Thieves Of Mercy

They waited. Bowater, Tarbox, Amos Baxter, the helmsman.

Doc arrived with coffee and hardtack smeared with something that might be construed as butter, and they ate and drank and waited some more.

The sky grew lighter, the dark pulled away to reveal the river, the town climbing up the hill, the levee, the ships of the River Defense Fleet, black smoke rolling from their chimneys.

“Look there,” Tarbox grunted, gesturing upriver. A great cloud of black smoke hung over the trees, a mile and a half away.

“Hope them damned Yankees done set their damn selves on fire,” Baxter offered, but Bowater knew it would not be that easy. The smoke was the collective output of the ironclad fleet’s furnaces. They were getting up steam. Next stop: Memphis.

Bowater looked to the flag boat, the Little Rebel, wondered what decisions had been made. It was light enough now that he could see a figure at the base of the forwardmost flagpole. Bowater picked up the signal book just as the string of three flags ran up the pole. Numbers one, two, and four. Bowater ran his finger down the list. Prepare for battle.

“We stay,” he announced to the wheelhouse. “We stay and fight.”

One by one the ships of the River Defense Fleet cast off and backed into the stream. The General M. Jeff Thompson, the Sumter, the General Beauregard, the General Joseph Page, the Colonel Lovell, and the Little Rebel. The General Earl Van Dorn, the General Sterling Price and the General Bragg, paddle wheels turning, kicking up the river white, their men hunkered down behind makeshift barricades of railroad iron and compressed cotton and pine planks, or clustered around the odd assortment of guns at bow and stern. The River Defense Fleet, the forlorn hope, steamed into the morning.

By the time Bowater could turn his concentration from conning the ship, getting her into the line of boats, like knights of old, ready to charge, the sky had gone from gray to the lightest blue.

He could see people on the waterfront and gathering on the levee, the citizens of Memphis come out to watch the battle for their town, helpless spectators to their own fate.

Bowater gave the engine room a jingle. Dead slow ahead, enough to stem the current, keep them in place. He could see the Federal gunboats now, moving out into the river, forming a line from one shore to the other, much as the River Defense Fleet had done, a string of iron gunboats sweeping down on them. But it was still quiet, save for the working of the paddle wheels and the walking beam.

Bowater remembered Sullivan, down below.

“Mr. Tarbox, I have to go below for a moment. Hold the boat here, watch the Little Rebel for orders, send for me if you need me.”

“Awright. Where ya gonna be?”

“I’m going to confer with Captain Sullivan.”

He rushed forward as fast as he could go and still maintain his dignity, down to the boiler deck and aft to Sullivan’s cabin. He paused at the door and knocked, hoping there would be no answer, but instead he heard Sullivan’s voice, “Come!”

Bowater opened the door, stepped inside. Sullivan was sitting in his big chair, the one Bowater always pictured him in, the place he sat during their writing sessions. He was dressed in worn denim pants and a river-driver shirt and slouch hat. He had his gun belt with two pistols strapped around his waist. He was pale and sweating profusely, and his breath was labored, as if he had just run a mile or so, though he did not look as if he had the strength to stand.

“Sullivan, what in hell are you doing out of bed?” Bowater demanded.

“Doc told me…” Sullivan tried for a smile, but could not quite make it happen. “Said we’re gonna fight them Yankees. Can’t sleep through that.”

Bowater was suddenly afraid that Sullivan meant to take back command of the ship. What could he say? It was Sullivan’s ship to command. He tried to think of some argument that would not sound purely selfish.

“Don’t you fret, Cap’n,” Sullivan continued, as if he had read Bowater’s mind. “You’re still in command of this bucket. Hell, I don’t know if I can walk, never mind take charge. But I got to be on deck. You can understand that, can’t you?”

Bowater nodded.

“After all,” Sullivan said, “I’m the hardest drivin, hardest drinkin…” He broke off in a fit of coughing.

“Yes, most dangerous son of a whore riverboat man on the Western Waters,” Bowater supplied.

From somewhere beyond the cabin, but not so far, a gun fired, a single cannon shot. Sullivan stopped coughing. The two men looked up, looked at nothing, focused their hearing. Another shot, and another. The River Defense Fleet, opening the ball.

“Come on, Captain Sullivan.” Bowater stepped over to the chair, offered Mississippi Mike a hand. Sullivan took it, and with a grunt, an involuntary sound ripped from his guts, he stood.

Sullivan draped his right arm over Bowater’s shoulder and put his weight on it, and Bowater braced himself to hold the big man up. Together they stepped from the cabin, from their literary salon, right into the Battle of Memphis.

THIRTY

The people in tens of thousands crowded the high bluffs overlooking the river, some of them apparently as gay and cheerful as a bright May morning, and others watching with silent awe the impending struggle.

COMMANDER HENRY WALKE, USS CARONDELET

There was going to be a battle. A fight on the river. It was what everyone in Memphis was saying. It loomed like the Second Coming in people’s minds, and it made Wendy Atkins so anxious she could scream.

Getting upriver from Yazoo City to Memphis had been no easy task. Even with money to pay her passage-and it was running low-it had been a job just finding a boat making the run. Wendy heard various takes on the same theme-Boat to Memphis? Hell, there ain’t no boats no more. Should a seen it before, hell, you could walk to Memphis on the damned boats. Now? With the damn Yankees, an Jeff Davis? You’d have better luck swimmin-until she was ready to tear her hair out.

But she made it. Through perseverance, monetary disbursement, and shameless flirting she had managed to get upriver to

Memphis, stepping ashore on the afternoon of June fifth with absolutely no notion of what she would do next, where she would go, how she would find Samuel.

She secured lodging first-it seemed practical-and then began to ask around. There were two things that she kept hearing. There was no naval presence in Memphis, no naval officers or men. And there was going to be a battle on the river.

Those two facts seemed to contradict one another. How could there be a battle on the river with no navy? she wondered. Finally she found a haughty assistant provost named van Reid, who explained to her that the Confederate squadron, a thing called the River Defense Fleet, was not under the command of the navy, but under army control, to the extent that it was under any control at all.

“I see…” Wendy said.

“And now, it is hardly safe for you to be abroad, ma’am. Might I escort you to your lodging?” the suddenly solicitous van Reid asked.

“I think I am safer escorting myself, thank you,” she said curtly and walked off. It was dark. She was very tired. She walked uphill to her hotel.

She was just stepping through the door of her room when another line of questioning came to her. The Tennessee, she thought. No one in Memphis knew where a naval officer might be found, but surely someone would know where this Tennessee was being built. With a refreshed sense of optimism, she went to bed and slept, deep and dreamlessly.