“Some crews used to pull their boats back upriver from Nawlins,” Kingsbury said. “Most sells their boats along with the freight.”
“Man like Ebenezer Zane there can make him a tidy profit from this trip,” Ovatt said. “Tell the boy what you paid for this boat, Eb.”
The pilot called out, “Less’n a hundred dollars, Pennsylvania value. Listen, boys: let’s move ’er more to the center of the channel.”
“Up to Pittsburgh,” Kingsbury said as he put his shoulders into the oar and Ovatt crawled forward to resume control of the bow rudder, “a flatboat like this’un costed Ebenezer a dollar and a half for each foot. Some hunnerd dollars, since’t this boat’s just a little longer’n sixty-some feet.”
“And she’ll sell for ten times that much we get on down to Norleans,” Zane boasted. “Fifteen dollar a foot or more for the lumber. They hongry for good hardwood down there.” He slapped his hand on the gunnel beside his rudder. “Close-grained poplar. None better, Titus Bass.”
“Damn, but she’s fogging up, Ebenezer!” Reuben Root growled from the port side of the craft.
“Soup gets up much more,” Zane flung his voice the length of the boat, “get huffing on that horn, Heman.”
For several minutes Titus watched the fog coagulate on the brown surface of the Ohio, obscuring most of the banks on either side. Growing more and more worried, he finally turned to peer back at the bushy-headed pilot. Wisps of fog-mist clung to the wild sprigs of Zane’s hair as if it were smoldering. Ebenezer suddenly threw all his weight against his long-tailed rudder, giving the flatboat an ungainly lurch.
Frightened, Titus turned back around, peering forward, his face gone as pale as the grain of newly hewn oak. “H-how’s he know where to point this boat?”
Kingsbury started to grin, concentrating his squint on the bow piercing the wisps of fog, as he replied, “Don’t you worry, boy. Ebenezer Zane knows this river, and he can push through soup better’n most men. Feels his way.”
“Feels … feels his way?”
“Watches for signs on the bank when he can see ’em, but mostly he keeps his eye on the water. Water out in the middle of the channel runs different than the water close to either of them banks. ’Sides,” Kingsbury explained, “if he gets into real bad trouble, he’ll call me to take over up there on the gouger for Ovatt.”
“Gouger?”
“That front rudder,” Hames explained, his jaw working hard. He was so skinny, his sagging jowls appeared ready to topple him. “He knows I’m about the best gouger on the river. Working together, Zane and me, we could turn this here sixty-foot boat around on a ha’penny ’thout no trouble we get in a real fix. And if Ebenezer don’t feel good about making it down a certain stretch, then he’ll sing out and we’ll all put ’er to one shore or t’other,”
The rain came into his face, gentle at first, but cold. Then as it began to lance down harder, the fog began to dissipate, clinging only in long, thick patches strung along either shoreline, puffed back among the trees and brush that huddled just above the water.
“Heave back, Ovatt!” Zane bellowed.
Heman raised his gouger out of the water and secured a loop of rope over the end of the rudder to secure it just above the surface of the river. Turning back to the other three boatmen, he grinned as he began to sing loudly.
For the answering chorus Zane, Root, and Kingsbury joined in: “Pull away! Pull away now!”
“Tomorrow you’ll be in Louisville,” Kingsbury explained as the other three went on singing their chantey in the pelting cold rain. He snugged his shapeless hat down on his head as Titus scooted closer to a stack of crates to escape most of the driving rain. “We’ll get you your first taste of likker, Titus Bass. You ever drank afore?”
“Never,” he answered, pulling his oiled leather jerkin up around his cold ears, wishing he had brought himself a warm hat. Perhaps one of those ones his mother knitted for her entire brood. “My pap always had likker around, and he drank it come a wedding or a funeral or a reason for all the menfolk to say serious words about something.”
“Never just for the fun of it?”
He looked at Kingsbury as if he were crazed. “Why, no—I never saw a man take a drink of likker just for the fun of it.”
“Allays had to be a reason?”
“Yep. An’ he said I’d get my first drink when I was finished with my schooling and joined him on the farm.”
“I see,” Kingsbury replied. “Didn’t finish your school neither, did you?”
“Nope.”
“An’ you sure as hell ain’t joined him to work the farm, have you, now?”
“Nope.”
“Way I see it, you ain’t done nothing your pappy told you to do—so it don’t make no sense to me for you to go drink the way your pappy told you to.”
Inside him there was a sudden leap of freedom, almost like a fluttering of wings. “We gonna get us a drink of likker when we get to this here Louisville?”
“Get us
Root cried out, “We’ll damn well drink that river town dry if they ain’t careful. And we’ll get our honey- daubers wet too!”
“Just for good measure!” Ovatt joined in.
“You boys don’t go spending everything I give you to last the whole trip, now,” Zane cautioned. “There’s still a hell of a lot of river left after Louisville.”
“Natchez!” Ovatt sang out wistfully. “Sweet, sweet Natchez!”
“Norlins is the place! By damned, I’ll wait to have my spree come Norlins!” Root cried out exuberantly.
Kingsbury leaned forward, lowering his head toward the youth, both of his arms wrapped along the shaft of his oar. “You ever had you a woman, Titus Bass?”
“S-sure I have. Had me a special girl.”
“An’ you run off, leaving her behind?”
He gazed down at the deck slick with rain. “She wanted to get married up to me right off.”
“But you had you other things to do, right?”
“S’pose you might say.”
“Damn right, Titus Bass,” Ebenezer Zane roared. “Lots of gals out there in the world, many of ’em ready to climb the hump of a likely young lad such as yourself.”
“You had you that special gal of yours?” Kingsbury pursued.
His head bobbed. How eager he was to be a man among these men. “More’n once.”
“Whoooeee!” Kingsbury exclaimed. “Then you’re ready for a real man-thumpin’ woman, Titus Bass!”
“I … I don’t—”
“Not that young gal of your’n back where you run off from,” Kingsbury interrupted. “We’re talking about getting you a real, live, honest-to-goodness, fleshed-out woman who’ll just love to take you under her arm and teach you all she can teach you.”
“T-teach me?”
“’Bout getting your stinger wet, Titus Bass,” Zane added.
Kingsbury leaned forward and slapped the youngster on the shoulder. “I’ll even put up the price of getting you diddled!”
Ovatt asked, “Before or after you get him drunk, Hames?”
