there about the boat. Then he gazed at the woman one last time. “No. I been figuring on it some—and … this don’t rightly seem the life for me. Not that it ain’t a good life and all. But last few weeks … ever since Ebenezer, them Injuns and all—”
Kingsbury said, “I know just how you might feel, son. After Eb was kill’t … we got you tangled up in that business back at Annie Christmas’s gunboat. But cain’t you see? That was for Ebenezer too, settling a score for the man.”
“We done it for Mathilda too,” Ovatt said.
The pilot seemed to study Bass’s face for a few moments, then shrugged with resignation as he added, “Maybeso there’s too damned much of the wrong kind of excitement on the river for our young friend here.”
“Maybe too damn much …,” Titus began, then sighed and finished, “I ain’t never killed a man.”
“Them red bastards gonna kill you if’n you didn’t kill them!” Ovatt argued.
“Worse’n that,” Titus continued, “I never afore see’d a man die like Ebenezer Zane done.”
“You pay me heed: that’s one thing there’s plenty of in a boatman’s life,” Kingsbury explained. “Lot of dying.”
Ovatt nodded. “But I allays s’posed all that dying went right along with all the living.”
“So what you figure to do, Titus?” Root asked.
With a shrug Bass answered, “Figured to get back to the Ohio, make my way yonder to Louisville, where I was bound away for when I run onto you and Ebenezer.”
“Still got your sights set on finding work there?” Ovatt inquired.
“If I can’t find none, maybeso I’ll get on up to St. Louie eventually. Finally see what that place got to offer a man.”
“The hull damned world, that’s what,” the woman said, stunning them all. “That St. Lou there’s one of the four doors what opens onto the rest of the world, Titus. Don’t you see?”
“Four doors?” Root asked at the rudder.
“Up yonder’s Orlins,” Beulah explained. “That’s the southern door out to the world. A man can mosey on all the way up the Mississippi to find the northern door to them English lands, the lakes and rivers and all that country beyond where it grows mighty cold. Then, from Pittsburgh and Cincinnati country, you head east over the mountains where a body can go to the edge of the ocean, sailing off to just about anywhere.”
Bass listened to her words with not just his ears, but even more so with his heart, pounding as it was. Finally he asked, “St. Louie’s the w-western door?”
“That’s what I hear tell.”
Kingsbury leaned toward her to ask, “You ever heard of what’s out there?”
For a moment she cocked her head to the side, as if trying to pull something from her memory. “Only what I heard when Jefferson’s bunch—them explorers—come back years ago. You see, them other three doors—north, south, and east—they all open onto water. Water’s the way you get to the rest of the world.”
“But not from St. Louie?” Ovatt asked.
“Shit,” Root growled. “Everybody knows St. Louie’s on the river. Sure as hell a man can get west on the water.”
“I s’pose that’s true,” the woman agreed matter-of-factly. “But I heard there’s tall mountains atween St. Louie and the far ocean. Ain’t no river through them mountains what takes you to t’other side.”
Mumbling his unintelligible complaints while he scratched at the side of his hairy face, Root finally responded, “I don’t figure a man got any business going to no place where there ain’t a river to take him. I’m a waterman. Borned beside the river, raised up on it—figure I’ll live and die riding the rivers.”
“If there ain’t a river going there, Reuben don’t figure it’s worth the journey,” Kingsbury explained to Titus.
“Got to admit, Reuben’s got him something there,” Ovatt stated. “I allays found me everything I needed on the river, or right beside it.”
Turning from the boatmen, Titus peered intently at the woman. “You ever hear anything more about that country out there?”
“Only what I hear’d listening to menfolk talk up and down the river after Jefferson’s men come back from that far ocean.”
Bass leaned forward, excitement coursing through him. “They say anything about them mountains?”
“Only that they was so tall they touched the sky,” the woman replied, a look crossing her face that told him she understood. “Mountains higher’n anything we can’t even imagine out there.”
“And goddamned red-bellied Injuns too!” Kingsbury snarled.
“’Thout no big, fine rivers out there,” Root began, “sounds to me like that be country fit only for Injuns, and not at all fit for the likes of civil folk.”
“There gotta allays be a place for Injuns and wild critters,” Ovatt said. “Place where we can put ’em so just plain white folks like us can go on about our business of living.”
“Listen to you!” the woman cried. “Like you fellas was the cocks of the walk, wherever you choose to set down your boots!”
“Damn right—we are that!” Kingsbury shouted exuberantly. “Ever’ last one of us is half horse, half alligator —”
“Don’t even let me ever hear you go on and on about how you can whup up, outride, outdrink and all that better’n any other man alive.”
“We’re rivermen!” Root exclaimed. “By damn, we’re ring-tailed roarers—”
“By bloody damn, you just get us to Orlins,” Beulah interrupted the boatman’s verbal strut. “Then we’ll see if you can get us back north to Kentucky all to one piece.”
Kingsbury leaned forward from his perch to slap her on her ample rear. Whirling quickly on him, she squinted a flinty glare at first, but no sooner did it quickly soften into a grin.
“Why, Mr. Pilot,” she said, cocking her head coyly, “you do appear to be mending quite nicely.”
“I am at that,” Hames replied.
But now the woman doubled up a sizable fist and held it below the pilot’s nose. “But if I ever catch you taking a swat at my behind parts again, I’ll do even worse to you than you got visiting that whore’s gunboat.”
With a wide grin of his own Kingsbury ducked behind his arms as if about to be pummeled. “I hear you, ma’am. Won’t never have me grabbing for a feel of your behind parts no more.”
“Maybe since’t you ain’t making yourself useful steering this here broadhorn—you can grab one of them poles and do us some fishing for lunch.”
“I can do that,” Kingsbury said, starting to rise.
She laid a firm hand on his shoulder and shoved him back down on that rough bench beneath the awning. “And while you’re fishing, mister riverman—suppose you think about how you just might treat a lady proper, and not like one of your whores.”
Hames gazed up into her face, immediately contrite. “I’m sorry if’n I offended you, ma’am. Didn’t mean to treat you bad—”
“Not like them women you pay to hike up their skirts for you!” she said.
Titus listened and watched, amazed—never having heard a woman talk in such a bold-faced manner to a man. At least one who was not a foul-mouthed, hard-case whore.
“Just get to your fishing there, Pilot,” the woman ordered. “And prove to me you’re of some use besides rutting with poxed-up pay-women, making yourself tumble drunk at every river stop, and shoving your way into a fight at the drop of a boot.”
Hames glared, saying, “It’s fish you want, then fish you’ll get, woman.”
By midday Kingsbury had pulled all sorts of creatures from the waters of the lower Mississippi: besides perch and trout, he had hooked some buffalo fish, carp, and sturgeon, along with pike and even a soft-shelled turtle. Over the coals of her sandbox fire Beulah cooked the pilot’s catch, feeding them all until they were ready to burst.
“Maybe you’ll do,” she admitted to Kingsbury as he started from the warmth of the fire, intending to relieve Heman Ovatt at the stern rudder. “Maybe you are the sort of man what can provide for a woman proper.”
The pilot stopped, turned back to look closely at her face, then said, “If ever a man was intending to get himself tied up to one woman, I figure one like you ought to do a man nicely too.”
Bass watched her kneel back over the sandbox fire, her cheeks flushing with the compliment—Kingsbury
