As if reading my mind, he said solemnly, “I will stop this haunting, Mr. Sheridan.”
“I hope so, Mr. Boyer. For both our sakes.” I glanced back at him. “I really hope you do.”
I was ashamed of the state of my cabin. A man like Joseph probably slept on a velvet, four-poster bed. Yet my meager bunk wasn’t made, the wash basin was almost empty, and my copy of A School Compendium of Natural and Experimental Philosophy lay in a pile of loose papers on the bureau.
But I didn’t have time to dwell on—or apologize for—my housekeeping skills, for right then a whistle pierced the cabin. It was the final call for the crew to board.
The race was about to begin.
I stripped out of my coveralls in moments, and once I had fresh pants on and my arms in sleeves, I threw a hard glance at Joseph. “You. Stay. Here.” Then I snagged my uniform coat and bolted from the cabin. By the time I hit the Main Deck three floors below, rocketing past the firemen and enormous sacks of coal, I had my shirt buttoned and my coat pulled on.
I paused only once—to throw a glance up to the very top of the ship. To where Cassidy Cochran stood in the glass-domed pilothouse, sunlit and beautiful. Her spyglass was to her eye, her posture straight. My heart warmed; my lips twisted up.
Fastest team on the Mississippi. That was us—and we were about to prove it. Together.
I kicked back into a run and finally burst into the engine room, and the thunder of the moment crashed into me full force. We were about to race. The next eight hours of my life would be absolute and total hell—whether Cassidy and I were a team or not.
Murry, stationed at the engine on the right, looked up when I barreled in, and when his scorched face turned to me, he bellowed, “Start the left paddle! Now, Striker, now!”
So I did. But I barely had the engine valves open, the steam bursting from the boilers to set the pistons turning—which then got the paddles going—before the distant boom of a cannon signaled the race had begun.
Then the firemen began to sing. But the shanty’s rhythm didn’t match the increasing thwump-thwump-thwump of the paddles, and nothing matched the clanging of the command bells.
Never in my apprenticeship had I heard such a discordant jangle come from the bells beside each engine. They connected to the pilothouse, and such a battle of bells could only mean a lot of tricky turns and deft maneuverings at the steering wheel.
As engineers, we had to get both paddles moving at exactly the right—though not always the same—speed to match whatever the pilot needed. Cassidy was our eyes, steering the Sadie Queen around curves, and we were her muscles, pushing and stopping and twisting through a river we couldn’t see.
And I could just imagine Cass up there, her eyes locked on the distant horizon. Her grip firm and sure on the wheel . . .
Focus! I ordered myself . . . but every three seconds a new thought of Cass would weasel in. . . . The way her breathing had turned to shallow gasps when we’d kissed. The way her waist felt when I’d grabbed—
FOCUS!
Thick and fast, the commands from the pilothouse rang one after another—stop, come ahead, back, and again to stop and back and come ahead full steam. I had no idea where we were, only that we weren’t at the pier anymore. Only that me and Cassidy really were one hell of a team.
And only that thinking of her made this a lot more bearable. It wasn’t miserable when I knew she was up there, waiting on me. . . .
“Club!” Murry screamed, and I dove for the wood shaft, thrusting the club into the enormous uprising piston arm that drove the paddle.
I bolted backward just as steam erupted. With a shriek like an angry bull the engine moved to maximum speed.
Time blended into a myriad of bells and levers, steam bellowing and explosive exhaust, thumping strokes and distant singing. Hours or maybe only minutes blurred past until suddenly all the bells ceased ringing save one.
It was the tiniest of them all, placed next to a long brass tube. The speaking tube. I darted to it and pressed my ear flat against the mouth.
Cassidy’s voice snaked down. “Wide channel. Just past Carrollton. Keep her full steam.”
I tugged my own bell rope—it would ring a confirmation in the pilothouse—and then turned to Murry, whose chest heaved like a dying man. I winced. He was too old to be doing this.
“We’re to Carrollton,” I relayed. “We’re supposed to keep her full steam.”