Kingsbury waved his arm for them all to follow him off the boat, saying, “Just pack that squeeze-box of your’n in some waxed paper and lock it up high—you won’t have a lick of trouble, Reuben.”
“Don’t none of you realize that extra cargo I just bought me after three days of haggling will make this trip all the sweeter for every one of us?” Zane asked them as they joined him on the wharf nearer the Kangaroo where they had moved the boat earlier in the day to begin their on-loading. There the broadhorn would remain moored until dawn.
All four carried belt weapons that night as they put solid land under their feet. Zane had assigned each of them a four-hour watch, keeping a fire burning in the sandbox there close by the stern rudder, something to warm their hands and coffee over too.
Bass glanced over the others as they put away their pistols, then said, “You didn’t gimme a watch, Mr. Zane.”
With something of a smile Ebenezer turned to Titus in the swelling darkness of that autumn evening. “These here men’re my crew, Titus Bass. They hired on for work such as this.”
“Back at the start you said you needed me through the Falls.”
“I did say that, and your help is much appreciated.”
“Then you count me like one of the rest—if I’m to work through to the other side of the Falls.”
Kingsbury nodded. “Boy’s got him a point, Ebenezer.”
“You’re up to taking a watch, are you?” Zane asked.
But before Bass could answer, Ovatt declared, “It’s lonely work. Out here by yourself. Just you and the river and any others what wanna raise some devilment with our load.”
“That’s right,” Root added. “The whole town knows we’re setting off come morning. Lonely and cold out here—’specially since’t Mincemeat gonna be inside ’thout you tonight.”
Bass turned back to Zane, steadfast. “I’ll take the watch you gimme. First, last, or middle. I figure to pull my share of the work for ’llowing me come downriver with you. All you done for me since we got here.”
Zane said, “I’ll see ’bout sending Mincemeat out to visit you.”
Wagging his head, Bass replied, “Treat me just like the rest of ’em here. I got work to do—don’t want a woman around.”
“Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat!” Kingsbury exclaimed. “Did you hear that? Titus sure got serious about work, going and turning down a woman coming out to keep him warm—”
“Maybeso the rest of you learn something from Titus Bass here,” the pilot declared. “When you’re working, you keep your mind on work.”
Bass said, “Yessir. That’s what I was saying.”
“All right, son. With you added on, that shorts the watches to three hours apiece. Titus takes this first watch.” Ebenezer drew his two big-bored belt weapons out of his greasy red waist sash and handed them over, butt first, to the youth. “Here. Keep these handy. Rest of us be right up the slope at the inn. Any trouble, just call out or shoot. We’ll huff down here straightaway.”
His eyes got big as coffee saucers when the pistols came into his skinny hands, in awe at their sheer weight. All Titus did was bob his head as the four turned to go.
“You want supper brung out?” Ovatt asked.
“I’ll wait.”
“When he finishes, he can have his ale and stew,” Zane declared as the four slogged up the slope toward the Kangaroo in the cold. “And Mincemeat too.”
Bass thought he had struggled with loneliness before—those first nights in the forest. Believed he had battled cold too. But nothing like this: the dampness penetrated him to the bone despite the coffee and the fire he hunkered over, flames flutting in that tin sandbox he fed with more and more kindling. But, then, cold and lonely always seemed to go hand in hand, he brooded. Never had he been lonely on a summer night.
How easily he thought back to Amy then. Her memory still a bright thing he could feel inside his breast despite the miles and all the days. How sweet her mouth had tasted last summer, so unlike Abigail’s—her mouth strong with the whiskey and the tobacco. But it was not to be, he decided again, surprised that he still was making peace with that.
Had his father come searching for him? Had they finally given up? Would his folks ask of him all the way upriver to Cincinnati? Perhaps even this far downriver to Louisville, he convinced himself. Maybe not. Maybe his pap already figured it was for the best, ridding himself of a son not wanting to become a farmer. So much the better— and now they would go on with their lives.
But what of his mother? Strong as she was, he nonetheless worried most for her. She had always been the one to quietly set herself against her husband when it mattered: she who hid supper for Titus; she who had seen to it the new shirt and biscuits were set out where Titus could get his hands on them that dark morning of farewell. Such was the real remorse he felt, about his only regret, leaving the way he had without explaining to her. Sure even now that she would have understood.
There wasn’t a star he could make out in the sky overhead. Clouds thickened like coal-blackened cotton bolls, reminding him how his hands hurt, rubbed raw and cut, whenever they had to pick what little cotton they had taken to growing on a small patch of ground by the smokehouse. Better was the flax the family planted, woven with wool to make a strong cloth that would turn the weather without being as heavy as pure wool. Between that mixed cloth his mother had woven and the animal skins she’d tanned for coats, britches, and moccasins—a body could count on staying reasonably warm, no matter what the weather.
In such deep thought his watch passed, and it was with reluctance that Titus turned over the two horse pistols to Ebenezer, who came to relieve him three hours later.
“Likely there’s some stew left, but if not, they’ll get you a pullet or two and a loaf of that black bread. There’s plenty of beans to fill you up. But stay away from the spruce beer this night, Titus,” Zane had warned as he settled onto a crate to start his watch. “I need your head clear come morning.”
So until that dawn he had filled himself with nothing more than Abigail Thresher, as hungry as he was for her, having done his best to pay no heed to the taunts of the other three boatmen when they warned him the whore would have nothing more to do with him once Ebenezer Zane had gone, taking his fat river pilot’s purse with him.
“She said she likes me,” Titus had protested.
“Playing with your diddle ain’t the only thing Mincemeat gets paid for,” Root explained, always the one out to pop another man’s bubble. “She gets paid for saying what she’s told to say.”
“Ebenezer told her to tell me that?”
Kingsbury only shrugged. “Who knows?”
“She’s just a whore,” Ovatt said. “There’ll be others on the ride down. Why, if’n you was floating along with us, you could count on tasting some fine girls we reach Natchez-Under-the-Hill.”
“And all them sweet Creole girls down to Nawlins,” Kingsbury added with a smack of his lips.
“I ain’t got me any need to go south,” Titus argued with a doleful wag of his head. “West is where away I’m bound.”
“St. Lou?” Heman Ovatt asked.
“One of these days soon,” Bass answered.
Kingsbury said, “A man goes west—you’ll need money to give yourself a stake. That’s fur country out’n St. Louie. Ain’t white man country west of there. You’ll need fixin’s.”
“I’ll get me some work.”
“What the hell can a farm boy like you do to make a man hire you for pay?” Root inquired.
“I can find work,” Titus snapped quickly, wincing at the pain he’d felt with their talk about Abigail.
“Yes, you can,” Kingsbury replied quietly, holding a flat hand against Root’s chest to quickly silence the other boatman. “No doubt you’ll find work here in Louisville real soon.”
Titus had drowned himself in her flesh that last night, at least every time he awoke enough in rolling over against her, placing the woman’s hands on his flesh to harden it to stone once again. If in the end it was true that Mincemeat was feeling nothing more than any working girl who got paid to do what she was told, then—Titus decided—he’d sure as hell make sure Ebenezer Zane got his money’s worth out of that last night in Louisville.
As good as it felt with her at the moment, as excited as she could get him with her body, it was afterward that got him to thinking. Like he was doing now in this damp, fragrant tavern as they finished their coffee near the
