Thieves of Mercy

by James L. Nelson

  Bowater, watching, recalled when Sullivan and Tarbox had gone at it. Sullivan landed one good kick and it had been over, and Tarbox seemed to have forgotten it by the time he stood up. This brawl did not look as if it would be resolved so easily.

  By the wheelhouse, money was moving from hand to hand. Tarbox was taking the bets.

  Guthrie made the first move, stepping into the circle of Sullivan’s arms, his left arm blocking Sullivan’s right, his knife flashing out and down. Had he made a proper lunge, Bowater noted, front foot out, back leg extended, arm straight, the way Bowater’s fencing tutor, Monsieur Ouellette, had taught him, Guthrie would have run the knife into Sullivan’s gut. But he did not. It was a quick slash and a jump back out of the way. Sullivan twisted clear of the attack and charged.

  He came at Guthrie in a flurry of big arms and steel, knocking the smaller man’s knife aside, slashing with his own blade. But Guthrie was as quick as he looked, and much stronger. He leaped back, recovered, met Sullivan’s knife, hand guard to hand guard, and held it. Guthrie’s foot darted up and caught Sullivan between the legs, and only Sullivan’s lightning fast left hand blocked Guthrie from landing a kick that might have done for Mississippi Mike.

  They both staggered back, reassessing, still circling. The men crowding the deck were getting vocal, and seemed pretty evenly divided as to who they wished would run a knife through whom.

  Captain and engineer came at one another again. Sullivan feinted with his knife, connected with his brogan, right in Guthrie’s stomach, doubling the engineer up. Sullivan stepped back to deliver another kick and Guthrie charged like a bull, head-butting Sullivan in the stomach. The breath came out of Sullivan’s lungs like steam from an emergency valve but he still managed to bring both hands down on Guthrie’s neck, which dropped the engineer to the deck.

  Sullivan might have ended it there, if he had not been stumbling back, gasping, barely able to hold his blade. Guthrie rolled over, and willing hands pulled him to his feet, gave him a restorative shake, and pushed him forward.

  By the time Guthrie staggered after him, Mississippi Mike had managed to catch his breath and resume his defensive stance, but halfhearted, heaving, as was Guthrie. They came at each other as if they were half asleep, or drunk, or both. Knives swept the air. Sullivan grabbed Guthrie’s knife hand, and Guthrie did the same to Sullivan, and they stood there, each holding the other’s wrist, forming a circle with their arms, like kids playing a game, teeth bared, faces red, each straining to break the other’s grip.

  Close upriver, perhaps two hundred yards, one of Fort Pillow’s guns fired, a startling sound. Bowater jumped, wheeled around. There was a steamer coming downriver, a Yankee steamer. No one had noticed its approach.

  Then from behind, a sound like a grunt and a muffled scream, like someone violently ill. Bowater turned back. In that instant of distraction, Spence Guthrie had managed to free his knife hand. Now his bowie knife was buried in Mississippi Mike Sullivan’s gut, almost up to the hand guard. Blood was spilling fresh on the deck.

  Sullivan grabbed Guthrie’s hand, pulled the hand and the knife away, pulled the blade clean out of his gut. His right hand made a wide sweeping arc through the air and the hand guard of his knife hit the side of Guthrie’s head with an impact like round shot, point-blank range.

  Guthrie flew sideways, limp as a doll, a spray of blood flying off his face. He hit the deck and did not move, just as Sullivan fell to his knees, hand on his stomach. Blood ran between his fingers. His eyes were wide. He fell slowly onto his side and lay there, curled in a ball.

  The fort fired again. Bowater pulled his eyes from the two men laid out on the deck, looked upriver. The Yankee was coming on through the water battery’s fire, making right for them, the General Page, helpless, tied to the bank, the captain and chief engineer hors de combat.

  Someone had better do some damn thing, he thought. He looked across the deck at Buford Tarbox, first mate, who was looking back at him.

  “Cap’n Bowater, I reckon you’re in charge now,” he said, the cheroot never leaving his mouth.

  “Me?” Bowater argued. “You’re the first officer, damn it.”

  “That’s right. First officer. I ain’t a cap’n of nothin.”

  Bowater shook his head. This was absurd, the Page was an army vessel, but arguing was even more absurd. “Quarters!” he shouted. “Hands to quarters! Cast off the fasts! What steam do we have?”

  He looked around. No one moved.

  “Git, you som bitches!” Tarbox shouted and the men scrambled.

  “What steam do we have?” Bowater asked again. There were only a few men left on the hurricane deck, and the only one who knew was out cold.

  “Mr. Taylor,” Bowater turned to Hieronymus Taylor, who was looking down at the groaning Mississippi Mike. “Could I impose on you to take over in the engine room?”

  Taylor looked up, met his eyes. Bowater had expected the half-amused, half-resigned look, a look he knew well, on Taylor’s face. But that was not it. There was something else. He could not place it. On another man it might have been trepidation, hesitation. But not on Taylor. Bowater did not know what it was.

  Fort Pillow fired again, three guns in rapid succession. The battery was almost lost in its own gun smoke. And the Yankee stood on.

  “Reckon I’ll git below,” Taylor said, and hobbled off.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  If not already done, for God’s sake order the River Defense Fleet to defend every bend and dispute every mile of river from [Fort] Pillow here.

  BRIGADIER GENERAL M. JEFF THOMPSON

  TO GENERAL DANIEL RUGGLES,

  CONFEDERATE STATES ARMY

  For Bowater, stepping into command was like pulling on an old, worn coat. Once he began issuing orders, he forgot about how utterly absurd it was that he should be in that situation. His mind was entirely taken up with strategy.

  Yankee, water battery, current, steam, bow gun. His world was reduced to those elements, the only ones that mattered.

  He leaned into the speaking tube that communicated with the engine room. “Mr. Taylor, are you there?” he shouted. He waited a moment, opened his mouth to speak again, when Taylor’s voice echoed back up the tube. “I’m here, Cap’n.” That familiar tone of exasperation, it was good to hear it again.

  “What do you have for steam?”

  Another pause, a sigh of even deeper exasperation. “Still below service gauge. I can give you one bell in five minutes.”

  “Very well. As soon as you can.” Bowater straightened, looked out the wheelhouse window. They had no steam, but the current was with them. Worst case, they could cast off and drift down to the rest of the River Defense Fleet, anchored below Fort Pillow.

  The guns of the fort were blasting away, the low water battery and now the guns higher up, sending a shower of metal across the river, but the Yankee was pressing on through it. He’s a cool one, Bowater thought. It was one of the rams he and Sullivan had seen upriver. A big letter Q hung between the chimneys.

  What to do, what to do… Bowater stepped out of the wheelhouse, looked down the boat’s larboard side, the side pressed against the riverbank. The lines were all cast off, save for the bow and stern, and those were ready to slip. He turned to look where Sullivan and Guthrie had fallen. Their shipmates had carried them away, and all that remained of their fight was a pool of Mississippi Mike’s blood, and a splatter of Guthrie’s.

  With his mind occupied, Bowater had not given them a second thought, but now he did. He recalled Guthrie’s big knife thrust into Mike’s gut. He had seen gut wounds before. There was not much hope for anything but a quick death, and even that was not likely.

  Guthrie? Bowater could not tell. That hit he took to the side of the head might well have crushed his skull. Sullivan was strong enough to do it. In a day or two, they might both be dead.

  What a God almighty waste, Bowater thought. The Confederacy could scarcely afford to have its own people killing each other. The Yan
kees were doing that fast enough.

  He heard a creak, a groan behind him. The walking beam made its first agonizing move, up and down, with just steam enough to drive it. The paddle wheels began to turn, slowly, painfully, like an old man getting out of bed.

  Good enough. Bowater strode back to the wheelhouse. “Cast off, fore and aft,” he said to Tarbox.

  Tarbox stepped quickly to the larboard side. “Cast off, fore and aft!” he shouted and the bow and stern fasts, looped around trees ashore, came snaking through the low brush and whipped back aboard. The distance from boat to shore began to open up, a strip of muddy water between them. Bowater turned to the helmsman. “You have steerage?”

  The helmsman grunted, spun the wheel a half turn. “A bit. Enough.”

  “Very well. Make for the Yankee steamer.”

  “Yankee steamer,” the helmsman repeated, gave a turn to starboard, steadied her up. The General Page could barely stem the current with the steam she had. They were a long way from having the momentum to ram, while the Yankee had a full head of steam and the current to boot. If she got a clean shot with her ram, it might be the end of the Page and Bowater’s brief tenure with the River Defense Fleet.

  He grabbed the engine room bell cord, rang up three bells, could well imagine the string of profanities Hieronymus Taylor was pouring on his name.

  They were crossing the river diagonally, closing with the Yankee. Fort Pillow was flinging shell and round shot across the water, but it seemed to have little effect on the intruder.

  “Tell the bow gun to fire when ready,” Bowater said and Tarbox nodded, carried the order forward. In a minute the first mate was back. “You gonna fight this son of a bitch?” he asked, disinterested, as if the decision did not involve him.

  “Perhaps…” As he said it, a cat’s-paw of wind enveloped the fort, lifted the smoke away, revealing the batteries, the turned earth of the redoubts climbing up the bank. And beyond that, another column of smoke, a double column, twisting together to form a single black line, rising from the river, upstream.

  Oh, you tricky son of a bitch…

  “It’s a trap, Mr. Tarbox,” Bowater said. “There is at least one more of these Yankee rams waiting upstream for us. See the smoke?”

  Tarbox looked in the direction that Bowater indicated. He puffed his cheroot, nodded his head.

  “Reckon we best get the hell outta here,” Tarbox said.

  Bowater nearly said, “Reckon so,” but he stopped himself. “Yes, indeed.”

  Forward, the Page’s bow gun fired, adding to the din from the fort. “Tell the men on the stern to fire when they bear,” Bowater said to Tarbox, then to the helmsman, “Bring her around. We’ll make for the rest of the fleet below the fort.”

  The helmsman spun the wheel, and with the mounting steam and the current with them at last, the General Page seemed to fly downriver, leaving the Yankee in the hail of fire from Fort Pillow. The stern chaser, loaded and ready, fired upriver. They were almost up to their anchorage before the gun fired a second time.

  Bowater conned the steamer to a place between the Colonel Lovell and the Little Rebel and ordered the anchor let go. The Yankee had turned on his heel and was steaming back upriver, with nothing to show for his efforts.

  Doc appeared at the wheelhouse door. Dried blood formed a new layer of stains on his apron, on top of the rest of the filth. There was a smear of blood on his worried-looking face as well. “Cap’n Bowater?” he asked with more deference than Bowater would have thought he had in him. “Cap’n Sullivan, he’s askin for ya.”

  “Very well.” Bowater looked into the cook’s blue eyes and saw trouble. “Have you been ministering to him? How is he?”

  “He ain’t good. Well…hell, I don’t know. Gut wound’s a bad thing. Reckon you know that. Sullivan says he’ll be fine, but hell, I don’t see how.”

  Bowater nodded. “Guthrie?”

  “Still out cold.”

  “Very well.” He gestured toward the forward ladder and Doc led the way down to the boiler deck, then aft to Sullivan’s cabin. Bowater stepped into the familiar room where he and Mississippi Mike had created their masterwork, then into the sleeping cabin beyond.

  Sullivan was stretched out on his bunk, his shirt torn open, a pile of bloody bandage on his stomach. His skin looked white and waxy, and the dim lantern light shone on the film of perspiration that covered his body.

  “Cap’n Bowater,” Sullivan said, his voice lacking the drive and timbre that Bowater had come to expect. “I would sure admire a drink of water.”

  “No water!” Doc shrieked from behind Bowater’s back. “I done told you, no water!”

  “Aw, hell, is he here?” Sullivan said. “How’s a fella supposed to live with no water?”

  “I don’t know,” Doc said, with more of the old cussedness back in his voice. “I just know gut wound means no water.”

  Sullivan let his head roll back in a way that implied resignation. “Doc told me you took command up there. What happened, Cap’n? With the Yankee, an all?”

  Samuel stepped closer. He felt himself growing solicitous, as if it was all right to be genuine and caring in this instance, since the man was going to die anyway. He told him about the trap upriver, and the firing from the fort and their escape below Fort Pillow’s guns.

  Sullivan nodded weakly. “You done a good job, Cap’n,” he said, and though Bowater found that Sullivan’s patronizing compliment rankled, he kept silent because of his current forgiving mood.

  “Now see here,” Sullivan continued, his voice weak, his tone conspiratorial, “I need you to do me a favor, Cap’n, need it more’n I ever needed anything. You can’t tell Thompson or Montgomery or nobody about me being laid up here. You do, they’ll put me on the beach, give my boat to someone else, an I can’t have that. Couldn’t live with it.”

  You probably won’t be living with anything for long, Bowater thought.

  “You got to take over fer me, Cap’n, least until I’m on my feet,” Sullivan continued. He reached out a hand—the move seemed almost delicate and fluttery—and clutched Bowater’s arm. “Send Tarbox over to the flag boat, have him tell Montgomery we gots to go to Memphis fer somethin. Need boiler parts or some such. Jest so’s we’re out of here whiles I convalesce.”

  “Sullivan…you need a doctor. A real doctor. You should be in a hospital.”

  “Ain’t a thing…” Sullivan stopped, gritted his teeth, then sighed as the pain passed. “Ain’t a thing they can do in a hospital I can’t have done here. But if we gets to Memphis, I’ll get me a doctor to take a look. All right?”

  Bowater frowned. A dying man’s last request, or near enough. How could he refuse? “Very well.”

  Sullivan gave a smile of sorts, and seemed to shrink back into his pillow.

  “Here, now, that’s enough of the damned chitchat,” Doc interrupted, his reserve of pleasantness now expended. “You get the hell out of here.” He half pushed Bowater across the cabin and toward the door. It wasn’t until he had actually shoved Bowater out onto the side deck that he grudgingly added, “Cap’n.”

  Hieronymus Taylor sat amid the hissing, the clanging, the popping, the groaning, the leit motif of his life since he had spit on the refinement and wealth of his birthright and, at fifteen, picked up a shovel and begun heaving coal on a New Orleans side-wheel tug.

  He sat on a stool, his wood slat-encased leg thrust out straight. It hurt, but not so bad. It was mending fast. He wondered if he would live long enough for it to actually heal.

  His eyes moved naturally to the boilers, and in the dim illumination from the skylight on top of the fidley and from the few lanterns, he could see the pressure gauges and water gauges. All was where it should be, or near enough, but what was going on in the inside? In his mind he moved through the iron shells of the scotch boilers, probed the sides for weak spots, looked for stuck gauges, rusty corners, fire tubes ready to give out, pipes on the verge of blowing apart.

  What was hiding
in there, waiting to kill them all?

  They had been under way, Bowater frantically ringing up three bells when he knew there was barely steam for one, some great emergency. And now they were anchored. Why that was, what was going on topside, Taylor did not know and did not ask. Not his concern. Just keep the steam up. Try not to kill us all. But could he do that?

  On the ships where Hieronymus Taylor had served as chief engineer, and even as second and third, the machines became an extension of himself. He could feel a problem as surely as he could feel a pain in his own body or the onset of some illness. It was that realization, that he possessed such mechanical empathy, that drove him down into the engine rooms in the first place. His father had indulged him for years, seeing him tutored in the theoreticals of mechanical engineering, the emerging science of steam. He had hoped that his son would manifest his love of mechanics at a desk or drafting table, and not in an engine room. He had hoped young Hieronymus would not reject the station to which he was bred.

  But in the end he had. Because he was an ornery son of a bitch by nature, and because engineering did not happen in drawing rooms, but in engine rooms.

  Eli Taylor, you old, pretentious, holier than thou bastard… He and his father had been at loggerheads since as early as Hieronymus could recall, and the prodigal son was pleased to reject everything the old man stood for—wealth, privilege, refinement. He resented the old man, and loathed him.

  Or at least he had. But as the years mounted, the sharp edge of those passions dulled, and he began to see that maybe his father was not so wrong in everything. Eli, after all, had not inherited his wealth, but had fought tooth and nail for it, every penny, had pulled himself up from the docks around New Orleans, had made himself into a sophisticated man of the world. Only to see his son take exactly the opposite trajectory.

  Hieronymus Taylor began to wonder how his father was doing, and his mother, began to toy with the idea of visiting them. Take a leave, Lord knew he had earned it.