by Mike Blakely
He found the firemen standing back from the furnace, four-foot lengths of pinewood in their hands.
“Give me fire, damn it! Don’t just stand there!”
The black men looked at each other. “She’s hot, Mister Judd,” one of them said.
“Oh, she is?” Kelso waited until the man turned his face away, then jabbed him hard with the capstan bar, between his rib cage and hip. The black man buckled, and the others reluctantly threw their billets of wood into the furnace.
“Get up, boy!” Kelso said to the injured man. “Stoke the fire! Damn you to tell me she’s hot. You ever heard of a nigger engineer? I’m the engineer on this boat, and I want steam.”
The stokers chucked in more fuel as the roar of the fire grew. Kelso knew they were hoping he would just go away.
“If you don’t want to do your job, I can boot your black asses over the guards right now. I guess it wouldn’t make much difference. Your jobs are all goin’ to shit anyway.”
The stokers glanced at each other and scowled at Kelso without looking him in the eyes. “What you mean, Mister Judd?” one of them asked.
“Haven’t you boys heard about the railroads comin’? There’s a new one gonna build in from Louisiana, through Marshall and Jefferson. They call it the Shreveport, Houston, and Indian Territory. The S.H. and I.T.!”
Kelso laughed like a rasp, but the stokers just looked at one another, puzzled.
“If you boys could spell,” Kelso said, “you’d know S.H. and I.T. makes shit. Like I said, your jobs are all goin’ to shit!”
“Yours too, ain’t it, Mister Judd?” said the stoker who had been stuck with the capstan bar, now pulling himself back to his feet and grabbing a chunk of wood.
Kelso brandished the iron rod again, but only grinned at the man without using it. “I’m a mite smarter than you. I already got it planned to make my fortune.”
“How you gonna do that?” another stoker asked.
“You’ll be the first to know, boy. Now, stoke that fire good. The captain wants to show this town some speed. Good for trade.”
Four hogsheads of spoiled bacon stood among the cords of firewood. The bacon had gone bad in a Jefferson warehouse. Captain Gentry had bought it cheap to use for quick heat when the Glory needed speed. Kelso pried a lid off one of the barrels and grabbed a hunk of bacon. “Come on, boys. Pour it on!” He threw a few pieces of bacon into the furnace, then brandished his bar at the black men. “We’ll need the steam to move all this cotton. Come on, damn it, hurry up!”
The stokers plunged their powerful hands into the stench of putrid bacon. They fought the blistering heat to get near enough the furnace door to throw the fuel in. The bacon fat crackled fiercely as it hit the wood coals and flared.
“Use that whole barrel up,” Kelso ordered. “I’ll be back directly and it better be empty!” He waved the capstan bar at the stokers. “And sing one of them damn coonjine songs loud enough for the captain to hear. You know he likes to hear you boys sing.”
The stokers scowled, but one of them lit into song, hoping Kelso would leave if they started singing. He sang low as a foghorn, and the others grudgingly joined in.
Oh, shovel up the furnace,
Till the smoke put out the stars.
We’s gwine along the river
Like we’s bound to beat the cars … .
They continued singing as Kelso disappeared behind the boilers, heading aft. But he paused to listen and make sure the men continued to feed the fire. He could barely hear two of them talking over the singing and the roar of the flames.
“That fool’s gonna blow us to hell,” one of them said to the other.
“Just listen for them safety valves,” the other replied. “They won’t let out steam fast enough to keep her from blowin’, but if they start talkin’, you know it’s time to jump.”
Judd Kelso grinned, the nervous crawl in his stomach increasing. He passed quickly by the heat of the boilers, until he got aft of them. Then he stopped, the warmth still reaching his back down one of the corridors of cotton bales. He turned slowly and watched the boilers as he listened to the stokers sing. Poor bastards. They would never know what hit them.
Then he heard it. Above the shuddering of the boat, the hissing of the steam engines, the singing of the firemen, and the crackling of the pork fat, he heard the faint ticking of boiler plates. They were expanding, pulling against their rivets. He eyed the edge of the starboard boiler. Maybe it was his imagination, but he swore he could see it swelling, heaving like a living thing taking in breath. He turned quickly back toward the engine room.
Ellen Crowell rolled out of her berth in her stateroom on the boiler deck. The movement of the boat had wakened her. Feeling her way across the tiny six-by-six room to the window, she pulled the curtains back and saw only shreds of light seeping past the bales of cotton. She had forgotten in her sleep how cotton-imprisoned she was, denied escape to the outer deck in case of an emergency. Her only way out of her stateroom was by the door that led into the saloon. Boats made her nervous. She couldn’t swim.
Her son could swim. That gave her some ease. Ben could shame otters. She felt her way back across the tiny room and put her hand on him as he slept in the upper berth. She was taking him to New Orleans to visit family. They had boarded in the night at Port Caddo and waited for hours as the rousters took on wood and the engineer made repairs and adjustments. Now, at last, they were under way.
Ellen knew she couldn’t sleep through the vibrations of the steamboat. She put on her robe and opened the door into the saloon. She didn’t understand steamboat nomenclature. She was on the boiler deck, but there was no boiler on it. The boilers were below, on the main deck. And this saloon wasn’t a saloon at all, but a long, broad hallway running between the two rows of staterooms.
The saloon’s piano stood right outside her room. It was a grand piano—too big for a small steamboat, but Captain Gentry did things in a big way where the Glory was concerned. Her door almost hit the piano bench as she opened it. She didn’t know if she liked the piano being there. She could imagine drunken revelers keeping her awake with wild song, every night, all the way to New Orleans. The thin stateroom walls insulated against sound little better than mosquito bars did.
The so-called saloon was quiet, except for the rattle of pots and pans in the galley, where the cook was fixing breakfast. Ellen passed polished hardwood tables and walked a few doors down to the ladies’ washroom. She found a community towel on a rack, and even a common toothbrush tied to the washstand by a string. She was glad she and Ben had brought their own towels and toothbrushes.
She tried to calm herself. She had chosen the finest steamer on the lake for their trip. Nothing bad would happen. She looked for something to ease her worries. Tin washbasins were nailed down to the wooden washstand. In them, she found fresh spring water. Now, see there. Most steamers used common bayou water. Yes, she had chosen well.
Billy Treat opened his galley door out onto the promenade and threw a bowl of eggshells over the guardrail, into the bayou. The rousters had left him a gap in the cotton bales on the boiler deck so he could throw refuse overboard. The rousters took good care of Billy Treat. He always cooked double what the passengers could eat. Rousters ate leftovers, and the deckhands of the Glory fed as well as any on the bayou, thanks to Billy.
He lingered at the rail. It was a beautiful morning. Summer coming on. The boat was still backing into the bayou, getting in position to steam down the channel toward Caddo Lake. He listened to the stokers sing the coonjine as his pale blue eyes swept the sky over the cypress tops.
Billy was a stranger to every man in the crew, though he had cooked for them now for a year and a half. They knew him as a courteous fellow, but one who avoided long conversation. Nobody knew where he had come from. He didn’t talk about his past. And, though he didn’t frown, he rarely smiled, and never laughed. He was young—maybe thirty. He moved with strength and grace. He had more than his share of good loo
ks. But he was suffering something powerful.
Just as he was about to go back to cooking breakfast, Billy saw the young apprentice engineer, Reggie Swearengen, climbing the guardrails and jigsaw work up to the boiler deck. He enjoyed watching the boy climb recklessly about the boat.
“Good morning, Reggie Swear-engineer,” Billy said.
Reggie Swearengen grinned. “Mornin’, Billy!” he shouted as he climbed around the cotton bales.
“What are you doing?”
“Kelso told me to lower the yawl.”
Billy smirked. “The yawl? What for?”
“Said he wants me to tow him behind the paddle wheel when we get underway so he can look at something.”
“Look at what?”
“I don’t know,” Reggie said, throwing one hand into the air as he clung to the hog chains with the other.
Billy shook his head. “It would be a shame if you should loose your hold on the rope when you were towing him.”
Reggie laughed at the suggestion and climbed onto the hurricane deck to lower the yawl.
The Glory continued to back slowly up the bayou as Billy turned back into his kitchen. He tested the heat of the griddle, flicking some water onto it with his fingertips. He heard Captain Gentry ring the bell, giving the signal to stop the engines. He felt the vibrations cease, and heard the coonjine, louder now that the exhaust valves were silenced. The pulleys squeaked as Reggie lowered the yawl to the water.
Billy heard the splash of the yawl as he whipped a wooden spoon through a huge bowl of pancake batter. Now the captain would align the boat with the channel, ring the bell for full speed ahead, and blow the whistle as the Glory of Caddo Lake steamed down Big Cypress Bayou.
The bell rang. Billy waited for the engine-room vibrations. They didn’t come. The captain repeated the bell signal. Something was wrong. Putting his pancake batter aside, Billy stepped back out onto the promenade and looked toward the engine room. He saw Reggie climbing down from the boiler deck and Judd Kelso stepping into the yawl. One of them should have been in the engine room, following the captain’s signals. It was Kelso’s fault. Reggie was just following orders. Kelso had no business being an engineer.
The entire boat suddenly came alive under him. It felt as if he were trying to stand on a monster gator twisting its prey to death underwater. The air shook with a sound so loud that he heard it with the marrow of his bones, and something hit him in the back with incredible force.
Now the waters of the bayou were all around him, morning-cold. He felt disoriented, couldn’t find his way to the top. As he held his breath and waited, hopefully to surface, he realized that he had heard a double blast, absorbed a tremendous percussion. It seemed long ago, but his senses were coming back to him now, and he knew it had just happened. He found the morning glow of the surface above him and swam upward.
2
THE WORLD SEEMED OUT OF CONTROL. THE SKY RAINED BALES OF COTTON. One splashed ten yards away from Billy Treat, covering him momentarily with spray. Screams and shouts accompanied a vicious hiss of steam. Something ripped into a cypress tree behind him. He treaded water with some difficulty in his long pants and waterlogged shoes. He shook his head to clear his thoughts. Pieces of wood were splashing all around him now, and clattering down on the hurricane deck of the Glory. His right shoulder and the back of his head were smarting from whatever it was that had struck him.
His eyes focused. The steamboat was listing severely to port, vomiting hysterical people, shooting a geyser of steam. He began to think clearly. Two of the boilers had exploded and blown bales of cotton away from the starboard side of the boat, throwing her off balance. The pilothouse was gone. There was probably a hole in the hull, because the boat was sinking steadily, tilting ever farther to port.
People floundered around him in the water. He went under and yanked his shoes off. When he came back up, he heard someone moaning. He saw a black man, face burned horribly, clinging to a splintered mass of wood. He swam to the man, helped him pull farther up on the floating lumber.
“Kelso!” he shouted. The son of a bitch was rowing the yawl toward the Port Caddo wharf! “We need the boat!” He saw the apprentice engineer treading water, dazed. “Reggie, get the yawl from the wharf! Swim, Reggie!”
The young apprentice squinted and saw the yawl. He waved at Billy and started swimming with powerful strokes. Billy knew he would make it. The lad was strong, and obviously uninjured.
A deckhand was floundering, screaming, frothing the water with his blood. He went down in a swirl. “Just hold on,” Billy said to the burned man he had helped onto the floating lumber. To his surprise, the black man nodded and pushed him away.
Billy marked the spot where the rouster had gone down. He took long, steady breaths as he swam easily to the place. Filling his lungs, he jackknifed his body and plunged downward, headfirst.
The horrible sounds of the world above ended and he could barely see his own hands, outstretched, through the murky water. He descended, pinching his nose and forcing air into his ears to equalize the pressure. He felt for the drowning man with his arms and legs. An air bubble passed between his fingers. More met him in the face. He had plenty of oxygen left. He knew how to conserve it underwater. He plunged until he crashed into the thrashing body of the deckhand.
The black man grabbed him with desperate force. Lord, he was powerful! Billy used all his strength to turn the man around. He pinned one huge, muscled arm back and locked his own elbow under the man’s chin. He started kicking for the surface, the drowning man clawing at him with his free hand.
When they finally broke into the air again, the black man was exhausted, holding Billy’s hair in his fist, coughing water from his lungs. The man’s forearm was ripped open and pumping blood. Maybe the cool water would slow the flow, Billy thought. He kicked toward the floating mass of lumber, which he now recognized as a big piece of the hurricane deck. It was just starting to really dawn on him what had happened. The boilers had blown. People were drowning.
As he fought the bleeding deckhand to reach the floating wood, he looked toward the town and saw Reggie coming with the yawl. That worthless Kelso was lying on the wharf as if he were hurt or something. He had looked healthy enough rowing away.
Above the hiss of steam, Treat heard a bell ringing in town. The Port Caddoans were coming down to the bayou, manning boats. Some of them were in their nightclothes, or in long underwear. They dragged skiffs, pirogues, bateaux, all manner of vessels into the water.
Suddenly five horsemen came galloping down the brick pavement. They plunged across the flood bank to low ground, passed the log jailhouse, and leaped their barebacked mounts from the wharf. They splashed into the bayou, the horses grunting as they started to swim. The riders slipped from the backs of their mounts and held onto the manes. They would tow people to shore, one or two at a time. It would help.
The bayou writhed with screaming people. Billy saw a few sensible men and women doing good work, pulling others onto floating debris. A woman was holding calmly to a bobbing bale of cotton with one arm while she clutched two crying children with the other.
The Glory was tilting harder to port, sinking, still spewing steam. The main deck went under and water boiled instantly around the furnace, sending up a cloud of hot vapor.
Billy pulled the bleeding man onto the floating section of hurricane deck and told him to hold pressure on his own arm to stop the flow of blood. The man was starting to recover from the sheer percussion of the explosion, and he nodded vacantly as Billy spoke to him. The other man, the one who had been so badly scalded, was still there, unconscious but grasping the wood.
Without taking time to rest, Billy stroked back toward the throng. He was not even winded. A woman was becoming hysterical, clinging to a piece of wood too small to keep her afloat. She would go under before he reached her, but she would be easier to save than the big deckhand had been. The boats would be there soon.
One at a time, he told himself. You c
an’t save everybody yourself. God knows, even that wouldn’t set your life right, even if you could, but you can’t.
Ellen Crowell woke up on the floor of the washroom. She smelled her own blood in her nostrils. She had been bending over the washbasin when, suddenly, it had risen to smash her in the face. What was happening? What had gone wrong?
The sounds came to her gradually—the screaming, the hissing of steam. She remembered only now having heard and felt the explosion. She tried to stand up, but seemed too dizzy to keep her feet under her. Then she felt herself sliding across the washroom floor and knew it was a tilt in the boat that prevented her from standing. Ben was in the stateroom, and the steamboat was sinking.
Clawing across the slanting floor, Ellen reached the door frame and pulled herself up into the saloon. The saloon floor was gone forward of the washroom. She could see water coming up in the hole. Morning light streamed in from another hole above. Now she understood what had happened. The boilers had exploded, tearing through the thin planking of the boiler deck, the hurricane deck, the texas, and even the pilothouse.
Luckily, her stateroom was aft of the gaping hole and she didn’t have to cross it to rescue Ben. A few passengers were still floundering toward the end of the slanted saloon, but most had already gotten out. Ellen realized that she must have been unconscious for a minute or two. She had lost valuable seconds, but she was sure she still had time to get out with Ben. After that, she would probably drown, but that didn’t concern her yet. Ben wouldn’t drown. Thank God that the boy could swim.
She scrambled on all fours toward her stateroom. Why wasn’t Ben coming out? Was he all right? Relax, Ellen. He can’t reach the doorknob the way the floor is slanted. He’s waiting for you. She heard his voice:
“Mama!” He sounded more confused than terrified.
She had almost reached the door when the boat settled suddenly to port and the grand piano slid against her stateroom door, blocking it.