Dead water - Barbara Hambly [51]
At the stern end he found Rose. She was talking with Julie, so he couldn't very well catch her up in his arms and kiss her, as he wished to do, or say, You, my nightingale, are a genius. . . .
“Mrs. Fischer returned about half an hour ago with Mr. Weems,” Rose said, turning to meet his smile. “So I suppose poor Sophie's going to be occupied for the rest of the evening. Mrs. Fischer seemed to be in a frightful mood when she called to Sophie, probably because she realized the boat wasn't going to be able to proceed until nearly dark.”
“I never figured why white folks always got their hair on fire to get somewhere quick,” sighed Julie, squinting in the sharp, hot sunlight as Molloy stormed out of the engine-room's rear door and up the stairs to the boiler-deck. “What's it matter if we stays here another few hours? What's so all-fired important in Vicksburg, or Memphis, that it can't wait? The boiler really gonna blow up if they runs the boat too fast?”
She looked scared, and trying to conceal it. She wasn't even, January guessed, as old as Bobby, and the recollection of Bobby stabbed him with guilt again, that he'd left the boy his own choice about escape.
Even if making your own choice was what freedom was about.
“Most accidents on steamboats are because the pilot gets careless,” Rose soothed. “I think whatever else can be said of him, Mr. Molloy is a good pilot, and not likely to take foolish risks.”
“Then how come they think they got to check all the boilers?” asked Julie. “They wouldn't be check 'em if there wasn't somethin' wrong.”
“I can't imagine,” said Rose with a sidelong glance at January. Eli, the cook, on his way back into the galley, overheard and paused long enough to shoot back.
“Hey, Julie, these is white folks we're talkin' about.”
And all three of them laughed.
“Shit,” sighed Julie. “Here she is.” Across the open mud-flat of the landing, Theodora Skippen appeared out of the mouth of a scummy alley. “God, I hope she ain't drunk again.” As Miss Skippen hurried toward the Silver Moon, her white bonnet-plumes nodding with her step, one of the stevedores said something to her that elicited an obscene gesture, quickly released as she realized there might be respectable ladies on the upper-deck promenades who might see her. She was not, January reflected, particularly bright—or else she'd had enough liquor at the Stump to blunt her animal cunning for survival.
Julie rubbed her ear, which, dark as she was, showed fresh bruising as well as the earlier nail-gash cuts, and went up the rear stair to be in Miss Skippen's stateroom when Miss Skippen returned there. Across the confusion of the wharf, January could see the Reverend Christmas leaning in the mouth of the same alleyway, watching the Silver Moon.
An hour later Mr. Lundy returned, with Hannibal in tow.
“Quid non mortalia pectora cogis, auri sacra fames,” sighed Hannibal as he slumped onto the nearest wood-pile next to the galley passway and took a sip of opium. “And now, of course, our precious friends know who we are. At least they know about you and me, Ben. Owl-eyed Athene still wears the hood of invisibility. . . .”
“Which I won't much longer,” retorted Rose, “if I persist in being seen in your company.”
“What, will you join the regiment of women who tell me my friendship does their reputations no good?”
“You don't think La Pécheresse will believe that you were overcome by my charms when we met on the boat?” January drew himself up in mock indignation. “I am cut to the very heart. I wish now I'd stayed a little longer hiding near the Stump, to know whether Miss Skippen escaped from the Reverend Christmas or whether he sent her back here as his spy.”
“You'd only have gotten yourself killed.” Hannibal followed