in a high wind, watching her every move as she dribbled a little of the rye along the crusty open wound. Taking an end to the strip of petticoat, she kneaded away a little of the coagulate. Time and again she dipped the cloth into the liquor and scrubbed at the neglected wound until the entire length of the angry gash lay raw and shiny with fresh ooze.
“Wish to God I had my medeecins,” she grumbled to herself as she knotted the linen thread, then looked at Titus. “A body can’t rightly do without some medeecins when folks need tending.”
Wincing involuntarily, Bass watched her poke the needle through the right side of the laceration, continuing over to the left side before she pulled the thread through the flaps of flesh. Reuben grunted and his eyes fluttered a few times, but he never stirred.
“Take hol’t of his arms there,” she said to Ovatt. Then turned her head to tell Titus, “An’ you, son—sit on his legs. There, like that. Just in case he decides to wake up and get in a fittle over this sewing I’ve got to do on him.”
Tugging against the knot as if to assure herself that it would hold, the woman clucked once and drove the needle through the skin a second time. Wrap by wrap she worked herself down the eight long inches of severely torn muscle. Each time Beulah pulled her thread tight, she would dab more of the fiery alcohol on the laceration as it continued to ooze and seep bright-red blood.
“That’s good,” she told them as she neared the last of her labors. “Better that it bleed. Gets all the evil out, seeing how we ain’t got no roots to put in it. My medeecins”—and Beulah bit her lip to stifle a sob—“all that I had in this world went down with that goddamned flatboat.”
Her curse struck Titus as something foreign, never having heard a woman of her age hint at profanity, much less take God’s name in vain. After all that she had said about Kingsbury’s life resting in the Almighty’s hand—he thought it strange indeed that she would pray to God one day and soundly curse Him the very next.
“Don’t look at me so odd, boy,” she commanded. “Close your mouth, or you’re likely to have something crawl right in it with more legs’n a Chickasaw war party.”
Knotting the linen thread, she cut off the excess and returned the bloody-handled knife to Root’s belt scabbard. Then she slowly poured the last of the rye from the cup up and down the wound, washing away some of the dark ooze one last time.
Handing the empty cup to Titus, she said, “Now, wipe that cup out and get me some more likker.”
When Bass turned to the side to use Root’s shirttail to wipe at the crimson coated inside of the cup, Ovatt asked, “You gonna put more of that Monongahela on your sewing job?”
“Hell, no,” she said. “I aim to drink my share, now that he’s done and Kingsbury over there seems like’n he’s turned the last bad bend in the river.”
As she took the cup from him, a frightened Titus asked, “You mean he ain’t … not likely to make it much longer?”
Swallowing long and slow with her eyes closed, the woman finally took the cup away and licked her lips, then swiped a sleeve across her mouth. “Didn’t mean nothing of the kind. Damn, but it’s been a long time since I felt that particular burn down in my gut.”
“Just what the hell you mean, then?” Ovatt demanded.
She looked offended, then peered down at her cup a moment more before answering. “Near as I can tell, fellas—looks like your pilot there is gonna be up and around soon.”
“He’s … he’s gonna pull through?” Bass demanded, feeling the tingle of hope coursing through all the bleakness of what had been his despair these last few days.
“His color’s lot better, the last little while, and he ain’t breathing near like he was. No more choking and gurgling a’tall. I do believe Hames Kingsbury’s gonna make it.”
“Whooeee!” Ovatt cried out, reaching out both arms to embrace the older woman, who sat there stunned by the boatman’s sudden affection.
When Heman took his arms from her, Titus leaned forward and clumsily hugged her, whispering in her ear, “Thankee, ma’am. For all you done … for the both of ’em.” And just before he released her, Bass kissed her lightly on the cheek.
As he pulled away from her, an astonished Beulah brushed her fingertips across her cheek, gazing at the youth wistfully. “T’weren’t nothing I wouldn’t done for nary boatman.”
“We had you with us, likely Ebenezer Zane be alive today,” Titus said.
Taking his hand in hers, she patted it maternally and wagged her head. “Ain’t nothing in this world gonna save a man what got his head caved in with a Chickasaw rock war club.”
“She’s right, Titus,” Ovatt agreed as he pulled his collar up and rose from the bench to move past Root toward the bow. “I see it’s time we got on down to Nawlins. Get on up there and get them hawsers heaved to on that capstan. We got us a boatload of cargo and these two ailing boatmen to get on downriver.”
The thick hemp ropes nearly filled his hands in their own right as he struggled with his knots against the nudge of the current, but they were soon moving south once more, through the last of that myriad of false channels and swamps just below Pointe Coupee, where Lower Louisiana began. Here long ago the French had begun construction of a great levee, that work later taken up by the Spanish in their own attempt to prevent seasonal flooding of the rich agricultural lands of the lower Mississippi Valley.
“You see that,” Ovatt called out, pointing at the levees on the eastern shore, “a riverman knows it ain’t far now till he’s with more and more folks. All this here stretch is called the German Coast.”
In his own crude way Heman had just expressed the riverboatman’s term for the civilization that began to dot the banks once he’d passed the northern end of the levee: behind its protection sat plantations, many small and quaint villages inhabited by the friendliest of French-speaking Louisianans. Here in the flooded fields they grew sugarcane and rice, along with cotton and one huge orange grove after another, many trees still heavy with fruit. A wondrous sight for young Titus to behold. Many of the inhabitants along the German Coast came to the riverbank to wave at the passing flatboat. Ovatt, Root, and Bass waved back in salute to the friendly riverfolk working their fields and orchards. And at the sight of every likely young maiden, the three all stood tall, boasting of their manhood while lustily crying out their claims of true love to her.
In three more days Kingsbury was able to sit up and take more sustenance than grease soup. They floated past Baton Rouge, the site of an abandoned Spanish fort and a small village still peopled by Acadians. From there south they were never out of sight of one small settlement, cluster of fishing boats, trading post, or fine, palatial plantation after another.
“I’m gonna get myself a drink of some real liquor,” Beulah said one afternoon as she came up and settled on a cask near Titus at the gouger. Root and Ovatt both sat near the stern rudder, singing one of their riverman songs to the tune of “Yankee Doodle.”
Titus asked, “What’s real liquor taste like?”
She regarded him a moment in that afternoon light as a warming breeze crossed the bow. Then, peering off again to the south, the woman answered, “I allays get me a bottle of long-cork claret. Have every trip down. Figure it’s only fitting I should drink a final toast to Jameson. Only right.”
“Drink a toast? Of course—to your dead husband,” Bass replied.
