Freedom's Call

by Douglas Cornelius

  “Yeah, I remember this from my trip upstream last May. Go wide around the sandbar.”

  “And hug the shoreline. Well, I’m sure you can handle it. But just to be safe, I’m going to be cutting our speed way back.” He rang the bell and shouted “stand by” through the speaking tube, his voice carrying down the tube to the engineer. “Pull her back; easy now.”

  The big boat hunkered down into the water. Its wake quieted.

  “Even slower,” he followed up, then faced Brady. “I’ve got to make a trip down to the privy.” He gave a wink. “Too much breakfast and coffee this morning. I’ll be right back.”

  Brady turned the wheel larboard to cling closer to the cliff on the left shoreline. This was the first time he’d been given sole control. His hands trembled slightly, so he tightened his grip on the wheel. Soon the sound of the churning paddlewheels reverberated off the cliff.

  It got louder. Seems too loud.

  Had it sounded that way back in May? He must straighten her out—not get too close. As he twisted the wheel clockwise, the stern swung around. He was now heading straight.

  Mr. Avery came back, puffing up the steps. “Blazes, what have you done? You’re not far enough from the sandbar. I told you to hug the cliff!”

  “I thought I was close enough.” Brady wiped the moisture from his forehead.

  “No, no, no! Not near enough.” He rang the bell and called for the sounding team to check the water depth.

  With long poles, they rushed forward. Reports soon came back as shouts up to the pilothouse. “Mark three . . . half Twain less . . . Mark Twain!”2

  “Criminy,” said Pilot Avery, huffing.

  “We’ve got no choice. Gotta run it!” He reached for the bells, ringing them loudly. “Full steam ahead. Punch her, boys. Punch her!”

  But no response came back through the speaking tube.

  “Horsefeathers. What’s going on down there? I want everything you’ve got,” he pleaded. “We’ve got to jump this bar.”

  The massive vessel seemed oblivious to his commands.

  “Seven feet . . . ” Brady rubbed his brow. The boat’s draft was probably about six feet.

  “Get down to that engine room, son. Knock some people on the head. I can’t believe this.”

  Brady flew down the steps past the texas on the third level, past the hurricane deck, to the engine room on the first level. When the boat jerked, he clutched for the railing to retain his balance and cringed at the first sign of the hull catching a ridge.

  In the engine room, he sniffed for the robust smell of burning hardwood. Barely there. The boilers only wheezed, hardly more than a sick child. Just before him, the engineer was chastising a young black man, who slammed a book to the deck floor. But with all the noise, Brady could scarcely hear what was being said.

  “What’s going on?” Brady shouted out. “Who’s not doing his job down here?”

  The engineer jammed his hands on his hips. “When the orders came down, I yelled over instructions to this fella, but he’d disappeared. He’s the one who has to get his boys to stoke the furnace. Finally found him in another room. Couldn’t believe it—he was reading a book!”

  “Well, we had slowed way down.” The young black man stared straight ahead, speaking to neither of them. “I thought I could take a break.” His words came out low and quiet through gritted teeth. “You want that fire stoked? We’ll get her stoked!” He hurried over to the workers with Brady following close behind.

  The workers began shoving one log after another into the furnace. The boiler rumbled and hissed. They tossed in more logs.

  The boat hull scraped with another jolt on the sandbar.

  “It may be too late.” Brady reached with a strong tap on the young man’s back. “What’s your name? I’ve got to report you to the pilot. And maybe the captain too.” He released him to wipe the sweat from his own brow.

  The young man hesitated. For the space of a breath, his lips pressed tight. “Name is Sandford, sir. Not too late, sir. We’ll get her going.”

  The boat did gather speed, but soon came another loud scrape and then a forceful jerk. They all caught themselves to keep their balance. The boat ground to a complete halt.

  “What? Oh no!” Brady planted a heavy hand on the engineer’s shoulder. “Pilot Avery is going to be furious.” He pictured him in the pilothouse, slamming his fist down and releasing a volley of cuss words.

  Brady searched for what to do next. Then he spotted the book that started the whole mess. He bent over to pick it up and drew his arm back to fling it overboard. Gotta get rid of this troublemaker. But it was a copy of Robinson Crusoe. He tucked it under his arm.

  “Wait, sir,” Sandford pleaded. “We can still get her off of this sandbar. Let’s go, fellas. I want you to feed that furnace like there’s no tomorrow. Give her everything you got!”

  “No, no. It’s too late,” the engineer cried out. “I’ve been in tough spots like this before. We’re stuck. Some tug will have to pull us off.”

  The young man wouldn’t listen, and his workers kept stoking—tossing one log after another into the blazing furnace. The boiler hissed at a higher pitch. The engineer rushed to the pressure gauge where the boilerplates were expanding with a rumble.

  Brady headed back up to the pilothouse, escaping the engine room’s suffocating heat but knowing Pilot Avery’s wrath awaited him. His hot air might be even more suffocating.

  Brady jerked the door open inch by inch. Pilot Avery was not manning the wheel. A peek farther around revealed a slumped man on the back bench, his head in his hands. No surprise. After all, they were stuck with no place to go! Brady dared a tentative step in, his ears only half ready for the verbal thrashing.

  “What were you thinking, you numbskull?” the pilot lambasted Brady. “We had no business being so close to the sandbar,” he said, then kept mumbling it over again. “What did I tell you about the water? It’s shallower in July than in May. I told you to hug the cliff. Don’t you know what that means? Any knucklehead knows that. No excuses!”

  Sucking in a breath, Brady shut his mouth. No point in arguing about what happened in the engine room. He stooped to tuck the book into his satchel.

  Then a bone-jarring explosion sent his body flying and his head crashing into the sidewall.

  * * *

  1 Term used only on the Mississippi to represent toward the left side of the boat.

  2 Commonly used term to represent a mark on the pole equivalent to two fathoms or twelve feet.

  Chapter 3

  Brady’s woozy head ached. He shook it, trying to regain his senses as hot steam enveloped his body. He shielded his eyes and nose with his forearm and staggered to his feet. Pilot Avery’s face emerged from a cloud of steam.

  “Are you all right?” He hacked out a cough. “We’ve got to get below to help people.” He put his arm around Brady’s shoulder, and they both headed down.

  Where are my parents? That was all Brady could think while the blood hammered in his veins.

  Before them alongside the texas, on top of the hurricane deck, rested the two smokestacks, now broken and crumpled, no longer proud black spires reaching majestically to the sky. Down one more level, Pilot Avery hurried to the bow toward the men’s quarters while Brady rushed aft toward the women’s quarters. He shouted out his mother’s name, but the chaos drowned his pleas. His stinging eyes made a frantic scan to the water where many passengers were flailing about—some, no doubt, jettisoned by the explosion. Oh, please, God, help them!

  “Mother!” he yelled, rushing to the aft cabin area. But he soon became hoarse. The heart thumping in his chest had turned into weak thundering in his throat.

  Then a terrified man with a scalded face appeared before him. He yanked nonstop on Brady’s arm. “Help us! What should we do?”

  Brady stopped
in his tracks. At the far rear of the boat, a fire had already started. He must think.

  “Jump in the water on the starboard side. The water’s not so deep over there.” He reached to rip wood blinds from the windows. “Here, take these for flotation.”

  More people surrounded him, imploring for help, but no sign of his parents.

  “Pull down more wooden blinds—anything to help you float,” he yelled, his voice cracking with emotion. “Six feet—that’s not too deep on the starboard side! Gets shallower. The shoreline’s not far away.”

  Dozens of people were jumping into the water from the lower level.

  Brady pushed on through the throng. In the main stateroom, people milled about in a daze. Its center chandelier, once stately and glimmering with exquisite beauty, was now just a pile of cut glass on the floor reflecting flashes of light from the nearby fire.

  The fire raged most violently in the aft section where deckhands were manning fire buckets. He forged ahead and jumped to the side as an entire wall panel crashed beside him, sending glowing embers flying. Thick black smoke now clogged his breathing. I thought they’d be back here. Where are they?

  “Mother? Father?” His voice grew weaker as he investigated each cabin still standing. As his voice seemed to be totally spent, he dropped to his knees, his shoulders curling over his chest. Maybe his hopes were giving out as well.

  * * * * *

  Brady surveyed the throng filing into First Baptist Church, the designated gathering place for the Tecumseh’s survivors. The face of the elderly pastor who greeted visitors at the door said it all. Each deep wrinkle of his visage seemed to carry the extra burden of the lives lost. Brady still hadn’t found his parents, and as he descended the stairs to the basement where the deceased were laid out, he prayed he’d not find them there.

  Then through the blur, he spotted the back of what seemed like a familiar head. Could it be?

  “Father!” He pushed ahead of the line, his mouth widening with joy, his heart pounding. But then he saw his father’s head disappear. He must be kneeling.

  His raw hysteria whipsawed—with a stroke of the emotional saw ripping at his knees. His father must be OK, but where was Mother? “No, no.” Brady fisted his hands. “Please, Lord, no!” He grabbed the support of his father’s shoulder from behind as tears streamed down his cheeks.

  His father stood and spun in a daze. When he realized it was Brady, wide-eyed relief commandeered his swollen red face. Large knobby-knuckled hands reached out and grasped Brady, pulling him into the scent of smoke and sweat—a scent that would forever mean loss to him. As tears burned his stinging eyes, Brady returned his father’s fierce hug.

  “Praise God,” his father whispered as they rocked back and forth in each other’s grasp. “At least I have you.” Then they both turned with anguished faces and kneeled by the side of mother, by the side of wife.

  She lay prone on the church basement floor, in a row with what seemed like a dozen other bodies recovered from the steamboat boiler explosion. Her face was pale and expressionless.

  “She couldn’t swim,” his father stammered, his shoulders slumping. “She had to escape the fire, so she jumped in the water but on the deep side.” His chest rose and fell with a deep sigh. “That cliff must have looked so close. But alas, I couldn’t save her.” His chin dropped to his chest. “Oh, my dear sweet Beatrice.” He buried his face in his hands. His body trembled, and he continued sobbing.

  “Tell me this is all just a bad dream,” Brady cried out. But the irony of the situation stared straight back at him. Yes, this dream had begun on a good note when his mother pushed him to try out as a cub pilot. His father’s lingering weeping fed the pit of pain in his stomach. This was much more than a good dream gone bad.

  “She’s gone! I can’t believe it. God bless her soul,” he whimpered. A refrain his mother had taught him kept echoing in his mind—“Your heart should soar ’cause it’s you I adore.” That was just one of dozens she called her “’cause it’s you” phrases.

  “May she rest in peace,” his father mumbled. “She was a wonderful woman. I will miss her so.”

  In the depths of the church basement, Brady felt like they were drowning—no longer from water, but now from suffocating grief. They must seek fresh air.

  As they walked together from the church, he looked back at its tall white spire. A cross on top glistened in the late afternoon sun. He had wondered where God was earlier in the day but was sure he was with them now.

  Just as quickly, though, that feeling disappeared. No matter how hard he fought it, an overpowering guttural emotion flared up within his chest.

  Someone must pay for this. God help me!

  Chapter 4

  Brady surveilled the two steamboats at the wharf. Two weeks of moping about had passed. Now, he’d seek justice. On the river ahead, a sidewheeler was pointed south, with the last of its passengers stepping on board from the loading gangplank. A tall crate inched along after them, pushed by two young black men, their sweat-glistened torsos shining in the afternoon sun.

  This was his opportunity. He hustled ahead and hid behind the crate. As the last boarding whistle blew, he bent and leaned a shoulder into the crate while it crossed the final threshold.

  “I’m joining the crew to keep these fellows in line,” he said. How ironic that he’d pretend to be the very person he was looking for. He hoped he would find Sandford, whose mismanagement led to the explosion responsible for his mother’s death. While searching, he’d stay hidden most of the time since he knew enough about a steamboat’s workings.

  He crouched between two crates until the steamboat was well underway. The boiler’s hissing and rising pitch brought back images of that fateful day. The vision of airborne boards and debris made it seem like yesterday. But where was the person responsible?

  Emerging from behind the crates, he sought out the crew tending to the furnace.

  “Where’s your boss?” he asked the black man carrying a load of cut hardwood to the furnace. But the noise of the wood tumbling from his arms to the deck drowned out his words. Brady asked again, prompting nary a word but a swipe of the sweat from the man’s brow, then an arm extended toward a young white man standing with a list in his hand.

  “You in charge here?” Brady sauntered over.

  “Yeah, what’s it to you?” Moving from the list, his darting eyes scanned Brady’s rumpled attire before returning to his task.

  “Well, I’m looking for a guy named Sandford. Probably has a job like yours.”

  “I’ve run into him before. He’s not on this boat.”

  “Any idea what boat I can find him on?” The fellow checked off an item, pausing a moment before looking back up.

  “Haven’t seen him in quite a while. Last I heard, he was on the Enterprise, but that boat’s way ahead of us—probably down by Baton Rouge now. Why? He in some sort of trouble?”

  “He was with me on the Tecumseh when it exploded. Saying he’s in trouble is a nice way of putting it.” Brady’s jaw tightened to a grimace as he turned to walk away.

  “Wait. I heard all about the Tecumseh. Nobody will take Sandford since that fiasco, if you know what I mean. They tell me he’s been hired out to a notorious slave trader named Walker. Sandford helps bring slaves down to New Orleans to be sold.”

  “So that’s what he’s doing on the Enterprise?”

  “That’d be my guess. Hopefully he’s paying attention.”

  * * * * *

  Brady sipped on a cup of hot coffee and leaned back in his chair, breathing in the bacon aroma lingering from the greasy plate on the uncleared table beside him. Daisy’s Café was ideally situated along the Natchez waterfront. In a row of shops including hard goods and apothecary stores, it overlooked the wharf and provided an excellent vantage point to monitor the river traffic. The Enterprise was overdue on its return trip ups
tream. Two scows laden with stacks of hardwood were already tied up along the wharf awaiting the steamboat.

  He readjusted the holster of the pistol inside his vest, still uncomfortable with its bulky weight. Weeks had passed since he last fired it while shooting target practice with his father, who had taught him the right way to handle it. He hoped he didn’t have to use it, but if need be, justice must be served.

  He stood, depositing a couple of coins on the table, and headed out. Sandford’s face flashed into his mind. A light-complexioned black man, his curly hair bulged over the sides of his ears, along with bushy sideburns. His peaceful visage bore a stout but not too big nose and not too thin lips, with a slight dimple to his chin. Brady couldn’t forget his face.

  Eventually, the late afternoon sun on the river’s west side shone brightly into his eyes. But two black smokestacks soon appeared above the treetops and eclipsed it. The Enterprise had arrived.

  He hurried down to the wharf, arriving as a man called out, “Here now, start that gangplank forward.”

  A gull circled above, squawking madly. Was it heralding his arrival or portending the future? How had it missed the remains of a fish washed to shore? Even his nose told him that.

  The two scows laden with hardwood had already attached themselves to the steamboat’s far side. Cut wood was stacked high on each one, towering over the men beginning to unload it. The smell of pine wafting through the air suggested not all the wood was hardwood.

  People wearing a myriad of colors traversed the rickety gangplank, bidding their farewell to the Enterprise. Blues, greens, yellows, blacks, and whites flashed by. No sign of Sandford. Brady figured he’d watch every person disembark and then check afterward for those remaining on board.

  Once what seemed to be the last of the stragglers made their way off, he rushed on board, yelling to the attendant he was with the wood supplier. A few questions directed to the crew on the main deck were met with shaking heads or blank stares. After about twenty minutes, a man approached the furnace with a stack of wood piled up to eye level. When Brady engaged the eyes, they bulged to the size of walnuts. The stack of cut wood went tumbling to his feet like toothpicks from a spilled box. In the background, the broiler’s steady hissing forced his mouth into a sick sneer of remembrance.