Song Inspired Oneshots

Slow Movin'

| Original - No song

| Slow Movin'

 The morning air was crisp, a thin layer of fog hanging over the water. The sun highlighted the tips of the trees, making the leaves appear as if they were glowing. The flow of the Mississippi was steady, and the water was seemingly as calm as if it were a lake instead of a river. Though the experienced sailors that traveled along the Mississippi knew that what the murky waters hide was a strong current that carried thousands of boats down to New Orleans.

Speaking of boats, the harbor that sat on the edge of both the Mississippi and Memphis was buzzing with activity. Large steamboats were being packed with people who wanted an early morning passage down the river. Steamboats were coming up the river too, pulling behind them empty flatboats back to their starting places upstream. The steam that poured out of their tall chimneys painted the orange sherbert sky with cream clouds until it disappeared back into the humid air.

The harbor was filled with smaller ports too, crews of men loading cargo onto the flatboats tied to the wood poles on the docks. The cargo ranged from bags of flour and grain to even horses and cows needing to go downstream. Men were shouting, chickens were clucking and produce was rolling in its boxes. Even at dawn the Memphis harbor was full of life, people running about trying to get ready to sail down the river in time.

On the far end of the harbor, right at the mouth of the wolf river, was a lonely dock hidden by reeds and a stray willow tree. A medium-sized flatboat was tied to one of the poles, the rope getting caught on the reeds as the current tried to pull it away. A skinny dirt trail led away from the dock to the rest of the port, a trail that a young man was carrying a box of maize corn to the dock. Stopping at the edge of the wooden rickety boards, he haphazardly dropped the box at his feet and wiped the nonexistent sweat from his brow.

His name was Arthur Smith, and with one look at Arthur you could tell he had barely worked a day in his life. In fact, the hardest work he has ever done was walk to the other side of the tree when the sun shone on his sleeping face. The son of a wealthy plantation owner, his family suffered a great loss of both profits and a workforce, causing his father to force him to work. Which is why he was here, agreeing to be part of a flatboat crew to sail down the Mississippi. He wore his red cotton shirt (it was what his plantation grew), and a pair of cotton pants that seemed to have seen its first episode of being dirty, if the tiny bit of dust on the pant legs counted as being dirty.

"Is that the last of it?" That was one of his crewmates, a man named William-something from Pennsylvania who knew more about books than anything else. A girl could do more things than him, a little pale skinny thing who was probably afraid of both the sun and the clouds. If Arthur hadn't seen William walking in broad daylight to meet them down at the dock he'd be convinced the kid was a vampire.

Actually, Arthur's pretty sure he is a vampire. Most northerners are.

"Yeah," picking up the box of corn, he carefully stepped onto the flatboat and left the box by the door. A pair of black hands quickly dragged the box into the boat where the cargo was going to be held, and Arthur could hear the sound of a wooden box being placed onto another wooden box. The hands belonged to Jam, a runaway slave who staked out in New York until the Civil War was over. He claims to have been part of many sailor crews in New York, though Arthur is certain that he's bluffing. Despite this, he knows a lot more about sailing than the rest of them.

"Let the ship go, will ya?" Arthur yelled back an affirmative and began to unhook the flatboat from the pole on the dock. Once he had finally gotten the rope off of the wood the boat immediately started to travel down the river, the current carrying it past the very end of the peninsula where the harbor was located. Just as they were about to bend around Joe Curtis Point, Jam emerged from inside the boat.