“Man overboard!”
Titus whirled at the frantic cry of alarm, finding a disheveled riverman perched high atop the huge stone mantel fronting the fireplace, weaving for a moment before he flung himself out into the crowd with abandon. A half-dozen others caught him, some grumbling their curses, many laughing, a few splashing ale on his head as they lowered him to the soppy floor below. There on his belly he thrashed with his legs and stroked with his arms disjointedly as if swimming, worming his way across the floor’s mud and muck in good fashion as more and more of the drinkers continued to splatter ale on the swimmer.
Titus found the noise almost ear shattering, unable to make out a single voice in the mad, raucous cacophony—
“Man overboard!”
Another cried out, causing Bass to whirl and look as he was swept along with his crew. This caller as well flung himself out from the wall into the crowd, which broke his fall, then dropped him without ceremony onto the muddy puncheon floor. But like a great beached carp, this one flopped over on his back and began to mimic something of a crude backstroke. Keeping his mouth open for the most part, the swimmer gaped like a fish as he inched himself along in that worming backstroke, swallowing most every drop of that ale bystanders sloshed upon him from above. Titus watched until the swimmer, his front completely soaked, disappeared among the tangle of legs in the milling throng.
“Three Monongahela rye for these fine boatmen,” Zane was ordering as Titus clattered to a halt within their fold, the pilot immediately drawing Bass to his side as he held up two fingers on the other hand, “and a spruce beer for me and my young friend here.”
Three men worked the bar, tapping kegs of ale with great bung starters and mallets, pouring out mugs of the Ohio River’s most famous rye. With a clatter and a slosh their five pewter mugs appeared before them. As the other four all grabbed for theirs, Ebenezer Zane took his in hand and picked up the last, unclaimed mug.
“Here, Titus Bass. I figure you ought’n go slow—this being your first night’s carouse as a man. That pissant rye these boys love to swill takes some getting used to. Me? I prefer my ale, with a foamy head or no. Potato squeezings or spruce drippings—it’s all the same to me. Drink up, lad!”
Titus watched the pilot throw back his chin and take a long and mighty draft, his hen-egg-sized Adam’s apple bobbing up and down between those muscular cords in his neck that throbbed beneath his thick beard.
Taking the mug from his lips, Zane dragged a forearm across his hairy face and whirled on the barman. “Another of that fine ale, my good man!”
When he had his second and had turned back to his crew, the pilot leaned in to Titus, saying, “Now it’s your turn. Drink the first one fast like I, boy. And the second you can savor the taste.”
“Swaller? Swaller it all … like you done—”
“Just like I done.”
“G’won, Titus Bass,” Kingsbury prodded as the other three boatmen crowded close, faces gaping apishly.
He figured it would be nothing much to fit his belly around that mug of ale—just a matter of swallowing until he had drained it all. With the first sip he found it not unpleasant, a woodsy taste to it, some effervescent tickling his tongue. Then he was swallowing in good order, barely aware of the boatmen around him chanting their encouragement as he tipped the bottom of his mug up higher and higher. From the corner of his eye he watched them cheer him on, hoisting their own mugs in waving salute until there was no more for him to drink.
“What’d you think of that?” Heman Ovatt asked with a slap to the back of his shoulders.
“Yes, you li’l river rat—what’d you think of that?”
At the sudden, strange, and very female voice, he whipped around to find a skinny woman sliding herself into their group, picking up Kingsbury’s arm to drape it over her shoulder.
“Ah, Mincemeat,” Kingsbury cried out, his eyes come alive with an inner fire as he seized one of her ample and half-exposed breasts in a huge hand, then clamped her jaw in the other, holding her prisoner while pressing his mouth on hers.
“I’m next, I’m next!” Ovatt cried, standing right there to press himself against the woman when Kingsbury drew back to take a breath and another swallow of his rye.
“An’ how ’bout you, Ebenezer Zane? You want your welcome kiss too?” she asked when Ovatt had finished kissing her.
Still aghast at the woman’s sudden appearance, how she allowed the men to hungrily fondle and kiss her, Titus stood there dumbfounded, his eyes muling as he watched Ovatt reach up to fondle the flesh across the tops of her rounded breasts, exposed as they were all the way down to just above her nipples, pushed up to their full extent by the bodice she had laced beneath them. Skinny as she was, they were about as big a pair as any breasts Bass had seen.
At that moment it grew warm in the Kangaroo. He became discomforted inside, gazing as he was at her pale, mottled flesh there in the murky, smoky lamplight.
“Thankee anyway, my sweetness. Mathilda working tonight?” Kingsbury asked as he brought his head up from kissing the woman’s cleavage.
“Ain’t she working ever’ night?” the woman asked in reply, her full eyes coming to rest on Titus. “After all, she owns this place where you pigs come to rut, don’t she?”
“Any new girls?” Reuben finally spoke up before he drank at his rye.
“Nary a one,” she replied. “Mathilda had a signed writ on three more new ones to come downriver from Pitts—but a feller down Natchez way made ’em a better offer.”
“Bet that made Mathilda a wild one!” Zane declared.
“Wild? You bet. None of us could live with her for a week after that,” she explained. “Then she up and sent a writ back to Cincinnati for what new girls she could get to come down on the next boat.”
“When’ll that be?” Root asked.
She turned to him slowly, her distaste for the man plain as paint on her face. “Be a long time.”
“What?” Root complained. “There’s boats like ours coming down all the time—”
She snorted as she took hold of Ovatt’s mug, saying, “Not boats hauling people cargo.”
As she tossed back some of his rye, Ovatt said, “Settlers going downriver—we see ’em all the time.”
“Not the same as a bunch of women, now, is it, you mud rat?” she snarled at Heman, her eyes flicking back to the youngster. “Not many wanna take up valuable cargo space with whores, now, do they?”
“Think Mathilda be happy to see me?” Kingsbury asked as he snugged her tighter against his hip.
One side of her chemise slipped off a bony shoulder, exposing just a bit more of one breast. Yet she did not take her eyes off Titus. “She’ll be happy to see you. Seeing that you’re one of the few don’t punch her so she’s gotta throw you out. One of you pig rutters gonna tell me who’s this skinny river rat you dragged in with you?”
“This’un?” Zane replied, slinging his weighty arm over Bass’s skinny shoulder. “Why, this be our new hand. Joined up couple days back on the river. Kentucky side of the river, that is. Like me, the lad’s a Kentucky man: southwest of Cincinnati—where you say them new girls be coming from.”
“What’s your name, boy?”
He licked his lips and looked away from her face. “B-bass.”
“What’s your christened name?”
For a moment that stumped him.
“His name is Titus,” Ebenezer answered for him.
With a bob of his warm head he echoed, “Titus Bass.” Immediately he turned to Zane to ask, “Can I get another?”
“Like that, eh?”
Bass agreed, glad to tear his eyes from the roundness and cleavage of the woman’s flesh. “Tasted real good. Makes a fella thirsty for another.” His head felt warm, the skin on his face burning too.
And he felt warm low in his belly when his eyes yanked back to look at her.
“S’pose you go find Mathilda for me?” Kingsbury asked. “You do that, Mincemeat?”
A loud voice suddenly called out, “You staying with them, Mincemeat?”
The five of them and the woman all turned to look at the table where a trio of men hard at their cups motioned her back over their way.
“I’m staying here, Briggs.”
