Passing the Narrows (3 page)

    "What's in them crates of yours?" said Swain. "Lincoln's
favorite undershorts?"

 

    "You may all leave," she said. "Put in at the riverbank. I
can provide you with protection that will see you safely through
the forest, back to Float."

 

    Another match flared as the Captain lit a fresh cigar.
"Will lives be lost if you and your crates fail to reach
Vicksburg tonight?" he asked.

 

    The sorceress nodded. "Lives will be lost," she said.
"Innocent lives."

 

    The Captain sighed and waved out the match. He stared into
the shadows, silent for a moment. Then he pulled out his pocket-
watch.

 

    "I had this inscribed with my son's name, madam," he said,
holding the watch forth. "For his seventeenth birthday. I
didn't know it, but while the jeweler was engraving the letters
my son lay dying in the mud at Billings. Ironic, no?"

 

    The sorceress shook her head. "I am truly sorry for your
loss, sir. Truly, I am." She leaned against the map table and
wiped her face with her sleeve. "I can't bring anyone back,
Captain. No one can. But if my cargo fails to make Vicksburg
tonight an outbreak of yellow fever is going to take hundreds,
perhaps thousands, of more young lives. That I can stop. If we
keep going."

 

    The Captain snapped the pocket watch shut. "Then damn the
Narrows," he said. "Damn the Narrows. Damn the haunt. Damn
them both." He stuck his head through the glassless pilothouse
window. "Mr. Barker!" he bellowed. "Mr. Barker!"

 

    "Cap'n?" came a faint reply.

 

    "Stoke her up, boys," he said. "Stoke her like the devil is
at our heels, because he just might be."

 

    "Yessir," said Barker. "Fine serving with you, sir."

 

    "Always a smart-ass, that boy." The Captain stepped away
from the window. "What can we do to assist you, madam?" he
said.

 

    "Remain calm," she said. "Keep control of your craft.
Beyond that, I simply do not know."

 

    The
Yocona
surged and lifted as a single tall hump of
water rushed past. The sorceress sighed and straightened. "It
begins," she said. "I must return to the cargo deck."

 

    "Good luck, madam," said the Captain. "I trust you will
share a proper drink with me, once we reach Vicksburg."

 

    "Give 'em Hell, your Yankeeship," said Swain. "No offense,"
he added, at the Captain's glare.

 

    The sorceress lifted an eyebrow. "Thank you, gentlemen,"
she said. The
Yocona
heaved as another trough of black
water surged past. Frantic pounding sounded below as Barker and
his engine crew redoubled their efforts to barricade the boiler
room.

 

    The sorceress opened her mouth, shut it, and marched out
into the dark.

 

    "Damn, Cap'n, what's got into you?" said Swain. "I was
half-expectin' you to drop down on one knee and polish her
boots."

 

    "We lost the war, Swain."

 

    Swain snorted. "Do tell? Hell, I thought we was engaged in
a long-term strategic withdrawal."

 

    "We lost," said the Captain. "Lost the war and lost your
limbs and lost my son. Lost our lives." The Captain sighed.
"I'm tired of losing, Matthew. Tired to death of it."

 

    Swain spat. "So now you reckon on fightin' the Narrows with
a broke-down paddle-wheeler, a cripple, an' a lady Yankee wand-
waver with more guts than sense?"

 

    The Captain chewed his cigar and said nothing.

 

    "Oh Hell," muttered Swain. Moans began to sound from the
trees on either bank, and the muddy Yazoo river-water began to
roil and foam, disturbed by dark forms writhing just below the
surface.

 

    The
Yocona
heaved and yawed. Ragged man-shapes began
to march clumsily out of the forest, pacing the
Yocona
,
stumbling to keep up with her running lamps.

 

    Swain peered out and broke into a short fit of laughter.
"There they are, Cap'n," he said. "Off to port, right next to
the headless gent. My legs. Got 'em a fine pair of boots."
Swain leaned out the window and began to shout. "Ya did better
without the rest o' me, boys!" he yelled. "I'da never bought ya
high-steppers like that!"

 

    The forest answered with a volley of screams. Screams, and
the shriek and thump of artillery, and the sporadic pop-pop of
rifles.

 

    The sorceress moved to stand in front of the pilothouse. An
aura flared around her, growing and spinning and wheeling about
her like a flock of tame thunderstorms. Each of her hands was
lost in a fierce, hissing glare that left streaks across Swain's
vision.

 

    The sorceress spoke a word.

 

    The stars vanished. Swain cursed, and when he stopped
searching the sky for the stars he saw that the riverbanks were
gone, and the trees, and every trace of the land beyond.
Instead, in every direction there was water -- smooth, still,
black water, not river but sea, yet not like any sea Swain had
ever seen.

 

    The sorceress stumbled, fell to her knees. The glow
surrounding her faded; her hands, invisible before, showed
clearly through the failing radiance.

 

    The Captain gasped. Swain peered over his shoulder, out
into the black sea.

 

    There, on the horizon, something was emerging from the
water, rising up to fill the grey and starless sky.

 

    "God have mercy," whispered the Captain.

 

    The sorceress shouted and lifted her right hand. The harsh
light returned, and from it a narrow strand of silent lightning
rose up to hang dancing in the empty sky.

 

    The
Yocona
reeled as though struck. Swain caught the
map table and hung on. The Captain was tossed away from the
wheel, sent sprawling to the glass-covered deck.

 

    Swain squeezed his eyes shut against the gargantuan thing
still rising from the sea. "Is this what you call a last stand,
Cap'n?" he shouted. "Layin' on the floor, bleedin'? Is this the
way you want to die?"

 

    The
Yocona
heaved again. Swain opened his eyes long
enough to see that the sorceress had risen to her feet, and
though only faint flashes of light shone about her, she was
facing the shadow, hands uplifted, chanting broken words in a
hoarse, spent voice.

 

    The monstrous form grew, looming closer, moving like a bank
of thunderheads. The oily waters broke into slow and shallow
waves. The
Yocona 's
pistons slowed; from below, Swain
could hear hissings and grindings that spoke of ruptured cylinder
casings, or worse.

 

    The sorceress's chant broke into a fit of coughing. The
strand of lightning dropped from her hand and was extinguished as
it fell in wide coils against the vast obsidian sea. Barker's
voice rang out faintly from the boiler room; he recited half-
remembered Psalms interspersed with exhortations clearly meant
for the
Yocona 's
failing steam pistons.

 

    Outside, the sorceress forced herself to stand. Her robes
smoked. No glow played about her hands now, and though she spoke
her words lacked the echo of power that always accompanied
sorcery. At first, Swain thought she was praying. Then he heard
a snatch of words and realized the Yankee wand-waver was trying
to sing.

 

    The sea boiled. The sky shrank, still filling with the
thing from the sea.

 

    "Mine eyes," Swain bellowed, "have seen the glory of the
coming of the Lord."

 

    The sorceress turned, her weary green eyes gone suddenly
wide. She smiled with cracked and bloody lips. "That's a Yankee
war song you're singing, Mr. Swain," she said. "Hardly words for
a Confederate veteran to die with."

 

    Swain laughed. "Good as any, ma'am," he said. "I reckon
Ol' Scratch yonder might even choke on 'em."

 

    The Captain moaned and stirred.

 

    "Get up, Captain," said Swain. "Me and my Union friend are
startin' us a choral group."

 

    The Captain grabbed the edge of the map-table and lifted
himself up. Blood trickled down the right side of his face and
oozed in drips from his wooly beard.

 

    He stared out past the pilothouse and the sorceress and to
the thing still rising from the water.

 

    "It's over, Cap'n," said Swain. "All over, and high time."

 

    The
Yocona
rolled and heaved. Swain laughed again,
and began beating out a rythym on the map table.

 

    "He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath
are stored, he hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible
swift sword -- "

 

    The Captain pulled out his hip-flask, drained it, and threw
the battered silver flask -- a memento of the Fifth Infantry --
out in a long arc above the black waters. His voice joined
Swain's, and the faint, coarse rasp of the sorceress.

 

 

    "Glory, glory, hallelujah,"
    glory, glory, hallelujah,
    His truth is marching on."

 

    The sky was all but gone. The black water around the
Yocona
churned and swirled and rose, sending icy spray
into the pilothouse and snuffing out the running lamps.

 

    The Captain opened the voice tube to the boiler room.
Voices, booming and muffled, rose up from it, some singing, some
praying, Barker's rising above the rest in a sing-song litany of
'Come on girl come on come come on.'"

 

    "Goodbye, Cap'n," said Swain. "You were a good man and a
good friend and if there's a whiskey house in Hell I'll buy the
first round."

 

    "The War is over, Swain," said the Captain. "Call me
Lester."

 

    Swain grinned. "Glory, glory, hallelujah," he shouted.
"Now let's all go home."

 

    The sorceress licked her lips, lifted her hands, and with
one final broken cry she hurled a word out against the dark.

 

    The word echoed, and the dark sea tilted, and with a lurch
the
Yocona
plunged bow-first into a sudden and deep abyss.

 

    Hands gripped Swain's shoulders. Something raked his face,
raked it again. Swain woke and swatted and fought with both
hands until he remembered he had only one.

 

    "Hold him!" came a voice. Swain opened his eyes. The
Captain stood over him, a bloody rag in his hand. "Calm down,
Swain," he said. "You got a gash on your fool head I'm trying to
doctor."

 

    Swain relaxed. "Thought we was dead," he said. "Thought
that thing in the water -- "

 

    "Shut up, damnit," snapped the Captain, looping the rag
around Swain's temple and pulling it tight. "Can't get this
thing tied with your jaws flapping like buzzard wings." Thick
fingers nimbly made a knot. "There. You'll live. Can you sit
up?"

 

    "Don't need no nurse-maid," snapped Swain, offering his
hand. "Just give me a hand-up."

 

    Barker spoke from beyond the pilothouse door. "I can give
you quarter ahead, Cap'n," he said. "For a while."

 

    "Good work, Mr. Barker," said the Captain. "Give us all you
can."

 

    Barker yelled. The deck shuddered, and after a moment the
Yocona 's
paddle-wheel screeched and began to turn.

 

    "I better get back there," said Barker. "Got to ride herd
on the old girl."

 

    Swain peered around. He saw darkness, but there -- there
were stars, and the outlines of trees against a half-clouded sky.
The
Yocona 's
running lamps were dark, but someone had lit
a single lantern on the hurricane deck and hung it on a broken
rail.

 

    "You have a horrific singing voice, Mr. Swain," said the
sorceress. Swain turned to find her slumped in the corner of the
pilothouse, wrapped in a blanket and the Captain's long coat.
"Still, I thank you."

 

    "You're welcome, ma'am," said Swain. "Now would you kindly
explain why we're here on the Yazoo instead of -- wherever we
was?"

 

    The sorceress smiled. "I would, if I could," she said.
"But my recollection is equally at fault. I remember speaking a
final word, and then darkness. Until your Mr. Barker found me
wedged between two cotton bales."

 

    "Must a' been quite a word you said," said Swain. "Knocked
Old Scratch right back to Hades."

 

    The sorceress shook her head. "Hardly, Mr. Swain. Hardly.
For some reason, the Narrows -- whatever it is -- lost its grip.
My word had little, if anything, to do with that."

 

    "Musta been my singin', then. Never could carry a tune."

 

    "Agreed. That's what I'll put in my official report," said
the sorceress. "Hostile spirit entity repelled by one Mr. Swain
and his rendition of 'The Battle Hymn of the Republic.'"

 

    Swain snorted. The Captain chuckled. The sorceress went
on. "I jest, gentlemen, but that may not be far from the truth,"
she said. "The Narrows lost its grip on us when we joined
together in song."

 

    "The War fed the Narrows," said the Captain. "Woke it and
fed it. Maybe it let go when we let our wars go. Who knows?" he
grinned. "We won one, Swain," he said. "Somehow, we won this
time."

 

    Swain grinned. "'Bout time we was made war heroes," he
said.

 

    The Captain snorted. "It's about time we just let it pass,"
he said. "Time to let it end." He pulled out his pocket watch,
held it clenched in his fist. "Goodbye, James," he said.
"Goodbye."

 

    He threw the watch through the open window, watched it
glitter and tumble and then vanish in the dark.

 

    "Mister Barker!" he bellowed.

 

    "Yessir," came a reply.