Thieves Of Mercy

“Thank you, Tom!” She handed him a coin.

“Thank you, ma’am! You enjoy you time wid you husband, now!” He tipped his hat and drove on.

Wendy took a few steps toward the yard and stopped. She looked over the men working there, but none of them was Samuel. Not that she would have expected him to be swinging a hammer or hauling on a saw.

A young officer standing in the yard glanced her way, glanced again, then approached. Wendy waited for him. “Ma’am, may I help you?” He was wearing the uniform of a navy lieutenant.

“Perhaps. I am looking for Lieutenant Samuel Bowater, of the Confederate States Navy.”

“Lieutenant Samuel Bowater…” The lieutenant looked away, screwed up his face. “Name doesn’t ring a bell, ma’am.”

“I was under the impression he was here,” Wendy insisted.

“Could be. It’s not as if I know everyone. Let me take you to the captain.”

The lieutenant, whose name was George Gift, graciously took Wendy’s bag and led her across the yard to a small wooden building, more of an overlarge shed, which served as the yard’s office. He led her inside, introduced her to a man seated behind one of two desks there, flowing with papers.

“Sir, perhaps you can help this lady,” he said.

The man stood, gave a shallow bow. “Lieutenant Isaac Brown, ma’am. How may I be of assistance?”

“Lieutenant, I am Wendy Atkins. I am looking for a navy lieutenant named Samuel Bowater.”

Brown said, “Hmmm,” and he squinted. “Bowater…?” he said, unsure.

The man at the other desk in the room, who had not looked up from the journal in which he was writing, looked up now. “Bowater? Sure, I know him,” he said. “He was the one got command of the Tennessee.”

“Tennessee?” Wendy asked. She had heard nothing of that.

“Ah!” Brown said, as if all were explained. “That’s why you can’t find him. The Tennessee is still up in Memphis. It was only this ship, the Arkansas, that was towed down here to Yazoo City.”

The Yankees were coming downriver. They were wasting no time. The River Defense Fleet dropped down ahead of them. By the light of the full moon and the huge bonfire that was once the gunboat Tennessee , the makeshift men-of-war tied up to the levee that lined the Memphis waterfront.

Confusion swept like a nasty rumor through the fleet; uncertainty was the only thing they knew for certain. The troops from Forts Pillow and Randolph had been sent away, there were no soldiers to defend the city. Was the fleet to make a stand? Try to hold the Yankees at bay? For how long? Were there reinforcements of any kind on the way? Or should the fleet preserve itself, make a stand farther downriver?

No one seemed to know. No one knew if anyone else knew, or if those decisions had even been made. The general feeling in the fleet was that they would not fight, that preserving the Confederacy’s last waterborne fighting force on the Mississippi was more important than trying to hold on to Memphis, which would be lost eventually, no matter what they did.

“So, there will be no fight?” Bowater asked. Dragging himself back from Shirley’s yard, exhausted, dispirited, he had met Tarbox up on the hurricane deck. The first mate was leaning on the rail, staring upriver.

“Reckon not. Feller on the Colonel Lovell, he told me we was gonna head downriver tonight. ’Course it don’t look like that’s gonna happen, so I don’t know what the hell now. Ain’t heard a thing from anyone who could actually make a damn decision, so I don’t know what to tell you, Cap’n.”

“I see.” Bowater considered sending Tarbox over to the flag boat, but decided against it. It would remind those in command that Sullivan was still out of commission, and that might make someone overly curious. Besides, it was even money that they did not know on the flag boat what they were going to do, anymore than anyone else did.

Just wait and see… Lord, after all his years in the service, it was one thing Bowater knew how to do.

“Word is, them Yankees is laid on Paddy’s Hen and Chickens,” Tarbox added.

Bowater had no idea what he meant. He wondered if that was some kind of river man’s insult. “Paddy’s Hen and Chickens?”

“Right up there.” Tarbox gestured upriver with his chin. “Little cluster of islands, right at the bend of the river, ’bout a mile an a half above the city. Called ‘Paddy’s Hen and Chickens.’ Picket boat brung word, them ironclads is tied up there. If it was daylight, we could see ’em from here.”

Bowater nodded. Two fleets within sight of one another, and no one knew what would happen next. Something, anyway. Make a stand or skedaddle, whichever it was, something would happen tomorrow. “If we don’t hear from the flag boat before, let’s have all hands at quarters an hour before dawn, and a full head up steam,” Bowater said.

“Yessuh,” Tarbox said, and though he drawled the words, there was a note of approval there as well.

“And get some sleep, Mr. Tarbox. I certainly intend to.”

The best laid plans…, Bowater thought as he lay in his bunk, sleepless, staring at the shadows made by the moonlight on the overhead. How many twists and turns had his life taken in the past year? After fourteen years of near stagnation in the United States Navy, he had, in one year of warfare, more than made up for that monotony.

A little monotony would not be so bad, he thought. But he knew he would not get that anytime soon. Certainly not in the morning.

He thought of Wendy. Where was she? He had sent her several letters during the last week of April and the first week of May, telling her all about Memphis, the Tennessee, the River Defense Fleet, the Battle of Plum Point. The things he knew she would not really care about. And he also told her how much he loved her, missed her, wished he could hold her in his arms once again. The things she would want to hear.

He mailed them to her address in Portsmouth, the only one he had, and he never received a word in reply. He could only guess that she had returned to Culpepper and her mail was not being forwarded, or that his letters had not arrived at all. There were other possibilities, of course, but none that he cared to think about.

It was now June sixth, with midnight an hour past. Almost a month since the Yankees had taken Portsmouth and Norfolk and ended the hope of even a letter from Wendy. If she had not gotten out ahead of them, she was now behind enemy lines.

Where is she? What is she doing? he wondered. And as he did, he fell asleep.

After some time, someone shook him awake, and none too gently. His limbs were stiff and his eyes stung from too little sleep. His cabin was partially illuminated by a single lantern hung from a hook.

“Three in the morning. Hour to sunrise,” Tarbox’s voice sounded in the dark.

“Thank you, Mr. Tarbox.” Bowater swung his legs off the bunk, rubbed his eyes. He heard the click of the door as Tarbox left.

Samuel gave himself five minutes to collect his thoughts. He said a prayer, which he was not much in the habit of doing, and only by asking for help for everyone but himself was he able to avoid feeling like the world’s biggest hypocrite. Then he stood, strapped on his belt and holster with his engraved.36 Colt, pulled on his frock coat, set his cap on his head and stepped out into the predawn dark.

Men moved like shadows around him, men stumbling to quarters, taking the places they would occupy if the General Page went into battle. The moon had set and it was quite dark, but still Bowater could see the shapes hunkered around the ten-pound Parrot rifle in the bow and loading small arms behind the wood and compressed cotton bulwarks.

He climbed up onto the hurricane deck. The morning was cool and damp and still. He could hear frogs and the call of wading birds, the buzz and chirp of insects around the levee. Lovely. He breathed deep, understood how a person could fall in love with that river.

Someone appeared at the head of the ladder, climbing up. He saluted. Bowater did not recognize him. “Chief Taylor says steam’s at service gauge, Cap’n,” he said. One of the coal passers. Bowater did not know his name.

“Very well. Tell Chief Taylor”-Bowater almost said, “Tell Chief Taylor to listen for my bells” but he stopped himself. “Tell Chief Taylor thank you. And Godspeed.”

“Godspeed,” the coal passer repeated, as if he would have trouble remembering. “Yes, sir.”