Page 11 of Blowing Off Steam

Indeed, when Tobias Fosburgh extricated himself from the gnarl of flailing limbs, he spied the two steamboat captains. Adjusting his wide-brimmed planter’s hat and tugging down his embroidered waistcoat, he sauntered casually over, no worse for the wear other than a slight cut on his cheekbone, which he vainly fingered.

“Why, just the men I wanted to see,” Tobias said in a rich Texas drawl that was probably all a put-on air.

Field said, “You have the same thought as me, sir. I was wondering if you were acquainted with any—”

“There’s the fellow who likes to fuck other men’s wives!” one of the brawling men bellowed.

Rushy, who must have thought the man meant him, immediately leapt into action. It would have been humorous the way Rushy hotfooted it toward the river like a long-distance somersault leaper. But Tobias Fosburgh must have thought the crowd wanted to throw him a necktie party, so he went like sixty after Rushy.

Field ran just for the hell of it at first, mainly since about ten highly soused, unknown individuals were bounding toward him, kicking up a storm of rats and the mangy dogs that hunted them. In his haste, he bypassed a gentlemanly looking fellow with a long, scraggly beard who peered incredulously at him and cried out.

“Thomas Field Trueworthy?”

Field kept running, and it wasn’t until he was nearly to the landing stage of the El Dorado that he realized the gentleman was Mark Hopkins, the merchant and visionary Field had been supposed to present with the steam engine sent from back East. The engine that was now laboring so smoothly in the engine room of the El Dorado.

So he ran even faster, leaping onto the main deck and tearing down the rail to unknot mooring lines.

“Ready about!” Field yelled to Cincinnatus in the engine room, as Rushy, already up in the pilothouse, furiously rang the signal bell.

CHAPTER FIVE

The next day, the El Dorado returned to Sacramento to load cargo and passengers.

After mooring upriver apiece to allow the rumpus to die down, they steamed back to discover a relatively serene town, seemingly filled with stern businessmen who wanted to accomplish trade, and many stunned and dazed miners who draped themselves over crates in various stages of convalescence. From his pilothouse, Rushy raised a glass to his eye to scan the wharf for signs of Brannan or that Hopkins gent that Field was hiding from, but those merchants must have just sent henchmen to do their business.

Tobias Fosburgh, attorney-at-law, didn’t seem inclined to stay on in Sacramento, though, and only disembarked long enough to return with a dozen carpetbags. He attempted to move into the best stateroom in the texas, which was set apart for the special use of dignitaries, and then the second-best stateroom, which Rushy had long ago given to Field as “the captain’s cabin.” Tobias settled for the third best, then pitched a whaling big fit after they had catted their anchor, claiming he was robbed and couldn’t pay them in advance, as they demanded of every passenger.

“If he was stuck up yesterday,” Field remarked, ragged out in a dandy cravat Rushy had tied for him, “why didn’t he notice the money missing when he paid his hotel bill just now?”

Rushy replied, “Given all the facts in this connection, I’d say he probably didn’t pay his hotel bill just now.”

Nearby, Tobias paced back and forth with agitation, declaring to another passenger, “I was bilked—chiseled out of my gold by a lowly prostitute who accosted me on the street! Yes, she gave me some sentimental story about how she had three scurvy children to feed, and when my back was turned she fleeced my pockets!”

“If that happened yesterday,” Field said calmly, “why is he only hollering about it now?’

They enjoyed jawing about the idiosyncrasies of others. It was one of their enjoyments in life. Rushy said, “Well, he did come back just now with those burly buffalo fellows to help us out. How’s that one greasy gent turning out as a fireman?”

“Well, he can throw wood into the firebox.” Field had to return to the engine room then and Rushy to the pilothouse to steer around a snag and a sandbar he knew was coming up.

Beneath the polite hubbub of the merchants and bankers on the hurricane deck and the less genteel roar of the prospectors, trollops, and Kanakas lower down on the main deck, Rushy only heard the soft chunking of the paddlewheels. Years of riverboating had trained him to listen to the sssoo, haah! ssooo, haah! of the slow steam engine, and the rising and falling sound of the paddle buckets. The loudest brawl could be taking place, complete with bodies bashing into his pilothouse, the most strident game of three-card monte between rural blades heading for the big city, and still Rushy’s expert ear listened for the slight variation in the wheels that occurred when the shining pistons approached the apex of their strokes, slowing down as they crossed center.

Field’s new engine, in particular, was a joy to listen to, but today Rushy’s mind was wandering. That kiss they’d shared yesterday in the brothel. Field had initiated it, and Rushy knew soaked from soused—Field wasn’t nearly intoxicated enough to mistake him for a girl. While Rushy did believe the part where Field had been carried away on a tide of lust, it wasn’t for a hooker. Field had wriggled his torso so sensuously against Rushy’s nude chest there could have been no mistaking the prodding of his firm erection against the small of Field’s back. And when Field had plastered his mouth to Rushy’s, it was Field who had snaked his tongue inside Rushy’s mouth, warm like an oyster. It was only when Rushy had dared to pinch his delightfully stiff nipple that Field had pulled away, seemingly confused and disoriented. Maybe he’d been smoking some of that opium that was popular in San Francisco—o-fuyung, the Celestials called it. Perhaps if Rushy obtained some, he could “confuse” the captain once more.

And Rushy knew he would attempt to approach the learned engineer again. Fucking hookers was temporary gratification, but this New York engineer had struck Rushy clean to the heart.

He muttered to himself as he steered around a twisting bend where willows stood unmoving in the heat. “It’s mighty little of this world’s goods I’ve got. I’m strong as a Dick horse, full of romancing and devilment. I’ve got to find some learned, satisfying outlet for my affections other than some gal who is smack and smooth out of brains.”

At first, Rushy had come to California to mine the easy gold, but two thousand dollars induced him to take the Chesapeake up to Sacramento. Back then, the only information he could get about the river was that Sacramento was “two or three hundred miles that way” while a fellow pointed. With only a sketch of the river to guide him, he figured he’d at least get closer to the source of gold. But he’d promptly stepped on a rattlesnake while attempting to mine, and another fifteen hundred dollars convinced him to become pilot of his first side-wheeler in 1851. Now, he knew every cutoff and island on the river better than any other helmsman, and it was becoming too easy. Rushy longed for the challenge of a rough, feisty, emotional relationship.

Normally this would have been a pleasant day, with kingfishers squeaking in ancient sloughs, salmon scooped up in the wheel buckets, slapping up against the hurricane deck with meaty plops. Rushy conversed with Field through the speaking trumpet, but his imagining of the sweaty, shirtless engineer only made him more miserable. He was very nearly considering taking his hefty erection from his pants and stroking it—something he often did while standing behind the pilot wheel on the straight, snag-free stretches of river—what the deckhands didn’t know before mopping his deck wouldn’t hurt them—but just as Rushy was passing the wreck of the John A. Sutter steamer, he spied a red rag tied to the branch of a cottonwood.

When not trying to set a record, Rushy often stopped at these brush landings. One could make an additional sum by picking up a load of asparagus or pears. So he tapped the big bell twice to signal Field and nosed the El Dorado over to the mass of brush and fruit tree parings dumped into the water that created the landing. But he saw only a lone miserable woman standing there, head covered in a scarf. Rushy’s stevedores clung to the rails, more pleased at the sight of a solitary woman than they would have been at twenty Celestial farmers waving potato sacks and abacuses.

“That there gal’s a peach,” Cincinnatus, the mate, declared.

“How can you tell?” Rushy said with irritation. Stopping for only one woman with two valises was a waste of time and fuel. “She’s got a scarf covering her head.”

Still, Rushy went down the few steps to the roof of the texas, where he bent over to view the woman better. It was difficult to see her with all the stevedores and hands clinging to her, playing tug-of-war with her valises for the honor of carrying them, but her nose did look wittily upturned, her mouth small and pouting. Her large crystalline-blue eyes were quizzical and intelligent when she looked upward for a brief moment, as though out of hundreds of people, she’d seen Rushy peering over the rail. And, although she clutched her shawl tightly about her head, when she moved to follow her valises, he could see her ample, sloping rump move enticingly beneath her brown silk skirts. Luckily, in California petticoats and crinolines were only worn for the most upper-drawer occasions, and Rushy watched the globes of her ass shimmy across the main deck until she was out of sight under the roof of the texas, no matter how far he strained over the rail.