by John Brunner
“Here’s a change from your reg’lar loudmouth nigger,” said Roy. “Nine out of ten on ‘em, they’d make out they captured New Orleans single-handed!”
But this second attempt to provoke a laugh failed. The others were too concerned about getting the job done.
“What’s that gauge read?” Steeples said suddenly, shooting out his arm. Caesar answered promptly.
“One-fifty-six. You’re a little below nominal working pressure.”
“Who told you what pressure we—?”
“Save it, Vic,” Corkran cut in. “Everybody on the river knows we’re running at one-sixty. But this—this man never had charge of anything bigger than a steam crane. I guess that don’t signify too much, because the last job Eb had before joining us was the same.”
Caesar bit back the comment he was tempted to make.
“But it comes down to this,” Corkran went on. “We accept him or we handle the whole trip ourselves. That means one-man watches. Do we want that?”
“Hell, no!” Steeples snapped.
“Okay! So we put up with it.” Corkran’s expression made it clear that he was no happier than his colleagues, but he pursued the matter no further.
“You—uh—Caesar! You know the bells? The signals from the pilot?”
“No, sir. But if you explain them twice, I surely promise to know them the third time.”
“Know how to pack a leaky union?”
“Had to do it a hundred times, sir. Also I can sweat a sleeve on a leaky pipe while it’s still under pressure. Also I been shown how to use hemp to stop a leak without shutting down a boiler—I never did it myself, but I guess you gentlemen did, and anyhow the machinery on board this fine boat ain’t too likely to create such an untoward happenstance!”
He was overdoing it, trespassing on the border of the in-group technique whereby blacks parodied the high-flown talk of white people. Miraculously none of them realized. Only Roy still looked hostile.
“What’s eating on you, Brian?” Corkran demanded. “We don’t have too long before—”
“He is,” Roy cut in, and indicated Caesar’s greasy old clothes, his boots worn through, his galluses supplemented by string. Being out of a job this year of grace was not a kindly experience.
“How a man looks don’t affect—”
“I don’t want his fleas! I don’t want his bugs!”
“Mm-hm.” Corkran turned to Caesar again. “I guess I didn’t mention that, nor Captain Parbury. Do the work or not—and you’d better, else we’ll flay the hide off you—you bunk where you can along with the other niggers. Understood?”
For a long moment Caesar wrestled with rage. He put his hand to his chest, groping for the charm that had so often lent him strength.
“Hah! Makes you itch, don’t it—talking of fleas!” Roy crowed.
Caesar managed a sickly grin and dropped his hand back to his side.
The lump under his shirt, which he had grown so accustomed to… was no longer there. He had obeyed the injunction to wear it until the string perished. Today must be the day. Perhaps he had burst the thin strip of leather straining to lift a heavy load. It didn’t matter. The power of the trickenbag was spent, and henceforth it was up to him to make the best of what offered.
He resolved to do so. After all, there was one colored man working as a pilot now! Why not a colored engineer? Maybe that was the end product of the charm’s potency. Maybe it didn’t signify failure when the thong broke, but achievement.
To gain this much ground against the constant ill will of white folks was already a sort of victory.
Adopting his most deferential tone, he said anxiously to Corkran, “Suh, I guess we don’t have too long before dishyear boat moves off. Never mind where I gwine bunk down tonight—I figures you do better teach me dem bell signals!”
Hearing, even as he spoke, how his voice was moving back into the protective thicket of nigger ignorance. And sensing what an impression this “good nigger” had made on the engineers.
Roy spoke for them all when he said, “I guess just so long as after sinking the last Nonpareil you don’t do nothin’ to sink this one too…!”
A flicker of superstitious alarm showed briefly on the others’ faces; clearly they had not thought of that. But now it was too late for worrying. The signal came from the pilothouse: stand by!
It still lacked several minutes of five, but they knew that clocks and watches differed vastly, and meridian time was far from public time.
“This way!” Corkran barked, and fatalistically Caesar followed where he was bidden.
Half-hopeful, half-fearful that Dorcas might reappear and oblige him to present her to his mother, Fernand descended to the main deck again, very conscious of how close it was to the moment of departure.
With a grande dame manner such as Alphonse had schooled her in, Eulalie offered her cheek to be kissed.
“I will not delay you, Fernand,” she said with chill formality, and for a moment one might have believed she wore a regal velvet robe rather than a housedress that had seen better days. “But… Take my arm. Lead me around the deck. I have no wish to let people eavesdrop.”
Matching the stiffness of her manner, Fernand complied, not without an anxious glance toward the Nonpareil.
“I know,” she said when they had taken half a dozen steps together, “you mock me for my faith.”
“I find it hard to reconcile with the one you and Father raised me to,” Fernand said after a moment.
“Oh, at bottom I think it’s all one. For some people, mine is a better way of looking at the world. But the point is—!”
She gave him an earnest look.
“You’re in terrible danger, Fernand. I know. And it’s likely to be because of this foolish race.”
Fernand almost groaned, though he preserved his outward dignity.
“Mother, I’ve lost count of the number of dire warnings you’ve uttered. And here I am, in my skin.”
In a colder tone than ever, she said, “This is the first time I’ve visited one of your boats. I expected at least a polite reception. Particularly since I went to some trouble to bring you this, which will protect you if anything can.”
She produced the silver crucifix.
“Take it!” she instructed. “Keep it close so long as danger lasts!”
He hesitated. “Take it!” she repeated, and thrust it into his hand. Then she resumed her casual manner and urged him once more to stroll along the deck. If for an instant they were stared at by neither passengers nor crewmen, then the weight of all the eyes on shore was overwhelming.
“I know you feel contempt for me because I didn’t trust you to make a go of your new career, but— Oh, Fernand, you must believe I love you!”
She swung around, and abruptly he realized that the eyes she turned on him… were haunted.
Before he got over the shock of that insight, she was practically babbling.
“They say I want to sacrifice you and it’s a lie! They’re all lying, all of them—behind every bush and every tree they’re lying about me, saying I’m going to murder you for the sake of the power Athalie had! Never believe that, no matter who says it to you!”
It took Fernand a long moment to make himself accept that his maman was actually speaking the words. He felt as though some stray current of unreality had carried his mind into a backwater where nonsense reigned.
But that settled it. He had been right not to bring Dorcas to meet his mother.
At least this crucifix was an advance on what she had given him in the past: ugly smelly bags of greasy felt containing Lord knew what foul bits and bobs. When he got home, though, he must find help for her: less a doctor’s, probably, than a priest’s…
But it was time to escort her back on shore. He was framing an acknowledgment something less than insulting when—
Ding! Ding! Ding!
Three taps on a steamer’s bell, the signal for departure! And by the roar that went up from the wharf,
it could only have come from the Nonpareil!
“Bitch! Faithless deceitful bitch!”
After uncountable variations, Parbury’s venom against Dorcas had settled down to that rhythmic phrase, repeated over and over. He was seething like a pool at the foot of rapids, waiting for a surge to make it overflow.
As best he could, Woodley was occupying himself with the business of departure, already wondering whether the race would have to be postponed. He hoped desperately it would not; he needed his anticipated winnings. On the other hand the old man exerted such influence… The exudation of his bad moods had been known to induce sickness among boiler-room hands.
And already, despite the efforts of Gordon and of Parbury’s oldest colleague Burge, the atmosphere on board was souring like milk left in a warm place. The excitement that had obtained since the decision to provoke the race was suddenly threatened by apprehension. The black workers had been singing nonstop—revival hymns, songs remembered from plantation days, new inventions with words that were sometimes harshly satirical—but that had died away within the past few minutes. Ordinarily, too, the crew cheered when at the one-bell mark the banner was hoisted which Gordon had had hand-embroidered: “None is my equal!”
This time more applause rang out on shore than on board.
Having made a hasty visit to the office and from there, by speaking tube, checked that all was well in the pilothouse, Woodley returned to where Parbury was standing on the boiler deck, sightless eyes staring into the past, bony hands tight on the stick he so much hated having to carry, lips moving in endless repetition of a string of insults.
Woodley was about to address a final plea to him when into a fleeting silence broke words just loud enough to reach someone who depended chiefly on hearing.
“Blind old fool! Someone should have told him long ago—his girl is mashed on the darkie pilot!”
Parbury jerked and swung around, blank gaze turning upward—for the words had come from the hurricane deck—and lifted his stick as though to kill someone. Anyone.
“You heard that?” he rasped at Woodley.
“Heard what?”
“Don’t mock me! Out with it, damn you! Is it true?”
Woodley sighed and gave ground. “I guess you’re just the last to know, Cap’n. Word is, Lamenthe plans to marry the girl at the end of this season.”
There was a long terrible pause, during which Parbury’s face crumbled like a statue’s exposed to much weathering.
“Captain Woodley!” A tap on his arm; he glanced round to find Auberon beside him, pointing toward the head of the stage, where Joel stood comforting a colored woman, handsome but apparently unwell.
Impatient of the distraction, he growled, “What is it?”
“A plot to wreck your boat is what I make of it!”—and added details in a low and rapid voice.
Woodley’s heart sank. He hoped against hope that Auberon had kept this wild assertion to himself until now. For it was not incredible, given that such vast sums were being wagered. But if some sort of false alarm were to delay their departure, it would be disastrous, and in any case the man was plainly drunk. Anxious to prevent him announcing his claim at the top of his voice, he tried to urge Auberon away.
But Parbury caught his arm.
“You’ve got to run him out now! You’ve got to, now!”
“I’m going to beat Drew anyway!” Woodley retorted. “Didn’t I promise?”
“The hell with Drew! I’m talking about Lamenthe, God damn his soul and rot his carcass! What’s the time?”
Attracted by the commotion attending Auberon, Gordon had drawn close enough to overhear. Now, looking anxious, he produced his watch and announced, “It’s five to five.”
“They mustn’t get away ahead of us!” shouted Parbury, his fury erupting like flame taking hold of oil. Brandishing his stick, he thrust toward the bow.
“Think there’s any substance to Moyne’s story?” Gordon muttered.
“If I thought so, I’d call off the trip this minute!” Woodley retorted, putting his bravest face on the matter. But, thus distracted, he failed until it was too late to realize what Parbury intended. Only as he saw the stick raised high in the air did he remember how perfectly the blind man had always been able to find his way around the Nonpareil.
Her great brass bell, a survival of the days before steam whistles became the accepted mode of signaling from boat to boat, was mounted at the forward end of the deck above, the hurricane deck. But part of it overhung the boiler deck. At his full stretch and with the full length of his stick Parbury was able to reach up to it.
And on it he struck three times: the order to depart.
Instantly the well-organized drill he had devised and Woodley had conveyed to his crew went into effect. Only one stage was out, and that at a balance; the other one had been withdrawn as soon as the last baggage had been stowed. An especially nimble deckhand with a hatchet remained on the wharf. So did one line through a ringbolt; the others had been stealthily hauled in. The hatchet slashed the line; the deckhand rushed up the stage and his very weight lifted its heel clear; the pilothouse bells rang for full astern and the Nonpareil stood out into the river with a churn and rush of water.
A roar exploded from the crowd. People waved hats and flags, and if they were too poor they improvised with rags and empty sacks. Some let off firecrackers. A few shot pistols into the air. Assembling his band at the stern, Manuel was taken by surprise, thinking a minute yet remained before they must strike up, but he hastily organized his men and with frantic waves of his baton evoked a stirring rendition of “Pauv’ P’tite Lolotte.”
Hundreds of people within earshot knew the song, and some loud-voiced improviser launched a new verse that fitted the tune:
Hey! Atchafalaya dyin’!
Hey! Atchafalaya dyin’!
Hey! Atchafalaya dyin’!
Gon’ be lef’ behin’!
More and more, as the verse caught on, people could be heard clapping wildly: those who had bet on the Nonpareil.
While those who had bet on the older boat contained themselves in silence, as must the crew of the Atchafalaya, and her passengers, from captain to fireman, from stateroom to corner of the hold. Parbury’s scheme had been apt, and simple, and flawless. “If we have to lie up at a berth downriver of the Atchafalaya,” he had said, “we must at all costs cut across her stern and leave her to flounder in our wake. That way we can gain a lead she will never make up.”
So it turned out. There was no way Tyburn could back into midstream without a collision. Fuming, he was forced to signal stop engines.
Woodley felt awe at the forces he had unleashed as the Nonpareil went full ahead and the Atchafalaya was at last free to pull out and wallow in her wake.
While hordes of yawls and pirogues and skiffs scattered before the charging steamers, Parbury forgot Dorcas who had been a chance intruder in his life, and even his son who had been scarcely more than that, and remembered only his dream come true. Abreast of St. Mary’s Market, he was told that the Nonpareil was one full minute ahead of her challenger and uttered a yell such as had not been heard since the desperate moments of the war.
Woodley made haste to confirm that yell with a gunshot. And counted seconds as the Atchafalaya struggled after, in the roiling surges of the Nonpareil’s wake. Only in still water could paddles take a full grip; were it already stirred by other vessels, they beat air.
By his watch, and those that others were consulting, more than fifty seconds passed before an answering gun was fired aboard the Atchafalaya.
The sky resounded with shouts from the rival boats, from others now pulling out, from the New Orleans and the Algiers sides of the river: to the north, mostly sightseers and the curious at leisure; to the south, mostly those who were stealing half an hour from the labor that was all that stood between them and starvation.
That, and perhaps a won bet on one of these great steamers.
Cato Woodley snapped shut the cov
er of his watch. At the same moment Hosea Drew did likewise.
It was like the closing of a door through which there could be no return—like the breaking of ice in a narrows—like the consignment of a corpse to its grave… which also called for bells to be rung.
From this dead-reckoned instant there was no turning back. The race began.
Making a shadow for herself with the vast cloud of smoke pouring from her chimneys, the Nonpareil sliced through the water, her upperworks gleaming white, her silk banner proudly flying, her high-pressure engines thrusting with the even rhythm of a fine-mettled horse—and suddenly to the joy of the crowd, she wore a rainbow. The careful fluting on her bow created the fountain of spray for which she was now famous, and the afternoon sun patterned it with brilliant fleeting color, gorgeous as a peacock’s tail. Responding exuberantly to the spectators, her pilot sounded and again sounded her sweet-toned whistle. Ferryboats, excursion boats, launches, all other vessels cleared out of her way, and everyone on board them waved and shouted their appreciation of so splendid a spectacle.
Crowned on her chimneys with red and gold coronets, she looked every inch heiress apparent to the queenship of the river. Her wheels smote the water with such violence, she caused a surge from bank to bank within yards of quitting the wharf. Backing out almost faster than was safe, the Atchafalaya found herself trapped.
There was room for two such boats to pass in either Gouldsborough Bend or Gretna Bend, and Tyburn did his utmost, as did her engines. Not so modern nor running at such a pressure, they were nonetheless larger, and while her wheels were smaller in diameter, their buckets were broader and thrust aside more water with each revolution.
But this gallant attempt to seize the lead immediately was doomed. With a sort of contempt the Nonpareil sidled into the path the other boat was trying to take and set her pitching and rolling. It was as though the Atchafalaya were contending with a double current. She was forced to fall back.