“Oh, hell, yes. I got a great head for remembering little ditties and such. I hear a tune, I got it”—Taylor snapped his fingers in the air—“like that.”
“Yes, well…” It was irritating that Taylor should think remembering and reproducing a “little ditty” by Mozart was the same as hearing and then playing some campfire song. “I fear it is a bit more than that, you know. Well, good night, Chief.”
Taylor pulled a cigar from his pocket, clamped it in his teeth. “Good night, Cap’n. We’ll have a full head of steam by sunup.”
“Very good, Chief.” Bowater walked to the forward end of the deckhouse, climbed the ladder to the boat deck. He stepped though the wheelhouse and into his cabin. The steam pipes that ran along the deck filled the cabin with glorious warmth, like stepping into a lover’s embrace.
Jacob was asleep below, and Bowater had given him permission to remain asleep and he was glad that he did. He wanted to be alone. He was in an irritable mood. His night ashore had been ruined, and all his telling himself that he was glad to introduce his men to such finer things as classical music was not enough to make him believe it.
Hieronymus Taylor…son of a bitch white trash peckerwood… The chief never failed to irritate him, and then it irritated him further that he let Taylor irritate him, until he had irritation built upon irritation.
It was irritating that Taylor was so damned good at his work. Taylor had a sense for engines that was profound, almost mystical. Every steamer on which Bowater sailed had always had a myriad of problems with the engines. But nothing beyond the most minor of difficulties ever seemed to take place aboard the Cape Fear. Bowater had watched Taylor once fix the small steam engine that drove the steering gear—an engine that had squealed its way to what seemed an untimely death—with just a twist of a wrench and a feather touch of a screwdriver. It was like a laying on of hands. It was spooky.
Samuel unbuttoned his coat and hung it on a hanger, smoothed it out, hung the hanger on a rod. He pulled his braces off his shoulders and took off his shirt and hung it up with equal care.
From the galley below he heard a screeching sound, like straining metal or a cat in great pain. He stopped, cocked his ear, frowned.
The sound again, but less discordant, and he realized it was Taylor’s violin. He was tuning his violin in the galley below.
Is he intending to play at this damned time of night?
Bowater stood in that spot and listened and did not know what to do. He wanted to tell Taylor to quit it, that he did not care to hear his caterwauling when he was going to bed, that he did not care to hear the damned “Bonnie Blue Flag” at that hour, or any. But he did not want Taylor to know he had irritated him.
Then the screeching stopped and there came up through the deck a series of notes that were not “Dixie” or “Roll the Old Chariot Along” but rather Mozart. Mozart’s Quintet in G Minor.
Bowater got down on his hands and knees, held his ear an inch above the deck. Taylor was playing the piece flawlessly, remembering note for note what he had heard two hours before. He went through the first movement, the notes rising and falling with the very passion the old master had infused into them. He did not miss a one. He made the first violin of the Norfolk and Elizabeth City Quintet sound like a hack in a minstrel show.
For ten minutes Bowater remained in his supplicant position, listening to the music coming up through the deck, nodding his head to the rhythm, mouthing the melody as it floated through the deck. He listened to Taylor breeze effortlessly over sections of which, he recalled, the first violin had made a hash. He listened to the chief engineer’s beautiful interpretation of that classic work.
Devil take that peckerwood son of a bitch… Bowater thought, despite himself. Now he was more annoyed than ever.
Hieronymus Taylor sat on Johnny St. Laurent’s stool, in the warmth of the galley, eyes closed, and let his fingers dance over the neck of his violin, let the music flow from his head, down his arm, up the bow, to be coaxed at last out of the body of the instrument.
He hummed softly as he played the Quintet in G Minor. He had not heard it for two years at least before that night, was not sure he could execute it perfectly, but his fingers and his bowing arm knew what to do, once he stopped thinking and just let them go.
The first violin of the Norfolk and Elizabeth City Quintet had not been so very bad, though he had no genuine feel for the music. Still, Taylor could sense Bowater tightening every time the poor bastard made a hash of it. From the corner of his eye he saw the captain shake his head in disgust with each minor imperfection.
Goddamned blueblood, stick-up-his-ass patrician son of a bitch… Taylor thought.
Wendy Atkins…son of a bitch… he thought.
He heard the music go awry as his concentration drifted, and he refocused on Mozart. Not one damned thing good enough for that bastard… Bowater made him feel insignificant, a poor relation, the hired man who lives in the barn. It irritated him and it irritated him that he allowed it to irritate him.
He crept up on the section where the first violin had made a mess of the tempo. He stood, climbed up on an apple crate so that his instrument would be as close to the sole of the captain’s cabin as it could get, played the part with a perfection of timing, as loud as he could.
He heard the galley door open, felt a blast of cold wind sweep away the steam heat. He looked over, expected to see a furious Samuel Bowater. Instead, he saw Ruffin Tanner, framed in the door, lit by the soft light of the single lantern burning in the galley. Tanner stepped in, shut the door behind him, leaned with folded arms against the door.
Taylor looked away, closed his eyes, finished the movement, but the mood was broken with Tanner there, and he felt a bit foolish, having been caught standing on top of the crate.
He bowed the last note, opened his eyes, let the bow fall to his side, and took the violin from his chin. He turned and regarded the sailor, who was patiently waiting for him to finish. He found Tanner gruff, often unpleasant, highly competent at his job. Tanner was the kind of man he liked, a kindred irascible bastard.
“That there,” Taylor said, hopping down from his crate, “is what you call ‘classical music.’”
“That a fact? Reckon I’d call it a lot of goddamned noise for seven bells in the evenin watch.”
“Would you, now?” Tanner’s attitude was something different for the sailor. Aggressive. He wondered if he was going to have to whop Tanner’s ass. Wondered if he could. It would be a good fight.
“Well, lucky for you, you done broke the mood, you know what I mean?” Taylor laid the violin and bow in the case. “You done broke my creative spell.” He snapped the case shut, set the instrument well out of the way on the galley counter. Turned, faced Tanner, arms folded the way the sailor’s were. “I don’t much appreciate that.”
“No? Well, I don’t much appreciate bein kept awake by some white trash peckerwood standin on an apple crate like some kinda dumb ass.”
“‘Dumb ass,’ you say?” Taylor let his arms drop to his sides, shook them out. Didn’t know what was up Tanner’s behind, but he reckoned it was time to beat it out of him. “You want to do somethin about this problem of yours?”
Tanner nodded. He unbuttoned the top few buttons of his heavy overcoat, reached a hand in. Taylor braced for what would come out of there—a knife, a blackjack, a gun.
But it was a bottle, a flask-style bottle more than half full of a liquid that looked very much like whiskey. “Long as your goddamned fiddle’s put away, guess I can give you something, might bring back that ‘creative spirit’ you s’all fired worried about.”
Tanner pulled the cork from the bottle, took a deep pull, wiped the neck on his coat, and handed it to Taylor. Taylor tipped the bottle back. Whiskey. Quite good whiskey, in fact. “Yup. Yup. I hear that ol’ muse singin again.”