’m so eager to get into a fight I feel like I could explode,” Bowater continued, and Taylor wondered what had gotten into that patrician peckerwood. Where had his relationship with Bowater gone so terribly wrong that Bowater now thought he could confide his feelings? The only good thing about Bowater had always been that he kept to his damned self.

“After Elizabeth City and New Orleans… a sensible man would want to stay out of harm’s way.” He paused. “I don’t know.”

“Damned if I know either, Cap’n. But I reckon you done the best thing.”

“Well, thank you. I… ah… I came down here to tell you, we’ll be returning to Memphis if Tarbox can get Montgomery to agree to it. We’ll get medical help for Sullivan and Guthrie.” Bowater seemed embarrassed now, as well he should. “Are we set to make the trip downriver?”

Taylor looked around. He could think of a hundred reasons why they should not try, but how many of them were just excuses, how many were real? “We ain’t got enough coal in the bunkers right now. And I’d like to have a go at the air pump. I don’t like the sound of it.”

“How long will the air pump take?”

“Half a day?”

“Very well. It will take that long to get coal, I should imagine.”

Bowater paused, then continued. “I had thought… my thought was, after we get to Memphis and get Sullivan and Guthrie squared away, I hope we can return upriver, rejoin the River Defense Fleet. The ship is in need of an engineer-I don’t think Guthrie will be recovering soon. I would be most pleased if you would take that position. Assuming it is mine to offer.”

Oh, God… So here was damned Bowater the fire-eater, itching to get into a fight. Bowater the stick-up-the-ass, don’t-get-coalash-on-my-white-gloves, night-at-the-opera patrician, dying to get into the monkey show with the Yankees, while he, Hieronymus Taylor, felt like jumping out of his skin from shear panic every time a pipe creaked.

“I’d be delighted to steam this here bucket into a fight, Cap’n,” he said.

He remembered once, in a frenzy of passion, telling a girl that he loved her. It was the last time he recalled his words sounding so completely insincere.

Bowater thumbed through the signal book, hoisted number fourteen, Coal, I am in want of.

He dispatched Tarbox to the flag boat with requests and excuses.

It was not until late afternoon of the following day that they had coal aboard, the air pump rebuilt, and Commodore Montgomery’s leave to go. Tarbox reported Sullivan down with a bad cold, unable to get out of bed, and Montgomery did not question him. By the time the anchor came up from the river bottom, Bowater was very eager to be out from under the flag boat’s gaze. He did not like living with deception. He felt like a child waiting for his parents to discover the broken vase.

Tarbox might not have any inclination to take command, but he was pilot enough that, once under way, he could con the General Page though the river’s tricky bars and shallows and snags. But Bowater could not ask the man to stand watch all night, so they tied up to the riverbank and posted a guard, and when the General Pages were done drinking, smoking, gambling, and brawling in the saloon, which was sometime after midnight, they slept.

Bowater, reluctantly, went to visit Sullivan, as he had done several times already. The river man looked even paler and more waxy than he had before, with beads of sweat standing out on his forehead. He drifted in and out of consciousness, and much of his talk seemed incoherent, though with Sullivan, Bowater found it hard to tell.

There were some people, Bowater knew, who had the words for just such a situation as that, the deathbed watch, but he did not. Should he tell Sullivan that everything would be all right? Should he tell him he had better think about making his peace with God? The small talk he offered seemed facile and absurd, talking with a man who was facing eternity.

Finally, mercifully, Sullivan fell asleep and Bowater was able to sneak guiltily out of the cabin. He looked in on Guthrie, who did not look much better than Sullivan. His breathing was shallow and labored. He had not opened his eyes since Sullivan’s hand guard had connected with his temple.

Bowater made his weary way back to his own cabin, aware that it really had become his own cabin, so much time had he spent with the River Defense Fleet.

In the early predawn hours, Guthrie died. He had opened his eyes once while Doc was there, opened them wide and in a strong voice said, “Mind the damn feed water!” Then he closed them again and never said another word. Three hours later, he gave a gasp, a rattle, and he was gone.

Doc told Bowater all about it the following morning, up at the wheelhouse, with the first light breaking in the east. “Fella’s got to be real careful,” Doc said, staring at Bowater with an odd sort of intensity. “Lotta ways a fella can git kilt. Look at ol’ Guthrie there. Got liquored up, fell down the ladder into the engine room, smashed the whole side of his head right in.” He held Bowater’s eyes, daring him to contradict that version of events. “Got a dozen fellas saw it happen, be more’n happy to swear to it,” he added.

It would not have occurred to Bowater to bring Sullivan up on charges, but he did not care for the short cook’s less than subtle coercion. “Thank you… Doc… for your help with my memory. Please return to your duties.” He turned his back on the man, the interview over.

They were under way with the rising sun, past a shoreline of hard-luck farms and wild places that looked like they must have looked before white men ever passed that way. Bowater knew the river fairly well by now, between Fort Pillow and Memphis, and he found he could pilot the boat himself in some places, having been up and down enough times to recall how certain stretches should be navigated. He and Tarbox took turns standing watch.

It was just getting on dark when they came alongside the levee in Memphis.

“Mr. Tarbox, I must go to Shirley’s yard and see what is happening there,” Bowater said. “Please find a doctor