upward, just as she had rocked against him earlier that night.
When he felt her shudder convulsively, tossing her head from side to side, Titus again grew scared—fearful he had hurt her, but as soon as he tried to yank his hand from her, the woman seized it, dragged it back against the same moist warmth. Afraid to move, ignorant of what had just happened with her, he lay there still as a cat about to pounce on a mouse.
“You done good,” she said eventually when her breathing became more regular. The woman stroked his hair with the hand that held his face against her breast.
Wanting to sort out the mystery so badly, but not sure how to ask, Titus finally said, “Tell me what I done good for you.”
“Ever’thing. Bet you done good in school—quick as you are at learning. The kissing and licking, and how you learn’t to touch me where it drives me near crazed. That all come to you pretty fast, Titus Bass.”
“You done most of it yourself.”
He could feel her wag her head.
“I just showed you—an’ you done the rest like you was born to make a woman’s body happy.”
“Is that what I done?” he asked, lifting his head and looking down into her face.
“Damn right. Just you remember me whenever you want a woman to hump. I’ll allays save time for you, Titus-from-upriver.”
“What about all them others what come back here with you—”
“Shit,” she grumbled sourly, shifting position slightly. “All the rest of them just interested in their own good time. Not that I don’t make a living at it, mind you, now—but they don’t think about me a’tall.”
“’Fraid I don’t rightly understand.”
“See, I’d rather take me a young’un like you and teach him what a man ought’n do to make a woman happy, ’cause all them older ones only worried about themselves. An’ speaking of that: it’s about time Titus climbed on me with that hammer of his and knocked a few pegs loose hisself. C’mon, lover.”
She kept her fingers locked around his flesh as he rolled over her, positioned himself, and rocked forward. He was beginning to think there wasn’t much of anything better than that feeling of getting inside a woman. For a fleeting moment he thought how he had lain atop Amy beside their old swimming hole last summer and never really gotten his pecker buried in her. Only between her thighs. It wasn’t until the second time that together Amy and he had gotten him inside her, both of them moving frantically, urgently before he repeated his first performance and exploded all too quickly.
But now this, the way the woman showed him to make it last precious minutes longer. If something felt so damned good, it just made sense for him to find all the ways he could to prolong his pleasure.
Locking his elbows so he could rock above her, hurling his hips into her with a growing insistence, Titus sensed the fire rising, the flames climbing across his lower belly for no more than a matter of heartbeats before the stars exploded back of his eyelids.
Once his breathing had slowed, he lay with a hand cupped on one of her soft breasts, fingertips sensing the bony ribs beneath it. “How you come to be called Mincemeat?”
She didn’t answer for some time, then replied, “You see’d my face in the light. That oughtta tell you. I been called that name since’t I was no more’n a wee child. Back to Virginia where I was raised, whole valley had us a time with the pox. Some got it real bad and died, burning up with the fever. Some didn’t get it at all. But most young’uns was like me. Got real sick, closing in on death’s door—but we come back to the land of the living. Only our faces to show that we’d been marked by the pox.”
“Why call you Mincemeat?”
“The pox on our cheeks looked red and angry, crusted and weepy for the longest time. My older brothers got to calling me Mincemeat ’cause my face looked like the meat mama chopped up and mixed in her mincemeat pies.”
“What’s your real name?”
“Awright to call me Mincemeat. Ever’body does,” she answered, turning her head away.
“No,” he insisted. “I really wanna know your real name.”
“Ain’t been called by my real name in longer’n I can remember.”
“You know mine. So tell me yours.”
When she finally answered, her voice sounded distant, sad. “Abigail,” she replied softly.
“That’s pretty, your folks naming you Abigail.”
“Abigail Thresher.”
“And you’re from Virginia?”
“Family’s all back there.”
“Some of my kin come from Virginia.”
“You born there too?” she asked.
“No. Like Ebenezer said, I’m a Kentucky man. But my grandpap come from Virgin’a. By the time he got over the mountains with the others to settle, I s’pose it weren’t Virgin’a no more. They was already calling the place Caintuckee. That’s where I’m from—downriver from Cincinnati an’ Fort Washington.”
“Your folks farming?”
“Long way back, we been farmers. What they wanted me to be too.”
“But you’re gonna be a riverman like Ebenezer Zane and them others now, ain’cha?”
“I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t think hard on it some last two days—but I first set my sights on coming here to Louisville. Still think I like the forest better’n the river.”
She cleared her throat and replied, “Probably better for you, Titus. I seen enough these last few years to know river life can be mean on a man. On the women what work ’longside the rivers too. Ain’t all men gone bad— some of ’em like Ebenezer. He’s half horse, half alligator like the best of ’em, but he’s still got him good feelings inside. You’re damned lucky you bumped into him coming downriver. Been some of them others, they’d had you stripped of all you owned and killed you just for the fun of it. Dumped your body off the side of the boat.”
“I can take care of myself,” he bristled.
“You’re still just a boy—”
“I ain’t a boy!” Titus snapped, rolling away from her angrily, shuddering with the cold as he pulled out from beneath the blanket.
She eased against his back. “Sorry if I hurt your feelings. What I meant to say was you ’pear to be growing into a fine young man. It’s easy to tell you ain’t got no business on the river … less’n you learn the riverman’s life from someone like Ebenezer Zane.”
“You said Ebenezer ain’t mean—like most of ’em are,” Titus began. “S’pose you tell me ’bout what happened that made them three ugly fellers want nothing to do with tangling with Ebenezer last night.”
For some time she lay quiet, nestled into his back. He could hear her breathing, feel the rise and fall of it against him as he watched the dip and dance of the fire’s light on the far wall.
“It was to last summer,” Abigail eventually began, in too quiet a voice. “The run Ebenezer made afore this’un. Most crews can make two trips downriver a year if they try—”
He was instantly edgy at the way she took her own sweet time to roll out the story, interrupting to say, “Just tell me what happened when he come through Louisville last time.”
“There was two of ’em he picked a fight with.”
“Ebenezer Zane?” he asked in disbelief. “Picking a fight?”
“This is the God’s truth, it is,” she explained as she laid a scratchy wool blanket over his body once more. “You push any man far enough—”
“All right, so I believe you. He picked a fight with two of ’em.”
“Ebenezer had his reasons. Trust to that.”
“They was?”
“Them two he picked a fight with were hard users.”
Bass wagged his head slightly. “I don’t know what that is—a hard user.”
“The kind’s rough on women,” she explained. “This time it was Mathilda.”
“Same one’s your boss?”
She nodded. “Mathilda owns the Kangaroo and keeps us girls working. She don’t have nothing to do with the men no more—bedding down with ’em—unless they hap to be favorites of hers, like Kingsbury is. Mostly she just
