“Perfectly,” Montaigne told him. “I’ll get someone in.” She turned and left the stateroom with an audible “Cheap-ass bastard…” trailing after her.
As the Natchez steamed upriver toward its next stop in Memphis (where more of the Kazakhs were scheduled to leave the boat), Wilbur continued to muse on his personal dilemma. He haunted the boiler room, still hoping to learn details about what Jackson expected Cottle to do, but Jackson never again approached Cottle or talked to him, at least as far as Wilbur knew. Cottle was as nervous and OCD about his precious machinery as ever.
He spent time in Jackson’s stateroom to see if he could discover what the man was planning, but was ultimately disappointed. The conversations he did catch gave him no optimism. Jackson seemed to be simply enjoying the voyage, rarely talking business with anyone unless they brought up the subject.
He lurked in Captain Montaigne’s quarters, hoping to overhear more details. The captain seemed to be as morose and unsettled as Wilbur, talking to JoHanna, to friends and (especially) to the woman who Wilbur knew was her lover back in New Orleans about what she should do. Could they borrow more money and raise the offer to Jackson? Maybe they could get another mortgage on the house in New Orleans, or just sell it outright. Should she accept the management job that the owners were offering, move to Cincinnati, and remain “captain” of a boat that would never move? Should she just look for an opening on some other river craft, maybe even returning to barge work? But that was as far as things went.
Wilbur didn’t talk to Montaigne or even let her know he was listening: while he might grudgingly admit that she was a decent boat’s captain, and while she had played along with him with the ICE agents, he also realized that she believed being “friendly” with her crew undermined her authority, and as for Wilbur, despite the fact that Jeremiah had told her he had conversations with Wilbur, it was as if Montaigne still wanted plausible deniability concerning his existence. She was prepared to simply ignore the signs and had no interest in communicating with him normally.
That was fair enough—a certain aloofness was necessary for a captain, and Wilbur had been the same way himself with his crew when alive. She tended to privacy in personal matters; she never talked about her sexual orientation with anyone on the Natchez, though it was an open secret. Wilbur understood that choice as well, given the general chauvinistic attitude of most of the crews he’d known in his time.
He would be private with her about his own worries, then.
For that, he went to Jeremiah, who was one of the few people among the crew who the captain also confided in. He found Jeremiah writing a letter: using a fountain pen on nice, thick stationery. Jeremiah still used a fountain pen—refillable, not a cartridge. “All them little plastic things just getting thrown away,” he’d told Wilbur once. “That’s just a plain, sad waste.” Unlike most of the crew, Jeremiah didn’t own a computer or laptop; he still wrote letters when he wanted to communicate with someone outside, and wrote out checks for his few bills. He did have a cell phone, even if he rarely had it with him, but it was of the ancient, flip-phone variety. Wilbur had never seen him texting anyone with it.
That was fine with Wilbur, who also thought things had largely been better Back Then.
Jeremiah was off duty; Captain Montaigne was up in the pilothouse, filling in for Kitty until the new assistant pilot came aboard. Jeremiah’s quarters were like the man himself: unassuming, understated, and a little old-fashioned, but everything in it was there for a good reason. The walls were lined with pictures and drawings of riverboats, several of the Natchez herself. Jeremiah was drinking a rum and Coke that smelled mostly like rum, the ice tinkling in the glass as he lay down and capped the fountain pen next to the letter.
Wilbur thrust his hand into the wall to draw in steam—he knew exactly where all the steam lines were on the boat. Behind Jeremiah, he allowed himself to become fully visible. “I haven’t heard anything new from the captain. Any new gossip you’ve heard?”
Jeremiah started heavily at the sound of Wilbur’s voice, spilling a bit of his drink. He craned his neck over his shoulder. “I don’t know about this talkin’ thing, Wilbur. It was bad enough when you’d just suddenly show up. Now you got a voice, you can scare the bejesus outta someone. Could you clear your throat or somethin’ to let a body know you’re there?”
“Sorry,” Wilbur told him. “I’ll try to remember that. But have you heard anything?”
“Well, the cap’n says she’s got a new replacement pilot set to arrive by launch tomorrow. I even heard a’ him: guy named Albert Mason, worked mostly on barges but for a few years was the pilot on the Delta Queen, so he knows steamboats. Retired a year or so ago. Cap’n must’ve convinced him to come back. Not like he’s gonna be here long, after all.”
Wilbur consoled himself with the thought that at least the Natchez would be in good hands until that point. “Did the captain say anything else? About the Natchez, I mean.”
“Nope,” Jeremiah said. He took a long swallow of his drink. “Not a word. Far as I know, this’ll be my last trip on your old Natchez. Maybe my last trip pilotin’ ever.”
“I … no, we can’t let that happen, Jeremiah.”
Jeremiah set the glass down on a coaster. “There’s a difference between not wantin’ somethin’ to happen and actually stoppin’ it from hap’ning, Wilbur. I don’t see how either of us got much chance of the latter. It’s the money talkin’. It’s always the money talkin’ for people like that bastard Jackson. Always has been, always will be.”
“I’m aware of the importance of money. I’ve had experience with that.”
Jeremiah chuckled slowly. “I guess you have, seein’ as you say that’s what got you shot.” He picked up his glass again, swirling around the ice cubes. He looked with nut-brown eyes trapped in a net of wrinkles at the wispy outline of Wilbur. “If there ain’t no steam up anymore, that’s gonna really mess with you, ain’t it?”
“What if…” Wilbur hesitated, wondering if he really wanted to say the next words aloud. Say a thing out loud, and you make it real. So be careful what you say. That was something Eleanor sometimes used to tell him. “… I killed Jackson?” he finished. “I could do that easily, you know.”
Jeremiah set down his whiskey glass on the desk with a sharp crack. He took the sheets of the letter he’d been writing and folded them in thirds. “You don’t mean that,” he told Wilbur as he pulled an envelope from a slot in his desk and placed the sheets inside. “You don’t even want to think it.”
“Why not? Wouldn’t that solve the problem? No one would know how it happened, and even if they did, how are they going to arrest me?”
Jeremiah was already shaking his head. “First of all, it ain’t likely to change nothin’. The man’s shares would just go to his heir, and the consortium’s already made up their minds. You’d just have that man’s death on your conscience. You already told me you feel like you’re paying for what you did to Carpenter, and that was justifiable for what he did to you. The Wilbur I know ain’t got it in him to deliberately just murder someone. Face it, you ain’t no killer, Wilbur.”
Wilbur simply nodded his head. The truth of the statement burned within him like steam. No, he couldn’t do that, couldn’t stay inside the man and feel him die around him. It had been bad enough with Carpenter, and the guilt still nagged at him after decades. He couldn’t imagine how he would feel—he knew Jackson had a wife, children, and grandchildren; he knew that from what he’d overheard. The loss of Eleanor had been devastating to Wilbur; he could easily imagine the desolation of Jackson’s wife and children on hearing of his death, no matter what he personally thought of the man.
All the anger building up in him collapsed, cold as water.
Jeremiah grunted, as if he saw that in Wilbur’s steamy posture. “I wish I could help,” he said. “I really do. But that ain’t the way, my friend. That ain’t never the way.”
“I know,” Wilbur said steamily. “But I can’t thi
nk of any other way out.” He hesitated. Condensed steam was beginning to make the carpet wet underneath him, and he slid over a few feet. “Yet,” he added finally.
“Well, when you do, let me know. Mebbe I can give you a hand. Too bad that Nurassyl couldn’t fix you so you could drink again. I’d offer you a good, stiff shot in the meantime.” Jeremiah lifted his glass in Wilbur’s direction. “Cheers,” he said.
“Cheers,” Wilbur answered. There was nothing else to say.
It was late in 1949, a year after the Natchez had started running the Mississippi. While Wilbur loved being on the river and being on the boat, it been a difficult year financially. The monthly payments on the initial loan were due, passengers were more scarce than Wilbur had imagined, and too few companies still used riverboats to move their cargo.
Wilbur was sitting at his desk in the captain’s stateroom with legal papers and bank statements arrayed in front of him. It was a dismal sight, the equivalent of overlooking a blood-soaked battlefield strewn with bodies, where there was no choice but for the general in charge to admit defeat and surrender. Wilbur was kneading his temples against the headache pounding at the inside of his skull when he heard Eleanor enter the stateroom.
“I’m afraid it’s over for the boat, my love,” he said aloud, without looking back at her. He didn’t want to look at the disappointment or perhaps the anger he imagined would be on her face. “I don’t see any way for us to go on like this. I’m not going to be able to make the next loan payments. I’m going to lose the Natchez. All my work, all our work, is just—”
He stopped. Eleanor’s hand had moved in front of his face, holding a check. Wilbur blinked at the amount written there. He turned to see her face, an oddly sad smile set there. “Eleanor, how in the world…” He stopped, realizing he’d never seen Eleanor fully dressed without jewelry, but she was wearing none now. “What did you do? Your emerald necklace, the jewelry from your parents…?”
“I sold it all,” she said simply. “Our Natchez needed them more than I did.”
“But—” Wilbur began to protest, but Eleanor put her finger to his lips, shaking her head.
“Hush,” she said. “It’s done. You’re going to put that check in our bank account, and you’re going to pay off some of our creditors.”
“Eleanor, I can’t do that,” Wilbur protested. “Those were gifts from your family. Heirlooms.”
“You’re my family, Wilbur. The most important part of all. And this…” She spread her hands, gesturing around them. “This is what we’ve built together. Your dream. What you’ve always wanted.”
“I have what I want. I have you.”
Eleanor’s smile widened at that. “That’s very nice of you to say, dear. Sometimes what you have to do for family, what you have to do to achieve what you want, is to refuse to give up on them, to change whatever needs to be changed and make whatever sacrifices are necessary. That,” she said, pointing at the check, “is just a small one. Those pieces of jewelry were just pretty baubles. This boat holds all of your dreams, and because of that, it’s become my dream as well. So don’t say anything more. This is what we need now, both of us.”
Wilbur could only shake his head. He took her hands and pulled her down into an embrace. “I don’t deserve you,” he told her, and was rewarded with a laugh.
“Then you’d better get working to make sure you do,” she told him.
He would, but in the end, the boat wouldn’t make enough of a profit to save him.
Wilbur left Jeremiah’s cabin and went into a bright afternoon, drifting down the promenade of the texas deck toward the stairs. He figured he’d head down to the Kazakhs’ cabin and talk to Jyrgal and Nurassyl, who’d begun to teach him a bit of the Kazakh language.
But he saw the familiar trio of young men in raincoats and laden with odd pieces of equipment emerge from the head of the staircase toward the bow of the boat, well away from the Kazakhs’ cabin: either Captain Montaigne had given the ghost hunters permission to explore the upper decks, or they’d simply ignored the chain with the CREW ONLY sign that was usually draped across the bottom of the stairs.
“Okay! Let’s get some good readings up here before someone sees us,” the heavily tattooed, studded, and bejeweled Ryan was saying. “Come on…”
This is your own damn fault, all that worrying about your own problems. It’s serendipity. Karma. You can’t have these idiots prowling around up here, not with the refugees so close. Wilbur moved toward the trio, pausing once at a wall behind which he knew one of the steam pipes ran. He thrust his hand into the wall and into the pipe it hid, drawing more steam into himself and absorbing it. He knew that in the sunlight, the most the ghost hunters might see was the wispy, uncertain outline of a figure, but still made certain that the steam inside him remained unseen.
“Are you sure we should be doing this, Ryan?” Sean, the blond cousin, again carrying most of the equipment, asked. “We don’t want to piss off the captain or get tossed off the boat at at the next stop—the trip’s just started and though we have some great footage already, there’s so much more to check out.”
“Christ’s sakes, Sean,” Ryan told him. “Quit being such a wimp. We’ll just tell her the chain was down and we thought that meant we were allowed up here. C’mon, let’s get to work. Sean, you scan for EMF residue; I’ll get temp readings and see if there are any anemones.”
Wilbur sighed at that. So did Kevin, the third young man of the group, wearing a black tee and his usual plaid newsboy cap. “Anomalies,” he told Ryan. “You mean anomalies.”
“Whatever.” Ryan shrugged. “Just make sure you’re filming everything as we go, Kevin, just in case we hit something good. Some of the crew hinted that there’s weird stuff going on up here.”
They started moving slowly down toward Wilbur, as Wilbur moved just as deliberately toward them. It was probably leftover irritation and frustration from his talk with Jeremiah, but Wilbur felt angry. Felt that he wanted to do something.
The probe Ryan was wielding was pointed directly at Wilbur, who allowed it to penetrate his body. “Shit! Look at this!” Ryan exclaimed, stopping so suddenly that Sean nearly ran into him. Kevin brought the camera close, zooming in on the instrument: the camera was a Sony, Wilbur saw. He shook his head. He’d never understood how quickly a country that they’d fought in World War II had gone from a bitter enemy to a ubiquitous consumer goods supplier. “I’m getting a reading of fifty degrees Celsius right here—that’s almost hot enough to scald someone.” Ryan moved the probe to his right; Wilbur stayed where he was. “Down to twenty-two degrees Celsius here: air temp. You got that, Kevin?” And back … “fifty degrees again.” Ryan blinked heavily. “Not a cold spot; a very hot spot.”
“Steam Wilbur,” the two others said nearly simultaneously.
“You guessed it,” Wilbur said aloud, and was pleased to see all of them jump at the sound of his new voice. He moved then, quickly. He put his hands around the Sony being held by Kevin, allowing them to fully penetrate the device, which suddenly became very hot. Kevin dropped the camera with a curse. It was rather too heavy for Wilbur to hold; the camera bounced on the decking, and Wilbur put his feet through it. Steam condensed into water and puddled around it; they could all hear the crackle of electronics shorting out.
“You can’t come up here again,” Wilbur said, the words emerging in wisps of steam. “If you do, it’ll be the last mistake you make. You’ll end up like this…”
Wilbur moved quickly, entering Kevin’s body. For a second, he was lost in Kevin’s thoughts—What the fuck? It’s like I just stepped into a sauna …—then he snatched control of the body from the young man. He forced Kevin to take a step, then another, toward the rail. He could feel Kevin fighting him, but the ghost hunter had already lost that battle; the water and heat his body was absorbing drained his energy and his will. Wilbur brought one foot over the railing, then looked back to Ryan and Sean. “Next time, I’ll make him jump,” he said, this time wi
th Kevin’s voice. “Then I’ll force the two of you to jump right after him. Now go while you can! GO!”
With that final shout, Wilbur stepped away from Kevin, who collapsed into a soggy heap on the deck, his clothing drenched. He coughed, retched, and threw up water and whatever he’d eaten for breakfast: eggs and toast, with bits of bacon, Wilbur decided.
Sean was already lumbering toward the stairs. Ryan, to his credit and Wilbur’s mild surprise, went to Kevin, helping him up. “Kevin, c’mon, little bro.” With one arm around him, he slowly followed Sean, looking around him fearfully all the while, as if he expected Wilbur to jump out from the nearest cabin. They left the camera where it was.
Wilbur watched them leave. “I need to stop doing that,” he muttered. “It always makes me feel so dry.”
Wilbur crouched down next to the camera. So small now. They used to be enormous. He started looking for the film compartment or the button to eject the video cassette, then belatedly remembered the new cameras used neither anymore. Everything’s small now. Flipping up the cover, he took out the memory card. Moving to the stern of the boat, he watched the paddle wheel churning below him in the wheelhouse. He held the card over the white water and the dripping paddles and let it drop. It hit one of the rising paddles, bouncing once, then vanishing into watery chaos.
He did feel somewhat better, having chased away the Dead Report kids and hopefully convinced them to stay away from the texas deck. He went back down the promenade a bit to the door of stateroom 3, and went through. “Sälem!” he said: Hello. “I thought I’d stop by for another lesson.”
Late the next afternoon, Captain Montaigne, JoHanna, Jeremiah, and the bartender, Jack, were ensconced in Montaigne’s quarters. Wilbur had seen them gathering and was there as well, slipping in unseen while the door was open to admit JoHanna.
Mississippi Roll_A Wild Cards Novel Page 20