He wrote for the bulk of two days, and then the first wagon train arrived, each creaking wagon half filled with gunboat iron, the most that the weary horses could pull. They unloaded the iron, stacked it on the landing, tended the horses. The next morning the wagons left again.
Bowater did the math. At that rate, and assuming none of the wagons broke or horses died, it would take 250 days to transport all the iron to Yazoo City. He tucked that information aside and did not think about it again.
When he had written all he could, and could do no more until he received replies, Samuel took up a wrecking bar and went at the deckhouse. In ten minutes he was sweating. In half an hour his arm muscles were protesting and he had cut his hand. In an hour and a half he had torn his sailor’s pullover in three places, cut the other hand, and was walking with a slight limp, but he felt better than he had in a week at least.
He looked with satisfaction at the wreckage on the deck. He had personally torn out a good portion of what had been the first-class passenger cabin, could see daylight where bulkheads had been, where iron casement soon would be.
Well, perhaps not soon.
“Captain Bowater?” He heard a man asking after him, looked up. A fellow on a big black horse, wearing the kind of riding clothes worn by those wealthy enough to afford clothes just for riding, a tall black silk hat on his head, thick silky black mustache under his nose. “Artemus, where might I find Captain Bowater?”
Polkey spit, jerked his thumb at Samuel. Samuel set his wrecking bar down, wiped his hands on the pullover, and stepped down the brow as the man dismounted.
“I am Captain Samuel Bowater.” Bowater extended a hand and the man took it, shook. Samuel caught the quick glance up and down, the man’s eyes noting the torn and filthy clothes, bloody hands.
“A pleasure, sir. ‘Officers will haul with the men,’ and all that, eh, just like old Drake?”
Bowater looked down at his clothes. He wondered when he had decided it was all right for him to appear in public, on duty, in such shabby attire. “We do what needs to be done. How may I help you?”
“My name is Theodore Wilson, sir. I own the plantation a mile north of town, five hundred acres of the finest cotton land. In any event, I was in town collecting my mail and the postmaster mentioned there was mail for the ship, so I thought it would be a friendly gesture to carry it down to you.”
“Friendly, indeed. Thank you, sir,” Bowater said. He waited while Wilson fished the canvas bag out of his saddlebag, waited to see why the man had really come.
Wilson handed the bag to Bowater. It was light and the letters made only a small lump in the bottom. They had not been there long enough for the bulk of the mail to catch up with them.
Wilson ran his eyes over the Yazoo River. “Robley Paine was by my place the other day, asking after something. Wagons, I think.” Wilson was quiet as he surveyed the boatyard with a half-amused smirk. “I have always had a keen interest in river navigation, Captain. In fact, I own a small screw steamer, often pilot her myself, runs to New Orleans and such.” He paused again. “So this here’s Robley Paine’s boat, is it?”
“No. No, it’s not.”
“No? I had thought…”
“This ship belongs to the Confederate States Navy. Mr. Paine has donated it for his country’s use.”
“I see…There is a story abroad that ol’ Robley intends to make her an ironclad.”
That was it. Curiosity. Amusement, perhaps. Come down and see what the fools were about, make great conversation over billiards and mint juleps.
“She is being converted to an ironclad this instant. You see the iron plate there.” Bowater waved toward the pile, a sad little stack of rail.
“Not much iron for an ironclad vessel.”
“That’s the first of it. We are moving it from Jackson as fast as we can, but are hampered by a lack of wagons. It seems not all the people hereabouts are as great patriots as Mr. Paine.”
That barb made Wilson stiffen, just a bit. “There is no man in Yazoo County, you will find, who is wanting in love for his country, and support for the cause.”
“I don’t doubt it, sir. Don’t mistake me. The men who put their lives in jeopardy for a cause, like my sailors there, or Mr. Paine, are often the ones who grumble the most. After all, didn’t our Lord Jesus himself doubt the wisdom of his cause on the night before his death? No sir, I find the staunchest patriots are often those who remain safe by their own hearths.”
Wilson’s eyes flashed with anger now, but Bowater did not care because he had had his fill of the Wilsons of the world. “You come close to insinuation, sir, and I do not care for it. I have a son fighting in the army, as do most of the men around here.”
“Yet when Robley came to you with the simple request for help, just a damned wagon and some manpower, you would deny him? When every bit of stubbornness on your part makes the Yankee—the Yankee who would kill your son—stronger?”
Wilson looked at Bowater for a long moment. “I will forgive your remarks, sir, as you are a stranger here, and do not know the recent history.”
Bowater said nothing.
Wilson chewed on a stray hair of his mustache. “Robley Paine’s gone mad. Surely you have noticed?”
Of course he had noticed. Curiosity battled with disgust at listening to such gossip. “I am satisfied with Mr. Paine’s dedication to the cause. Beyond that I am not interested.”
At that Wilson smiled, and Bowater could see he was not fooling the man. “It’s not a surprise he’s lost his mind, of course. I might have myself, under the circumstances…”
Silence. Stand-off. Finally Bowater surrendered. “What circumstances?”
“Robley had three boys. Fine lads, he doted on them. His entire world. They joined Hamer’s Rifles, the company that mustered out of Yazoo County in April of last year. His oldest boy, Robley Junior, made lieutenant. Anyway, they were all killed at Manassas. All three.”
Bowater nodded. Dear God! That bit of information fit like the last brick in the wall, made sense of everything he had seen Robley Paine to be.
“You impress me, Captain,” Wilson continued. “I was afraid that Paine had collected together a cadre of madmen, undertaking some fool thing. I just hope you are not wasting your time here, on some madman’s dream.”
Bowater straightened. Wilson’s approval felt like a dirty thing, like Judas’s handful of silver. He saw, in that instant, Robley Paine for what he was, and Theodore Wilson for what he was, and he could not hate Paine, and he could only hate Wilson.
“Mr. Wilson,” he said, picking the words carefully, “I have never been deluded about the state of Mr. Paine’s mind, not since meeting him. And now that you tell me the cause, I must say, I can hardly find fault or weakness in him for what he has become. But understand this…Robley Paine has thrown everything that he is and everything that he has into fighting for the cause for which his sons died. His is the purest, most unadulterated patriotism. He will die like his boys, fighting for his country, fighting for all you men who lie abed while the guns are firing, and I, sir, as an officer of the Confederate States Navy, will be proud to be with him.”
Bowater picked up the mail sack. “Thank you for delivering the mail to us. Now if you will forgive me, I have an ironclad that requires building.”
He turned, walked back into the office. After a few minutes he heard the jangle of Wilson’s horse’s tack, heard the clomp of hooves as he rode away.
For a long time Samuel was too angry to move. Angry that he had been saddled with a madman’s project. Angry that men such as Wilson, who had the means to make the ironclad Yazoo River a real thing, would not. Angry that in this modern time, this age of reason, men could still fight a war in which some sorry bastard could lose his three sons in an afternoon and become the shell that was Robley Paine.