Crossing the Deadline (18 page)

I gorge myself until my stomach hurts. After eating all we can manage, the rest is stuffed by the fistfuls into our trouser pockets. My hat holds two double handfuls. “I'll hide this in my bedroll as soon as we get back up on the hurricane deck,” I tell William.

The first mate returns twenty minutes later with Captain Mason. “Fellows, line up,” the captain calls to us. He hands out a dollar coin to each man. “Three hours' work at twenty-five cents per hour is seventy-five cents if my math is correct. Keep the extra quarter dollar for a job well done. There are still forty-five minutes left before shoving off in case some of you want to see Memphis. Listen for the bell.”

Big Tennessee sprints for the gangplank and disappears into the shadows of Memphis. I tell William I'm too exhausted to walk into town, so we return to the hurricane deck. The cots are lowered and filled with the sick. When we near where our provisions are stashed, William heads toward the stairs.

“Where are you going?” I ask.

“Before unloading the sugar I found two great spots smack in front of the pilothouse. I moved our things to save
places for us there. Survant and Big Tennessee will have to stay here.”

“We had good spots already, closer to the boiler,” I insist. “It's warmer here.”

“It's too hard to breathe here,” he says. “Too stuffy.”

“I don't like the idea of sleeping outside in the open.”

“Well, I don't want to be near all these sick people,” he says. “Hurry before everyone gets back and moves our things.”

* * *

Our arrival on the Texas deck is greeted by a light rain. “Are you serious, William?” I plead. “We're going to get soaked.”

“Use a rubber blanket.”

“It's cold and wet up here.”

“Stop being a crybaby, Stephen,” William tells me. “There's an eave on the pilothouse. We'll be under it and in fresh air. Unless there's a thunderstorm with high winds, we'll be dry as well.”

We reach the spot William saved for us and open our haversacks. We dump the sugar deep into the bottom of each bag. “Sweetened coffee will never have tasted so good,” I say with a smile. I wrap
David Copperfield
with a pair of
pants and move it to a safe, dry corner of the sack.

I place the bag against the pilothouse wall to use for a pillow, lie down, and toss the blanket over my legs. “What'll you do with your dollar?” I ask.

“Don't know,” William says at first. But then as quickly adds, “I think I'll buy Mother a jewelry box in Cairo.”

“She'll like that,” I say. “She'll really like that.”

I'm so beat, I nod off until the bell rings to call the troops back. A tired-looking fellow asks if he can join us under the eave of the pilothouse. He says he's tried to find a place beside the two smokestacks but with no luck.

“Most of the free spots are saved for others,” he says. “Each time I ask about sleeping somewhere, I'm told, ‘Sorry, pard, my friend's here.'”

I squeeze over closer to William and create just enough room for the man to lie down. “Make yourself at home.”

A ruckus erupts just prior to shoving off. “Get up on the Texas deck and go to sleep,” a voice commands.

An answer comes in slurred words. “If you didn't have that rifle and bay-net . . .”

“Well, I do have a rifle and a bayonet, and I'm telling you to get up on the Texas deck and go to sleep.”

“Up on the top wooost?” The voice sounds familiar, but
I can't quite make it out with the slurring of his words. Whoever it is has sampled some whisky tonight.

“I'll get you some help getting up the stairs,” the first man says sternly, losing his temper.

“Shhhhhhh, people seeping,” the drunk says.

As the man emerges from the stairs, everyone turns to see who's causing the stir. Out of the darkness, a soldier propped under each arm, stumbles Big Tennessee. He trips over a man near the last step and bumps into the stair railing. He nearly tumbles back down the stairs but is caught when one of the two men helping him grabs his shirt collar. “Whoa,” the man says loudly.

“Shhhhhh,” Big Tennessee whispers. “Seeeping.” He takes two steps, trips onto the floor, and passes out. Nobody bothers to move him.

Big Tennessee was always such a mild-mannered soul for all those months in Cahaba. “It's the whisky.” William laughs. “I guess a few drinks in Memphis did what the war couldn't do, bring down Big Tennessee.”

After pulling away from Memphis's docks, the
Sultana
lists in the river. “Can you feel that?” I ask William.

“What?” he says, waking from a fast sleep.

“The boat,” I insist.

“Yeah, I feel the boat, grayback,” he jokes. “We're moving. Go back to sleep.”

“No,” I say. “The boat listed in the river, William. It tilted an awful lot. Like in Helena when everybody raced to one side to get in the picture.”

“It's your imagination,” William says, yawning. “Please stop talking.”

The fellow next to me props himself up on his elbows. “Without the weight of the sugar in the hold the boat's top-heavy.”

“Sweet dreams,” William says as he pats the stash beneath his head. “Sweet dreams.”

The last thoughts on my mind, before I drift to sleep, is that we're almost home.

Almost home.

The war's over, and we're hours from home.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

April 27, 1865, 2:30 a.m.

Something shakes the
Sultana
so violently, it awakens me. It's pitch-dark, but my eyes open in time to see a shadowy object sweep across the sky behind my head and plow into the pilothouse. Whatever it is crashes with so much force, it destroys most of the pilothouse. My nose is instantly overwhelmed by the smell of burning coal coupled with a pain shooting through my left leg. An orange glow in the air is enough to illuminate a shard of wood, the length of my hand, sticking straight up out from my thigh.

Without thinking, I reach for the plank to yank it out but lose my courage.

“Oh my God!” William yells, throwing off his blanket and standing. “What happened?” He sees me in pain and gasps at the sight of the piece of timber protruding from my leg.
“Hold still.”

He crouches and yanks the piece of wood out.

I scream as blood pours from the wound. I grab a shirt from my haversack to use as a tourniquet. I wrap it around my leg and use the sleeves to tie a secure knot.

“William, are you okay?”

“Me? I'm fine, but what was that?” he asks in shock.

“Don't know. Looks like one of the smokestacks fell over on the pilothouse.” William kicks a few pieces of debris off my ankles.

To my right, not even the length of a kitchen table away, the smokestack has knocked an immense hole in the Texas deck's floor. Everyone sleeping there was crushed and pushed down to the next level of the boat, possibly beyond. The back half of the pilothouse has been blown to atoms.

Right beside me, the man I had made room for earlier has a beam the thickness of a flagpole protruding through the center of his chest. It had to have killed him instantly.

“She's sinking!” someone yells from below. I stand, but putting weight on my left leg reminds me of my wound.

A faint voice nearby says, “I can't move.” A thick beam rests across the man's legs. William and I lift the end and try to free him.

We fail. The other end is lodged under a pile of debris.

The more we strive, the more my thigh hurts. “Somebody help us!” I yell.

As if from nowhere, Big Tennessee staggers over to the beam. “When I lift, the two of you pull him out,” he says in a calm voice.

“We already tried that,” William says, an urgency in his voice. “It's too heavy,”

“Just do it,” Big Tennessee orders. “Each of you grab one of his hands and pull on my command.” Big Tennessee's giant frame straddles the freed end of the beam, and he clasps his hands beneath it. He releases a deep grunt as the obstacle rises a mere inch or two. “Now!” he yells.

William and I easily pull the soldier loose, and he scrambles to his feet.

“We've got to get off the boat,” William says. “Are you okay to move?” he asks the man we just released.

“Yeah,” he say, testing his leg. And with that he hurries toward the side of the boat and launches himself overboard. We hear multiple splashes come from the river as other men have started abandoning the
Sultana.

Someone yells, “Put out the fire!” I turn to see embers flying through the opening where the smokestack stood
seconds earlier. A man whose legs are pinned by a support near the hole begs for help. Big Tennessee, William, and several men rush to where he lies. “Help me!” he yells. “I'm going to burn.”

I limp over and add my assistance as well. I gain some leverage with my right leg and push off the best I can. But even with all our hands, the wood won't budge. It won't yield. It's simply too large for us to move. Escaping sparks ignite the jagged edges of the deck, turning it to flames. Fire that begins devouring the wood gets closer and closer to the man.

“Don't stop. For God's sake, don't stop trying!” he yells. But it's useless. No matter how hard we try, the weight of the wood and heat from the fire push us back. Everyone ducks lower to the floor, trying to avoid the heat racing out of the crater. We shield our faces with our hands. Being recent prisoners, everyone's too weak, and the far end of the timber appears to be buried by other debris. The flames get closer, and the group retreats.

William stumbles, drops to his knees, and vomits on what's left of the front wall of the pilothouse.

A voice whispers,
Be calm, son. Don't lose your head.
It's Mother speaking.
You'll be okay if you don't lose your head.

“Out of the way!” Big Tennessee yells as he and another man carry a limp soldier toward the stairs. But when they get there, they find the stairs are gone. That portion of the Texas deck blew up with the smokestack. “We can't take him that direction,” Big Tennessee says. They hurry to the side of the boat and dangle the man over the edge by his arms to the deck below. “Grab this man!” Big Tennessee screams at the top of his lungs. After the man is taken from their hands, Big Tennessee leaps over the railing and into the Mississippi River.

The smokestack's hole is now a volcano blowing embers and heat into the evening sky.

“Swim or burn!” someone yells.

A figure darts toward the edge of the boat, weaving around the debris. He takes off every stitch of clothing except his drawers and peers into the water, scanning left to right. Finally finding a clear spot, he jumps three stories into the black river surface.

Bodies are scattered everywhere, many bleeding, some missing arms or legs. The scene is far worse than at Sulphur Branch Trestle, and there are no nurses here to be of assistance.

I think the situation through for a minute. “William, we have to get off this deck. It may give way soon.”

We race to the railing, me hobbling on my wounded leg. There's a rope dangling over the side, so we lower ourselves to the next level while men continue rushing into the water, some diving straight over us. The river that seemed so calm and peaceful a day ago is now a sea of bobbing faces in pitch-black water. Many of the heads go under and fail to come up again.

“I can't swim,” a man says to me as we finally get footing on the lowest deck. It's Caleb Rule, the farrier who had begged the guards at Castle Morgan to let us leave the prison during the flood. “I can't swim,” he says again. “Should I burn or drown?” he asks.

Caleb's hugging a four-by-four-inch post at the railing of the deck as if it's as dear to him as a child is to a mother. He looks at me again. “I can't swim.”

“That's okay,” I tell him. “It's going to be all right.”

Steam shoots out a nearby window, scalding a man running by. I pull on Caleb's arms, but he's having none of it and refuses to let go of the post. His gaze does not leave the sight of the men floating in the water. “I can't swim,” he repeats for the fourth time.

“Help me pry his fingers loose,” I tell William.

William leans over and bites Caleb's fingers. Our friend
lets go of the post and we drag him to the edge of the banister. Men in the frigid water beg us to throw them anything that might help them float. Heads bob below the surface a dozen at a time—never to resurface. Others on the boat are pulling everything they can off the walls to toss into the water.

Coal boxes, shutters, bales of cotton, doors, and cracker barrels litter the river's surface. Somebody has managed to throw a massive flour barrel into the mix.

“Your choice is being made for you,” I tell Caleb after seeing a man fly from the Texas deck, his hair on fire as he whizzes past. The flames on his head dissolve when he hits the water. “You're going in the river.”

I can't sw—”

“Can't swim, we know.” A green shutter lies on the floor, blown off by the explosion. I pick it up. “Wrap your arms around this and don't let go. Even when you hit the water, don't let go of the shutter.”

William braces himself against the ship's outer wall with both hands and kicks the three wooden rails free to provide an opening into the water. It's going to be difficult to get Caleb off the boat, so a nod to William tells him to help me push. I hold up one finger, then two, then three. On the third, Caleb Rule flies overboard with his shutter.

“Can't swim!” he yells midair.

Caleb hits the water hard, but the shutter breaks his fall. His chin barely gets damp as he floats away. A team of mules won't be able to pry that shutter from his grasp.

Sergeant Survant rushes by, a bedpost in his hands to throw over. “What happened to the
Sultana
?.” I ask.

“Boiler exploded,” he says. “I was next to the stairs when it blew. The banister saved me when the Texas deck came crashing down. The fellow six inches from me was crushed.

“Listen,” Sergeant Survant says, panting. “I have a plan. Wait as long as you can before jumping in. Watch,” he says, pointing to the water. “Too many of the men are pulling each other under. Those who can't swim are drowning those who can. Wait for the water to clear a bit.”

I nod. “Okay.”

“You can swim, can't you?”

“Certainly.”

William Lugenbeal rushes by, dragging a large crate with GASTONE written across the side.

“Where's the gator?” Sergeant Survant asks.

* * *

Lugenbeal laughs and points over his shoulder toward the flames shooting out of a window. “He's on his way to hell by now is my guess. I stabbed him between the eyes with a knife and took his crate.” In a heartbeat, Lugenbeal and the crate are in the river. Sergeant Survant walks toward the front of the boat, clutching a cabin door to chuck overboard.

When Lugenbeal mentions the alligator, I remember the hold contains livestock. Beyond the fire and smoke, the shapes of some of them can be seen being pushed into the water near the stern.

A loud splash catches my ears. A shape, larger than the roof on Uncle Clem's house, is buoying in the water. It's
Sultana
's gangplank. Instantly, pairs of hands, too many to count, appear from every direction and latch on to the edges of the wood.

“Help me, Stephen,” William says. He's gathered a heap of spindles from a staircase railing. “Tuck half of these under your right arm.” A few of them spill to the floor, and I stoop to pick them up.

“Leave 'em lay,” William says. “The flames are getting too close.” He takes off his suspenders, wraps them around the wood, and ties the four ends in a knot. “If God's willing, these will see us through. There's enough here for both of us. Take off your suspenders,” he orders.

After tying the second batch and with blazes lapping out many of the nearby cabin windows, the time has come to jump. I think of the sugar we had hauled up to the pilothouse just hours before, now burning along with our blankets, with our few possessions in our rucksacks, along with my . . .

“I have to go back up!” I yell at William.

“Back up where?”

“To the pilothouse.”

William grabs my arm. “No, you're not going back up there, Stephen.”

I pull away. “The book! Governor Morton said I have to bring
David Copperfield
back home to him. He hasn't read it.”

“He didn't mean it literally,” William says, shaking his head violently, eyes pleading. “Look around, pard. My God, he'll understand.”

“It was an order. Good soldiers follow orders.”

“Let it go,” William pleads.

But it's too late. My mind's made up. “Give me a boost,” I say.

I latch on to the rope we had used earlier, climb up on William's back, and onto his shoulders. He places his hands, palms up, next to his neck for me to step onto. By pulling on the rope while he pushes me up another two
feet, there's just enough room to get a good hold on the railing above me. Men jump over me and plummet into the river. I grab the deck and swing my good leg up and over onto the flooring.

The boat's top floor is mostly burned. I shield my face from the inferno with both arms and walk toward where the pilothouse once stood. A light breeze blows some of the heat away and toward the back of the boat. But at the same time, the wind is turning the vessel slowly to the right. This brings the flames straight back to where I'm headed. The entire spot where we had slept, fifteen minutes earlier, is now an inferno. My knapsack, sugar, hat, and copy of
David Copperfield
are gone.

I've failed.