bright, fiery, optimistic eyes seeming to come directly to Titus, dawdling just enough as they halted there to cause him to swallow hard. As a child or man, he’d never been what anyone could dare call handsome—fact was, Bass considered himself firmly on the homely side—so when her eyes appeared to take their measure of him, Bass felt his cheeks redden. He was relieved when the woman’s gaze turned aside to land on the storekeeper.
“Bailey,” she began in a loud, sure voice she flung across the shabby, low-roofed store, “what’s cornmeal these days?”
“This time of year it’s twenty-five dollar the hundredweight, Mrs. Grigsby.”
She drew her lips into a wrinkled purse, licked them quickly in grave thought, then replied, “Gimme ten pounds. Got coffee?”
“Some come in just last week.”
The woman asked, “You tried it your own self?”
“The missus made some for us just this morning.”
“And?” she prodded, nudging her head to the side, out of the way of some ironmongery hanging from the rafters as she took two steps forward, her brood shuttling hurriedly to stay at the hem of her dress.
“As fine a cup as I’ve ever had on either side of the river, ma’am.”
Drawing her shoulders back, Mrs. Grigsby declared, “Should have known
With a smile the storekeeper answered, “Land, but I know he’s a one to drink it morning, noon, and evening too—was it that you had it always brewed for him. Tell you the honest, for this last shipment, I gotta have fifty cents the pound.”
“Lord bless and preserve me!” she exclaimed, suddenly snagging the wrist of one of the younger children and taking from the hand something the offending youngster had been closely inspecting behind her mother’s back. She replaced the waxed parcel back among the display on the rough plank shelving and turned back to Henline. “Will you see fit to give us five pounds of your coffee on account?”
He sighed. “I can add it to the books for you, Mrs. Grigsby. You’re good folks—and I’ll stand by honest stock like you and the mister.”
“No one can say you ain’t stood by us these last two troublesome seasons, Bailey,” she declared with the sort of undisguised gratitude that was hard for a proud woman to let show. “You know we’re good for it. And … if it’s all right, I’d like to get each of the young’uns a little treat out of your jars over here. We don’t get in here much as I’d like—”
“Go right ahead, ma’am. Let ’em each pick what they want. Ain’t no trouble to just put their treats on the books too.”
With a meaningful nod she said, “Thank you, Bailey.”
Bass watched her turn away with her children as she bent her head and murmured to them softly. One by one they began to approach the shelf where rested the immense, odd-colored jars and small wicker baskets filled with rock candy and other sugared delights. Taking a step back toward the counter, Titus grew thoughtful as he cupped the small skin pouch inside the worn blanket satchel slung over his shoulder—fingering what he had left in the way of hard coin.
Titus cleared his throat, drawing Henline’s attention and said, “Best have me some of that cornmeal and your coffee too my own self.”
“Good thinking, mister,” the storekeeper replied, rubbing the palms of both hands down the front of his sweat-stained shirt that had likely been the better part of a month without a scrubbing. “’Cepting for the army sutler upriver, this here be the last place you’ll run onto such victuals. What’ll it be of the cornmeal?”
“Fifty pound,” Bass said, swallowing down the sudden flush of apprehension he felt at spending the last of his money.
Turning aside to move off, Henline asked, “And your coffee?”
“Maybe best I have us count what I got left after you get that cornmeal,” Bass replied. “We’ll see how much coffee I can do with.”
“You have American?” Bailey asked, eying him up and down.
“Yes. I have American.”
With an approving nod the storekeeper continued about his chore of scooping cornmeal from a large oaken hogshead into linen sacking.
It was money, Titus reminded himself as he fretted. Only money. Never had he been captive of it, because his whole life had either been feast or famine: Titus at times had earned all the money he wanted at Troost’s Livery and had survived nicely; while at other times he had none to speak of in his empty pocket, and had survived just as well. Maybe money was just like whiskey and women. All three were the same: when a man had ’em—he best drink up while the drinking was good … lay while the women were spreading their legs for him … or spend that money before it wore a hole in his britches. Many were the times he’d gotten by without the whiskey, or the whores, and more often than not he had survived without coins jangling in his purse.
Besides, he suddenly decided, like the storekeeper said—west of here there wasn’t but one more goddamned place to spend one’s money anyhow. Why would a man want to carry anything west when it weren’t going to do him any good out there?
Then and there a candle’s flicker of impulse made him suddenly decide to empty his purse. This would be the last in the way of hard currency he figured he would see for many a season to come. While some men buried their money away against some greatly feared lean time like squirrels hoarding their store of nuts for the coming winter, Titus no longer saw any need to have the feel of it stitched up in his waistband the way he and the rest of Kingsbury’s boatmen had carted their gold specie north from New Orleans on up the Natchez Trace. And he was surely not the sort who had ever needed the reassuring jangle of coins at his side, the feel of specie caressing his palm.
Money was to be used, he had come to believe with certainty. Not something to be hoarded. And where he was going, money sure as hell was something a man could not use. This was, he realized of that moment, the very edge of the world as he had known it: the border between all that he had been, and all that he wanted his life to be. Money, like so many other things, was clearly a part of the world he was leaving behind. Best to leave here what little money he had left. Leave it behind with all the rest of his old life he would no longer need take with him.
They settled up on what Titus owed for the cornmeal and coffee, the three bags sitting there on the dusty counter, in their midst the stack of coin, which now belonged to the storekeeper. The few that remained with Titus he turned over and over in his palm.
“Something more I can do for you, mister?” Henline asked expectantly, an eyebrow raising.
He licked his lips, gazing down at the few coins left him. “What you got in the way of tobaccy?”
The fleshy eyes studied the whipcord-lean wayfarer again, as one might regard a person of questionable sanity. “Don’t wan’cha no powder, or lead? Don’t need you no axes or knives?”
Shaking his head, Titus declared, “That tobaccy there,” and he pointed to the large cedar crate on the plank counter, the top of which had been pried off to expose the dark carrot twists of dried tobacco leaf. “How much is the asking?”
“You a chewing man, are you?”
“I am, a’times. What’s the toll for a plug?”
“Ten for a dollar.”
“That’s steep.”
“It’s American—and it’s come a fur distance, mister. Kentucky, I’m told. Freighted down the Ohio, then up the Missouri.” Henline scratched at a fleshy jowl again as he eyed the coins Titus set one by one down on the meal-dusted counter. “Tell you what I’ll do: with what you got left there … I can make you a good trade—fifteen for the dollar.”
“How much ’baccy that gimme?” he asked suspiciously.
With his beefy hands Henline began to pull out the carrots, counting out loud as two of the woman’s children inched close, intently studying the process, their eyes just above counter level. When he was done, the storekeeper again rubbed his hands down the front of his dirty pullover shirt and said, “Sixty of them twists—makes for four
