The Crescent Spy (16 page)

Yet there was no longer any heat in her words, and Josephine could tell she’d already softened. Soon, Claire would send a message of regret to Herr Maier so she could spend the night with the Colonel. And would that be such a bad thing? The Colonel may have been a scoundrel, but he did care, in his way. Maybe Josephine could explain the situation with the St. Paul newspaper, and together she and the Colonel could figure a way to get her mother off
Cairo Red
and onto a better class of boat.

“Then you don’t need money?” Josephine asked.

“Not at all.” He reached into his pocket and jingled some coins, although it was notable that he didn’t remove them. No gold. Most likely a few pennies and half dimes. “But I was wondering . . .” He licked his lips.

“Let me guess,” Josephine said, “you don’t need us to give you money, you just need to
borrow
it for a few hours.”

“I was wondering if you still have the lacquer box.”

Her eyebrows lifted in surprise. “You want it back? To sell?”

“It’s yours. It was a gift. But do you have it?”

“Of course she does,” Claire said. She examined herself one last time in the mirror, then rose. “Josie isn’t like you, she holds on to her valuable possessions.”

“May I see it?” he asked Josephine.

“No. I don’t trust you.” Josephine pushed him toward the door. “Now get out. If they haven’t thrown you overboard for cheating, we’ll talk after Mama’s show.”

When he was gone, mother and daughter looked at each other and sighed.

“Can you imagine?” Claire said. “We haven’t seen him for a month of Sundays, and he shows up now.”

“But what do we do about it?” Josephine asked.

“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to let him stay for a night or two,” Claire said. “But you probably guessed I’d say that.”

“I did.”

“Do you think it’s a mistake?”

“Who can tell? He won’t stay, that’s for dead certain, but does that matter? He’s no worse than Herr Maier.”

“I’m not so sure about that. Herr Maier isn’t flat broke.” Claire winced. “I’ll have to put Maier off somehow. It’s fortunate he didn’t come up while the Colonel was here. There might have been a duel.”

“Oh, come now,” Josephine said. “Do you really think the Colonel
is brave enough for dueling?”

“No, probably not.” Again, Claire sighed.

They went downstairs. They’d come up the Ohio, having picked up a number of Kentuckians on their way, and the saloon was packed with smoking, gambling, hard-drinking men. It was a mean, cussing crowd, and Josephine endured pinches and lewd offers before she got herself seated at the bar, where the bartender threatened to bash in the head of anyone who bothered her.

When she got settled, she saw that the Colonel had already insinuated himself into a game of faro. Off to ride the tiger again, as they called it. Tonight looked particularly dangerous. If he started to lose, he’d be broke in a hurry. If he started to win, his opponents seemed like the sort who would carve him up with bowie knives. He started off strong, and expressions darkened around the table.

She was so intent on the game that she didn’t immediately notice that the bar was vibrating strangely. It was only when a metallic screech penetrated the wooden wall to her side over the shouting, laughing men in the saloon that she realized that something had gone wrong.

That noise was coming from the boilers.

J
osephine shot to her feet at the sound of the screeching boilers.

Shouts reached her ear, and she glanced out the doors, which had been opened on either side of the saloon to allow a breeze to pass through. Men came running out of the boiler room, eyes white and bulging through faces darkened with soot. They hurled themselves over the railing and into the river.

If there had been any doubt, that eliminated it. The aging, poorly tended boilers of
Cairo Red
were about to blow. The groaning must be a bulging boilerplate, and attempts to let off steam had failed, perhaps due to a stuck or broken valve. The engineer and the firemen who fed wood into the boilers were fleeing for their lives.

Terror clarified her mind. Across the saloon, men argued, shouted across at each other, called for more drinks, laid down cards. Some form of recognition was dawning on a few faces, and these men had already turned to tug on the sleeves of their companions, or reach for the hands of the surprisingly large number of wives and mistresses in the room. There were even several children. Josephine only had moments before general panic set in, and then she’d be trapped inside as the mob rushed the doors to escape.

Josephine spotted her mother near the back doorway of the saloon. Claire and another of the dancers were sharing drinks with an older gentleman, laughing at some witticism. The Colonel sat at a table nearby, deep in his faro game, marking the casekeep that kept track of the cards that had been played.

She shoved her way through the crowd. When it didn’t part fast enough, she used her elbows. A shout sounded from her right, where others seemed to have recognized that disaster was imminent.

Josephine grabbed the surprised Colonel by the back of his collar and tried to haul him to his feet. His gambling mates guffawed, as if thinking she was a scorned lover, coming to take her revenge.

She shouted in his ear. “The boiler is going to blow! Get out!”

Others heard, and by now fear was spreading across the crowded floor. Dozens of people started jostling their way to the exits. Many were going out the sides, but this would place them near the boilers on the gunwale. She had to get out the back.

Without waiting to see if the Colonel would follow, she forced her way through the crowd, reaching her mother moments before the rear exit became clogged with screaming, brawling passengers and crew. Josephine grabbed her mother’s arm and dragged her outside to the aft deck.

“What is happening?” her mother cried.

“Get back! As far from the boilers as possible.”

Claire’s eyes went wide. “The boilers? My God!”

Smoke and cinders were roaring out the top of the stacks. The heat was so intense up there that it had caught the stacks on fire, burning all the partially combusted ash that had accumulated over the years. Josephine glanced down at the river, where more people were throwing themselves overboard. It was almost dark, and hard to spot the opposite shore, but it had to be at least two hundred feet away. Josephine could swim that distance, but her mother couldn’t.

“We have to get off the boat,” Josephine said. She eyed her mother’s dress, which had layers and layers of petticoats, most of which she would remove as she danced, until she was practically down to her stockings. Rhinestones and sequins weighed down the outer layer. “Get undressed. Hurry.”

The Colonel came out as the women started working each other’s clasps and loops. He glanced at the stacks, then turned a skeptical eye to Josephine. “Seems a lot of fuss for nothing. I really don’t think a stack fire is going to make the entire—”

He never finished his sentence.

A tremendous flash of light lit up the night sky. A boom and a concussion of air threw Josephine off her feet. She landed on her back, ears ringing, head cloudy. Barely conscious. A column of fire and debris shot skyward from the center of the boat. As she lay stunned, the debris began to rain down. The heavier pieces landed first: twisted pieces of steaming metal, giant, flaming beams of wood. This was followed by burning furniture, spears of broken wood, barrels, chunks of wood, and people. Many, many people. They fell broken and torn in pieces all around, on the boat and in the water. A bloody leg slapped wetly onto the deck near Josephine’s head, followed by the entire torso of a man. Then something—dear God!—that looked like a bloody doll but that she knew was not.

Josephine struggled to rise. She couldn’t stand and fell again. Her head was swimming. Her limbs were lead and wouldn’t do what she told them to do. The eerie silence in the wake of the explosion was replaced by the roar of fire and the screaming of those still living.

At last, she began to recover her wits and regained her feet. All around lay the dead and dying. They were burned, broken, scalded by boiling water, mangled and twisted. Dozens and dozens. The deck was on fire all around, and the entire center of the boat had turned into a mass of flames.

She found the Colonel, rising slowly to his feet with a stunned expression on his gaping face and blood streaming from both nostrils. And she found her mother, groaning, clutching her head. Her hair lay spread across a flaming piece of the paddle-wheel guard and was burning up on the end. Josephine struggled to pull her mother clear of the fire.

Cairo Red
was an inferno, with flames already shooting skyward even as the smaller bits of debris continued to rain down. The boat was listing. Water would be gushing into the hull. It would soon go down.

The Colonel grabbed Josephine and spun her around. His eyes were wide, his shirt wet from his bloody nose. “Where is the box?”

“Box?”

“The lacquer box? Where the devil did you put it?”

“We’re going down. Help me get Mama out of her dress.”

“Where is it?”

“Damn the box. We’re going down.”

He shook her like a terrier with a rat. “Tell me!”

“Behind my cot.”

He turned and ran off toward the stairs that led up to the promenade. The fire was spreading rapidly along the upper levels, and as she looked after him in dumbfounded amazement, she figured she had seen the last of him. The fool had survived the explosion only to be burned to death.

She turned and struggled to get her mother out of the dress. The clasps, hooks, and loops that had been so easy to unfasten moments earlier were now wet from the water sloshing over the deck as the boat listed onto its side. Josephine’s fingers were numb, as if they’d been struck by a hammer. All around, people screamed and struggled. Many were dead, others horrifically wounded and suffering. Some threw themselves into the water, or were flailing and drowning in the river, their stricken faces illuminated by the burning barrels, furniture, and chunks of decking that floated downstream with the general conflagration.

Josephine got the outer dress off her mother. After that, the rest of the layers came off quickly until the woman was down to her undergarments. Josephine started on her own clothes. Her mother was still woozy but seemed to be recovering. She looked up.

“Josie. What—”

“Mama, we have to swim for shore.” Josephine couldn’t get the clasp off at her neck. The dress was torn and the metal hook twisted. She kept struggling.

The deck heaved beneath them. The water was swirling all around now, and as she looked up and into the raging fire of the upper decks, she saw with horror that the remnants of the side-wheel, the heavy walking beam, and the saloon were already submerged. The remaining stack tilted toward them, still leaking smoke. It crashed onto the aft deck with a shudder. And then
Cairo Red
sank beneath them.

Josephine grabbed her mother by the hair as the rail snagged them and threatened to drag them to the bottom. Water sucked at her, tugging downward. She fought against it, got her mother to the surface, sputtering. Josephine hooked a hand under her mother’s chin and kicked her way toward shore.

Josephine had grown up a river rat, with no fear of the water. She’d learned to swim so young that she couldn’t ever remember not knowing. She’d long since stopped diving overboard in her underclothes as she’d done as a child, but she hadn’t forgotten how to swim.

But her confidence quickly faded. Her mother was thrashing in terror; Josephine’s own clothes were waterlogged and tugging her down. She struggled to keep both of their heads above water. There was no way she’d make it all the way to shore. A big chunk of decking floated by, and she grabbed for it. But there was a man fighting for it, too, one of his arms twisted and mangled. He couldn’t reach the planking, but he did get his free arm hooked around Josephine’s neck. He tried to climb on her back.

She went under, struggling and kicking to get away from his desperate lunges. When she’d come up and fought herself free, she’d lost her mother. Crying out, still fending off the wounded man, she looked about. A large chunk of the burning upper deck of
Cairo Red
was still floating to one side, and it cast the river in light, illuminating the dead and dying. Josephine spotted her mother, bobbing along, still flailing.

“Mama!”

Josephine swam after her. She fought clear of another bit of flaming debris, two more injured, screaming people who tried to grab her, and then was logjammed behind several floating barrels. By the time she got around them, her mother had disappeared.

“Mama!” Panic was spreading in Josephine’s breast. “Mama!”

Her voice drowned in the screams of other survivors. She swam around, calling, begging for help from any who seemed to be swimming uninjured toward the shore. Twice more she fought off screaming, frightened survivors. She was too exhausted from her own struggles to help and still desperate to find her mother. When she could swim no more, she clawed her way to shore and hauled herself through the mud to throw herself feebly onto the bank. The last burning wreckage drifted downriver and out of sight. From up and down the riverbank came the cries of the wounded, people hollering for help or shouting out for loved ones.

Josephine fought off her exhaustion and climbed to her feet. She waded into the shallow water near the bank and splashed downriver, calling for her mother. There were dozens of survivors all along the bank. None of them were her mother. Josephine continued, ignoring pleas for help in her desperation. About an hour later, the Colonel must have heard her voice, because he was calling to her from a dry, grassy bank. She pushed through the darkness until she found him. He did not have Claire. He hadn’t seen her.

But of course he
had
rescued his precious Oriental box. He’d even managed to haul it to shore in a rapidly emptied cask of tobacco, so it wasn’t even wet. He tried to take Josephine in his arms and comfort her, but she beat on his chest, uttering every riverboat oath she’d ever heard, until he relented and let her go.

“Maybe she . . . ,” he began. “She might have . . . somewhere on the riverbank. We’ll keep looking.”

“She didn’t make it! You let her die!”

“It was an accident. Nobody could have known it.” He sounded shaken. “Claire!” he shouted into the darkness, as if that would help. Then, to Josephine. “We can keep looking.”

“I’ll keep looking. You stay here. I want nothing to do with you. Do you understand? I never want to see you again.”

“I’m so sorry.” He reached out for her.

“Leave me alone.”

“Here, take this at least. Please.” He had reached for her to shove the Oriental box into her hands.

“I don’t want your confounded box, I want my Mama back.”

“Please, keep it. Take it with you. It’s very valuable.”

He turned and started shouting for Claire again. This only made her more upset, so she set off again downstream and left him alone in the dark. Somehow, she kept the lacquer box, instead of hurling it into the river, as was her first inclination. She kept searching throughout the night.

When daylight came, Josephine was exhausted, hungry, and broken in spirit. In her heart, she knew that her mother had drowned in the river, but she couldn’t stop looking. She came across a man who had taken in two children who’d lost their parents, and when a woman came staggering out of the brush, Josephine and the other two adults decided to round up survivors instead of waiting helplessly. They trudged through the swamps and muddy flats along the riverbank, fighting clouds of mosquitoes as they gradually worked their way upriver.

By the time the first boats began taking in survivors, Josephine and her companions had gathered over ninety souls. Reading later about
Cairo Red
, she would learn that only 147 people had been rescued after the disaster. The number of dead and missing was unknown, but estimated at four hundred. Among those taken that day were the captain, the owner of the boat, and nearly all of the musicians and dancers.

Also among the missing was Claire de Layerre. Her body was never found.