Thieves Of Mercy sb-2

by James L. Nelson

  “I was just asking myself the same.”

  “Well, I should expect they’re a bit under the weather this morning. Whole town was celebrating last night. Good to have something to celebrate, ain’t been much good news of late.”

  Ruffin Tanner appeared at ten minutes past, his tongue thick, his eyes bleary, one hand pressed tenderly to his temple, apologizing for his tardiness. His arm was in a sling and the sling was dirty and stained. The first of his men to show up, and he was hors de combat, useless in the shipyard. Bowater gave him a sharp order to see things laid along for setting the next plank in place, as best as he could with one arm. He was not in a charitable mood.

  One by one the others straggled in, Bowater’s men and the dozen or so that Shirley had scraped up. They set to work under the constructor’s careful eye, shaping and steaming planks, fitting the square beams of the casemate, pounding drifts and trunnels, turning the pile of lumber on the ground into the ironclad Tennessee.

  Bowater spent some time watching them, but there was little he could do, because he was no shipwright. So once he was satisfied that Shirley and his foremen knew their business and would keep the men at it, he commandeered a desk in Shirley’s office and began to write. Requisitions for ordnance and powder, requests that more sailors be transferred to his command, requests to recruit river men from the armies stationed nearby, payroll information, submissions for reimbursement for the men’s housing expenses, it was all terribly depressing.

  After some time of that, Bowater was distracted by a sound like a footstep on the two wooden stairs leading up to the office door, a sound like a footstep but more sharp, wood knocking on wood. He looked up. The door swung open and Hieronymus Taylor made his way through, walking with a crutch, his leg bound up in a heavy wooden splint. Bowater watched the engineer hobble across the floor, struggling with the splint and the unfamiliar crutches. He did not offer to help. He knew Taylor better than that.

  Taylor flopped down in a chair beside Bowater’s desk. “You could at least offer some goddamned help,” he said. The body was worse off, but the attitude was Hieronymus Taylor of old. They would not mention the violin. That was mutually understood.

  “I am forgetting myself,” Bowater said. “And you the hero of Plum Point Bend. I’ve heard some mighty tall versions of your exploits.”

  “Hell…” Taylor put a cigar in his mouth, then spit out a fleck of tobacco. His hands were trembling. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead.

  “I cannot imagine that you are discharged from the hospital by your doctor’s orders,” Bowater said. “And from the looks of you, you would be best to be in bed.”

  “Bed. If I stay abed they’ll find me agin.”

  “Who?”

  “All of them. The ol ladies with their proclamations and presentations, the damn schoolchil’n comin to cheer the wounded sailors up, the damn mayor and his claptrap. Like to make a body shoot himself rather than listen to all that horseshit.” He scraped a match on the desk, lit his cigar.

  “I wonder if every attempted suicide gets that much attention.”

  “Suicide?” Taylor took a big puff of his cigar. “That what you reckon I was doin?”

  Bowater held up his hands in a gesture that said “I don’t know.”

  “Suicide, hell. I’m a big hero, Cap’n.”

  “You’re going to be a dead hero, you keep on the way you are, and that is the one and only thing the Confederacy has enough of already. And while I might be entirely indifferent to the possibility of your death, I would not care to try and find another engineer.”

  “Cap’n, I’m touched. But what the hell you need an engineer for? You got no engine.”

  “We’ll get it back.”

  “Well, you best hurry. Boilers and shaftin, too. You gonna feel mighty damn foolish, you get that casemate built and realize you forgot to put the engines and such in first.” The perspiration was still building on Taylor ’s forehead and Bowater wondered if he was feverish. His casual act was taking it out of him.

  “How did you manage-” Bowater was cut short by a booming voice just outside his door. His heart sank as he heard Mississippi Mike Sullivan shouting, “You doin good work, boys, damn good work! Y’all keep her up, now!”

  Sullivan flung open the door, his massive frame filling the space. Like Taylor, he had a cigar clenched in his teeth. Unlike Taylor, who hobbled sick and wounded, Sullivan was a typhoon, as always. “Cap’n Bowater! What the hell you doin to that fine ship? I told you ya needs ventilation in this part of the world! Now if you go and put planks on the whole damned thing, she’s gonna be hot as Beelzebub’s barbecue down below. Next thing you gonna do some damn fool thing like coverin her up with iron plating!”

  “Fear not, Sullivan, I think she is in little danger of being plated with iron anytime soon.”

  “I’m happy to hear that! Now, Captain, it occurred to me, you ain’t got what I would call an ideal situation, your men housed all over the damn town. You know how sailors can be, let ’em run wild like that. Just look at ol Hieronymus Taylor, here. One night on the town and he looks like somethin the devil brought in in his carpetbag. So I thought I could do you a friendly turn, let your boys bunk on board the General Page. Plenty of room, good quarters. Keep ’em all together. Free of charge. What do ya say?” Sullivan withdrew his cigar and held it in meaty fingers, grinning wide.

  “That’s very kind of you, Captain, and I certainly would feel better knowing my men were under the vigilant eye of the hardest drinking, hardest driving, most dangerous son of a whore riverboat man on the Western Waters. But I thought the River Defense Fleet was remaining at Fort Pillow, a good hundred miles upriver from here.”

  “We go up and down. Here and there. Not a problem at all, get your boys to work of a morning.”

  Bowater nodded. Sullivan was clearly hoping that once Bowater’s men were aboard the Page, he could begin to incorporate them into his own crew. Give him a month and every one of them would be assigned to the Page, and Bowater would have not a man left.

  “Unfortunately, Sullivan, since you are an army outfit, and we are navy, I fear the paperwork would be a nightmare.”

  “Ah, paperwork, hell, paperwork don’t stand no show ’round here. We don’t need no paperwork. Just send your boys over.”

  “Forgive me, but you know how we professional military types are. Has to be by the book. It’s what makes us so damned insufferable. But thanks.”

  “You think on her, anyhow.” Sullivan puffed his cigar. “Say, here’s another thing. I seen a notice for some fancy playactors, thought you might be interested. You bein a man of letters and all.” He fished around in the pocket of his sack coat, pulled out a crumbled handbill. “Here she is.” Sullivan unfolded it, squinted at it.

  “ ‘The Theatre Troupe of the South,’ ” he read, “ ‘just recently returned from their triumphant tour of England and the Continent of Europe, where they were lauded by the crowned heads for which they performed, are pleased to announce an encore performance of Mr. William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.’ ”

  Sullivan looked up. “Now I wasn’t so sure about this. This ain’t one of them things where they got them fat gals all singin in some foreign language, is it?”

  “I don’t reckon,” said Taylor. “Way I hear it, she’s a play, just talkin and such, plus a whole deal of sword fightin and doublecrossin and murder and the like.”

  “Well, hell, that sounds just grand! Cap’n Bowater, you ever heard of this here Tragedy of Hamlet?”

  “Yes, something, I believe.” He glared at Taylor, wondered what the man knew.

  “So what do ya say?” Sullivan asked. “We should go see this here! Go tonight!”

  “I’m not sure,” Bowater said. “I have an awful lot of work to finish up.”

  “You need some diversion, Cap’n,” Taylor said, a smile playing on his lips. “Been workin too damn hard. We all were kickin out the jams after the battle, an you just carr
yin on with work, like a busy little beaver.”

  “Perhaps. But you, Mr. Taylor, are far too ill to attend. I must insist you go immediately back to the hospital and remain there until your strength returns.”

  “Maybe tomorrow I will. But now I’m all worked up to see this here play. Heard some good things about it. Wouldn’t miss her for worlds.”

  “Then she’s settled!” Sullivan said. “The three of us, we’re gonna see us some Hamlet.”

  Sullivan made his exit, stage right, in the same whirlwind of energy in which he had entered. Bowater could hear him in the shipyard, yelling at the men working on the Tennessee. He turned and glared at Taylor.

  Bowater nodded. “Funny that an uneducated mudsill like you should recommend Hamlet, of all things, for Sullivan to see.”

  “Why’s that?” Taylor was all innocence, but he could not keep the devil out of his voice, and the bit of a grin that formed around his cigar.

  “It would almost suggest some familiarity with the play, which I would not expect from a simple salt-of-the-earth kind of fellow such as yourself.”

  “I done heard of the play before. Always thought it was about a little pig.”

  Bowater sighed. “ Taylor, you are a great pretender, but I happen to know the truth of you.”

  “That a fact? What would the truth of me be?”

  “That you’re just acting at being a semiliterate river rat. That you are actually an educated man, a man of arts and letters.”

  Taylor continued to grin, but Bowater was sure he saw a hint of uneasiness there. “Now ain’t that the biggest load a crap I ever heard. You tell me, Cap’n, if that was true, why would a fellow with an education pretend to be a low-down dirty peckerwood like me?”

  “That is a good question,” Bowater said. “That is one hell of a good question.”

  NINETEEN

  HORATIO:… So shall you hear

  Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,

  Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters,

  Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause,

  And, in this upshot, purposes mistook

  Fallen on the inventors’ needs.

  SHAKESPEARE, HAMLET, ACT V, SCENE 2

  Samuel Bowater had seen his share of theaters and opera houses. During fourteen years as an officer in the United States Navy, on the European Station, the Mediterranean Station, and the South American Station, Bowater had indulged in some of the finest performances, in the most sumptuous theaters, that the civilized world had to offer. The opportunity to see such performances, along with the chance to take in the museums of England and the Continent, the Sistine Chapel, Venice, Florence, the Parthenon, all the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome, were the singular benefits of belonging to a service that offered little chance of promotion, and even less of action.

  As far as his own country was concerned, his notion of a theater was the stately, elegant, but not ostentatious Charleston Theater on Meeting Street in his native Charleston, South Carolina.

  Along with the Charleston Theater, Charleston was home to the Dock Street Theater, or was until it burned down. The Dock Street Theater was believed by many to be the first theater built specifically for the purpose in the United States. When the Dock Street burned, any number of other theaters-houses of culture, venues for the great works-sprang up to take its place. Fire and decay had claimed most of them. But the Charleston Theater still stood as a monument to Southern culture.

  That was, to Bowater’s thinking, further proof that Charleston was indeed the hub of all that was worthy and good in both the Confederate States and the United States, and that the farther one moved from that shining core of civilization, the more dark and barbaric things became, until, at last, you found yourselves among Mexicans in California.

  And so the Tilton Theater of Memphis, a good six hundred miles distant from Charleston on a rhumb line, nearly a third of the way to California, was about what Bowater expected. With its peculiar smell and peeling flocked wallpaper, dirty, cramped box office, worn carpet in the lobby, and pools of an unidentified viscous substance on the floors to which his shoes stuck, it was a place best suited to minstrel shows or burlesque. Bowater imagined its boards saw more of that sort of thing than they did the Bard.

  With some apprehension Bowater accompanied Mississippi Mike Sullivan through the lobby and into the house. The theater was crowded, a rough-looking bunch, and Bowater wondered if they knew what kind of entertainment was in store for them.

  Sullivan moved like a Wabash-class frigate through the crowd, shouldering it aside, and Bowater followed along in his wake. Behind Bowater, Hieronymus Taylor thumped after them, panting in his effort to keep up.

  Sullivan did not stop until he was at the front row, where he found three seats together, once he had ejected two people who were already there. He was grinning widely, enjoying himself.

  Having discovered the pleasures of being a man of letters, Mississippi Mike was now eager to scarf down the other fruits of civilization.

  “Here, right up front, where we can see this Hamlet good and proper,” he announced, and Bowater and Taylor took their seats. Taylor pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his forehead. He looked pale and his hand shook.

  “Now, Sullivan,” Bowater explained, “you should understand, with Shakespeare, sometimes the language can be a little hard to follow.” Bowater’s chief hope was that Shakespeare’s language would be so foreign to Sullivan that he would not notice the striking similarities between Hamlet and the plot of Mississippi Mike, Melancholy Prince of the River, that Bowater had been feeding him.

  “Aw, hell, Cap’n, language ain’t no problem. You should hear how some a these dumb-asses along the river talks. If I can understand them ignorant cusses, reckon I’ll have no problem with this here burlesque.”

  Bowater was going to point out that Hamlet was not exactly burlesque, but he realized that any interpretation was possible with the Theatre Troupe of the South, so he kept his mouth shut.

  They were ten minutes in restless anticipation before the house lights dimmed and the footlights came up and the sentinels Bernardo and Francisco came from stage right and left. They were wearing costumes reminiscent of Roman soldiers, which Bowater guessed were left over from an Easter pageant. Horatio and Marcellus soon joined them onstage, and hard on their heels, and moving like a somnambulist, the ghost of Hamlet’s father.

  The white greasepaint on his face made him look like the inverse of a minstrel, and it occurred to Bowater that it would have been funny to cast a black man in the role, for just that reason. A black man in whiteface. But clearly the Theatre Troupe saw nothing amusing in their production of Hamlet.

  Mississippi Mike jabbed Bowater in the ribs. “You was right, about the ghost,” he said in a loud whisper.

  “What?”

  “About the ghost. You said folks loves to see ghosts in things, and I reckon you was right. See, they got a ghost too.”

  The ghost drifted around the stage, wide-eyed, looking more confused than vengeful, and then drifted off at the sound of a stagehand doing a rooster call, stage right.

  Claudius, Polonius, Laertes, Gertrude, and Hamlet came and went upon the stage. Mississippi Mike squinted up at them, shook his head every once in a while, trying to follow the story line. Hamlet, with great moans of dismay, sawing the air with his arms, expressed the wish that his too, too solid flesh would melt, and Bowater wished it would too, and soon. He decided that the Theatre Troupe of the South was creating as grand a parody of Hamlet as Mississippi Mike’s.

  From back in the darkened house came a low buzz from the audience, a general restlessness, the occasional loud voice or shout of derision. As Bowater had guessed, the entertainment was not what that crowd had expected. The mood was growing volatile as it dawned on the audience that the play contained no burlesque and that the next act would not be a minstrel show, just more of the same, men in stockings and big hats.

  Horatio en
tered, stage left, and said, “Hail to your lordship,” to which Hamlet, exhausted from his ennui, said, “I am glad to see you well, Horatio! or I do forget myself.”

  Mississippi Mike’s elbow struck again. “They gots a Horatio too, ’cept he ain’t a darky. I guess when you come up with some good ideas like we done, you ain’t gonna be the only one’s gonna think of it.”

  “No doubt. It wouldn’t surprise me if there were even more things in common with our book. It’s perfectly normal.”

  Mike listened for a minute more, then asked, “What in hell are they all talkin about?”

  “I’m not sure,” Bowater said. “Something about a king.”

  Mississippi Mike nodded and turned his big face back to the stage. He squinted and shook his head through the next few scenes, and Bowater was beginning to think the big man might just sit through the whole show and never have a notion of what was taking place on stage.

  It was around Act I, Scene 5 that things began to go sour. Bowater, finding the ghost no longer amusing, stole a glance at Sullivan as Sullivan stared and frowned at the stage. Sullivan turned and looked at Bowater, too fast for Bowater to avert his eyes, and Sullivan said, “If I ain’t mistaken, that there ghost was goin on about some murder and poison and some such, and I could just swear I heard somethin about incest and marryin a queen what was that Hamlet’s mother. You thinkin the same as I’m thinkin?”

  “I am thinking nothing,” Bowater assured him.

  “Hmm. All right, you just let me do the thinkin, then.”

  Sullivan turned back to the play, and Bowater could see he was judging it in a different light now, scrutinizing it for similarities to his own literary efforts. He heard Taylor whisper, “So how you likin her so far, Sullivan?” and Sullivan say, “I ain’t sure, Chief, I ain’t so sure.”