by Frank Yerby
The captain drew out a huge case knife and flipped it to the deck where it stood and quivered in the thick oaken planking.
“Eat,” he said, and sank down beside Stephen.
Stephen scraped away as much of the mold as he could see by the flickering light of the lantern, and cut off a slice.
“So, it’s finicky yez are,” the captain laughed. “It’s best that yez fortify your belly, for that’s all we have aboard.”
Stephen ate grimly. The smell of the swine was not calculated to add to a man’s appetite, he thought.
“Me name’s Mike Farrel,” the captain said. Stephen waited. The man seemed in a mood for talk. The captain brought out a battered cob pipe and lit it with flint and steel. The smoke was even worse than the hogs.
“For forty year I’ve worked the river. The sights I’ve seen, lad, yez wouldn’t believe them. But all that is going now.”
“Why?” Stephen asked.
“The steamboat. When it came, the river died. More then the river was the place for men. Why the ears I’ve seen chawed off and the eyes gouged out . . .” He sighed deeply. “Why I ‘member one time when Annie Christmas . . .”
“Don’t sell me that one,” Stephen laughed, picking up the jug of whiskey. “She was just a legend. She never really lived.”
“What!” Captain Mike roared. “And who were it that put out me eye? Why Annie were as real as you or I! She had a little mustache just like a man and a red necklace thirty foot long. Ever time she bit off a nose or gouged out a eye she added a red bead. That necklace coulda been over fifty foot, but she didn’t count Nigras. Why I tell yez . . .”
“All right,” Stephen said. “I believe ye.”
Mike looked at him keenly, then turned his gaze out over the river which was lighted almost to daylight clarity by the newly risen moon.
“ ‘Tis a good life,” he said; “I don’t regret it. But now it grows wearisome, yez ken. It could be that I’m aheading for the salvage docks. A man don’t last forever.”
“Ye’re not old,” Stephen told him. “I see ye still wear the red feather.”
“Yez know what it means?”
“Of course. It means ye’re the champion of the river.”
“Yes. Times I feel like throwing it away. It don’t seem worth the trouble to defend it. Then ag’in it does—there’s a glory in it, Mister Fox. I’ve held it nigh onto eight year.” He sighed. “My river, it’s mine, ever inch of it! Me fader brung me over from Ireland afore I could walk and the two of us come crosst the land to the river. Me mither wuz dead, yez ken. And we licked it, the two of us—we licked the river. Only it don’t stay licked. It got the old man finally. It’ll git me, too, someday.”
Stephen looked at the huge man. But there was no sadness in the tone. Acceptance. yes—a kind of calm fatalism.
“I took me furst flat down the river at sixteen. Even then 1 had me growth. Yez know how it goes?”
Stephen did know, but he sensed also that the big man wanted an audience. Talking to this crew of his would be no better than addressing the hogs. Mike Farrel was intelligent, that he could tell. Intelligent and strong as a bull, and all man. A friend well worth the making.
“No,” Stephen said kindly. “Tell me.”
“Yez gets a consignment. Then yez picks up a flatboat and ships on a crew. First yez must knock their thick skulls together to let them know as who’s boss. After yez have whipped them all, ye have their respect—not before. Then yez come driftin’ down the river with the current, avoiding the shoals and the sand bars. When yez have done it enough yez knows where they be. Come night, be it fair, yez keeps on. Foul, yez ties up at some town and seeks out the bullies from the other flats and keels. Then yez thrashes them one at a time.”
“Always?” Stephen demanded.
“Always. ‘Tain’t safe for yez or the crew ‘til yez prove your mettle. After yez have licked the fear of God into their hides they stands yez a drink and yez stands them another and after a while the wenches come. Yez split up then and tumbles a foine wench. In the morning yez come back to the flat with a head like a melon and pray God yez did not git the French disease. Then yez slip hawsers and drift out and down until finally yez git where yez are going. Yez sells the consignment, stays roaring drunk for two weeks. After the money is almost gone yez rents a nag, yez and two others—we sell the boats too, yez ken, they’re broken up for timber, and anyhow yez can’t take a flatboat upstream.
“Then yez starts out up the King’s Highway ‘til yez gets to the Natchez Trace, going north. When yez have gone twenty or thirty miles through the Trace, yez ties up the nag and start walking. Yez pass up the other two who be agoing afoot while yez are ariding. Then when the next man come to where yez left the nag, he mounts, rides his stint and leaves him for the next— and so on all through the Trace. A foine life, if Wilson’s cut-throats don’t git yez while yez are passing through.”
He fell silent, looking out over the river.
“At least ye’re never bored,” Stephen laughed. He stretched out his hand and picked up the jug of Monongahela rye whiskey that the flatboatman called Nongela. He put it to his mouth and drank deeply. Then he opened his mouth and the whiskey exploded out through his mouth and his nose and even it seemed to him through his eyes in a great whooosh, scalding and blinding him at the same time, as though he were being drowned in liquid fire.
Mike Farrel put back his head and roared.
“Good old Nongela!” he bellowed. “Ain’t made for greenhorns. Got to have a caulked-oak throat and a copper-lined belly, that yez have, to drink it. Here give me!”
Stephen passed it over and Mike drank deeply. Afterwards, he was silent for a time. The moon rode high above the river and the water blazed silver. Mike raised his hand and pointed.
“See that oak afore the church?” he demanded. “That’s where they hung the furst one.”
“The first one of what?”
“Them twenty-three Nigras. That was in ‘ninety-five—in me fader’s time. The year after the big fire it were. Most of Nawleans burnt down. I tell yez that were sumpin’.”
“But the twenty-three blacks?” Stephen asked.
“They tried to mutiny, the murderin’ black devils. When they caught them the Frenchies took them up to Pointe Coupee and loaded them on a flatboat. Then they set it a-floatin down the river. And ever time they come to a Parish church, they took off a Bumbo and hung him. That were where they hung the first one. Only thing them Frenchies ever showed any sense about— handling Nigras. Ever read their Black Code?”
“No.”
“Me neither. But a young Frenchie read it to me oncet—in English. Sure kept the Nigras laced up straight.”
He stood up.
“Well, I’ll see after me bullies now. See you later, Mr. Fox.” Stephen stretched out on the rough oaken planks and put his gray hat over his eyes. He swore that he wouldn’t sleep, but that is a resolution not easily kept when one has not closed an eye in more than forty-eight hours. The motion of the current was gentle. The little waves slapped against the sides of the flat-boat and up ahead the hogs grunted peacefully. And Stephen Fox slipped down the river toward New Orleans wrapped in a bright dream of broad acres and a huge white house set down among the oaks not far from the river.
When he awoke the sun was high in the heavens and the current was laughing downstream. The crew was lounging about the flatboat, feeding the pigs and taking turns drinking the throat-searing rye whiskey. They wore no clothing but their spiked brogans and the trousers of linsey-woolsey. Their gigantically muscled chests were burnt brown as teak and most of them were as hairy as apes. Seeing Stephen, they laughed:
“Have some Nongela,” they called. “Hit’s good fer a fine gent like you!”
“Pipe the red wescut! Ain’t he the swell, I ax you?”
“Maybe I should git heem a little dirty, no? Maybe then he won’t feel so gar blame fine!”
Mike Farrel raised a paw like a grizzly’s.
<
br /> “Hish, me lads!” he said. “Mr. Fox is my guest and a paying one at that. If one of yez touches so much as one red hair on his foine young head, I will cut out your liver and make yez eat it!”
“Aw, Mike,” the big Canadian half-breed growled. “Just a leetle I should tumble heem! Just a leetle, no?”
“No,” Mike said. “Gawddamit, no!”
Stephen gazed at them for a half minute, then turned his back. “I think,” he said clearly, “I’ll go aft among the pigs. I find them better company.”
“I theenk,” the half-breed said, “I theenk I keel heem now.” Stephen turned slowly. He put his hand inside his coat as though he were searching for his snuff box, taking his time about it, moving very slowly. When his hand came out again, the little double-barrelled derringer lay loosely in his palm. The sun picked up the rich silver mounting. The half-breed halted suddenly.
The rest of the crew broke into a roar of laughter.
“Go on, Frenchie,” they said. “That little thing can’t shoot!”
“Whatcha stoppin fer, Frenchie? Ascairt of flea bite?”
“Sometime I do it,” the half-breed said. “Sometime I do it sure!”
Stephen put the pistol back in his pocket and looked out over the river. Here the trees came down to the water’s edge and the current ran very fast and smoothly. The river was broadening out, so that the far bank was almost a mile away. And in the shoal water inside the sandbars the waterfowl circled and dived. Stephen turned back to the captain.
“How far?” he asked.
“Be there tomorrow,” Mike said. “More noon, if all goes well.” That day they had more of the stone bread and the rotten cheese, but as an extra treat Mike ordered Louie to prepare some rancid bacon. Stephen threw his overboard when the others were not looking.
The hours went by like the river, so slowly that almost the sun seemed to be standing still. Stephen paced up and down the rough planking of the flatboat, gazing south toward New Orleans. And now, as the creaking, clumsy ark drew nearer to the city, something very like a fever ran from man to man. The card games on the deck stopped and one by one the men stood up and began to look down river. They stood there a long time, looking down the river, not saying anything until at last one of them said it in something like a deep breath or a half-audible prayer:
“Nawleans!”
“Yes, by Gawd!”
“Know what I’m agonna do?”
“Git stinkin drunk like you always do when you git money.”
“Sure I’m gonna git drunk, but furst I’m gonna git me a young yaller Nigra wench with long legs like a half-year colt an’. . .”
“And then you gonna stand her up in a corner and look at her. That’s all you good fer now, old man!”
“Who’s a old man? Why I betcha I break you half in two, you little polecat puppy!”
“Polecat puppy! Why I wuz raised with the swamp ‘gators and weaned on panther’s milk! And jist fer that I’m gonna walk you down and chaw off both your ears!”
“Me, I’m the chile of the snapping turtle! And when I starts to chawin I don’t never let go! Why, you . . .”
Mike Farrel stood up slowly. He crossed the wide prow to where the two boatmen were circling and hopping around each other looking for an opening. When he was close enough, he struck out once with both arms. The two men crumpled to the deck and lay there without moving.
“Sorry, Mister Fox,” he said ceremoniously. “But they mought a hurt each other. When I take on a crew I deliver them safe just like they started.”
Stephen smiled.
“They’re impatient,” he said. “For that matter, so am I.”
“I kin understan that,” Mike said. “Nawleans. They ain’t another town like it. It’s the wickedest city in the whole blame country and I seen em all. But it sorta gits under your skin somehow. Once yez have tied up along Tchoupitoulas Road yez will always come back. That yez will.”
“I don’t aim to leave,” Stephen said. “I’m through with the river. A place of my own, that’s what I want.”
“A hotel? A good saloon and café? That’s the stuff, young fellow!”
“No,” Stephen said slowly. “A country place—a plantation. A big one.”
“Yez aim high, don’t yez? Still, it is in my mind that yez will get whatever yez go after. And when yez do . . .”
“Yes?” Stephen said smiling.
“A glass and a bed fer old Mike Farrel when he comes ashore and wants to git away from the noise and the fighting. Your promise, lad?”
“My hand on it,” Stephen said.
“Good. It grows dark in a little now. The haze is coming down yez notice.”
“Yes,” Stephen said. “And tomorrow . . .”
“Tomorrow we dock. A good night to yez, Mister Fox.”
The night dropped down suddenly like a curtain. The great Southern stars blazed low and close. The river was alive with craft: steamboats snorting and puffing upstream and down, rafts, flatboats, little fishing yawls up from the Gulf, all of them carrying lights so that it seemed that the stars moved over the face of the Mississippi.
Nobody slept that night. The voices of the crew rose up, quarrelsome, boasting. God help the women of New Orleans, Stephen thought, when these goats and monkeys come ashore. Then the dawn was coming up out of the Gulf in streaks of watery gray-yellow, behind them the sky lightening. Then the sun was up all at once without warning. One moment Stephen looked back in the direction he had come, staring up the muddy channel to where the river had broadened until the far bank was a mere haze and a shadow; and when he looked again the sun was up, so quickly did it come.
Five slow hours crept by and the city grew from a smudge on the bank to a cluster of tumble-down buildings. The crew was working the great oars now, the wide-bladed broadhorns, angling the clumsy flatboat in toward the landing at Tchoupitoulas Road.
Stephen looked, but he could not see the shore. There were miles upon miles of flatboats and shantyboats tied up in rows so that they hid the banks and already from them were coming the drunken roars of the boatmen. Then, miraculously, there was a hole, and the steersmen were sliding the flatboat in, the whole crew laughing and shouting at the top of their voices.
The men lined up, and Mike stood up in the prow, a canvas sack, heavy with silver dollars, in his hand. As they passed him, he paid them off, throwing in a small jug of whiskey for each man. With a whoop they seized their pay and swarmed over the sides.
Next to them was an ancient, dilapidated flatboat. Just before the last of the men had gone over the sides the sound of shouting and shrill feminine laughter came from the cargo box. Then there was the pounding of bare feet on the board decks and a skinny wreck of a woman, as naked as the day she was born, dashed across the craft screaming with laughter. Behind her, roaring like an amorous bull, thundered a blackhaired giant of a man, a jug of Nongela cradled under one huge arm.
InstantIy, the remaining boatman set up a howl and joined the chase. They bounded from deck to deck until at last they all disappeared into the hold of a shantyboat a few yards downstream.
“Nawleans,” Mike Farrel breathed. “Good old Nawleans!”
Stephen grinned.
“Is it always like this?” he asked.
“Aye and worse. Yez’ll be goin ashore, Mister Fox?”
“Yes. But the pigs—and the cargo?”
“I go to notify the owners. They’ll come with roustabouts. Mought I have the pleasure of your company for a little, Mister Fox?”
“Yes—certainly. You might well steer me on my way. There’s a place that a man can get lodging hereabouts?”
“Aye—fer a picayune yez kin get a bed, not too clean, all the whiskey yez kin drink and a wench to keep your back warm.”
“A picayune?”
“I fergit—yez don’t know the Frenchies’ money. That’s six cents American.”
“Six cents!”
“Aye! But yez had better not close an eye; for sich boots and s
ich a wescut, they’d murder Our Lady herself.”
Stephen looked at Mike.
“Then what on earth?”
“I dunno. The really good places cost a mint. If I were yez, I’d go first to the gaming places and repair my fortunes.”
“Not today,” Stephen said. “I think I’ll chance one of your waterfront hostels for tonight. Tomorrow, I’ll start the long climb.”
“Well—come along with yez now. First yez should try the Swamp. At least yez will be closer to help if they try to murder yez. On Tchoupitoulas Road yez would have to run for miles until yez reached the garde de vile.”
The two of them walked along among the flatboats until they came ashore. The urchins looked with openmouthed wonder at Stephen’s fine dress and the prostitutes sauntered out and clutched him boldly by the arm.
“This way, my fine gentleman,” they said. “Nothing is too good for sich a fine gentleman. For you the best—all day with me and tonight too—one dollar.”
Stephen shrugged them off as though they were not there. The two of them walked between the filthy, tumbledown buildings until they came to the Protestant Cemetery at Cypress and South Liberty Streets.
“It is here that I take leave of yez,” Mike said. “If yez have need of me, leave word at the Rest For Weary Boatmen. And, for the love of God, be careful!”
Stephen put out his hand.
“It has been a pleasure,” he said. “Don’t worry about me, Mike. I can take care of myself.”
“Aye-that I believe. But keep your pistol handy—and drink nothing! For yez it would surely be drugged.”
Watching the big man rolling away, Stephen felt suddenly very lonely. He turned and walked back in the direction of the Swamp. There was the first ghost of a plan shaping itself in his mind.
He went first to a dive called the Sure Enuff. He took a table, ordered wine, and watched the play. The games were faro and roulette. In two minutes Stephen saw that the player had no chance at all. The wheels were fixed and the dealers’ boxes in faro appeared to have some sort of mechanism which could change the order that the cards appeared. He paid the few cents that the watered wine cost and moved on. It was the same everywhere he went. There was not a square game in the whole length of the Swamp.
