Page 51 of Blowing Off Steam

“All right,” Callie lied.

She fixed on his broad shoulders as he waded back into the river. Diving under a flailing woman’s arm, he towed her back toward shore, and Calliope looked to the steamer. The El Dorado had ploughed into a cove on the opposite shore upriver, choked with willow roots and overhanging moss, flames already streaming from the engine room. The pilothouse was blown forward, a smokestack lay over the port paddle box, and the forward part of the hurricane deck hung like the brim of a slouch hat. Men ashore were already chopping a willow to make an impromptu landing stage for women, but injured passengers still aboard might burn to death.

Field helped three more passengers out of the river before they sighted the Cleopatra, never a more welcome sight than now. Steaming heroically, she was the loser of the race but the savior of the day. She anchored as close as was safe to the El Dorado and sent her firemen aboard to help put out the fire. Her skiff came to Calliope’s shore to take on any passengers who wished to continue to Sacramento, but in frustration, Field had already dove back into the water after stripping to the waist.

“It’s my boat, Callie. I can’t stay here and watch her burn. Don’t move,” he commanded before vanishing under the waves that buffeted timbers, crates, and already less commonly, body parts.

Calliope was horrified that he intended to swim all the way to the opposite shore while dodging all that floating detritus, but she could do nothing about it. She was acquainted with the Cleopatra helmsman, and she shoved aside a sobbing matron in order to board the skiff. “Leroy,” she said urgently. “Pilot Rushy Wakeman is still aboard that burning hulk. Every second we waste on these crybabies brings him one more second closer to death.”

Leroy, as a fellow river man, seemed to instantly understand, and he began hoisting passengers aboard with unconcern, nearly flinging them over the gunwales. Calliope even manned an oar herself, nudging aside the matron with her ass and over-correcting the small boat in her zeal to reach the El Dorado.

Indeed, Leroy was so responsive to her entreaty, they had nearly caught up with Field’s bobbing seal’s head by the time they reached the steamers. “What happened over there, anyway?” Leroy wanted to know.

“Soquel Haight is what!” Calliope snapped. She was so frightened, frazzled, and angry she did not care who heard her malign the river tycoon. “He doesn’t like that we’re starting our own People’s Line so he sent some midget to sabotage our boat!” The Cleopatra was rumored to be joining The Combination as well, but at the moment Calliope didn’t give a fuck. “That evildoing shit sack Soquel Haight—he wanted to get us to stop racing and wound up blowing up our floating palace instead!”

“I’ll tell Captain Cousins to be leery of Haight,” Leroy agreed.

“Spread the word to everyone! Soquel Haight is a shady businessman not to be trusted.”

Calliope was the first to be hoisted up the Cleopatra’s ladder, racing immediately to the other bow where she stripped down to her camisole and leaped heedlessly back into the water.

She only needed to swim the thirty-foot gap between boats, and she pulled herself to the El Dorado’s main deck by gripping the red-painted paddle box that wasn’t damaged. Firemen pumped river water into the engine room and the burning hold where animals still screamed, and sprayed a chemical from wheeled extinguishers directly into the flames. Calliope slipped in the slimy water, banging her shoulder painfully against the structure of the galley. Her galley that was so splintered into smithereens she could see pots blown so forcefully into bulkheads they were embedded in the wood planking, exploded watermelon rinds dripping from the ceiling, and—where was Maurice?

“Maurice! Maurice!” Calliope’s loudest bellow couldn’t be heard over the firemen shouting instructions, and she had to get above to the pilothouse to find Rushy. “Have you seen Rushy? Captain Wakeman?” All she got for her efforts were blank, sooty faces. No one had seen Rushy.

But a couple of firemen did yell at her to “get off the boat, missy!”

There was no way to use the interior stairs to the next deck—they were on fire. Calliope grabbed the sleeves of several firemen in succession, screaming, “The captain is still up in the pilothouse!” She was able to drag the last two firemen to the bow just as Maurice passed them by, clutching a white bundle of fabric.

“Miss Calliope!” Maurice shouted, pointing to where the forward part of the hurricane deck careened over like a waterfall, its railing splayed out like so many rotten teeth. Calliope shaded her eyes against the falling rain to see Field up there waving like all possessed, Cincinnatus next to him. And Rushy’s head was just visible as he clung to the shattered rail, blood dripping down his neck. “Captain Rushy needs to jump into this!”

Maurice displayed a linen tablecloth, and the firemen looked at each other skeptically. One of them went to round up more men while Calliope gripped the edge of the cloth and looked up.

“Is he all right?”

“Just his sprained arm,” Field shouted back down. “He took a mighty whopping ride when the pilothouse shot off the roof.”

The fireman returned with about five others, and they all gripped the edges of the linen.

“Jump, Rushy! Jump!” the firemen exhorted.

It was more of a roll that Rushy had to take then, and he nearly snagged on the crooked teeth of the railing. But he hugged his sprained arm close to his torso and rolled, his weight buoyed by the tightness of the tablecloth, and he only bounced his butt a couple of times against the deck.

Calliope carefully flung herself atop him, sprinkling his oily, bloody face with kisses. “Rushy, Rushy,” she purred over and over. The firemen raced off to spray more water and chemicals on the fire as Field shimmied down the broken rail like a monkey and fell into a pile of limbs next to them.

Rushy propped himself up on his good arm and smiled weakly. “That was some ride,” he agreed. “You need to go help the firemen.”

Field kissed Rushy dead on the mouth, sweetly and gently, licking the oil and blood from his full, sensuous lips. Maybe it took Rushy’s mind off the fact that his boat was rapidly disintegrating into a pile of blackened embers. Rushy kissed him back, sucking on Field’s mouth, uncaring that Cincinnatus stood over them with hands on hips.

When Calliope placed a hand on Rushy’s thigh to lean in and join the kiss, he inhaled a hiss and recoiled back.

“Oh, damn,” said Calliope. “Something’s wrong with his leg.”

They stood Rushy up, Calliope allowing the much taller Cincinnatus to sling one of the pilot’s arms over his shoulder, and headed gingerly toward the Cleopatra’s bow.

“The boiler shot clear into the middle of the river,” said Rushy.

“I think they’ll get the fire out,” said Calliope. “Right, Maurice?”