Thieves of Mercy

by James L. Nelson

  You bitch…

  TWENTY-THREE

  HAMLET: O it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows and noise.

  SHAKESPEARE, HAMLET,

  ACT III, SCENE 2

  Mississippi Mike steadfastly refused to allow his literary doppelgänger to die at the end of the book.

  “I admire the knife fight, an the poison an all that,” he said to Bowater, sitting on the edge of a frail-looking chair in his cabin aboard the General Joseph Page. “I surely do. But it don’t make no sense to have Mike kilt off, an this the first book we done.” He stood, made an expansive gesture. “Hell, Cap’n, when this here book goes like hotcakes, I reckon me an you’ll be writin two, three of ’em a year, minny-mum! Can’t kill the damned golden goose right off.”

  “Very well.” It was pointless to argue. On artistic grounds, Bowater could generally sway Sullivan to his way of thinking, but this was a commercial consideration, and Mike was intransigent. “Let’s see what we have.”

  Sullivan sat again. Bowater picked up the manuscript and read. The fight scene, the very end of their opus.

  Mike’s ol pard Larry took a lucky stab at Mike with his big ol bowie nife and he cut him a good one, right acrost the arm, and Mike bled jest like a pigll do when his throtes cut.

  “Tere warnt no call to do that,” Mike sed an he dropt his nife an put his hand over where he was cut. “Warnt no call at all,” he sed an now he was getin some angry an he hit Larry right square in the jaw an hit him so hard ol Larry fell right down flat an dropped his nife to.

  “Yer my meat now, Mississippi Mike,” Larry sed and gabbed up a nife but he grabed Mississippi Mike’s nife by accident and Mike picked up Larrys nife. They went at her like a couple of ol bucks in ruttin season and next thing Mike cuts Larry a good one.

  Jest then Mike’s ma fell right out of her chair. “Oh, Mike, they done poisoned me, I knows it!” she called and then she died, right then and there.

  “Poisoned? What all’s goin on here?” Mike demanded.

  “Reckon Im done fer now, Mike,” Larry said, “Same as you. On account of that nifes got poison on her. Same poison done fer yer ma.”

  Mississippi Mike jest nodded his worried hed but he didnt say nothin on account of he knew there warnt no poison could kill him.

  Bowater nodded his approval as he read. “This is excellent, Sullivan,” he said and looked up at Mike’s beaming face. “You just wrote this?”

  “Wrote her up last night. I’m awful careful now about who I lets see that. Keep her under lock and key when I ain’t actually in my cabin. I don’t know how them actor sons of bitches got their hands on her, but I got my ideas.” He leaned closer, said in a stage whisper, “I reckon it’s that little weasel Guthrie, down ta the engine room. He’s got it in fer me, has fer a long damn time. I jest got plumb full up of his lazy damned careless ways and I started tellin him what’s what and he don’t care fer it. Damn engineers. Damn the whole breed of cat.”

  Bowater raised the glass of brandy that Sullivan had provided. “I’ll second that.” Finally, he and Mississippi Mike had found common ground.

  If there was one good thing about Spence Guthrie, the nervous, rodentlike malcontent in the Page’s engine room, it was that he made Hieronymus Taylor seem like a reasonable and cooperative individual.

  No sooner had Bowater and Sullivan come aboard than Guthrie had started in: the coal’s no good, the new firemen didn’t know their business, the condenser’s shot and no spare parts to be had. “Whole damn walking beam’s shifting around, the bearings’s so worn. I been with whores didn’t move as much as that fucking walking beam.” All in that shrill voice, on and on, until even Bowater wanted to strangle him.

  Not even Mississippi Mike Sullivan deserved Spence Guthrie.

  They had got under way around noon, after listening to Guthrie explain why the boilers would probably blow up and kill them all, jest because some goddamn people think a damned army riverboat’s their own private yacht, jest run her up and down the damn river hows’ever they please, an never mind about the engine room, they’ll do jest fine on their own, thank you please, jest there to serve the lords and masters in the ruttin pilothouse anyhow….

  Later, after their literary salon, during which they finalized the climactic end of Mississippi Mike, Melancholy Prince of the River, Sullivan relieved Tarbox in the wheelhouse for the evening watch and Bowater found a dark place on the fantail and sat. He watched the moonlit banks and the scattered lights on shore slip past, listened to the slap of the paddle-wheel buckets, the creak of the walking beam overhead, let his mind go away, far and away.

  He wondered where Wendy was. The news he was getting from Norfolk was not good. With McClellan on the Peninsula, Norfolk could not stand for long. The shipyard would be lost, and Wendy, if she did not escape, would be in enemy-held territory. She would be behind the lines, and he would not see her again until the war was over, and he no longer believed that it would be over soon.

  So Wendy Atkins was yet another thing that the Yankees had taken from him.

  “No, no,” he said out loud. She would not allow herself to be trapped that way. She would get out, somehow, before the Yankees arrived. She and that aunt of hers, who seemed a resourceful woman. Off to Culpepper, where the Yankees could not reach her. There would be a letter, any day, he was certain. When he returned to Memphis there would be a letter.

  He went to bed, woke to the sound of the anchor chain rattling out the hawsepipe. He stood and scratched, splashed water on his face, dressed, and stumbled out on deck. The sky was just taking on the suggestion of dawn. The earthworks of Fort Pillow loomed over the starboard side, hulking and black, and if Bowater had not seen it several times already he would never have been able to differentiate fort from shoreline.

  He could make out a few other boats anchored around, but the majority of the River Defense Fleet was gathered downriver at the little town of Fulton.

  One of the Page’s deckhands rounded the corner of the boiler deck. He stopped when he saw Bowater, jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Sullivan wants ya, ta the larboard gangway. Cap’n,” he growled and then left.

  What, no tea and biscuits in bed? Bowater thought. Reckon that’s what passes for a courteous summons in the river-rat vernacular.

  He hit himself on the forehead with the heel of his palm several times, berating himself for even thinking the word reckon and trying to drive the vial colloquialism from his mind. That done, he settled his cap on his head, ran fingers through his goatee, and walked around the boiler deck to the steps forward. He took the ladder cautiously down to the main deck and walked around to the larboard gangway.

  Mississippi Mike was already there, with four of his crew, the General Page’s gig floating alongside. Sullivan held a haversack. It looked like a lady’s reticule in his big hand.

  “You ready fer a little scoutin, Cap’n?” Sullivan asked, smiling wide.

  “I reck—” Bowater closed his eyes, let his irritation settle. “I imagine so.”

  “Good, good. Let’s get under way.”

  Wordless, the four river men climbed down into the boat and took up the oars. Sullivan climbed into the stern sheets. Bowater followed. Doc arrived at the gangway with two steaming bowls of burgoo and two mugs of coffee. He snarled as he handed them over.

  “Thankee, Doc! Shove off!” Sullivan said. The men pushed off, the oars came down. Sullivan worked the tiller with his knee and handed Bowater a bowl and mug. “Reckon we’ll have our breakfast under way, Cap’n, if’n that’s agreeable to you.”

  “Thank you.” Bowater took the bowl, looked at the sloppy mess, wondered if Doc’s resentment ran so deep that he might adulterate the mush in some way. But Sullivan was already shoveling it in, and Bowater, as a career navy man, was no stranger to horrid food.

  Anyway, wha
t the hell could he do to it that would make it worse than it is in its natural state? Bowater wondered as he took a spoonful.

  It was a lovely morning, quiet and calm, with the promise of a perfect blue sky revealed by the growing light. The quiet dip of the oars was the least intrusive of sounds, and Bowater could hear the rustle of animals along the shore, the shrill and musical cry of birds. Little islands of fog hung over the water in isolated patches of gray. Thankfully, Sullivan kept his mouth shut, and Samuel was able to enjoy the slow, steady pull upriver to where the Yankees lay.

  Bowater was just letting his mind drift away on the beauty of the place, so serene it seemed otherworldly, when Sullivan said, “Jest around this here bend, an we’ll see the first of them Yankees.”

  Bowater was brought back to unpleasant reality. Far from taking an idyllic pull through a newfound Eden, they were rowing right under the guns of a powerful enemy.

  That thought raised a few questions.

  “Sullivan, are you intending to just row up to them and have a look around?”

  Sullivan nodded. “Pretty much how I see it. They ain’t too alert, this time of the mornin. Yankees ain’t used ta gittin up with the sun.”

  Bowater frowned, scratched his goatee. He was skeptical. “They could well have a picket boat,” he suggested.

  “Doubt it. They had a picket boat, we wouldn’ta caught ’em with their pants down around their ankles at Plum Point, would we?”

  Which is exactly why they are more likely to have a picket boat now, Bowater thought, but he kept his mouth shut because he did not want to appear overly cautious. There was his personal dignity at stake, as well as that of the Confederate States Navy.

  They came around the bend, keeping close to the eastern shore where the trees cast deep shadows on the water. The sun was well up now, illuminating the western bank in brilliant orange, glinting off the brown water of the rolling Mississippi. And there was the enemy fleet.

  The Yankee gunboats were tied to the banks, long and low and rusty brown, lit up bright in the morning sun. Awnings of light gray canvas were stretched over sections of their hurricane decks. Thin curls of black smoke lifted from their smokestacks, indicating banked fires that could be stoked up quickly in case of another Rebel attack.

  One, two three, four, Bowater counted, vessels of what the Yankees called the “City Class,” named for northern river towns. The two that had been sunk during the Battle of Plum Point had not returned. There was a fifth ironclad as well, bigger than the City Class boats, which Bowater imagined was the flagship. They were ugly things, but deadly, built for river fighting.

  “Look there, how they got logs around them boats.” Sullivan nodded toward the ironclads. Booms of cyprus logs floated like low bastions around each ship. “Reckon they don’t care to get poked by our rams no more.”

  Along with the gunboats, there was a smattering of steamers swinging at their anchors in the stream. Most of them Bowater recognized from the Battle at Plum Point. He had taken care to observe the fleet even as they rammed their way through, had jotted down notes concerning the enemy’s strength.

  But there were more steamers now, more than he had seen before. Not ironclads, but riverboats, stern-wheelers, with the low freeboard and square, bulky deckhouses of their ilk, capped with pilothouses on top of that and sporting tall twin smokestacks at the forward end of the deckhouse. And, curiously, suspended between the smokestacks, each boat had a big cut-out letter—M, Q, L, and others—one letter per boat.

  “These here boats are new to the fleet,” Sullivan said in a low voice. One of the oars squeaked in the tholes and Bowater wondered if they should not have muffled them. “Whadda ya make of ’em?”

  Bowater looked over the boat nearest them, riding at anchor two hundred feet away. The sides of the deckhouse had been planked over, and bales of cotton were stacked against the forward end to offer the boilers some protection against shot, and he could see where more work was still being done. On her tall wooden paddle-wheel box was painted the name Monarch. Between her stacks, the letter M.

  Ahh, Bowater thought. When a cloud of gun smoke hung over the water during battle, and only the tall stacks were visible above it, the letters would allow each ship to identify the others of their fleet.

  “Rams,” Bowater said. “They must be rams. They are clearly set up for a fight, but there are no guns at all, no heavy ordnance mounted fore or aft.”

  Sullivan nodded. “Reckon you’re right.”

  Bowater ran his eyes along the anchored fleet. They would be very effective, if handled right, a seaborne cavalry and just as un-stoppable. Then, from the far end of the anchored line, he saw a boat. It came around the stern of a ship sporting the letter Q between her chimneys. It was pulled by a dozen men wearing the white frocks of the United States Navy.

  “Boat,” Bowater whispered, forcing the calm in his voice.

  “Where?” Sullivan asked.

  “Coming around the north end of the line of rams. There.”

  The boat had turned bow-on to them, the oars rising and falling with that curious illusion of a rowed vessel seen head-on, as if the oars were simply going up and down and not fore and aft at all, as if the oarsmen were just slapping the water.

  “Ah, hell,” Sullivan said. One of the oarsmen spat tobacco over the side, dripping on the gunnel. They pulled on.

  Bowater remained silent, waiting for Sullivan to make some move, to issue some order. The Yankee boat was three hundred feet away and closing quickly. Their direct and unwavering approach suggested that they had seen the Rebel intruder.

  “Ah, Sullivan…I don’t wish to impinge on your unique style of command, but hadn’t you better do something?”

  Mississippi Mike sighed. “Reckon so,” he said. He reached down into the bottom of the boat, pulled out a five-foot-long pole encased in a canvas sleeve. He pulled the sleeve off to reveal a white flag. He unrolled the flag and held it aloft, waving it slightly to make the cloth flutter in the still air.

  Bowater’s jaw and stomach dropped together. “What the hell are you doing?” he hissed.

  “Flag of truce,” Sullivan explained.

  “Flag of…what are…are you out of your idiot mind?”

  “Naw, naw, Cap’n, we got to go over, talk with these here Yankees.”

  “Talk with the…”

  “Sure. Jest a little par-lay, you know.”

  Bowater looked wildly around, a trapped-animal gesture. The picket boat was closing fast. He could see rifles in the hands of the bowman and the officer in the stern sheets.

  “What is this?” Bowater demanded, his voice full of accusation. Was Sullivan going over to the Yankees? Bringing a Confederate officer prisoner to sweeten the deal?

  “It ain’t nothin, Cap’n, we jest need a little help from these fellas. Hell, after all the time you was in the U-nited States Navy, I reckon they figure you fer an honorary Yankee as it is.” Sullivan waved the flag back and forth. “No offense,” he said.

  Bowater was still sputtering when the picket boat came within hail. “Toss your oars! Toss them! I want to see your goddamned hands!”

  “Go ahead, boys,” Sullivan said to the oarsmen, who held their oars straight up. They looked not in the least bit concerned. The long-bearded Mississippian on stroke looked positively bored.

  “Toss oars,” the Yankee officer called again and Bowater thought, They’re tossed, you dumb bastard, and then realized the officer was talking to his own men. The picket boat drifted up alongside. The bowman had exchanged his rifle for a boat hook. He grabbed the gig and pulled the two boats together.

  Sullenly, Bowater looked over at the Yankee boat. The men holding their oars straight up wore white cotton shirts with blue bibs across their shoulders and straw hats on their heads, a uniform as familiar to Bowater as anything in his life. The officer in the stern sheets wore a blue frock coat with the shoulder boards and cuff insignia of a lieutenant, identical to the one that he, Bowater, once wore. The rifl
es pointed at them, five in all, were British .577 Enfields.

  “What’s this about?” the Yankee officer demanded. He addressed the question to Bowater, naturally, since Bowater was the only uniformed man in the boat, with the insignia of an officer on his coat and hat.

  “I have no idea, Lieutenant,” Bowater said. “Ask the peckerwood with the flag.”

  The Yankee’s eyebrows came together. He opened his mouth, but Sullivan spoke first. “Cap’n…” Sullivan began.

  “Lieutenant,” the Yankee officer replied.

  “Pardon. Lieutenant, we’ve come under flag of truce. Like to have a word with your commandin officer, if it ain’t much bother.”

  The Yankee officer seemed as stunned and speechless as Samuel Bowater, but he found his voice. “You were not showing any flag of truce when we spotted you. Don’t think you can come spying around here, and then go scot-free with a flag of truce.”

  “Now, Lieutenant, you don’t have to be like that. Jest want to have a word with whoever you gots in charge here.”

  The lieutenant scowled at them. He looked at Bowater but Bowater just shrugged. “I think we’ll let Captain Davis sort this out,” he announced at last. “You will proceed to the flagship, there”—he pointed over his transom at the larger of the ironclad gunboats—“and go aboard. We’ll follow directly astern. If you alter course one degree, we’ll fire into you.”

  “You ain’t even gonna offer us no coffee or biscuits? Now that there,” Sullivan addressed his men, “is Yankee hospitality. Makes a man grateful to be a Southron, don’t it? Ship oars! Give way!”

  The gig crept past the picket boat and the picket boat turned and followed in her wake and together they pulled for the flagship.

  “Sullivan…what the hell…” was all Bowater managed to get out through his clenched teeth, his jaw tight with rage. It was the coal barge all over again, and once more he had let Sullivan play him for a sucker. But this time, for his stupidity, he would end up in a Yankee prison.