Thieves of Mercy

by James L. Nelson

  He heard a pop and a hiss. Aw, hell, Guthrie, what the hell have you done now?

  The second engineer, a hopped-up fireman named Burgoyne, ducked around the condenser. “Got a steam gauge broke here,” he said.

  “Can you fix her?”

  “Reckon.”

  “Go on, then.”

  What in damnation else is waiting to let go? Taylor was sorry to see Mississippi Mike gored on that big bowie knife—and the emotion surprised him. He was more than happy to see Guthrie take a hard one to the head. He didn’t mind an engineer who was a whining, sniveling malcontent, but he could not tolerate one who let his engines go to hell.

  His mind raced over all the thousand things that could fail and make the boilers blow, like they had blown aboard the Yazoo River, and he felt the sweat standing out on his forehead, and he knew it was not the heat kind of sweat. At least no one else could know that, not when it was one hundred or more degrees down there. Damn it, goddamn it… It was bad enough without now having to be responsible for boilers that had been maintained by a lazy incompetent.

  He heard steps on the ladder and was surprised to see Samuel Bowater climbing down the fidley.

  “Chief,” Bowater said, stepping over to the workbench where Taylor sat, casting his eye around the dimly lit boiler room and engine room.

  “Cap’n. What brings you to the Stygian depths?”

  “Thought it was easier for me to come down to the underworld than for Hades to come topside with a broken leg. Everything all right here?”

  Taylor scratched a lucifer on the bench, lit a cigar. “Good as can be expected.” His hand was trembling, but Bowater was looking the other way. “Hard to know for sure, with a beat like Guthrie, what’s ready to give out.”

  Bowater nodded as he looked around. “Sullivan’s asked me to take command here, and not tell his commanding officer about his wound. He’s afraid he’ll be relieved of command.”

  Taylor smiled at that, a genuine smile. “Hell, he’s gonna be dead in a day or so.”

  “Most likely. Hard to say. He’s a tough one, and Doc says he might make it.”

  “Doc? You mean the cook?”

  Bowater cleared his throat. “Yes, well, in any event we can only wait and see. I agreed to Sullivan’s request. It seemed the only decent thing to do.”

  “Decent. Sure.”

  Bowater turned and met his eyes and there was a vulnerability there that Taylor had seen only once before, when he had helped Bowater lift the body of Thadeous Harwell, his young first officer killed at the Battle of Elizabeth City, onto the boat that had come for them.

  “I’ll be honest, Chief,” Bowater said. “I can’t stand the thought of being on the shore and watching the fight. I can’t stand looking at that damned Tennessee one more minute, wasting time trying to finish her when we never will.”

  Aw, hell, don’t go’n tell me none of this, I don’t want to hear any goddamned confessions, Taylor thought. But he remained silent.

  “I’m so eager to get into a fight I feel like I could explode,” Bowater continued, and Taylor wondered what had gotten into that patrician peckerwood. Where had his relationship with Bowater gone so terribly wrong that Bowater now thought he could confide his feelings? The only good thing about Bowater had always been that he kept to his damned self.

  “After Elizabeth City and New Orleans…a sensible man would want to stay out of harm’s way.” He paused. “I don’t know.”

  “Damned if I know either, Cap’n. But I reckon you done the best thing.”

  “Well, thank you. I…ah…I came down here to tell you, we’ll be returning to Memphis if Tarbox can get Montgomery to agree to it. We’ll get medical help for Sullivan and Guthrie.” Bowater seemed embarrassed now, as well he should. “Are we set to make the trip downriver?”

  Taylor looked around. He could think of a hundred reasons why they should not try, but how many of them were just excuses, how many were real? “We ain’t got enough coal in the bunkers right now. And I’d like to have a go at the air pump. I don’t like the sound of it.”

  “How long will the air pump take?”

  “Half a day?”

  “Very well. It will take that long to get coal, I should imagine.” Bowater paused, then continued. “I had thought…my thought was, after we get to Memphis and get Sullivan and Guthrie squared away, I hope we can return upriver, rejoin the River Defense Fleet. The ship is in need of an engineer—I don’t think Guthrie will be recovering soon. I would be most pleased if you would take that position. Assuming it is mine to offer.”

  Oh, God… So here was damned Bowater the fire-eater, itching to get into a fight. Bowater the stick-up-the-ass, don’t-get-coal-ash-on-my-white-gloves, night-at-the-opera patrician, dying to get into the monkey show with the Yankees, while he, Hieronymus Taylor, felt like jumping out of his skin from shear panic every time a pipe creaked.

  “I’d be delighted to steam this here bucket into a fight, Cap’n,” he said.

  He remembered once, in a frenzy of passion, telling a girl that he loved her. It was the last time he recalled his words sounding so completely insincere.

  Bowater thumbed through the signal book, hoisted number fourteen, Coal, I am in want of. He dispatched Tarbox to the flag boat with requests and excuses.

  It was not until late afternoon of the following day that they had coal aboard, the air pump rebuilt, and Commodore Montgomery’s leave to go. Tarbox reported Sullivan down with a bad cold, unable to get out of bed, and Montgomery did not question him. By the time the anchor came up from the river bottom, Bowater was very eager to be out from under the flag boat’s gaze. He did not like living with deception. He felt like a child waiting for his parents to discover the broken vase.

  Tarbox might not have any inclination to take command, but he was pilot enough that, once under way, he could con the General Page though the river’s tricky bars and shallows and snags. But Bowater could not ask the man to stand watch all night, so they tied up to the riverbank and posted a guard, and when the General Pages were done drinking, smoking, gambling, and brawling in the saloon, which was sometime after midnight, they slept.

  Bowater, reluctantly, went to visit Sullivan, as he had done several times already. The river man looked even paler and more waxy than he had before, with beads of sweat standing out on his forehead. He drifted in and out of consciousness, and much of his talk seemed incoherent, though with Sullivan, Bowater found it hard to tell.

  There were some people, Bowater knew, who had the words for just such a situation as that, the deathbed watch, but he did not. Should he tell Sullivan that everything would be all right? Should he tell him he had better think about making his peace with God? The small talk he offered seemed facile and absurd, talking with a man who was facing eternity.

  Finally, mercifully, Sullivan fell asleep and Bowater was able to sneak guiltily out of the cabin. He looked in on Guthrie, who did not look much better than Sullivan. His breathing was shallow and labored. He had not opened his eyes since Sullivan’s hand guard had connected with his temple.

  Bowater made his weary way back to his own cabin, aware that it really had become his own cabin, so much time had he spent with the River Defense Fleet.

  In the early predawn hours, Guthrie died. He had opened his eyes once while Doc was there, opened them wide and in a strong voice said, “Mind the damn feed water!” Then he closed them again and never said another word. Three hours later, he gave a gasp, a rattle, and he was gone.

  Doc told Bowater all about it the following morning, up at the wheelhouse, with the first light breaking in the east. “Fella’s got to be real careful,” Doc said, staring at Bowater with an odd sort of intensity. “Lotta ways a fella can git kilt. Look at ol’ Guthrie there. Got liquored up, fell down the ladder into the engine room, smashed the whole side of his head right in.” He held Bowater’s eyes, daring him to contradict that version of events. “Got a dozen fellas saw it happen, be more’n happy to swear to it,”
he added.

  It would not have occurred to Bowater to bring Sullivan up on charges, but he did not care for the short cook’s less than subtle coercion. “Thank you…Doc…for your help with my memory. Please return to your duties.” He turned his back on the man, the interview over.

  They were under way with the rising sun, past a shoreline of hard-luck farms and wild places that looked like they must have looked before white men ever passed that way. Bowater knew the river fairly well by now, between Fort Pillow and Memphis, and he found he could pilot the boat himself in some places, having been up and down enough times to recall how certain stretches should be navigated. He and Tarbox took turns standing watch.

  It was just getting on dark when they came alongside the levee in Memphis.

  “Mr. Tarbox, I must go to Shirley’s yard and see what is happening there,” Bowater said. “Please find a doctor to look in on Captain Sullivan, but he is not to be removed from the ship unless absolutely necessary. And please get Guthrie’s body to the morgue. You may report his death in any manner you see fit.”

  “Awright, Cap’n,” Tarbox said.

  “Very well. Carry on.” Bowater was still astounded that these river rats would listen to him. But men like that, he knew, really craved leadership and discipline, deep down, and would latch onto it when it was offered.

  Before stepping ashore, Bowater climbed down into the engine room, looking for Taylor. He found him at the feed water pump, a wrench in his hand, a coal passer standing by with half a dozen other tools. The fires were banked, the steam pressure down to three pounds, and Taylor looked much more relaxed.

  “Chief?” Bowater had been dreading this moment. He was still burning with embarrassment over his humiliating confession to Hieronymus Taylor. Why he had done that, why he had let the words come unchecked from his generally guarded mouth, he could not fathom. He wondered what breed of self-indulgent idiot Taylor now took him for.

  “Chief, how’d the engine do?”

  Taylor turned and looked at him, and his face revealed nothing. “Not bad. Ran. Boilers didn’t blow up. Don’t reckon we could ask for much more.”

  “Good. I am going over to the shipyard. Would you care to join me?”

  “I best get this here feed water pump goin, or we ain’t gonna be so lucky next time. I’ll come by later.”

  “Very well. Thank you, Chief, for taking over here.”

  Taylor smiled, shrugged. “You keep gettin my engine rooms blowed up or sunk, I got to find work where I can.”

  Bowater left the General Page as the sun dipped away and the sky was lit blue and orange with the last rays of light coming over the horizon. He walked fast down the waterfront street to the open place that Shirley had turned into a shipyard. He felt guilty, as if he had abandoned his family.

  He was brought up short by the crowd of men in the shipyard. At that hour he would not have expected more than half a dozen, finishing up for the day, with John Shirley rushing around as ever. But all the men were there now, his men, the yard workers. A small knot of soldiers in gray and butternut. An officer with a frock coat and gold swirls on the cuff.

  Whatever was going on, Bowater suspected it was not good.

  He hurried across the hard-packed ground to where the soldiers stood, about ten feet from the Tennessee’s port quarter, the focal point of the men sitting and standing around. He could see now that the officer was talking with Shirley, the short man hidden behind the crowd around him.

  “Mr. Shirley, what is going on here?” Bowater said, pushing through, insinuating himself into the discussion.

  The army officer turned to him slowly, with an imperious look. “And you are?”

  “Lieutenant Samuel Bowater, Confederate States Navy. I am the commanding officer of the ship building on the ways here.”

  “Indeed?”

  “It’s bad news, Captain, damned bad news,” Shirley chimed in. “Telegraph just brought word. Fort Pillow’s abandoned. The Golden Age went up to get the last of the men out. Now there isn’t a damn thing but sandbars and snags between the Yankees and Memphis.”

  Bowater felt his stomach drop. “Is there any word of the Yankees? Are they coming?”

  The army officer, annoyed by Shirley’s interruption, now commandeered the conversation. “We believe they are on the move now. We don’t know when they will be here, but we suspect soon. As Mr. Shirley has said, there is little holding them back.”

  “The River Defense Fleet’s falling back to the city,” Shirley butted in again. “The army officers are holding public meetings all over the city, see about organizing some defense, but it don’t look good, not good at all.”

  “Yes, anyway, that is not what we are concerned with,” the army officer said.

  “And you are?” Bowater asked, not willing to be outdone in the imperious department.

  “Captain van Reid, second assistant provost marshal. I am here by order of the provost. I…”

  “He wants to burn the ship!” Shirley chimed in, like jumping on the punch line of a joke. “He come here to order us to burn the damned Tennessee!”

  “Is that true?”

  “Lieutenant,” van Reid said with elaborate weariness, “I have already argued the point with Mr. Shirley, and I do not intend to argue it again. Unless you can launch this ship and tow it away before, say, sunrise tomorrow, it will have to be destroyed. It cannot be allowed to fall into Yankee hands.”

  Bowater pressed his lips together, scowled, tried to think of something to say. Something insightful that would alter the situation. He could think of nothing, so he said, “Can’t the city be defended?”

  “We have something in the neighborhood of two hundred troops to defend the city. You tell me, Lieutenant. Now if you will excuse me, I have a great deal to do. Launch your ship, and if you cannot, burn it. If it is not floating or burning by midnight, I will return and do it myself.”

  He turned and marched off and the clutch of soldiers marched after him, leaving Bowater and Shirley and the rest to stare, open-mouthed.

  Bowater looked at Shirley and Shirley looked at Bowater. There was not much to say. They might have launched the Tennessee in a few days, but not a few hours.

  “There’s some turpentine up in the paint shed,” Shirley said at last. “That’ll get things going along.”

  Bowater knew the words he had to speak. Gather up flammable material, pack it around the ship, douse it with turpentine. But they would not come. “Tanner, please see the ship ready for burning,” he ordered instead, and let Ruffin Tanner make the preparations.

  The men did not move fast, not one of them was enthusiastic about the job at hand. But slowly, bales of cotton and straw and scrap timber were piled around the ship, the bare wood of her hull showing like white bone in the torchlight. Like burning her at the stake, Bowater thought. The ship was dying for his heresy.

  Hieronymus Taylor appeared, walking on a crutch, and stood back in the shadows and watched.

  It was full dark when the provost marshal arrived, expecting to find the men unwilling to burn the ship, or so Bowater suspected. But preparations were far enough along that the provost said nothing, beyond an introduction and “Very good. Carry on.”

  And then it was ready, there was nothing left to do, no excuse for delay. “All right, you men.” Bowater turned to his crew behind him. “Go ahead.”

  The men with the torches stepped forward, solemn, as if they were part of a religious service. Up and down the ways they put flame to turpentine-soaked tinder and the fire roared to life, sprang up out of the cotton and hay and wood as if it had been there all along and was only waiting to be released.

  Bowater stepped back from the heat, and the others did as well. Soon the shipyard was lit with the dancing light, yellow and deep shadow.

  Oh, God, what a waste, what a waste… Bowater did not know if he should feel guilty about his less than stellar effort at getting the ship ready, or angry that he had wasted precious time on such a lost cau
se.

  They remained in the shipyard for a little more than two hours, watching the great wooden edifice collapse into a pile of glowing coal, and then they left. Bowater took his men back to the General Page. Sullivan would get his wish in the end—Bowater’s men would join his crew, Hieronymus Taylor would run the engine room. Bowater wondered if Sullivan would be alive in the morning so that he could enjoy his final victory.

  But not a victory, not really. Sullivan might have got Bowater’s men, but Bowater had Sullivan’s ship. That thought stirred something else in Samuel Bowater, something deep. The Yankees would be there soon, perhaps in the morning. But he had a ship. He could fight them. He would not be watching from the shore, or holding his tongue as Mississippi Mike Sullivan gave orders.

  And that, at least, was something.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Without it was a strategic movement, it was useless to evacuate

  Fort Pillow. If we are allowed to place the mortars on rafts and permitted to use the transports and play strategy back on the enemy, I will contract to hold this river above Memphis for a month.

  BRIGADIER GENERAL M. JEFF THOMPSON

  TO GENERAL DANIEL RUGGLES

  Flag Officer Charles Davis, United States Navy, looked around his cabin and reflected on the lack of fiddles.

  On the ships that he knew, the ones he had spent his career aboard, there were fiddles on everything, wooden lips around the edge of any flat surface to keep things from sliding off when the ship was rolling in a seaway. Fiddles on the bookshelves, around the tables, around the washbasin, little walls to keep nonsecured items from hitting the deck.

  There were no fiddles aboard the ironclad gunboat Benton. The Benton did not roll. She rocked a little, every once in a while, but the motion could not be called “rolling.” This was a different kind of ship, in a very different kind of war.

  He sighed and looked down at his diary, open on the desk in front of him. The cabin was lit with several lanterns, enough light to read and write, but Davis missed the big stern windows of the captain’s cabin of a proper man-of-war. This was more like a bunker than a cabin.