“Folks believe it—howsomever I ain’t never had occasion to prove it wrong,” Beulah explained. “You take a loaf of bread and wrap it in the missing person’s shirt. Put it on the water and it will sink over the spot where we can find his body.”
He thought on that, hard.
Finally she asked, “You don’t think that’s crazy, do you, young’un?”
With a shrug he replied, “Maybe not near as crazy as what some folks do. Hell—no matter that you didn’t have your husband’s shirt. We ain’t even got any bread to do it with anyways. But if we had, I’d talked ’em into giving it a try for you.”
She smiled warmly. “Want you to know I’m in your debt and didn’t mean you to take no offense when I was calling you a young’un, talking about your ma.”
“Wish you’d just left my mam out’n this,” Titus said as he watched the river ahead for obstacles, scratching at the incessant itch under his arms, at his waistband.
“There’s difference ’tween leaving home when it’s time … and running off,” she said as the cold wisps of river fog glided slowly past them.
“It was my time.”
“Just looking at you, I can tell that ain’t near enough the truth.”
Bristling like a short-haired hog at butcher time, Titus replied, “Ain’t none of your concern nohow.”
“How long you been itching the way you are?”
“I dunno,” he said, suddenly conscious of the fact that he had been scratching himself almost raw in places.
“Likely you got the Scotch-Irish itch.”
“The what?”
“You got lice, young’un,” she explained. “Never had ’em afore?”
He shook his head.
“Bet you got ’em now—just looking at this boat’s crew,” she chided, wagging her head.
“What can I do for ’em … stop this scratching?”
“Burn your clothes, pour coal tar on your hair,” she replied.
“You’re pulling my leg, ain’cha?”
“No—onliest way I know to get rid of them little seam-rats. Nits and graybacks—damn ’em all,” the woman answered.
He swallowed, regarding her carefully, deciding she was serious. “Maybeso I can get something for ’em up to Natchez.”
“Coal tar’s good.”
He flared with anger briefly as he gazed out at the river, watching. “I ain’t gonna put no coal tar on my hair.”
With a warm smile Beulah said, “G’won and get you some of that tar in Natchez. We kin daub some of it on them bites—keep ’em from itching you so bad.”
“Thank … thanks, Beulah,” he stammered, sensing something profound come from her at that moment.
For the longest time she had been staring off downriver as they’d slipped through the gauzy tendrils of gray fog, some of it clinging in her hair as if her head were smoldering. From time to time he caught sight of the river’s edge and the sycamore trees, roots exposed by the eroding bank, high-water mud plastered halfway up the tall trunks. Long gray moss, what some of the rivermen called “Spanish beard,” drooped in great, wavering clumps from the giant branches, dancing gently on the cold breeze.
“We’ll be making Natchez soon,” Beulah finally said. “Get close to Natchez, them others gonna bury the pilot in this river.”
“We been planning on it ever since’t he was killed.”
“He was a good man to you, wasn’t he?” Beulah asked. But without waiting for an answer, she continued. “So was my Jameson. How he stuck up for our three boys what run off from home—stuck up for ’em the same time he was doing all he could to ease my sorrow at their going.”
“They run off, like I done?”
“Ain’t ever see’d ’em since,” Beulah admitted with a sigh. “Once a young’un you’ve tried so hard to keep in the nest gets ready to try his wings—if you don’t step back and let ’em try flying on their own, they can damn sure beat you to death with those same goddamned wings.”
“You watched all of your’n fly off,” he said quietly.
The woman nodded. “And they ain’t come back after all this time, likely won’t ever show their faces again.” Then, turning to him directly, the woman added, “You best send your mama word that you’re all right—”
Shaking his head emphatically, Bass replied, “Don’t want no one to know where I’m gone.”
“You don’t write her word, then you better go see your mother.”
“Can’t do that neither.”
“Your pa?”
He went on staring at the brown water gliding past them beneath the cold gray of the wispy fog.
She said, “Men and their boys—every family has problems.”
“Weren’t just my family,” Titus owned up quietly. “It were everybody wanting me to be something I wasn’t.”
“This what you was meant to be? A riverman?”
“No,” he said. “Not that neither. Something akin to my gran’pap.” He went on to tell her how his family had come into the Kentucky country to settle long ago—how his grandfather never really did settle down like he was supposed to, restless and yearning to move farther west to his dying day.
“There’s men made what’re never meant to settle long in one place,” the woman said. “I saw that in my Jameson, right off. We both just made peace with it—and found us something to do what would keep him moving. Ain’t no wonder to me anymore that a young’un does all he can to escape the labors of the field for a life on the river.”
Heman Ovatt was clambering up over the cargo. “Titus, you best go back and get you some coffee. I’ll spell you at the gouger.”
“Hap that you fellas are ready for breakfast?” Beulah asked.
“We always ready to eat,” the riverman answered enthusiastically as he came up to take the gouger from Bass.
Titus stopped a moment, sensing an immense sadness clinging to the woman here, days after her tragic loss. “You got sons back to Ohio?”
Beulah wagged her head. “Two of ’em the river took,” she replied, staring off. “Them three I spoke of took off, and I don’t have idea one where they’ve gone. But two of my boys, yes—they always been up to Ohio when Jameson and me come home from every one of our journeys.”
“Then you got a place to stay when you get back there.”
“Yes,” she replied. “But you ain’t got a home no more, do you, son?”
He watched her back as the woman moved off toward the awning. Perhaps no more acutely since he’d fled Rabbit Hash had he felt without a home than since Ebenezer Zane was killed. Almost as if he were adrift on the river now himself, but without a rudder or gouger, without a single paddle to use when life tossed him this way and that, very much the way this mighty river shoved and pulled their broadhorn downstream.
Over their heads that melancholy morning hung a pearl button of a sun glimpsed through the thinning fog. The other three boatmen grew more somber as the hours passed and familiar landmarks presented themselves along the eastern shore.
“We’ll be tied up at Natchez before dark,” Kingsbury declared early that afternoon.
Titus said, “Means we’re gonna bury Ebenezer afore that.”
“There’s a place a few miles upriver he liked especial’,” Reuben said. “I figure that’s where he’d want us to let him over the side.”
Ovatt nodded, his face twisting somewhat in an attempt to hide the emotions threatening to overwhelm him.
At the rudder Kingsbury said only, “We get there, I’ll put us over to the east bank and we can all help put Ebenezer to his rest.”
