“We already tried that,” William says, an urgency in his voice. “It’s too heavy,”
“Just do it,” Big Tennessee orders. “Each of you grab one of his hands and pull on my command.” Big Tennessee’s giant frame straddles the freed end of the beam, and he clasps his hands beneath it. He releases a deep grunt as the obstacle rises a mere inch or two. “Now!” he yells.
William and I easily pull the soldier loose, and he scrambles to his feet.
“We’ve got to get off the boat,” William says. “Are you okay to move?” he asks the man we just released.
“Yeah,” he say, testing his leg. And with that he hurries toward the side of the boat and launches himself overboard. We hear multiple splashes come from the river as other men have started abandoning the Sultana.
Someone yells, “Put out the fire!” I turn to see embers flying through the opening where the smokestack stood seconds earlier. A man whose legs are pinned by a support near the hole begs for help. Big Tennessee, William, and several men rush to where he lies. “Help me!” he yells. “I’m going to burn.”
I limp over and add my assistance as well. I gain some leverage with my right leg and push off the best I can. But even with all our hands, the wood won’t budge. It won’t yield. It’s simply too large for us to move. Escaping sparks ignite the jagged edges of the deck, turning it to flames. Fire that begins devouring the wood gets closer and closer to the man.
“Don’t stop. For God’s sake, don’t stop trying!” he yells. But it’s useless. No matter how hard we try, the weight of the wood and heat from the fire push us back. Everyone ducks lower to the floor, trying to avoid the heat racing out of the crater. We shield our faces with our hands. Being recent prisoners, everyone’s too weak, and the far end of the timber appears to be buried by other debris. The flames get closer, and the group retreats.
William stumbles, drops to his knees, and vomits on what’s left of the front wall of the pilothouse.
A voice whispers, Be calm, son. Don’t lose your head. It’s Mother speaking. You’ll be okay if you don’t lose your head.
“Out of the way!” Big Tennessee yells as he and another man carry a limp soldier toward the stairs. But when they get there, they find the stairs are gone. That portion of the Texas deck blew up with the smokestack. “We can’t take him that direction,” Big Tennessee says. They hurry to the side of the boat and dangle the man over the edge by his arms to the deck below. “Grab this man!” Big Tennessee screams at the top of his lungs. After the man is taken from their hands, Big Tennessee leaps over the railing and into the Mississippi River.
The smokestack’s hole is now a volcano blowing embers and heat into the evening sky.
“Swim or burn!” someone yells.
A figure darts toward the edge of the boat, weaving around the debris. He takes off every stitch of clothing except his drawers and peers into the water, scanning left to right. Finally finding a clear spot, he jumps three stories into the black river surface.
Bodies are scattered everywhere, many bleeding, some missing arms or legs. The scene is far worse than at Sulphur Branch Trestle, and there are no nurses here to be of assistance.
I think the situation through for a minute. “William, we have to get off this deck. It may give way soon.”
We race to the railing, me hobbling on my wounded leg. There’s a rope dangling over the side, so we lower ourselves to the next level while men continue rushing into the water, some diving straight over us. The river that seemed so calm and peaceful a day ago is now a sea of bobbing faces in pitch-black water. Many of the heads go under and fail to come up again.
“I can’t swim,” a man says to me as we finally get footing on the lowest deck. It’s Caleb Rule, the farrier who had begged the guards at Castle Morgan to let us leave the prison during the flood. “I can’t swim,” he says again. “Should I burn or drown?” he asks.
Caleb’s hugging a four-by-four-inch post at the railing of the deck as if it’s as dear to him as a child is to a mother. He looks at me again. “I can’t swim.”
“That’s okay,” I tell him. “It’s going to be all right.”
Steam shoots out a nearby window, scalding a man running by. I pull on Caleb’s arms, but he’s having none of it and refuses to let go of the post. His gaze does not leave the sight of the men floating in the water. “I can’t swim,” he repeats for the fourth time.
“Help me pry his fingers loose,” I tell William.
William leans over and bites Caleb’s fingers. Our friend lets go of the post and we drag him to the edge of the banister. Men in the frigid water beg us to throw them anything that might help them float. Heads bob below the surface a dozen at a time—never to resurface. Others on the boat are pulling everything they can off the walls to toss into the water.
Coal boxes, shutters, bales of cotton, doors, and cracker barrels litter the river’s surface. Somebody has managed to throw a massive flour barrel into the mix.
“Your choice is being made for you,” I tell Caleb after seeing a man fly from the Texas deck, his hair on fire as he whizzes past. The flames on his head dissolve when he hits the water. “You’re going in the river.”
I can’t sw—”
“Can’t swim, we know.” A green shutter lies on the floor, blown off by the explosion. I pick it up. “Wrap your arms around this and don’t let go. Even when you hit the water, don’t let go of the shutter.”
William braces himself against the ship’s outer wall with both hands and kicks the three wooden rails free to provide an opening into the water. It’s going to be difficult to get Caleb off the boat, so a nod to William tells him to help me push. I hold up one finger, then two, then three. On the third, Caleb Rule flies overboard with his shutter.
“Can’t swim!” he yells midair.
Caleb hits the water hard, but the shutter breaks his fall. His chin barely gets damp as he floats away. A team of mules won’t be able to pry that shutter from his grasp.
Sergeant Survant rushes by, a bedpost in his hands to throw over. “What happened to the Sultana?.” I ask.
“Boiler exploded,” he says. “I was next to the stairs when it blew. The banister saved me when the Texas deck came crashing down. The fellow six inches from me was crushed.
“Listen,” Sergeant Survant says, panting. “I have a plan. Wait as long as you can before jumping in. Watch,” he says, pointing to the water. “Too many of the men are pulling each other under. Those who can’t swim are drowning those who can. Wait for the water to clear a bit.”
I nod. “Okay.”
“You can swim, can’t you?”
“Certainly.”
William Lugenbeal rushes by, dragging a large crate with GASTONE written across the side.
“Where’s the gator?” Sergeant Survant asks.
* * *
Lugenbeal laughs and points over his shoulder toward the flames shooting out of a window. “He’s on his way to hell by now is my guess. I stabbed him between the eyes with a knife and took his crate.” In a heartbeat, Lugenbeal and the crate are in the river. Sergeant Survant walks toward the front of the boat, clutching a cabin door to chuck overboard.
When Lugenbeal mentions the alligator, I remember the hold contains livestock. Beyond the fire and smoke, the shapes of some of them can be seen being pushed into the water near the stern.
A loud splash catches my ears. A shape, larger than the roof on Uncle Clem’s house, is buoying in the water. It’s Sultana’s gangplank. Instantly, pairs of hands, too many to count, appear from every direction and latch on to the edges of the wood.
“Help me, Stephen,” William says. He’s gathered a heap of spindles from a staircase railing. “Tuck half of these under your right arm.” A few of them spill to the floor, and I stoop to pick them up.
“Leave ’em lay,” William says. “The flames are getting too close.” He takes off his suspenders, wraps them around the wood, and ties the four ends in a knot. “If God’s willin
g, these will see us through. There’s enough here for both of us. Take off your suspenders,” he orders.
After tying the second batch and with blazes lapping out many of the nearby cabin windows, the time has come to jump. I think of the sugar we had hauled up to the pilothouse just hours before, now burning along with our blankets, with our few possessions in our rucksacks, along with my . . .
“I have to go back up!” I yell at William.
“Back up where?”
“To the pilothouse.”
William grabs my arm. “No, you’re not going back up there, Stephen.”
I pull away. “The book! Governor Morton said I have to bring David Copperfield back home to him. He hasn’t read it.”
“He didn’t mean it literally,” William says, shaking his head violently, eyes pleading. “Look around, pard. My God, he’ll understand.”
“It was an order. Good soldiers follow orders.”
“Let it go,” William pleads.
But it’s too late. My mind’s made up. “Give me a boost,” I say.
I latch on to the rope we had used earlier, climb up on William’s back, and onto his shoulders. He places his hands, palms up, next to his neck for me to step onto. By pulling on the rope while he pushes me up another two feet, there’s just enough room to get a good hold on the railing above me. Men jump over me and plummet into the river. I grab the deck and swing my good leg up and over onto the flooring.
The boat’s top floor is mostly burned. I shield my face from the inferno with both arms and walk toward where the pilothouse once stood. A light breeze blows some of the heat away and toward the back of the boat. But at the same time, the wind is turning the vessel slowly to the right. This brings the flames straight back to where I’m headed. The entire spot where we had slept, fifteen minutes earlier, is now an inferno. My knapsack, sugar, hat, and copy of David Copperfield are gone.
I’ve failed.
CHAPTER FORTY
April 27, 1865, 3:08 a.m.
A second explosion rips at my ears. It’s louder than twenty cannons on a battlefield all firing at once. It blows me, and most of the deck I was running across, into the coldest water I’ve felt since leaving the Alabama prison three weeks ago. It’s hard to tell which way to swim, submerged in muddy water, struggling for my life.
So this is how it ends? I’m fifteen years old and this is how my life ends: at the bottom of the flooded Mississippi River?
Arms and legs thrash all around. Planks, churning water, legs kicking, barrels, fists punching . . . everyone . . . everywhere . . . EVERYTHING fighting for the surface . . . wherever that is. AIR . . . that’s where life is. If I could only reach it.
But which way is up? How far is it? One thing is for sure: I can’t hold my breath much longer.
Just fifteen years? That’s all I get? I’m younger than Robert was when he died in the war.
I’ve made it through too many dangers to die like this, sinking toward the bottom of a muddy river swollen with two thousand soldiers, countless horses, and one murdered alligator. After all I’ve been through, it can’t end like this. Not when I’m so close to home.
Something kicks my thigh. The strike, a glancing blow, has to be a mule or horse kicking for the surface like the rest of us.
A boot kicks my chest. What little air I’ve managed to hold in my lungs shoots out and bubbles past my cheeks and ears. The boat must be behind me. My body twists easily in the red-black muck. I push both hands up through the water as if trying to catch the escaped bubbles. A fast stroke brings them down to my side. Somebody’s hair tangles through my fingers. I push him away, expecting a fight. Whoever it is will latch on like a burr if he can. He doesn’t. There is no grabbing, no fists punching, no legs kicking. Whoever he is, he isn’t trying to find the surface anymore. He’s already gone.
An orange glow in the water—a distant, faint spark—like a campfire’s last hour appears above me. The shape grows larger, and shadows move toward the light. I reach above me, cup the water, and pull hard down to my side . . . and do it again . . . and again. The light gets rounder and brighter, and, at the same time, sounds grow in my ears.
My body slips through the water and breaks the surface of the river. When I gasp for breath, my lungs take in as much water as air. I cough violently. Somebody puts an arm around my neck and pulls down. The best thing to do is to stay under until he lets go. Don’t fight. Play dead. Finally, whoever it is releases their clutch.
Returning to the surface, I see the Sultana—or what’s left of it—swallowed in flames, making the sky glow like a sunrise. Orange and yellow light dance against a frantic hand nearby. I snatch at the hand and pull a flailing body back up. It’s Charles Evans, bugler from Company A.
“Help,” he says, and gasps between quick breaths. “Please! Please help.” He’s so disoriented, I don’t believe he knows who he’s talking to.
A barrel floats by. The word “flour” is written on it in large white letters. I grab Charles’s hand, but he pulls in a panic. We both go under. Holding him underwater forces him to let go. I resurface in time to seize his hand as it sinks below the water, and pull him back up.
“Don’t grab me!” I yell quickly.
His jaw chatters, but he manages a slight nod. “Okay,” he says, but not convincingly.
I pull at his hands in quick bursts like I’m moving a hot coffeepot from one side of the stove to the other. I’m trying to gain his trust and keep his head above water.
“Charles, you’re going to take my hand. Don’t fight or lunge at me. Just hold it.”
He grabs hold. With all my strength I’m able to raise his arm toward the black sky. This clears his head of the water. “See?”
“Yeah,” Charles says, and manages a quick smile. His smile disappears quicker than a shooting star.
“If you fight, I’m holding you under the water, and only one of us will come back up alive. Do you understand?”
“Okay,” he promises.
I struggle toward the flour barrel, but a trunk lid blocks my way. The top is light and moves easily with a swipe of my hand. I rest my fingers on the rim of the barrel for a second to regain some strength. Charles sees we’ve reached it and flails so unbridled, I have to let go. Somehow, he manages to clamp his fingers on the rim of the wood.
Within seconds the barrel is swarmed with several more pairs of hands. It sinks a bit in the water but buoys enough to support those grabbing its edge.
As the flow takes me away from the wreckage it’s impossible not to look at the burning mass. A thin figure lies on the deck, near the railing of the boat. “Please somebody throw me in the river!” he screams. “The flames are getting closer!”
“Your leg is broken,” another man still on board shouts over the roar of the fire. “You won’t be able to keep yourself afloat in the water.”
“You’ve got to do it. I’ll die in the fire for sure!” he yells. “Don’t let me burn alive.”
The second man cups both hands in front of his mouth and hesitates. Is he praying? Is he thinking? Finally, he rolls the soldier to the edge, shields his face from the approaching flames and shoves with the heel of his boot. The soldier enters the water, but the splash cannot be heard over the roar of the fire. I search, but his head doesn’t resurface.
Brave men faced death on the battlefield without flinching. But in the icy April waters of the Mississippi there are no privates. No sergeants. No generals. There are only men doing anything for their own survival. Some beg for life, others plead for a quick death. I don’t recall such screaming and praying even in the heat of battle at Sulphur Branch Trestle.
“Gaston!” somebody yells out. “Grab hold.” A leather strap from a horse’s rein smacks the water in front of me. I see the shape of a horse from the corner of my eye.
I turn to swim in the opposite direction and call back over my shoulder, “Get away! One kick and that thing will kill us for sure.”
“He can’t kick, Gaston. Not an
ymore,” the voice assures me. “He’s got no head. That second explosion blew him plum into the river. Grab the damn strap if you want to live, boy.”
It’s Robert Talkington, a sergeant from Company A. He pulls the rein back and tosses it in my direction again. This time it lands across my right shoulder. My hands feel numb. Can I swim much longer in this icy water? Floating with Talkington, on a dead horse, is my best option at the moment, so I grab the rein.
Talkington pulls me to the carcass. “I’m getting cold,” I tell him.
“Wrap the reins around your wrist so you don’t float away,” Talkington orders. “Don’t worry. I’ve got the other end secure. Here, lean up on the base of his neck and shoulders. He’s dead but still warm.”
He’s right. I nestle across the horse’s shoulder, my head resting on its neck, and the horse’s body warms mine. Wrapping the rein four times around my right wrist and twisting my left hand through what’s left of his mane, I anchor myself to the corpse.
Talkington shakes his head, laughs, and says, “You know, trading a live horse for a dead one is the best bargain I ever made.”
Then, slowly, everything goes dark.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
April 27, 1865, 4:20 a.m.
“Gaston, wake up. Stay awake, pard.”
I wake from the splashing of water against my face. “What? Stop.”
“Better stay awake, pard. You almost slipped away once already.” It’s Robert Talkington, and he’s the one flicking water at me. He has a grip on my forearm with his other hand and shakes a finger in my face.
I lift my head slightly and see a bonfire floating on water. It’s the Sultana, and it’s illuminating the scene enough to reveal a river of human heads bobbing. Light from the flames dances on the faces near us. A crack like thunder causes every head to turn toward the sound. Men are hanging on to a round structure on the side of the boat. The form is now angled out like a tree branch jutting from the side of a tree.
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