Taylor climbed back up into the casement, made his way aft to the makeshift galley where Johnny St. Laurent slept. He shook the sleeping cook until he got a response.
“Johnny, come with me,” Taylor said, and Johnny, who had been with Taylor on many a misadventure, stood and followed without question.
They met on the fantail, Hieronymus Taylor and a cluster of black men in Confederate sailor’s garb. On the starboard side, Tanner and two seamen held one of the Yazoo River ’s boats against the ironclad hull.
“All right, you boys,” Taylor began, and then he was interrupted by footsteps in the casement, stepping through the door. Captain Bowater.
“Chief, what are you doing?” Bowater asked. It was not a friendly tone: anger, confusion, but mostly suspicion.
“I’m lettin’ the darkies go, Cap’n. They ain’t got a dog in this fight.”
“You are…what?”
“Letting the darkies go. Givin them a boat. Let ’em sail on down to the Yankees. We don’t need ’em, don’t need no divided loyalties for the fight we got comin.”
“What makes you think their loyalties are divided?”
“Well, let’s jest see.” Taylor turned to the men on the fantail. “Any you men don’t want to go over to the Yankees, wants to remain in the Confederate Navy, stay and fight, step on over there.”
Taylor pointed to the port rail. There was a long pause. No one moved.
“Who is going to pass coal, Chief?”
“I can pass coal. Burgess can pass coal. Got two white coal passers, don’t need so damn many down there anyhow.”
Bowater was silent, clearly did not know which way to go on this.
“How ’bout you, Cap’n? You gonna let your boy Jacob go?”
“Jacob’s been with me all his life. He certainly would not think of deserting.”
“That a fact? Why don’t we ask him?”
The two men stared at one another. The moon was rising, and gave just enough light that they could see one another’s eyes, but just barely.
“Very well. Tanner, go fetch Jacob,” Bowater said.
Silence on the fantail, an ugly silence, like two men holding one another at gunpoint. And then a moment later Tanner and a very confused Jacob climbed out the small door onto the deck.
“Jacob,” Bowater said. “Mr. Taylor here wishes to let all of the Negroes go, let them get into the boat there and row down to the Yankees and ostensible freedom. He suggests I allow you to go, so I will.
“The choice is yours. Remain where you are, and stay with me, or step over with those other men”—Bowater pointed to the cluster by the starboard rail—“and go with them to the Yankees. What will it be?”
The silence settled down again, and every eye was on Jacob, and Jacob clearly was not happy about it. His eyes shifted between Bowater and the men at the starboard rail. At last he made some little sound—it might have been a muttered word—and with three quick steps he crossed to the starboard rail and took his place there.
Jacob shook his head. Taylor could see the sorrow in his face, his eyes. Finally he spoke. “Massah Sam’l, I’se sorry. Really, I’se sorry. But what the hell else you expect me ta do?”
Bowater looked from Jacob to Moses, to Johnny, then to Hieronymus Taylor. Then, without a word, he turned and disappeared through the door into the casement.
“All right, y’all, this here’s your chance and you best take it!” Taylor said, loud, and his voice moved the men to action. They climbed down, one after another, into the boat, faces frightened and expectant, all at once.
“Boss.” Jones stopped, as Taylor knew and feared he would. “This here, this here’s a fine thing you doin’…”
“Shut up. Think I wouldn’t rather see your black ass stop a shell before mine? Git the hell in the boat, afore I change my stupid mind.”
Moses nodded, and to Taylor’s irritation smiled and then climbed into the boat and took up an oar.
“Go on, y’all!” Taylor shouted. “Head on downriver, that’s where you’ll find them Yankees, lead ya to the Promised Land!”
The men at the thwarts dipped their oars and pulled and the boat began to fade into the night.
“Go on!” Taylor shouted. “Go work in one of them damned factories up North, see how damned good ya had it here!”
Then from the dark, from the amorphous white shape which was all he could see of the boat, Moses Jones’s voice cut though the dark like a knife. Oh, Shenandoah, I’m bound to leave you…
Then all of the men in the boat together: Away, you rolling river…
Then Moses again: But Shenandoah, I’ll never grieve you…
Hieronymus Taylor stood on the fantail and watched until first the boat and then the singing were swallowed up in the dark. He smiled despite himself, shook his head, stepped into the casement, and shut the ironclad door.
Samuel Bowater stood on top of the pilothouse roof, alone, watched the boat pull away downriver. Jones’s voice, deep and clear, floated back to them.
Jacob’s desertion had moved him in a profound way. He would never have guessed it, was certain, when he agreed to test his conviction, that Jacob would remain by his side. That he had opted instead to leave the Bowaters’ service for the uncertainties of freedom in the North shocked Samuel, changed his outlook in a fundamental way.
He toyed with these thoughts, but his mind wandered. His father, his mother, Wendy, Robley Paine, they all stepped up for consideration, vague, half-formed thoughts. He sat on the hurricane deck, leaned back against the pilothouse.
He did not know what time it was when he awoke, nor what woke him. He opened his eyes, looked into the dark. There were footsteps on the hurricane deck. He did not move.
A figure stepped past the pilothouse, stepped to the forward end of the hurricane deck. In the moonlight Bowater recognized the beaten-down frame of Robley Paine.
For a moment Paine did nothing. Then with some difficulty he knelt down on the deck, bowed his head. Clasped his hands. For a long time he remained there, in silent prayer, and Bowater was not sure what to do.
Finally Bowater rose, and his foot scraped on the deck and Paine looked up.
“Ah, Mr. Paine, I did not see you there,” Bowater said.
“Quite all right, Captain,” Paine said. He stood painfully, stepped over to Bowater. There was something different about his face. The muscles seemed less tense, the edge of madness dulled. “A fine night,” he said.
“Lovely…” Bowater said, and then, before he knew he had said it, added, “Why did you do this, sir? The ship, all of it?”
Paine looked at him with a look that seemed to peel the buffers of secret thought away. “I don’t know. I don’t know why I did most of what I did, this past year. I don’t even recall a lot of it. I did it for my boys, I suppose. Their memory. My wife was able to let herself die, but I did not have that trick. I guess I did it because I was doomed to live when I did not want to, because the Everlasting has set His canon against self-slaughter.”
His voice was stronger, more clear than Samuel had ever heard it. He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “In any event, here we are. And even if what I did can do nothing for my boys, it can at least help my country, and that is something.” He turned to Bowater. “You are the only one who has ever had the grit to ask me that.”
Bowater nodded. This man before him was not the mendacious lunatic who had greeted them at the landing at Yazoo City. The transformation of the ship had somehow transformed him as well. Or maybe it was the proximity of eternal rest that revived his mind.
Then, like punctuation to the thought, the guns of Fort St. Philip opened up, two hundred yards away. Instant change, like waking from a dream, the dark and quiet blasted away as gun after gun hurled iron and fire over the water. And lit up by the muzzle flashes of the big guns, the Yankee fleet, moving slowly, line ahead, upriver, through the boom, through the crossfire of the forts.