by John Brunner
“I almost lost Lewis,” the captain said as he prepared to climb the stairs to the last level: the pilothouse, whose exterior was gorgeous with fretted carvings that made it much resemble a wedding cake. That, Fernand suspected, once more betrayed the influence of Barber; it could scarcely match Drew’s soberer taste.
“Lost, sir? Uh—overboard?”
“Rich!” Drew exclaimed. “That is rich! I’ll remember it! But—no! He used to be my regular caterer in the old days. I lost touch with him during the war. He can’t cope any more with the demands of provisioning for upwards of a thousand passengers and crew. Still, I’d not have him languish, nor anyone who stood by me in hard times. Let him work out his span!”
And on that note they arrived in the pilothouse.
In contrast with its outward guise, its interior was functional to the point of starkness, and Fernand—his nerves tuned to a raw pitch—observed how here, of all the departments of the vessel, Drew exuded contentment. It was like watching someone come home after a long absence. Below, in the cabin or when passing the boilers and engines and even when trudging the length of the hold, Drew had exhibited a sort of pride: this belongs to me!
Now there was a shift of emphasis. The mode became: this is where I belong.
It grievously excited Fernand’s envy to learn that there could be such a place for such a person.
Only one man was in the pilothouse when they entered. Lean, of middle height, with keen blue eyes and a drooping brown moustache, he was checking off equipment on a neatly written list. He was dressed in somewhat old-fashioned style, with a string tie and a long-skirted coat… and under it, on his right hip, was the bulge of a revolver.
“Our watchman, Harry Whitworth,” Drew said. Fernand extended his hand. The other made no move to shake it.
Vehm had; Amboy had, if a trifle absent-mindedly; and if the engineers had not, it was because their hands were dirty. Fernand felt the blood rush to his head. But with considerable effort he mastered the impulse to ball a fist and apply it where it would hurt. Instead he commented in the calmest tones he could muster on the excellent view here afforded of both ends of the boat.
“Is all well?” Drew demanded, not addressing Fernand.
“I guess so.” The watchman tucked his lists under his arm and his pencil behind his ear, then produced a coarse black cigar. One of his lower front teeth was missing; it made convenient lodging.
Fernand himself did not smoke, but since many of his friends did, he had taken to carrying matches. With a mutter of thanks Whitworth turned to the proffered flame.
A second later realization of what he had done appeared on his face; it seemed almost cruel. Clearly this was the role he expected “persons of color” to fulfill. Equally clearly he felt he had been caught out in some manner he could not wholly grasp.
“All’s in order here, Cap’n,” he said after a tense moment, and strode toward the stairs.
“Now, Mr. Lamenthe!” Producing a commonplace watch, Drew compared it with the clocks visible on land. “Is there any other matter you want to discuss, or may I have you escorted ashore?”
“Yes, Captain. There is something else.”
Fernand turned his back to the broad forward window, equipped with shades that could be slid to block the sun; they divided it into patterns of irregular light and dark, and that seemed an appropriate setting.
“Well?” Drew cocked one gray eyebrow.
“I want to be a Mississippi pilot.”
The world outside continued as before; to the noise of the engine driving the freight hoister was added another out of rhythm—a donkey engine powering one of the cranes lately introduced by a consortium from the victorious North, determined to modernize the port in spite of cheap black labor. Always there were shouts and banging sounds and the buzz of insects.
But here was an interval.
At last Drew said, compressing into the syllable a universe of incredulity: “Why?”
So Fernand explained. Chewing meditatively on a wad of dark tobacco, Drew heard him out with apparent sympathy. And eventually:
“If what you want is a career on the river, son, there are simpler answers. Any boat in this port now would sign you for a clerk’s post with your background. And clerks can do well for themselves.”
“I don’t want that!” Fernand answered fiercely. “I want this!” And laid his hand on a spoke of the huge wheel.
Drew chomped solemnly awhile longer, then glanced around for the nearest box of sawdust and let fly; chomped again, and spat again. Fearing a rebuff, Fernand summoned his words of last resort.
“Captain, I’m informed it’s now a legal obligation—”
And broke off, aware of having made a terrible mistake. For Drew’s brow had clouded with the threat of storms.
When he next spoke, his voice was like the grinding of icefloes.
“You are correct, boy. The members of the Pilots’ Guild are not happy about the law, but it was enacted and we must concede there does have to be a next generation of pilots, despite the railroads. Therefore someone in my position is compelled to take on any cub who rolls over at a skilled man’s feet and whines with his paws in the air!” His voice passed from savage to caressing. “Still, needs must when the devil drives!
“For that reason and for that reason only you may present yourself aboard tomorrow at noon. Bring no more than one bag with you: plain comfortable clothing and what minimum of other gear will keep you fit for company on a summer trip. And the price of your education will be a thousand dollars. Mr. Motley can draw up an agreement. Come to the office.”
He started for the stairs, and in mid-stride glanced back.
“You do have a thousand dollars, do you?”
Fernand tried to hide his dismay. He had been informed that the regular rate was more like five hundred. However, he put a brave face on matters.
“My uncle’s bequest will be adequate,” he declared.
“Then it’s a deal… bar one more thing!”
“What?” Fernand’s voice quavered.
“That you never tell anyone you threatened me, you fool! I was all set to say okay, and then… For that, I’ll give you the toughest time of your young life, and you can put up with it or be damned!”
Within the half-hour Motley—with some advice from his colleague Wills—drafted a document binding both parties in a style that would not have shamed the best lawyers in the city. While the work was going on, word spread, and before he was invited to set his fist to the bottom line Fernand found himself surrounded by members of the crew: not only the officers, like Fonck and Ealing and O’Dowd, Chalker and Sexton—and Whitworth—but also Diamond, Amboy and Vehm, Presslie and the junior clerk David Grant who hovered at the door, torn between the need to get on with his assigned task and this press of his superiors who stood in his way.
Fernand almost identified with him while preparing to sign. Which he did with exaggerated legibility and a final flourish.
“See you at noon tomorrow, then,” Drew said in a neutral voice, adding his own brisk scrawl to the paper.
Fernand turned to go.
By this time Whitworth’s cigar had expired. With the tip of his tongue he carefully extracted it from between his teeth; rolled it a quarter-inch toward the center of his mouth; aligned it; and spat it—pteugh!—not at a cuspidor but through the open window of the office and clear over the side of the boat.
There was a ceremonial quality about Whitworth’s action that made Fernand abruptly understand the implications of casting a spell.
He intended to whistle the first cab he saw and ride home in triumph, to face his mother with the news that he had devised a new profession free from the toils of the Marocains. All that evaporated. The world of the riverboats was not different in essence from the one he was accustomed to; it also was populated by human beings capable of greed and generosity, friendship and hatred, and perhaps for no better reason than the common run.
And yet—! And
yet—!
There was something about river people which not only tempted him but downright convinced him that he must cast his lot with them. Whatever it was, it had generated a feeling he wanted to participate in.
The term that sprang to mind was communion.
Counter to that, Whitworth had issued a warning, crude but fair. For a second his will had wavered; he had reconsidered Drew’s proposal about a clerk’s post… then scrapped it once for all. Fernand Lamenthe had the opportunity of becoming a pilot, and he was going to seize it with both hands.
Yet the all-too-patent shortcomings of the people he was committed to spend time among, contrasted with the miraculous transformation he had been promising himself, prevented him from rushing home. Instead of hailing a cab, he walked, and took by no means the shortest route.
Owing to reflex rather than conscious choice, he strayed along Bienville after walking almost too far east and turning north at hazard. And—amazed, in a way, that the sky was still light, for he felt as though enough had been crammed into one day already—he checked and turned back on spotting from the corner of his eye the sign of Hamel’s Drugstore.
“No, for the last time, I will not make up ‘magnetic salves’! Let Cherouen do his own quack cookery!”
Hamel barked the words as Fernand entered, and thereby frightened a thin yellow servant girl into snatching back a paper she had laid on the counter and taking to her heels. Fernand just had time to step aside.
“Good riddance!” Hamel exclaimed, and in the same breath returned to his normal polite tones. “Sir, what may I—? Ah! You came here earlier with Dr. Malone!”
Flattered at being recognized, Fernand agreed.
“I’m sorry about what you just saw,” Hamel said, passing his fingers through already unruly hair. “But some people would rather believe in magnetism and miracles than medicine per se!”
A lecture was obviously on the brew; Fernand said hastily, “I was passing by chance, and thought to inquire after the…”
He had been about to say “the young lady I carried here this morning.” But when he thought back he was scarcely able to credit that he had held in his arms a girl so beautiful. He would have been regretful but resigned had it turned out at this moment that she had never existed except in his dreams. To have one dream come true in one day was plenty for any reasonable person.
She certainly had been real, though, for Hamel finished the sentence.
“Oh, the girl? We made arrangements for her. With the Ursulines.”
Fernand’s heart sank. Their convent was a few blocks distant, a place of iron grilles and strict enclosure. He ventured, “Is she Catholic, then?”
“It seems not. But the Sisters are charitable, and—well, where else can you send someone in her condition?”
“Condition? Was she—?”
“Yes! She miscarried an infant fifteen or sixteen weeks gone. Dead, of course. She’s half-dead herself, from inanition.”
“I suppose,” said Fernand from a dry throat, “her family ordered her out?”
On the slim hand he had chafed—her left—there had been no wedding band, nor even the trace that a ring leaves on the skin.
Hamel shrugged. “Who knows? She was too weak to talk. But Dr. Malone is a kind and generous man, and said that when she recovers he’ll arrange a post for her. That’s a better reward than some might say she deserves. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”
“Might I not at least—?”
“Were you previously acquainted with her?”
“Well, no! But—”
“Then take my advice. Leave well alone. Good evening, sir!”
For a brief instant the notion of invading the convent crossed Fernand’s mind. All his upbringing rebelled. He sighed and resumed his homeward journey.
The house where Alphonse Marocain had installed his beautiful Eulalie lay a little apart from everywhere else: from the bustle of muddy St. Charles Avenue; from the French Quarter where so much of life was public, literally on the streets; from all the districts where people were respectable… and also those where living was fun.
Fernand, still laboring under the dismal impact of being told that the lovely Miss Archer had gone where he might not follow, was ripe to suffer pangs of nostalgia-to-be when he gazed at it for this, the last time when he would count it as home.
For there was about to be a showdown.
As he thrust his latchkey into the lock his resolution hardened. Abruptly he was again eager to impart news of his future career. His subconscious was equipping him with arguments to defeat his mother’s opposition. How could anyone be a more rigorous instructor than Uncle Edouard? If he had been satisfied with his nephew’s talents, why should Drew not be? And so forth.
But the moment he crossed the threshold he was assailed with waves of incense, and at the same time heard noises such as he had heard often and often, since about a year after his father’s death. A drum was being beaten and someone was chanting in a language he did not recognize as English, nor even as the patois in which his nurse had taught him to sing concerning such waifs and strays as Pauv’ P’tit’ Lolotte.
When the drum fell silent there would be gasps, and cries, and moans…
For a second Fernand thrilled with rage. There had been a time when, because he loved and trusted his mother, he had been able to believe she was celebrating a protective magic rite. Little by little he had grown to think in other terms—above all, lust. But why in heaven’s name, if she must take a lover (and he saw no reason why she shouldn’t, healthy and beautiful as she still was), could she not choose someone worthy of Alphonse’s memory? Why this gaunt and very black man Cudjo, finely enough dressed to be sure, but vulgar in every expression and gesture, who stole in furtive as a thief and only after dark, carrying a bagful of God knew what—John the Conqueror root and chicken feathers and goofer dust and other disgusting substances, no doubt?
The door swung shut behind him; its lock clicked like a telegraph key: ! His rage gave way to weary resignation. He had once tried to interrupt one of his mother’s “ceremonies,” but they took place behind a well-bolted door, and all his efforts earned him was a volley of curses. It was not to his taste to hear his mother curse him. In spite of everything, he suspected in his heart of hearts she might perhaps wield some sort of supernatural power…
So he wandered up and down in empty rooms, looking at the furniture and pictures and thinking how dark and durable they were in contrast to the waterborne world he had committed himself to.
During the war men’s lives had been sold at a discount. Standing by himself in the fine salon of the home where his father would have wished to offer congratulations on his coming of age—but listening to his mother moan in ecstasy and thinking of the beautiful girl he had carried to Hamel’s and making a web of connections he was terrified by—Fernand realized his existence too was not indispensable to the universe.
Climaxing into chaos, those images and memories and sensations combined to crown his day of growing up.
FORMED BY THE UNION
24TH SEPTEMBER 1869
“Even when they passed the mouth of the great muddy Pekitanoui, they considered that to be only a tributary, not stopping to think that it might be longer than the branch called Mississippi, and in some other ways too a greater river. So, because the explorers first voyaged down the river, the northern name spread along it clear to the mouth. But if the explorers had come from the south, they would naturally have called the river by some southern name. When they reached the forking… the lower stream and each of the upper branches might have been known and named separately… and men would have said that the lower river was ‘formed by the union’ of the two upper branches.”
—George R. Stewart,
Names on the Land
Everywhere else today was Friday. But in the house where Caesar had found lodging, the saying went that any day was Juba day: Monday. Because here there was never any food but red beans
and rice, flavored with a scrap of seasonin’ meat. It was best not to inquire closely into what sort of meat that was.
He woke cold and with his body folded clockspring-tight. Even his jaw muscles were tense… and that was bad, because since his discharge from the army his teeth had given him more and more trouble. Also there was the inescapable ache from his leg wound. But time enough had dragged by for him to grow used to limping.
The crowded room smelled much of humanity and more of bedbugs. Two or three had bitten him in the night. As usual.
Cursing—silently, because none of the men who were still asleep would take kindly to being roused before they must—he forced himself to stand up. He slept in his flannel shirt. Over it he drew on old greasy breeches, last legacy of his wartime uniform, supported by leather galluses. From under the end of his straw pallet he retrieved his boots, which doubled as a pillow and as a safe place to store his few valuable possessions, including the money he had scrimped. Carrying them until he was outdoors, he stole away to face another dawn.
This was not exactly the freedom Caesar had believed himself to be fighting for. Except in dreams, though, his memories of the war were so distant and so strange that what he was recalling might as well have happened to a different person.
Yet he had finally struck lucky. After countless casual jobs he now had steady employment. There were very few steam cranes along the New Orleans levee, although they were common in the North and Europe; however, the machinery of the ones which had recently been installed did not differ greatly from the engine powering the sugar mill at Pré du Lac. After much persuasion Caesar had convinced a white man who was paid a fat wage as a crane driver that he could handle this job by himself—whereupon the white man agreed to part with a quarter of his pay so that Caesar could do the work and he could pass his time drinking and chasing women.