Flame & Steel
What follows is Chapter Eleven of an unpublished novel called Flame & Steel. The story is set during the American Civil War, and in the aftermath. All of the characters in this chapter have been previously introduced. Here is a rundown/recap.
Stephen Mallory is the Confederacy’s Secretary of the Navy, a Florida man who grew up selling rum to pirates in his mother’s Key West boarding house. Prior to secession, he was the Secretary of the Navy for the United States. Angela, as we have seen, is his highly spirited Cuban wife. We have also learned that Mallory is a voracious reader despite what we would now call dyslexia. Here, Mallory first meets Lieutenant John Taylor Wood, a prominent character throughout this story who we have encountered on several previous occasions.
Gideon Welles is a New England newspaperman, a political appointee who is now the Union’s Secretary of the Navy. He feels completely out of his element in this job, but nonetheless is determined to do the best that he can. Gustavus Fox, the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, is Welles’s true ally and an indispensible agent in the intrigues of the Federal Government. Cornelius Bushnell and Cornelius Delamater, two characters who we have met before briefly, are an odd pairing of capitalists in the incipient military/industrial complex. And, of course, we all are familiar with Abraham Lincoln.
Erasmus and Annabel are the two central characters of this tale from beginning to end. Erasmus is an erstwhile slave child whose churlish father disappeared into the Dismal Swamp and whose mother was sold somewhere to the Deep South. Shortly afterward, Erasmus’s master — who was an abject failure at everything he attempted — unceremoniously departed, abandoning the plantation and thus leaving young Erasmus to live by his wits. Annabel, who is slightly older than Erasmus, is the daughter of an Irish dockyard whore who barely acknowledges her child’s existence. Annabel has an active imagination, having grown up hearing exotic stories from sailors siting on the steps outside her mother’s door. The two youngsters are best friends.
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