Dance on the Wind

till my mind is at ease,

And I’ll turn my back on her and

court who I please.”

When Root bellowed forth with “Bird in a Cage”:

“Bird in a cage, love,

Bird in a cage;

Waiting for Willie

To come back to me.

“Roses are red, love,

Violets are blue.

God in heaven

Knows I love you.

“Write me a letter,

Write it today.

Stamp it tomorrow,

Send it away.

“Write me a letter,

Send it by mail.

Send and direct it

To the Burlington jail.”

“Burlington?” Titus asked Ovatt. “Is he singing ’bout the Kentucky Burlington?”

“I don’t know no other Burlington.”

“Sing me ’nother of those I like,” Ebenezer commanded from the stern.

Kingsbury began to sing another to the tune of a 1766 hymn by Isaac Watts.

“I’m far from home, far from the wife,

Which in my bosom lay,

Far from my children, dead, which used

Around me for to play.

“This doleful circumstance cannot

My happiness prevent

While peace of conscience I enjoy

Great comfort and content.”

Titus took his eyes off Zane to ask of Ovatt, “Ebenezer married?”

“He was,” Heman replied.

“And had he children?”

“Them too.” But Heman warned, “Wouldn’t do for you to ask after them. It makes the man powerful sorry.”

“What happened to his family?”

“They was kill’t.”

“Injuns?”

“Long ago, when the children was but babes,” Ovatt explained. “All boys, they was. Their heads smashed in by Shawnee.”

Titus turned to gaze at the pilot, regarding the man studiously, wondering how it was to have one’s family taken by a sudden act of savagery, rather than merely an act of leaving.

Zane winked at Titus as he called out to Kingsbury, “Sing ‘The Boatmen’s Dance.’”

“High row, the boatmen row,

Floating down the river of Ohio.

The boatmen dance, the boatmen sing,

The boatmen up to everything.

And when the boatman gets on shore,

He spends his cash and works for more.

“Then dance, the boatmen dance.

Oh, dance—the boatmen dance.

Oh, dance all night till broad daylight,

And go home with the gals in

the morning!”

Float time between sunup and sundown shrank a little each day, and there were mornings when they awakened to find a rime of ice slicking their cedar water buckets. As much as they could through the long, cold evenings of enforced idleness they stayed close by the sandbox fire before they would crab off to their blankets beneath the oiled awning cloth.

With their singing and their storytelling filling the long days and into the nights, how Titus often sat in pure wonder of these men who had welcomed him into their life, sweeping him along in their adventure, showing him how to make it his own. Rivermen, some called them. Others called them boatmen. Every last one of these restless souls folks on down the Mississippi had lumped together and called Kentuckians—these were the rough, rowdy, ne’er-do-wells Titus had come to regard as uncles, men who had taken him under their wings, to watch over, to