fireplace as if soaking up all this warmth for what ordeal was yet to come, waiting for Ebenezer to tell them it was time to push away.
And he wondered what it was that made a man want to stay on with a woman after they were through coupling. It had to be something more than just a man’s knowing he could climb atop that woman again whenever he wanted. There must surely be something else he had yet to learn of this mysterious tangle of things between a man and a woman—more than he had learned at the threshold from the pretty Amy Whistler, and now from that full-growed woman what could please a man no end and was called Mincemeat.
What made some men stay on and on with a woman, while at the same time urging him to move on from both of those he had known so far?
“It h’ain’t getting any better out there, Ebenezer,” Root grumbled from the open doorway where the cold air gusted. Beyond Reuben was a gray streaked with white slashes.
“Best us be going,” Zane said with resignation.
“We could stay over, sit it out,” Ovatt declared.
Ebenezer turned to them slowly, hitching up his belt, and smiled inside that hairy face. “We got everything tied down and we’re ready to put off. Nothing’s holding us no more. I want out of Louisville and put the Falls behind us.”
Kingsbury started, “Maybe Ovatt’s right, Ebene—”
“Any of you’s free to stay what wants to,” Zane interrupted, though his voice remained quiet and calm. He turned to the youngest among them. “Even you, Titus. No reason for you to get on that boat now. We’ll do just fine ’thout you.”
“Said you needed me.”
Zane shook his head. “Weather like this, it don’t matter much anymore. Best you stay.”
“I made a promise,” Titus said, sensing the curiosity of the other men nettling him. “You an’ me made us a bargain. I aim to keep up my end of it.”
Zane regarded him briefly, then took a step forward, slapping a hand down on Bass’s shoulder. “Good man.” Looking at the rest of them, he explained, “Any of the rest of you decide to stay, Titus here can take your place.”
For a moment they looked at one another, almost furtively, perhaps waiting for one of their number to stave in. Then before any of them could, Zane suddenly emboldened them with his words.
“Good for you, men. Like I always been proud of you—taking on this river, no matter what face it showed us. And now Heman’s got him a new man to help with the gouger when the water gets rough.”
Ovatt nodded at Bass. Titus swallowed, for the first time in his life feeling as if he was a part of something bigger than himself. One of these reckless men who would once again pit themselves against the icy river.
That was when Ebenezer held up a clenched fist at waist level, speaking not a word in explanation. Kingsbury immediately set his clenched fist atop Zane’s, then Ovatt’s atop his. When Root had added his to the top of the stack, they turned their eyes to Bass. Eagerly Titus slipped between the muscle-knotted shoulders of Zane and Kingsbury to join that small circle and made his short-fingered hand into a fist that looked so outsized by all the others.
With that fifth hand atop the rest, Zane declared, “This is the shaft that water and wind may bend but will never be broken as long as we stay together as one.”
“Let’s go to the Mississippi!” Kingsbury roared.
As the four men yelped and cheered, turning aside to sweep up their blankets and oiled coats, Titus stood for but a moment in that spot, somehow still sensing the power of those clenched, veined fists his had joined, no matter how briefly, feeling as if the others had just vowed to prop him up, support him, watch over him like one of their own. A short, strong staff carved of man’s will and camaraderie. In that moment all doubts took to the wing, freeing with them all remorse in leaving the Kangaroo and the woman behind.
Once more his life appeared black-and-white, without shades of indecisive gray. Just as it had when he’d determined to leave home behind, Titus sensed the certainty of what lay downriver. The sureness that he was being pulled on by what lay out there.
“You’ll stay with Heman,” Ebenezer ordered as the four of them pounded up the cleated gangplank, clambered over the gunnel, and began to scramble off in different directions as the sleet spat at them in gusty sheets out of a leaden sky.
Bass turned to find Root still onshore and leaning into his work, lunging against the thick rope that held the flatboat’s bow fast to the wharf. With the knot eventually loosened, he heaved the rope toward Ovatt, who began to coil it up near his feet as Root trudged back through the icy mud toward the last rope securing the stern. With that second knot freed, he flung the loose end of the rope to Zane while making sure the loop was still secured around one of the wharf’s stanchions. When Root had crawled on board and was dragging the cleated gangplank atop some of the crates, Zane dropped the free end of the rope and released them from the wharf. The thick hemp flopped to the surface of the ice-flecked water like a huge oiled snake suddenly dropping from a great height. Kingsbury began to haul in the rope as the pilot whirled about to seize up the long arm of his rudder.
“Push us free,” Zane ordered.
Root and Kingsbury took up fourteen-foot hardwood shafts, each of them going to the gunnels, where they planted the ends of their poles against the wharf and heaved with the thrust in their legs. Foot by foot, grunt by grunt, the two lunged against the poles, easing the laden flatboat out from the tangle of other craft moored at the wharf. Slow it was, the gray water slogging beneath them little by little. Back and forth Zane worked his rudder, shouting an order from time to time to Ovatt on the gouger as they edged on out into the middle of the harbor. Then, just beyond the last finger of land surrounding that cove on three sides, Titus felt the perceptible nudge of the Ohio against the hull beneath him. Now the water seemed to pick up speed, and the boat with it as they rounded that last glimpse of Louisville and Zane piloted them into the current.
“Sing out—you see anything a’floating!” Ebenezer called to the others. “We done this many a time, so ever’ one of you knows what we’re needing to draw for water!”
“What’s he talking about?” Bass inquired as he leaned on the short gouger pole across from Ovatt.
“This ain’t a high-water time to be floating down the Ohio,” Heman explained. “Come autumn and winter, water gets low so we might just see us a lot of planters and sawyers from here on out downriver. ’Specially when we get yonder to the Falls, where the water gets all boiled up.”
“What’s he mean by drawing water?”
“We’re heavy,” the boatman explained. “Sitting down in the water some, instead of riding on top. So we’re gonna need deeper water to run the chute.”
“Chute?”
“There’s three of ’em at the Falls. One of ’em’s better’n the others sometime during the year. Depending on how deep the river is, how fast she’s moving. It’s up to me to sing out to Ebenezer soon as I can tell which chute is the one he ought’n take us through the Falls.”
As the boat picked up speed, with the wind whipping the icy sleet into them out of the west, Titus felt his insides drawing up like someone had dashed them with pickling spice. Water was one thing. Swimming in it—hell, even floating on it was one thing. But this bobbing within an onrushing current, totally at the mercy of the Ohio as it suddenly narrowed itself southwest of Louisville, rushing them onward to the Great Falls, was quite another.
He quickly looked about at the other three boatmen. Root had one hand gripping the gunnel as the icy water began to slap against that side of the flatboat. Time and again he swiped his face clear of spray and sleet as he squinted downriver.
Then Titus heard the sound that made his blood go cold.
Turning with a jerk, he peered into the sleeting mist ahead of them. Not only was it that low rumble which seemed to pull them perceptibly closer still, but also his inability to make out the source of the nearing thunder which caused his belly to churn and flop. In all that gray he could find nothing ahead of them that gave him the slightest clue—nothing but the gradual narrowing of the river’s channel between its timbered, rocky banks.
“You hear it, don’t you?”
Without tearing his eyes from the far bend in the river, he nodded to Ovatt.
“That’s the Falls,” Heman went on. “You allays hear ’em afore you see ’em.”
“Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat!”
With a start Titus turned from downstream to look at Kingsbury, finding the boatman intent on watching the
