Thieves Of Mercy sb-2

by James L. Nelson

  “She’s done for,” Shirley said, mournfully. “I’m sorry, Miss Atkins.”

  They watched as the Yankee extracted itself from the Page and steamed away downstream, chasing after the remnants of the River Defense Fleet. They watched and waited and Wendy felt her terror mount. And then, from the far side of the sinking ship, a boat appeared, moving like a white water bug, pulling for the Tennessee shore.

  “Look!” Wendy practically shouted, pointing at the boat, but

  Shirley’s mood did not revive. “It’s too late. They’ll just rot in some Yankee prison.” “What? Why?” “The Yankees will have Memphis in a hour or so. They’ll

  round these fellas up. They got the city, they got the river. Nowhere to run.” From despair to elation to anger. Live through that, only to be made prisoner? I hardly think so.

  Wilbur Rankin, leading Memphis merchant, was not going to be a prisoner either. He was not going to be arrested, not going to be hung, not going to be killed by his fellow citizens in the panic. And most of all, he was not going to be poor.

  Rankin had not spent the past twenty-three years cheating, embezzling, gouging, and extorting for nothing. He had not hoarded goods such as cloth, food, and shoes in his warehouse until prices became astronomical just to lose it all now, simply because the damned Yankees were here.

  No, sir.

  He loaded the wagon with whatever it would hold, whatever in his warehouse he could personally lift and toss in the back. Happily, the really valuable things tended to be the lightest-silk, for instance-and though the small hoard of gold coin was not light by any means, he had divided it into a few small boxes, which were manageable.

  While the rest of the idiotic, sentimental citizens of Memphis watched their fate being decided from the levee and the hills, Wilbur Rankin was at his riverside warehouse preparing his exit. The war had been very good for him, so far. Blockades, shortages, wartime demand, he had made a fortune, but it was played out, at least as far as Memphis was concerned.

  The Confederacy was done. Time to go north. He would return if Southern fortunes turned around again, but until then, he was a loyal Union man. Always had been.

  He tossed the last box of tea in the back and climbed up onto the seat. It was a big wagon, made for hauling freight, and pulled by a team of four. He had managed to pile quite a lot back there.

  He flicked the reins, got the horses moving. In the gaps between the waterfront buildings he could catch glimpses of the river, the thick blanket of smoke, the boats whirling about, limping for the shore in a sinking condition, paddle wheels shattered. He shook his head. Stupid, stupid, stupid… He did not understand why people even bothered.

  He heard a voice calling, but he had expected that. Every fool who had not had the foresight to prepare an escape would be pleading with him. He would be Noah, and they would be the people with the water rising around them, and like Noah, he would tell them all to go to the devil.

  “Sir! Sir!”

  Rankin frowned and looked past the horses’ heads. It was a woman, a young woman. Rankin slowed the team. A very attractive young woman, with long brown hair tumbling out from under a straw hat, and a shapely figure. She had a very worried look on her face. She had no baggage.

  “Whoa!” Rankin pulled the horses to a stop. “Miss, can I help you?”

  The young woman ran over. Very nice indeed. And desperate.

  “Please, sir, I must get out of town! Please, can I ride with you?”

  Rankin decided to alter the plan. Desperation, gratitude, dependence, put them all together and they could render a young woman very liberal in the defense of her virtues. There was a hotel in Nashville he had hoped to reach that night.

  “Certainly, miss. Hop on.” He did not offer to help her climb up onto the high seat. She had to understand right off the nature of their relationship. “Giddyup!” Rankin snapped the reins. The horses moved out. “Oh, thank you, sir,” the young woman gushed. Rankin nodded his head. He did not speak to her. They rolled along, heading south to where Rankin would turn on the road to Nashville, now safely in Union hands. They rode in silence for five minutes. Rankin was aware of a rustling of skirts and he glanced over and caught a glimpse of the young woman’s ankle and calf, which he found enticing. “Down there, sir, is that the city wharf?” she asked. Rankin did not have to look in the direction she was pointing, he knew the answer. “Mm-hmm,” he said. “Yes it is, darlin.” “Very well,” she said, and her tone was quite different than it had been before. Lacking the desperation. “You can stop.” “Stop?” Rankin turned and smiled at her and found himself looking right into the barrel of a little pistol, aimed at his face. “Yes, stop. And get off.”

  Bowater and Taylor staggered aft, Bowater hoping to hell that the boat was still there. The one intact boat, the big one they had been towing astern. As Bowater had gone looking for Taylor, the men were massing on the fantail and crowding aboard the launch. Last Bowater had seen, there was not much freeboard left, and more men climbing in.

  The General Page rolled again, another five degrees. Bowater grabbed the rail to keep his footing and keep Taylor from falling.

  They made their way down the starboard side, the high side, Bowater looking for stragglers, but the men of the General Page were well motivated to abandon ship, and he found only a few dead men along the way, victims of small arms or shell fragments or splinters.

  He heard footsteps on the deck. Tanner and Tarbox, Burgoyne and Baxter, they came racing aft. “Let’s git the hell along!” Tarbox shouted, like a parent who has lost his patience. They grabbed up Taylor’s arms, half dragged him aft, and Bowater followed behind.

  They handed Taylor into the boat and climbed in after, and then it was only Bowater on board. He put a leg over the side, stepped awkwardly into the stern sheets, and jammed himself into the place by the tiller.

  “Shove off! Ship oars! Pull together!”

  Awkwardly, their work hampered by the men overflowing the thwarts, the oarsmen pulled and the boat gathered way. They pulled hard, getting distance between themselves and the sinking boat.

  “Rest on your oars!” Bowater called and the men stopped rowing and leaned on the looms. Bowater turned the boat broadside to the sinking paddle wheeler and the men looked back at the place from which they had come.

  The General Joseph Page was heeling over at a forty-five-degree angle, water lapping around her deckhouse, shot full of holes. With a groan the walking beam let go and tumbled off the A-frame, smashed into the deckhouse, and hit the water with a great splash that set the boat rocking in the circular waves.

  The Page sat more upright with that weight gone, and then began to settle. The water came up around her main deck, then her boiler deck, and then up to the hurricane deck. Bowater watched the Confederate ensign, tattered but still flying, as it was swallowed up by the river. At last only the one remaining chimney was left, and half of that disappeared into the river before it stopped.

  “Reckon she’s on the bottom,” someone said, and that was met with a chorus of grunts.

  Bowater looked upriver. The gunboats were coming down, and the rams had already chased downriver whatever ships of the River Defense Fleet were still floating. He wanted to make for the Arkansas side, try and get away overland, but one of the Yankee boats would catch them before they were halfway there. Besides, the overloaded launch would never make it.

  “Oarsmen, pull together,” he said, and as the boat gathered way, he brought her head around to aim for the city wharf, the closest landing spot to them.

  It was a ten-minute pull, long enough for Bowater to stare at the strange figure at the end of the wharf and deduce that it was a woman and she was waving to them. Wife of one of these river rats, he imagined. Sweetheart… hooker that one of them owes money to…

  They got closer, and the only sound from the boatload of hopeless and despairing men was the creak of the oars and the occasional groan of the wounded, and Bowater could not help but think that the woman
looked a damned lot like Wendy Atkins.

  Absurd… And the resemblance only made his loneliness and depression more acute.

  They pulled alongside the wharf, which was a few feet above the gunnel of the boat, and Bowater had to admit that the woman looked very much like Wendy, but he had not seen Wendy in half a year, and so clearly his memory was fading.

  And then the woman said, “Samuel! Oh, Samuel!” and Bowater realized that it was Wendy Atkins, and then he did not know what to think. He stared at her. He said nothing. He feared for his sanity.

  “Samuel, listen, I have a wagon, and I think it’s big enough to get all your men in, if we really crowd them in. I need help unloading it! Oh, Samuel, do hurry, we haven’t much time at all!”

  Her tone carried so much authority that it snapped Bowater from his stupor. “Come on, you men. Up, up! Get that wagon emptied, we can still get out of here before the Yankees overrun us. Move! Do you want to rot in prison?” They could escape, they could do it with honor. They had not hauled down their flag.

  The men moved. Exhausted, shocked, wounded, they pulled themselves from the boat, staggered over to the wagon, and began to unceremoniously dump Wilbur Rankin’s goods on the ground, all save for the small, heavy iron boxes, which they guessed were worth hanging on to.

  Bowater supervised the operation, seeing the wounded men loaded in first, made comfortable on beds of silk cloth, and then the others, crammed in like hands of tobacco prized into a cask.

  When the last man was on board, Bowater looked around. He could not see Wendy and he was suddenly terrified that she had not been there at all. But there she was, on the driver’s seat, reins in her hand. She smiled at him, that amazing smile.

  He stepped quickly to the front of the wagon and climbed in beside her. She gave the reins a flick. “Giddyup!” she shouted and the horses strained and the wagon gathered way.

  Bowater looked at her and she glanced at him quickly, smiled, and looked back at the road.

  How… how… He did not know where to begin, so he didn’t. Too many questions. She handled the horses with a confidence he did not recall her possessing. Not the feigned confidence of her brash earlier self, but something real and solid.

  Or perhaps he was just forgetting. It had been so long, and he was so tired. He closed his eyes.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  In reply I have only to say that the civil authorities have no resources of defense, and by the force of circumstances the city is in your power.

  JOHN P ARK, MAYOR OF MEMPHIS, TO FLAG OFFICER CHARLES H. DA VIS

  Bowater slept fitfully and not long, lurching along on the heavy wagon. When he came awake with a gasp and looked around, they were rolling through open fields dotted with scrubby brush, little farms off in the distance. He could see birds and cows. It was as if the wagon had transported him to another country.

  He swiveled around. The church spires of Memphis were still visible in the distance, peeking over the hills, the pall of battle smoke still hanging over the town.

  For a long moment Bowater just stared. That cloud of smoke-the guns of the General Page had added to that cloud, he and his men had done their part in that orgy of riparian butchery. He pictured the wreckage of the General Page resting in the mud. He pictured the body of Mississippi Mike Sullivan floating around the engine room. In his mind he saw the currents animating Mike’s limbs so that even in death he was waving his arms in that frantic way of his.

  “Hey, Captain…” The voice came from behind. Hieronymus Taylor. Bowater turned the other way.

  “Chief. How are you doing?”

  “Been better. Been a hell of a lot better. Fact, I can’t recall when I felt worse.” Taylor paused, looked around the countryside. “No, that ain’t true. Day after our brawl in the theater I felt worse. So I reckon things are lookin up.”

  “Have you taken to brawling now?” Wendy Atkins asked.

  Taylor ignored the question, looked at Bowater. “Now, Captain, if I ain’t very much mistaken, this young lady drivin the wagon is none other than Miss Wendy Atkins of Portsmouth, Virginia. Is that a fact?”

  Bowater looked at Wendy, suddenly unsure of himself. Wendy swiveled around. “That is a fact, Chief Taylor,” she said.

  Taylor nodded. “My guess is that there is one hell of a story attached to your bein here.”

  “You guessed right, Chief,” Wendy said.

  “Awright. Let’s hear her.”

  “Where are we going, Captain Bowater?” Wendy asked.

  Samuel had not really considered that, though it seemed an obvious question. He pictured the map in his mind, arrayed the Yankees where he knew them to be. “I don’t know,” he said at last.

  “Well, it should take us some time to get there,” Wendy said. “I guess there’s time for my story. It started with the letter you sent, Captain, from Yazoo City…”

  The tale spun out as the wagon rolled south, always south, deep into Confederate territory. There were more than a few times that Bowater and Taylor exchanged glances of strained credulity, more than a few times that Wendy said, “You two must think I am a wicked liar, but in faith this is really what happened…”

  Forty-five minutes later the story ended with a gun thrust in the face of the poor unfortunate who owned the wagon on which they were riding. They rattled on for a mile or so in silence. The men did not know what to say.

  “I was going to tell you what we’ve been up to,” Samuel said at last. “Two river battles, ship sunk under us, Sullivan killed. But frankly it seems pretty tame now.”

  “So the mighty CSS Virginia’s gone, huh?” Taylor asked.

  “Yup. Blown to the heavens. Molly and I were nearly killed when she fell back to earth.”

  “She lived for four months and she changed the nature of sea-fighting forever,” Taylor said. “We won’t see the like of her again.” Bowater had never heard Taylor wax so sentimental, certainly not over any person.

  They rolled on south, stopped in the town of White Haven because they were desperately hungry and thirsty. There was a store and an inn there, but between all the men crowded on the wagon they could come up with no more than a few Confederate dollars. That was when Ruffin Tanner suggested they open the little strongboxes, and they made the happy discovery of hoards of gleaming gold.

  The innkeeper, who had regarded them with suspicion and fear, saw them in a quite different light when presented with actual specie, gold, the value of which only went up with the misfortunes of the Confederacy. The former General Pages ate well and were on the road again, because they all had the sense, unspoken, that they should get as much distance as they could between themselves and the Yankees.

  They came at last to Commerce, Mississippi, though there seemed to be precious little commerce taking place. The sun was two hours set by the time they climbed wearily out of the wagon and stretched and groaned in front of the inn on the one main street. The inn was all but deserted, but still it was barely large enough to house all the men. They ate, another fine meal, and tumbled off to sleep, too exhausted to talk.

  Samuel took a private room, as was fitting his status as captain, and saw of course that Wendy had a room to herself. In the dark he lay in his bed, staring up at the ceiling, a dull blue in the moonlight. Outside the windows the crickets and frogs were singing their opera, an ensemble cast of thousands.

  The door creaked on its hinges and he did not startle, did not even ask who it was. He could see her in the muted light, her hair loose and hanging down her shoulders, a robe held tight around her. She paused and they looked at one another and neither spoke. Then Wendy slipped off the robe, slipped off her nightdress, and for a moment the light played over her naked body, her white skin. She stepped up to the bed, pulled back the cover, and slipped in next to Samuel.

  Samuel put his arm out, wrapped it around her, pressed her tight. She lay her cheek on his chest and they seemed to melt together. They remained like that for some time, silent, serenaded by the crickets and frogs.


  “God, I have missed you,” Wendy said at last.

  “I have missed you too.” And he had, though he had not known until that moment just how much.

  She propped herself up on her elbow, shuffled closer to him, kissed him on the lips. He ran his hands over her back, through that long thick hair he loved, cradled her face in his hands. They made love, as if they had been waiting their whole life for this and were not going to rush through it now.

  Finally they lay side by side, their heads on the cool pillows, their bodies bright with sweat because it was June and it was hot and humid, even at two o’clock in the morning.

  “What will we do?” Wendy asked finally.

  “I don’t know,” Samuel answered, the only true answer, but he knew Wendy needed more than that and it was not kind to leave her without it. “We’ll have to get to some city, someplace where we can contact the Navy Department. I reckon-I imagine we can find a steamer, something to get us down to Vicksburg. That’s the last holdout on the river, and when that falls, the Confederacy is split in two.”

  Wendy rolled over, flung an arm across his chest. “Will that end the war?” she asked. There was a note of resignation, a touch of hope. Win or lose, she was ready for it to be over.

  “No. Not immediately. There’ll be plenty more war. The navy will have more work for me, of that I have no doubt.”

  Wendy pressed tighter against him. “I don’t want you to go.”

  And he did not want to go. For once in his life, it seemed, there was something better on shore than anything he could hope to find over the horizon. After years in the moribund United States Navy, where his coming or going was a matter of complete indifference to anyone, when he might have walked away at any point, he had at last found a reason to walk away, at the very moment he could no longer do so. Sometimes he thought God specialized in irony.

  “The war will end someday,” he said, but the words did not sound as hopeful as he wanted them to. They had this day, and the next, and the next, and he would savor them and not think about the future. He knew how to cherish any given moment. It was one thing, at least, he had learned.