“I say we split the money up afore we set off for the Ohio,” Heman Ovatt suggested.
Titus could see in the boatman’s eyes some hint of what he himself felt inside at that moment. The four of them and the woman stood in a cluster at the far end of the levee, watching three strangers release the hawsers, wheeling them in on that crude capstan as they set off on that very flatboat which had carried Ebenezer Zane’s crew down the Ohio, on down the Mississippi to New Orleans.
“Maybe that ain’t such a bad idea you got,” Kingsbury replied. “That way I don’t have to watch over it all by myself.”
Reuben nodded enthusiastically, licking his lower lip with a pink flick of his tongue. “I figure each of us watch out for his own share.”
“Too much for one man to carry, anyway, ain’t it?” Beulah asked.
The pilot held up the skin sack filled with heavy coins, then patted, with a muted rattle, the five other sacks he had weighing down the pockets of his greasy hide coat.
“I do believe it is. I ain’t no packmule,” Hames replied. “And sure as hell don’t wanna carry all this up the Natchez Road by myself.”
“Let’s divide it!” Ovatt cried.
“Not here,” Beulah said. “I gotta tell you that’s more money’n I ever seen—and I been on the river longer’n any of you fellas.”
“Ebenezer made sure he loaded his boat this time down with cargo what’d bring top dollar here in Nawlins for the season. Shame he ain’t here to see just how much it brung him.”
“He allays carried the money north hisself—in belts he wore under his shirt,” Ovatt stated. “Don’t know how he stood up under it all, though.”
Titus turned aside a moment, watching their flatboat slip away down the wharf, under the control of its new owners—men who bought flatboats reaching New Orleans, taking the vessels to their woodyard on the levee, where in the shallow water the boats were knocked and sawed apart, the hard-grained yellow poplar from those northern forests sold plank by plank, foot by expensive foot to those who could afford to build their homes and shops of the very best money would by. Selling off that long flatboat Ebenezer Zane had built for him at the mouth of the Ohio in Pittsburgh was the last thing holding them there. The long trek north could now begin.
Over the last week their cargo had gone for more than any of the veteran rivermen could have imagined. The massive coils of thick, oil-soaked hemp rope taken on in Louisville went first. Then the northern flour, first sifted and checked for weevil larvae and other pests before stevedores rolled off those casks for the buyers. After that the crates of Kentucky tobacco leaf were inspected and sold among four competing middlemen, each of whom had an overseas buyer in the markets in Europe. And finally came the middlemen interested in looking over the kegs and casks of Kentucky and Pennsylvania ironmongery: candleholders and chest hinges, door latches, hasps and all manner of window hardware, every last fire-hardened piece of it hammered out somewhere along the northern frontier of the Ohio River country.
Seven days it took them to arrange for the sale of everything. This strange, new, convoluted process began by their searching out Ebenezer’s longtime buyers for certain goods, scouring the levee for still others, bringing those savvy negotiators to the boat one by one to let them pore over the goods brought down from the Ohio country, and offer their best price for what they wanted most. There followed considerable discussion and ciphering among the three boatmen, arguing over how they might wrestle the best deal for every cask, keg, and crate of Ebenezer’s cargo.
After the second buyer made his offer on the entire lot of their flour that first day of dickering, the boatmen even turned to Titus for help sorting through the maze of numbers for them.
“Why me?” he asked anxiously.
Kingsbury’s brow furrowed. “We ain’t none of us been to school in many a year—I just figured you’d know more about such things and wouldn’t mind working out things on paper for us.”
“I …”—and he swallowed hard with no little fear, forcing out the admission—“I don’t remember much about how numbers work and such.”
It was the truth, plain and simple: he could recall practically nothing of the mystical world of ciphering.
In bewildered frustration Kingsbury turned to the woman.
“If you’re sure you’ll trust me,” Beulah replied without hesitation.
With a glance at Titus the pilot said, “You know how to work your numbers?”
“See there?” she snapped at him. “Just goes to show you don’t trust me.”
But Kingsbury was as quick to answer, “We’ll trust you—just figure it out for us. Cipher what the offers mean for all them ropes. An’ what that fella said he’d give us for that whole lot of flour.”
From then on Beulah stood foursquare in the thick of the bargaining, selling, and in counting the hard money the buyers brought in pouches, all manner of specie: Spanish doubloons, French guineas, and sometimes even American silver. Money that had a real heft to it, cool to the touch, substantial. More of it than Titus thought he’d ever see in his whole life.
And now he watched the woman count out his share into his palm. More into his other palm, until he was sure he could hold no more in his hands. Into a skin pouch he poured his treasure, then dropped it inside his shirt, patted it. Maybe this was what it took to feel like a man. Not just the liquor and women—but to feel as if he was a real man like his father, earning a living. This long trip downriver had earned him a small fortune.
“I’m gonna show you boys what you ought’n do with your money,” Beulah said that night as they settled into a small second-story room above a noisy gambling house at the edge of the Swamp. Against the walls lay pallets made with coarse hemp, old comforters for padding, and a wool blanket.
They joined her to sit squat-legged around a flickering grease lamp and some wax candles at the center of the room while the woman passed out four needles.
“You get all of these out of Ebenezer’s plunder?”
Nodding her head, Beulah answered, “They was in his box on the boat what I saved. Them and this thread here.”
She gave them each a long strand of linen thread to start them out, showed them how to lick it before slipping it through the eye of their needle despite their coarse, callused, clumsy fingers. Then she turned to their youngest member.
“Titus, I want you go over in the corner and take your britches off.”
All four of them looked at her as if she had just whacked them all up alongside their heads with a snag pole.
“G’won, now. Put that blanket round you, if you’re scairt to lemme see you in your woolens.”
No one said a word as Titus crawled over to his pallet, laid the wool blanket over his legs, and loosened the buttons on his britches. When he had kicked them off his feet, Bass slid his rump back to the circle and handed the pants to her.
“Now watch what I’m gonna show you on the young’un’s britches so you can get started doing the very same thing on yours.”
Having peeled both legs inside out, the woman carefully sliced open the waistband. She pushed in a few of the youngster’s coins before knotting her thread and beginning her repair.
“Here, son,” she said, handing him the britches in one hand, the needle in the other, “now you keep on with it and get all them coins of your’n sewed away outta sight.”
“Ouch!” Reuben cried moments later as he began. He sucked on a bloody finger. “Goddamn! I ain’t s’posed to be doin’ such woman’s work as this.” He flung down his britches in disgust. “Rest of you can play like you’re a tailor—”
“So you want everyone you meet ’long the road home to know you’re carrying all that money, is that right?” Beulah asked.
“That’s my concern. T’ain’t none of yours!” Root snapped.
“Damn well is my concern,” Kingsbury said. “You go letting folks know you’re carrying all that money—they’re gonna rightly figure we’re carrying all of ours too.”
“Most folks coming north from Orlins gonna be poor—but ’nough of ’em gonna be rich,” Beulah explained as she leaned over to hand Reuben the britches he had flung down. “Folks know if you’re on the Trace, you either gonna be rich from selling cargo downriver … or you’re poor as a church mouse, with nothing but the clothes on
