by John Brunner
Nonetheless the notion of passing on what he knew was growing by degrees more appealing. His head was stocked with such a mass of information about this river!
Such thoughts were novel enough to be discomfortable. He repulsed them with great effort and found his voice.
“Lamenthe from Marocain’s? I remember him! Where is he, then?”
And retrieved his staff, propped in the corner by the door.
“Why, you’re in mourning! Never tell me it’s for your uncle!”
Reflexively doffing his hat, Fernand ventured, “You recall our meeting, sir?”
“Indeed I do,” Drew answered, his expression grave. “Am I right in assuming…?”
“Yes, unfortunately.” Fernand crossed himself. “We celebrated a requiem mass for him this morning.”
“I’m sure I should have heard the tragic news in due course. But I thank you for coming to inform me personally. I’ve had dealings with the firm of E. Marocain for many years. Many years.” He was gazing along the busy wharves, but seemed to be looking into another time. “I trust the business will continue?”
“Oh—oh yes!” Fernand licked his lips. Now that the moment was on him, he was finding it terribly difficult to deliver the crucial statement with which he had primed his tongue.
“And no doubt it was to assure me of the fact that you took the trouble to call,” Drew said dryly. “Very well—one understands that the world must go on in spite of those who take their leave of it. Would you care to be shown over the Atchafalaya, so you may report at first hand on her appointments?”
“A circuit of such a vessel under the guidance of her master would be a privilege!”
“Very well, then. Come this way. You will see that space on the main deck and the guards is available for cargo of a light but bulky nature, such as cotton or tobacco. Your eyes will inform you concerning the magnificent provision which the design of this boat makes for such a burden. Strangely enough, the boilers are not on the boiler deck, which is the next deck above—”
“Not so strange, Captain!” Fernand blurted before he could bridle the impulse. Drew bent a frosty gaze on him, but maintained at least the superficies of politeness.
“Is that so?”
“Why, yes—sir. The word ‘deck’ originally meant to cover, nothing more. You hear the same sound in ‘décor’ and ‘decorate’…”
“Hah! At least you agree with the preacher I took to Vicksburg last year, who said exactly the same.” Drew sought for and found the clew of his discourse.
“Above that again is the hurricane deck, so called because it gives protection against storms, and uppermost of all, bar the pilothouse, is the texas. No doubt you know how that got its name?” This with sarcasm.
Fernand had to swallow hard.
“Some say it’s because it was lately annexed, sir. But it appears to me to be a regular Spanish word, in which language techar means ‘to roof’. I believe there to be some connection with ‘textile’, meaning woven, and I’d hazard a guess the first texas was a canvas awning.”
Drew thought awhile before replying. Then he abandoned his prepared speech.
“I’d be wasting breath to say what I intended now I’ve found you so educated! Let’s go down to the hold. Which is called the hold because it holds the heavy freight!”
And he strode off ahead of Fernand.
Despite Drew’s sharpness, though, the latter’s determination was undiminished. What defiance of his mother had begun, his tour of the Atchafalaya completed.
For this boat was no mere dream, but a reality.
What happened next was like becoming Jonah in the belly of the great fish. Fernand gasped. On the few occasions when he had traveled by steamer, he had explored every corner the crew would permit; this, though, was the only time he had seen the full volume of a boat’s hold, for during a trip the view was always blocked by cargo.
Here, now, the process of freighting-up had scarcely begun. A stack of boxes fifty feet away did nothing to detract from the sight of this monstrously long and almost completely dark cavern of a place, threaded as by some gargantuan spider with a web of iron bars: the lengthwise hog chains, which lent her hull stem-to-stern rigidity, and the cross chains that transmitted to the keelson via wooden Sampson posts the enormous burden of her wheels and paddleboxes. Had timber been used to make her equally strong, she would have been three hundred tons heavier.
But a penalty must be paid for the advantage. Part of it was out of sight on the upper decks—those bars created problems at the peak of their ascending curves—and part was right here, proof of the time it took after every trip and often during one to make sure nothing had slackened to the danger point.
Walking along the echoing vault, they saw in the distance (its void was large enough to make one think in such terms) a wan and eerie light. Drawing near, they found a gang of men testing some of the iron struts by a glimmering oil lamp. Their leader was portly and almost bald; Drew named him as Josh Diamond, the boat’s carpenter, but carried formality no further and at once set about interrogating him concerning the condition of the hull and upperworks. Satisfied, he remembered Fernand and led him onward to where barrel after barrel of salt pork was being transported from daylight to darkness by the freight hoister, an endless chain with angled slabs of thick wood attached to it. Its own small steam engine, chuffing away for all the world like a tired mule not quite ready to launch a kick at his boss, rolled the chain around and around and around…
Ill-advisedly, one of the hands stowing the barrels glanced up at their approach and came within a half-inch of dropping the next one on his foot. Drew barked at him. At once a long-faced man peered down from the hatch the hoister ran through.
“Cap’n! Didn’t know you was there!” he exclaimed.
“You tell these men to act always as if I’m here, Mr. Sexton! Because if I’m not, I’m apt to be shortly! Understand?”
Without waiting for an answer, Drew moved on, confiding to Fernand as to an old friend, “He’s a good man, is Jack Sexton, or I’d not have made him my second mate. But he gets taken by surprise a mite too easy. You just saw! And now let’s go upstairs.”
Leaving the hold was a relief. After her scant year in service the Atchafalaya’s timbers were already impregnated with the stench of her foulest cargoes: poorly cured hides, for example, or tung oil, or any of the countless substances that could turn rancid on a summer’s day… particularly when nature’s heat was augmented by the boilers on the deck above. Wiping his face with a black-edged handkerchief he had been given at the time of his father’s funeral, carefully preserved by his mother and produced again now that such a symbol was once more appropriate, Fernand felt glad that today all but the one needed for the freight hoister were cold, and impressed, indeed awed, by their solidity in repose. The only steamboat boilers he had seen before had been aroar with coal and wood. Their red maws had fascinated him, fixing his gaze so fast he scarcely noticed whether the stokers who kept them fed were black men, or white but coated with soot and dust. It came as a shock to realize that they were framed in brick as substantial as any onshore. Through a high wall of it gaped eight furnace doors greedy for the fuel that was being stacked within reach against tomorrow’s departure.
From one of the doors protruded the feet of a man lying belly-down in the confined space beneath the thin iron shell that separated fire from water. Another man stood by offering tools and advice neither of which—to judge by the answering blast of oaths—were suited to the task.
Drew forgot all about Fernand and marched over, voicing a flood of profanity almost poetical in its inventiveness.
Come to think of it, was this not a likelier reason for Drew to have acquired his nickname than the one generally proposed?
As if galvanized, the man inside the firebox emerged with a single improbable twist of his torso and in a blink was on his feet, raising a lead-headed mallet to strike down whoever had insulted him. Recognizing the captain, however, he
at once lowered it and spoke in fluent technical terms.
“It’s the trouble I told you about as we rounded Arnauld’s Point, Cap’n! Steam showing in the firebed and the water low in number four. Must be a leak on the branch feed to the mud drum.”
Drew craned to look into the firedoor’s mouth. After a mere glance he appeared satisfied. Imitating him, Fernand found he could make out almost no detail in the ash-encrusted grate. He understood in principle what was being discussed. Steamers of this type drew their water from the river by way of a pump called “the doctor,” which possessed its own engine so that the level in the boilers would be kept up when steam was being generated but the main engines were idling: for instance, at a landing. But river water was foul with silt and weed and sometimes worse. The function of the mud drum was to receive impurities and let them settle out. It was located underneath the deck the boilers rested on; consequently the pipes to it had to pass through the tiled floor of the furnace. But it must take an expert eye to distinguish the mud drum feed from…
Fernand realized abruptly that he had gone on staring so long, he was now in turn being stared at. Sheepish, he put on an embarrassed smile.
But Drew was obviously in a better-than-average mood. He identified his visitor and introduced him to—
“This here’s Dutch! Dutch Fonck! And that’s Irish!”
“Pat O’Dowd,” said the man who had emerged from the furnace.
“Where’s Ealing?” Drew went on.
“Aft by the starboard pitman with his new striker.”
“What do you think of him?”
“Walt, you mean?” O’Dowd shrugged. “Jim says he’s shaping up.”
“He’s young yet,” Fonck supplemented. “I guess he’ll grow into the work.”
Listening, Fernand felt a pang of envy at the patent camaraderie between these men. He would never have imagined from his previous encounters with the captain that his crew could chat so casually with him. He had expected a sort of military discipline to be in force, and all conversation to be full of “Yes, sir!” and “No, sir!” and “Cap’n, if you please!”
How utterly different all this was from the atmosphere of the so-called “family” business he was used to, with its undercurrent of cutthroat rivalry…
Following the same route along the main deck as the steam pipes, Drew next led Fernand to the midships section, where the weight of the Atchafalaya’s monstrous engines was concentrated, and gave a crisp summary of their characteristics, using his staff like a lecturer’s pointer: forty-inch pistons, ten-foot stroke, a Pittsburgh cam designed to his own specification controlling the valves that admitted to the cylinders steam at 110 pounds per square inch.
Wisely forbearing to mention that, like anybody who religiously followed the river-news columns, he too could have recited these figures, Fernand looked at the back of his hand and mentally outlined there a square one inch by one, then tried to load it with 110 pounds. He failed.
A shiver ran down his spine. He thought of what it must be like to take deck passage up the Mississippi in foul weather, particularly if you were too poor to afford the regular fare and had to turn out at all hours to earn your keep by loading wood and coal from a shore landing slippery with mud or a barge that rocked insanely at every wake and ripple.
Nonetheless, in spite of all hardships, there was glamor about the notion of a steamer. Ever since the first voyage of the New Orleans in January 1812 the mere mention of the term conjured up visions of long voyages undertaken in amazingly little time. The world had been transformed from the days of wind and tide, towing and portage.
Steamer was the word that summarized the change.
Passing the huge tapered beam of the pitman, they came on the remaining engineer, Jim Ealing, short but thickset and obviously very strong, together with his striker Walt Presslie, a slight youth of about sixteen with a shock of hair that would have been tow-colored but for grease and smuts. They had carried out a minute inspection of the starboard wheel; it was so large, they could clamber about in it like monkeys in a treetop.
Having fired half a dozen questions at Ealing and received reassuring answers, Drew led the way toward the stairs that gave access to the deck above, the boiler deck. Fernand followed with more than one backward glance. Noticing, Drew asked the reason.
Sufficiently startled to reply with candor, Fernand said, “I was wondering how that boy copes when you’re in a stretch of crooked river. Your camrods must weigh all of fifty pounds.”
He was thinking of the laborious process involved in reversing, when the heavy metal bar governing the poppet valves had to be unhooked and reconnected three feet higher. He had watched it being done only once, on a trip with his father before the war, but he vividly recalled how exhausted the engineers had been after the boat had dodged her way through a score of reefs and bars with the bells coming faster than they could be answered. And he had just observed that no significant improvement over the old system had been incorporated in the design of this Atchafalaya.
A pace ahead of him Drew halted and spun around, staring. He spent the next several seconds looking Fernand over from head to foot. And then he said in a tone of disbelief, “His hands are clerk-soft! His cravat was tied by his mother! His shoes are shined for him every morning and the heaviest load he ever has to tote is a bag of money! So how come he knows such an all-fired deal about steamboating?”
Unendurably embarrassed, as though this were his uncle lashing him with reprimands for carelessness, Fernand shifted from foot to foot. That a display of knowledge by an outsider could provoke such a blast of sarcasm went a long way towards making clear why few people called themselves friends of Hosea Drew.
At length he muttered, “I’m kind of interested.”
“Are you now? Well, I guess that makes you one in a thousand! And the love of knowledge is the beginning of wisdom. Ain’t it?”
Hastily: “Yes, Captain!”
“I’m glad you agree. But I figure you’ll be more at home in the cabin than down here.” He turned toward the stairs again. Smarting, Fernand followed. It looked as though to get his way he might after all have to invoke the law, and all of a sudden the idea of getting his way was a lot less attractive than it had been.
But he found himself gasping again when he entered the main cabin.
Well over two hundred feet long, it was ornamented with complex fretwork painted bright white and highlighted in gold. Neither the décor nor the equally impressive carpet betrayed the fact that this boat had already been in service over a year. Tables as solid and well-carved as any in a smart New Orleans drawing room were ranged in echelon down the cabin’s enormous length. Halfway along stood a piano cased in maplewood; at the after end, two head-high mirrors of first-quality plate glass adorned the wall.
Years ago there had grown up an unwritten custom that family groups and single ladies should enjoy undisturbed the amenities of the cabin’s midships section; single gentlemen were advised to move as far forward as possible in search of male company and male pastimes. Aboard the Atchafalaya the frontier was symbolized by that indispensable appurtenance of the Mississippi steamer, the water cooler. This one was taller than Fernand, silver-plated, strung about with silver-plated cups on silver-plated chains. It was located about two-thirds of the way toward the bow.
Beyond lay the area where the influence of Drew’s unlikely co-owner was apparent. Not only was there a bar on the starboard side, at which men might purchase their own liquor instead of having it fetched by a waiter; there too were seen card presses, chuck-a-luck cups, a keno goose, and—at present being polished by one of the half-dozen tenders, all black, who were readying the boat for her departure tomorrow—a faro spread.
From which Drew was at pains to distract Fernand’s attention. He pointed out instead another and more moral feature. Making the best of structural necessity, rows of pillars on either side of the main area created a sort of promenade dividing it from the staterooms, every one of w
hose doors was resplendent with a painting that depicted some aspect of American history.
Of these the captain was inordinately proud. Fernand did his dutiful best to admire them, wondering when he would pluck up the courage to speak out concerning the decision that had brought him here. Against his will he remained tongue-tied, or perhaps overwhelmed, while Drew showed off more of the boat’s facilities: the nursery, the servants’ rooms, the washrooms and bathrooms, the laundry room…
Gradually, however, the determination he had conceived at the requiem mass, while listening to ethereal, awe-inspiring music, revived and renewed his resolve.
Looking over the texas where the officers occupied the staterooms ahead of the mockingly named “freedmen’s bureau”—so called after the department that had dealt with ex-slaves in New Orleans during the war, and reserved for black people paying cabin rates—his envy returned. Yes! Yes! He wanted this kind of life! Not one—his uncle’s phrase came back to him—“circumscribed by loans and pledges and rates of interest”!
That made his nape hairs prickle as though he had heard a voice from beyond the grave.
But the fact stood. He wanted, one day, to be proud of Fernand Lamenthe. It could not possibly be done by second hand.
At which point he found his thoughts being disturbed by more introductions. It was dizzying to think how numerous were the personnel of a steamer this size; he was glad there would be no test, of the kind his uncle would have contrived, to establish how many of these strangers he could put a name to at second meeting.
He met one Ernest Vehm, boat’s caterer, who could have stood in for the maître d’hotel of any restaurant in the city… and his cousin Peter, to whom he let the bar concession… and slow-spoken, elderly Lewis Amboy, steward in charge of the waiters and servants, who gave the impression of being vague yet was addressed by Drew with great politeness.