keeps out there in the tavern, making sure all folks are happy and them that aren’t get throwed out.”
“So what does she got to do with Ebenezer and them two he picked a fight with?”
“It all went back to the day before when Ebenezer’s boat landed and his boys come in for some supper and a good time,” Abigail continued her story. “Ebenezer stayed down to the boat—said his belly wasn’t feeling all that good. But Kingsbury come up here, and him and Mathilda was having themselves a drink together when a bunch of Pennsylvania riffraff come in. Their steersman set his eyes on Mathilda, right off—and when she told him she wasn’t bedding down with the customers no more, that big fella sour-mouthed her but he went off so’s to keep on drinking, like it wasn’t gonna matter.”
“You gonna tell me how Ebenezer picked a fight with ’em?”
“You’re jumping way ahead in the story,” she snapped, sitting up and letting the blanket fall from her upper body. He watched her breasts and bony shoulders as she rolled away from him on her hip. Then he stared at the mottled skin stretched over her bony back like a plucked bird’s folded wings as the woman swept up another dirty blanket from the end of the bed and wrapped it around herself. “You ever smoke afore?”
As she rose, Titus swallowed hard. “No, I ain’t.”
“Ever care to? Like now?”
Abigail went to a small walnut lap chest beneath the lamp table and from it drew out a drawstring pouch and a small clay pipe. She continued her story while she settled back on the edge of the bed beside him.
“Later on that night it seemed that bunch from Pennsylvania watched that Kingsbury and Mathilda was gone from the tavern for a long time together. And when the two of ’em come back, I was there to see the big steersman come over to grab hold of Mathilda—telling her he wanted some of her too. When she got angry and tried to explain she didn’t do that no more, he slapped her and dragged her up by her arm from the place where she was sitting.”
As he watched Abigail taking finger-pinches of fragrant tobacco from the pouch and dropping them in the tiny clay pipe bowl, Titus could clearly picture the scene in his mind: the hazy, lamplit tavern, so noisy and raucous no one would know what was happening right at first.
“That’s when Kingsbury got up and jumped for the steersman. About as far as he got, ’cause some others got him and started whopping on him while the pilot knocked Mathilda around good.”
“But when I come in last night, I watched a couple of fellas throwing a man out,” Titus said. “What about them she hires to protect her place?”
“She has help now. Since last summer, anyways,” Abigail explained, rising from the bed, clutching the blanket around her upper arms, her shoulders naked as she stepped to the fire. There he watched her squat, bare feet and ankles exposed as the blanket slurred out across the floor around her. He smiled to see that flesh while she took a straw from a bucket and for a moment held it in the fire. “But back when Kingsbury and her got whopped on, there was nobody in the place who could help. They all just backed away and let them strangers beat up that woman, and a good man too. Four of ’em throwed Kingsbury outside in the yard, good as dead. While’st the pilot dragged Mathilda outside too—carried her off down to their boat, where the bunch of ’em held her down and started using her bad.”
“Using her bad?”
Taking the burning straw from the fire, Abigail held it over the pipe bowl and inhaled, sucking noisily to light the tobacco. Then she pulled the stem from her lips and blew a great gush of smoke toward the low beam-and-mud roof, finally saying, “Like you and me just done, ’cept it’s one man right after ’nother—and none of ’em gentle about it,” she commented sourly, her pocked face gone hard again, “The more they hit her, the more she cried and bled. And the more she cried, the more they hit her.”
“How’d Ebenezer get in all of this?”
“Said he heard a woman moaning. The more he listened from where he was sick on his boat, with his belly hurting him—the more he figured out what was happening: a woman crying and men laughing. Said he could even hear them smacking her, they was whopping on her so hard.”
“That’s when he jumped on ’em?”
She nodded once as she rose to return to the edge of the bed. “He got him his cutlass—you ever see his cutlass?”
With a wag of his wide-eyed head, Titus looked down at the pipe she held out to him and said, “No, I ain’t.”
“Ask Ebenezer to see his cutlass sometime,” she advised knowingly. “Right then he come on that boat and got right in the middle of ’em afore he even saw it was Mathilda they was beating bad. When he started swinging that cutlass around, two of them sonsabitches run right off, wanting nothing of Ebenezer Zane and that big knife of his’n. Here—take this.”
He took the pipe, but when his palm met the heat of the clay bowl, Titus let it fall to the earthen floor.
“Silly man,” she said, bending over to pick it up by the stem, the blanket parting to expose most of those fleshy mounds, enough for him to see how her breastbone stood out beneath her pale skin like a freshly pressed sheet draped over a drying line. “Here, hold it like this.” She presented it to him again. “You try it again.”
“What of the other two?” he asked as he took the pipe, gripping it back on the stem, fingertips away from the hot bowl. He brought it to his lips, and his eyes met hers as he began to suck in.
“Them two what gave Ebenezer the worst of it? Well, now—one snatched out a pistol and brung it up to shoot, but Ebenezer was quicker with that cutlass, cleaving off a couple of fingers of that bastard’s pistol hand. But right about then Ebenezer went to his knees, a knife in his back. Say, you don’t gotta hold that smoke in so long, Titus. Let it out now if’n you want.”
With a gush it exploded from his mouth.
“Did you swaller it down into your chest?” she asked.
Titus swallowed, sensing the strong taste of it. “I dunno.”
“Then try it again. Just like breathing in. You’ll feel it down there in your chest, then you’ll know.”
“One of ’em, you said he stabbed Ebenezer?” and he put the stem to his lips.
Abigail waited to answer, watching his face as he drew long and slow on the pipe stem, pulling it into his lungs with all that was in him. The potent heat hit him hard: he found this smoking stuff like trying to force down a coarse old horseshoe file. As soon as it began to hurt more than he could stand, Titus coughed it right back up, gagging and retching, his face hot with embarrassment.
“That’s awright, Titus. Best to take it gentle and slow—not so much all at the first. Go ’head on and give ’nother try.”
He closed his eyes as he brought the pipe to his mouth a third time. Had to admit he’d always liked the smell of it, what with menfolk smoking around him all those years back in Boone County—something mighty flavorful. But getting it past his mouth into his chest appeared to be another matter. Still game for it, this time he did as she had suggested, drawing the smoke in slow and easy, a tiny bit at a time. He held it for a moment without coughing, opening his eyes wide in self-astonished celebration at his own triumph, then exhaled every bit as slowly as he had just pulled the smoke into his lungs. It was nothing less than a wonder to watch it all come back out in a steady stream.
Abigail smiled at him. “That’s it, Titus. Now you try some more.”
“G’won and tell me about Ebenezer getting stabbed.” Only then did he bring the pipe stem back to his lips.
“The pilot done it. With a big ol’ guttin’ knife—but lucky for Ebenezer Zane that the tip of the blade hit a rib and only sliced up some skin. Hurt him enough I s’pose that he went to his knees. That’s when Mathilda watched that bastard yank the knife back, ready to plant it in Ebenezer’s back again—’bout the time Zane grabbed hol’t of that pistol one of them others dropped out’n his chopped-up hand. Ebenezer turned and fired.”
“Who’d he hit?”
She wagged her head, insistent on telling the story her own way. “First thing Zane done was pick Mathilda up and wrap a blanket round her—what with the way them four had tored every stitch off her. She asked him if the pilot was dead, and when Ebenezer said he didn’t know, Mathilda said they should make sure he was. She told Ebenezer go pour some powder and coal oil all over the cargo.”
He blew out a gush of smoke, so damned proud of himself that he hadn’t coughed anymore nor made himself sick like his pap had warned him he would. Titus asked, “But he still didn’t know for sure if that river pilot was dead?”
