Mississippi Roll. Джордж Р. Р. Мартин

crude and misogynistic crewmembers. Wilbur’s own aunt, Blanche Leathers, had become captain of the Natchez way back in 1894, long before women were at all common in the workplace, let alone running a steamboat on the Mississippi. At least Montaigne was following a Leathers tradition, even if she wasn’t family.

      Captain Montaigne was greeting arrivals at the gangway leading down to the wharf as Wilbur drifted past her, unseen. He’d overheard earlier talk from the captain that there might be several wild card aces among the entertainers as well as the passengers at various points along the cruise; in fact, the Jokertown Boys, a joker boy band that had been famous a decade and a half ago, had been aboard for some time now, having most recently played the night before. Their supposed music failed to impress Wilbur, who still preferred the big band sound of the ’40s and early ’50s, or classic New Orleans jazz. The band’s keyboardist, ‘Gimcrack’ – a stupid name, in Wilbur’s opinion – had also been hired to play the boat’s calliope during the cruises, though at the moment it was silent, the boilers still waiting to be fully fired up tomorrow evening when the Natchez would be under way.

      He saw Kitty Strobe, the junior pilot for the Natchez, walking toward the stairs, probably heading up to the pilothouse to help Jeremiah with preparations for getting under way. As usual, despite the New Orleans heat, she was wearing a large baggy sweater and long pants, as well as large dark sunglasses. Wilbur smiled to himself: he knew why she dressed that way, even if no one else on the boat was aware of it.

      Captain Montaigne was speaking with a man who looked distressingly like a cartoon fox, accompanied by a woman who sported cat’s ears, nose, and whiskers in an otherwise normal face. Jokers, Wilbur thought. Or aces … ‘Mr Yamauchi, Ms Otto, welcome aboard,’ the captain said with her Cajun accent. ‘I’m glad to see both of you. Your equipment and luggage arrived yesterday. I have your stateroom ready; your luggage is there waiting for you. I assume you’ll want to take a look at the Bayou Lounge, as that’s where you’ll be performing your act; I’ll have one of the deckhands escort you up there. The Jokertown Boys will be sharing the bill with you …’

      Her voice trailed off as Wilbur drifted on past her and up the staircase, causing a descending deckhand to shudder as Wilbur passed partially through the man. Since the boilers were still cool, Wilbur was invisible, barely warm, and relatively dry at the moment.

      Wilbur continued up past the boiler deck and texas deck until he was standing on the open hurricane deck atop the boat. Wilbur stood near the calliope, a classic Thomas J. Nichol–built steam calliope salvaged from the sunken remains of the side-wheeler Island Queen, destroyed by fire. Wilbur had paid to lovingly (and expensively) have the calliope restored. The acquisition of the calliope had been one of Wilbur’s proudest accomplishments when he’d built this iteration of his family’s Natchez boats, that and the fact that he’d also been able to salvage murals and paintings from the eighth Natchez, built by his grandfather.

      He’d built the Natchez to be as much a part of him as he was now part of it.

      Neither Jeremiah nor Kitty Strobe was in the pilothouse, so Wilbur continued up the short flight of stairs and into the enclosure. There was the bell made of 250 melted silver dollars that Wilbur had salvaged from the SS J. D. Ayres; the steam whistle from a steamboat that sank in 1908 on the Monongahela River; the massive white oak and steel wheel from the Hamiltonian, and the ornate control and communications panels, refurbished and modernized over long decades by the boat’s subsequent owners, far different from the time when Wilbur had stood here. Alive. With Eleanor at his side.

      Eleanor … The pilothouse’s expansive windows allowed Wilbur to see the river and New Orleans in all directions. From his vantage point, he could view the wharf, the French Quarter, and nearby Jackson Square. He looked out over New Orleans, wondering if she was still there somewhere, wondering if their child was out there as well. Eleanor, what kind of life did Carpenter steal from us? Where would we have gone, what would we have become?

      Of course, he’d also stolen Carpenter’s life. He’d sometimes wondered if Carpenter had had a family, if his wife and maybe his kids had expected him to come home for dinner that February night so many decades ago. I’m still paying for that. I wonder if Carpenter’s doing the same somewhere, or maybe everything just ended for him then, even if it didn’t for me …

      Wilbur turned his gaze eastward past the huge stern wheelhouse and down the wide Mississippi. That was where the MS Gustav Schröder, a rusting, decrepit cargo ship flying the Liberian flag, was moored near the river’s intersection with the Intracoastal Waterway, guarded by the Coast Guard cutter Triton and boats from the New Orleans Port Police – all of them five miles downriver. With the river’s curves and all the other river traffic, Wilbur couldn’t make out the ship from this distance, but Schröder had been the subject of lots of talk and gossip and arguments aboard the Natchez in recent days. The vessel was reputedly stuffed with more than nine hundred refugees from Kazakhstan, wherever the hell that was, and the Schröder was out of fuel and food. According to the news reports from Jeremiah’s radio, a very few passengers with the proper papers had been permitted to disembark; the rest were still aboard, forbidden to come ashore.

      That seemed to please the majority of the crew, from what Wilbur had overheard.

      ‘We don’t need those fuckin’ foreign jokers,’ Mickey Lee Payne, the assistant ‘mud’ clerk, had declared only two nights ago, down on the main deck where the crew had gathered in one of the bunk rooms. Mickey Lee, in Wilbur’s opinion, was mostly a scrawny, loudmouthed bigot; if Wilbur were captain, he’d have the man tossed off the boat … Though he had to admit that his own grandfather had probably been a bigot of the same stripe. ‘We got enough of our own freaks. Who the hell knows how many of ’em might be infectious? Did you fucking see the pictures from over there? Christ! Thousands and thousands of people died, and the rest went bugfuck. They were eating fucking babies. You ask me, that new guy that took control over there has the right idea getting rid of the jokers. I say we need to do the same kinda strong leadership: close the damn borders, send ’em back, and good riddance.’ There’d been a rumble of general agreement with Mickey Lee’s statement from many of the crew.

      For Wilbur, Kazakhstan and its problems seemed as distant as the moon. His world was the Natchez. No, it was good enough for the moment to simply stand in the pilothouse as he had back when he’d still been alive and look out over the Quarter, watching the bustle on the dock and on the river around him and anticipating another voyage upriver, even if he was no longer the boat’s captain. He thought about the steamboat race that would be the showpiece of the Tall Stacks festival in Cincinnati, imagining the Natchez steaming past her competitors. In that moment, he would feel some satisfaction. In that moment, he might see the Natchez less as a prison and more as the boat he’d been so proud to create. His legacy, born of imagination and memories and the dreams of his ancestors. The only child it would seem he’d ever know.

      He could imagine that sweet moment already: his Natchez demonstrating what a magnificent boat she was, even in her seventieth decade. He caressed the wheel in front of him, stroking it like a lover, laying his hand there and letting it sink gently into the wood, merging his being with the boat. Part of me. Always part of me …

      It was a beautiful day. There would be beautiful nights to come, as well, with a nearly full boat, the steam up in the boilers, and the paddle wheel lashing the brown water of the river as they moved upriver. Soon. Very soon. Eleanor, I’m afraid I’m leaving you again, if you’re still out there. And this time I don’t know if I’ll be back.

      Wilbur shook his head at the thought and scowled. His exile on the Natchez was only bearable when they were on the river with the paddle wheel thrashing the water. Soon …

      The rest of the time … well, that was hardly worth thinking about.