Wild-eyed dogs eyed him, put their noses to the air, testing for scent of the man—be he friend or danger—then slunk back into the shadows, off down an alleyway, then stopped and turned to find Titus turning into the same dark shadows of that alley before those curs loped away at a greater hurry.
Into the first of Isaac’s favorite watering holes he went, stopping just inside the doorway to rake his eyes over those crumpled over the tables, collapsed in the corners, stretched out atop crude benches, their arms and legs akimbo as only the besotted can sleep. Turning to the long bar where puddles of ale and whiskey lay unattended, he nudged the tender, asleep on a curled arm.
“Whatta ye want?” the man growled without raising his head.
“Looking for a friend,” Titus explained, anxious as he peered into that face swollen with fatigue and interrupted sleep. “Wears a red scarf over his head. A silver earring.”
The head came up slowly. “No, nobody like that here.”
“Was he? Last night.”
The barman waved him away, his head sinking back to his arm pillow. “Early. Gone early. Some others throwed him out. You want a drink? If not—be off.”
“No, just tell me why he was throwed—”
“Shaddup, now. You be gone an’ let a man have his sleep.”
“He say where he—”
“That one’s lucky they didn’t choose to cut his throat—that Injun game of his!”
“Where—”
“Get out before I cut your liver out me own self!”
As he turned, Titus saw several of the patrons stirring restlessly, but not a one awoke. The entire room settled back into a languorous stupor, the fire crumbling to coals in the stone fireplace.
The dogs scattered from the doorway as he hurried out, turning up the back way, feeling more desperate than ever before the dank closeness of these low-roofed shanties and whores’ cribs squeezing in on that narrow, twisting passage he followed to the next of Washburn’s favored haunts along the wharf.
It was much the same there, and at the next. In fact, Titus learned the trapper had visited every last one of those considered the worst of the river city’s watering troughs. In most grogshops he learned how Washburn had attempted his game of chance, his sleight of hand, and for it was good-naturedly thrown out on his ear. Told to be off and take his lumbering scheme some other place.
From there Bass backtracked to the hovel where Isaac’s prostitute plied her trade. Surprise crossed her face as she pulled back the heavy Russian canvas sheeting hung for a doorway.
“You got the wrong bed, don’t you, lover?” she said, her voice thick with interrupted sleep. She pointed. “Your bitch is three beds down.”
“I didn’t come for her.”
A crass smile crossed the woman’s lips as she turned aside, motioning him in, then dropped the door curtain back in place behind him. Without a word the young woman stepped over to the pallet and settled to her knees, pulling up the hem of her long nightshirt until it rested at her waist, her bony, boyish hipbones straining against her pale skin, the dark triangle a stark contrast.
“I knew you’d have to have me one of these days, lover.”
“No,” and he wagged his head. “You don’t understand.”
“It don’t matter,” she cooed, hiking the nightshirt on up her body, over her shoulders, and flinging it into the corner, then rising up on her knees to sway provocatively as she fondled a breast. “I won’t ever tell your bitch you had to come have some of the sweetest lovin’ you’d get on the river.”
“Please—I’m looking for Washburn.”
“Isaac? Don’t you worry, now—I don’t think he’ll be back soon,” she replied, cupping her hands beneath the other small breast. “He don’t have to know neither. C’mere an’ taste these an’ tell me they ain’t ripe and juicy.”
He licked his lips, trying to keep his eyes from straying below her neck. The way she moved, swayed, rocked her hips in slow, luring gyrations.
“When was he here? Early, late?”
“Middle of the night,” she said, her voice deepening. “He was getting crazy awready. C’mon, lover—you know you can’t leave me now.”
“He tell you where he was—”
“Shut your mouth and c’mere. You got me all worked up.”
“You don’t know nothing more?”
“Forget about Washburn, that crazy old man,” she snapped. “He stunk like nobody else I ever smelled.”
Suddenly he felt very, very sorry for her. More sorry for Isaac. “That crazy ol’ man thought the world of you. It’d kill him to think of you saying these things ’bout him.”
Hurriedly she got to her feet, padding over to Titus, looping her arms around him and saying, “What he don’t know won’t never hurt ’im.”
Gently pushing her bony shoulders away, he was reminded of Mincemeat. So sad was the memory that he sighed.
She tried to push his arms away and slip closer again. Rubbing her groin against his thigh. “This is all yours right now.”
“Go to bed.”
“That’s the whole idea, sugar boy.”
He shoved her backward, angry, hearing her snarl like some animal as he pushed aside the canvas flap and ducked into the low hallway that led to the door which would take him back to the narrow alley.
“I’ll kill you, you ever come back again!”
How he hoped her shriek would quickly disappear behind him, swallowed by the coming gray in dawn’s creeping presence. Feeling all the sadder, all the more remorse for Washburn that she was without the least shred of decency and loyalty, despite how she fed herself, kept that shabby roof over her head. There was shame, and then there was downright shameful.
Stopping outside in the rain for but a moment, he thought on his sweet quadroon, how it had been three or more nights since the last visit. Then he pried himself away, down Wharf Street and among the tortuous twists of the tree-lined pathway that led toward the docks themselves.
On and on he searched, failing to find Washburn in any of the grogshops, even the worst of the drinking dens. Yet time and again his questions aroused the smoldering anger of those who had been bested in Isaac’s game of chance, before the trapper had been soundly pummeled with fists and tossed out. But where Washburn had gone after every beating, more drunk and belligerent with every new stop, no one had the least interest in helping Titus discover.
Day was coming when he finally started for the grove—hoping the trapper had gone there to sleep it off. Past the last wharves where the side-wheelers tied up to off-load, where the keelboats bobbed at their moorings to take on loads for the upriver Indian trade. Not far beyond the last of the wooden pilings the river lapped against the gentle slope of the bank. Driftwood cluttered the sandy, muddy shore. Over and around what had at one time been dangerous sawyers or planters he trudged, his moccasins soaked.
Stopped, peered at the dark object against the muddy bank ahead. Not a snag—it bobbed half in, half out of the Mississippi … in the shape of a body.
Titus feared. Dared not believe. Refused to allow himself to hope as he inched closer. That faded red scarf tied round the man’s head. Mud-soaked now. Washburn floated facedown in the shallow, brown water where Bass collapsed to his knees.
Dragging Isaac into his lap, he rolled the trapper over, brushing mud from the bruised and swollen face: eyes, cheeks split, lips cracked and bleeding, whiskers crusted with river silt. Titus sensed his own tears begin to spill as he slapped the face—hoping for life, some flicker of movement.
For the longest time Titus sat there in that cold water, cradling Washburn to hrs breast, clutched the friend beneath his chin so close he could smell the stale, sickly stench of drink about the dead man. This place, the cold unforgiving lap of the river around him, and the reek of one spree too many thick in his nostrils all brought Bass to thinking on what must have been the trapper’s last minutes. Somehow limping down here after one beating too many. Coming here rather than the livery where Titus had spurned him. Perhaps Washburn stood in this very spot
