Fevre Dream Page 0,31

of gold. I'll learn you. What say you come on up tomorrow during the day, at the start of my watch?"

"That may be fine for Captain Marsh," York said, "but I prefer to begin immediately."

Framm looked around. "Hell," he said. "Can't you see? It's night. Been learning Jody for near a year now, and it's only been a month I been lettin' him steer by night. Running at night ain't never easy. No." His tone was firm. "I'll learn you by day first, when a man can see where's he runnin' to."

"I will learn by night. I keep strange hours, Mister Framm. But you need not worry, I have excellent night vision, better than yours, I suspect."

The pilot unfolded his long legs, stood up, and stalked over and took the wheel. "Go below, Jody," he said to his cub. When the youth had gone, Framm said, "Ain't no man sees good enough to run a bad stretch of river in the dark," He stood with his back to them, intent on the black starlit waters ahead. Far up the river they could see the distant lights of another steamer. "Tonight is a good clear night, no clouds to speak of, a half decent moon, good stage on the river. Look at that water out there. Like black glass. Look at the banks. Real easy to see where they're at, ain't it?"

"Yes," said York. Marsh, smiling, said nothing.

"Well," said Framm, "it ain't always like that. Sometimes there ain't no moon, sometimes there's clouds covering everything. Gets awful black then. Gets so a man can't see much of nothin'. The banks pull back so you can't see where they are, and if you don't know what you're doin' you can steer right into 'em. Other times you get shadows that hulk up like they were solid land, and you got to know they ain't, otherwise you'll spend half the night steerin' away from things that ain't really there. How do you suppose a pilot knows such things, Cap'n York?" Framm gave him no chance to reply. He tapped his temple. "By memory is how. By seeing the dern river by day and rememberin' it, all of it, every bend and every house along the shore, every woodyard, where it runs deep and where it's shallow, where you got to cross. You pilot a steamer with what you know, Cap'n York, not with what you see. But you got to see before you can know, and you can't see good enough by night."

"That's the truth, Joshua," Abner Marsh affirmed, putting a hand up on York's shoulder.

York said quietly, "The boat up ahead of us is a side-wheeler, with what appears to be an ornate K between her chimneys, and a pilot house with a domed roof. Right now she's passing a woodyard. There's an old rotten wharf there, and a colored man is sitting on the end of it, looking out at the river."

Marsh let go of York's shoulder and moved to the window, squinting. The other boat was a long way ahead. He could make out that she was a side-wheeler right enough, but the device between her chimneys... the chimneys were black against a black sky, he could barely see them, and then only because of the sparks flying from them. "Damn," he said.

Framm glanced around at York with surprise in his eyes. "I can't make out half that stuff myself," he said, "but I do believe you're right." A few moments later the Fevre Dream steamed past the wood yard, and there was the old colored man, just like York had described. "He's smokin' a pipe," Framm said, grinning. "You left that out."

"Sorry," Joshua York said.

"Well," said Framm thoughtfully, "well." He chewed on his pipe, his eyes on the river ahead. "You surely do have good night eyes, I'll give you that. But I'm still not sure. It ain't hard to see a woodyard up ahead on a clear night. Seein' an old darkie is a mite harder, with the way they blend in and all, but still, that's one thing, and the river is another. There's lots of little things a pilot has got to see that your cabin passenger would never notice a-tall. The look of the water when a snag or a sawyer is hidin' underneath it. Old dead trees that'll tell you the stage of the river a hundred miles further on. The way to tell a bluff reef from a wind reef. You got to