Dance on the Wind

7

He couldn’t ever remember eating so much. It seemed his mouth and gullet and belly kept crying out for more, for every last bite he could lay his hands on.

“How long you say it been since you last et?” asked Hames Kingsbury, the head oarsman, who wore beneath his blanket coat a shirt of poor man’s tow cloth, topped with a bright-red handkerchief for a cravat. Crowning it all was a dark-green hat in which a long red feather was prominently displayed—a strutting cock of a boatman’s symbol of martial prowess.

Titus looked over the rim of his coffee tin at the blond, short-cropped man with a matted beard. “Two … two days.”

Kingsbury glanced up at the one called Ebenezer Zane, the long-haired, heavily bearded pilot and patroon of that flatboat bobbing gently nearby in the black water of the Ohio. “This boy’s got him a natural appetite, Ebenezer. If he gets hisself this hongry in two days—think what a pitiful sight he’ll make if he happed to go a week ’thout a bite.”

Zane squatted next to the youngster, grinning within that black beard and unkempt hair of his that surrounded his ruddy face like the mane of a lion. “Don’t you give none of these river riffraff no mind, Titus Bass. G’won and eat your fill.”

“I had a way,” Titus garbled around a chunk of the boiled salt pork, “I’d do something pay you back for the victuals.”

“Now, don’t go and tell our patroon that!” grumbled Reuben Root, just about the sourest-faced man Titus thought he’d ever had the displeasure to run across. Besides his jacket and waistcoat of Spanish silk that had seen finer days, Root sported a shapeless, low-crowned hat, the like of which protected a man from rain. “Man always pays up for what he eats.”

Stopping the corn dodger at his lips, Titus looked over at Root across the fire. “I … I ain’t got no money to pay for this food.”

In his fox-fur cap, with its legs dangling from either side of the pilot’s head and the tail bobbing down his back, Ebenezer Zane clapped a hand on the back of Bass’s shoulder and said, “Told you not to pay these’r hired fellers no mind. Eat your fill. An’ if’n that ain’t enough, we’ll boil up some more.”

“We go giving our food away, how we sure to last till Louisville and the Falls?” demanded Root grumpily.

“Shit, we’ll make it awright,” the fourth man cheered as he knelt close to the fire and picked up the bail to a large kettle where the boatmen had boiled their coffee. Like the other three, he too wore the thick moccasins preferred by rivermen, all well greased with tallow, as well as fustian britches, made of a coarse cloth woven from cotton and linen. The one called Heman Ovatt continued, “Cain’t be more’n another night on the river afore we reach port at Louisville.”

“Ovatt’s got the sense his folks give him,” Zane replied to the others.

“You’re the pilot—you tell me,” Root spat. “Pilot’s the one what’s supposed to know this river like every wrinkle in your own honey-dauber. Leastways, that’s what you claimed to me when you hired me back up to Pennsylvania.”

Zane leaned close to Bass as if intending to whisper a confidence, but his voice remained clear and loud as he said, “This sack of whorehouse catshit named Reuben Root really ain’t so bad a heart as it may seem, son. Just that, well—he’s a Pennsylvania boy. And not a Kentucky man.”

“Ovatt ain’t a Kentucky man neither!” Root protested. “An’ ’sides—I ain’t a sack of whorehouse catshit. That’s ’bout the worse thing you could call a man what hates cats much as I does.”

“Hell, Ebenezer knows that!” Kingsbury said. “Why you think he gone and called you that?”

The pilot nodded, smiling hugely. “Hames there”—and he pointed at the oarsman across the fire—“he a Ohio man. Same as Heman there. But I’ll ’llow they’re good Ohio men … seeing as they came from about as close to Kentucky as you can come.”

“We’re from Cincinnati,” Ovatt explained. “This here’s my third trip downriver.”

As were many who took up the nomadic, rootless life of a riverman, the flatboat’s patroon was himself a discharged soldier, a veteran of the Continental Army. Kingsbury, Root, and Ovatt had been the sort of vagabonds who naturally clustered in the river ports like Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and St. Louis when Ebenezer Zane had come upon them—otherwise homeless men who had become a class by themselves in the late eighteenth century.

Zane turned to Bass. “I figure since’t we saw you on the south side of the river—that’s gotta make you a Kentucky boy.”

“Yep, I am,” Bass answered.

How his ears already hung on every word these four spoke. While they might all be from the same general part of the frontier Titus had once called home, these boatmen nonetheless spoke with an accent that was all their own. From time to time their unique speech was spiced with the jargon peculiar to their trade, with a few Spanish, French, Creole, and Indian words thrown in for good measure.

Zane asked, “You got a place you call home?”

He glanced at the pilot a moment, then at two of the others around the fire, all of them gazing at him in expectant silence.

“It’s all right, Titus Bass,” the patroon finally said. “You don’t wanna say, makes us no difference. None of us gonna haul you back to home nohow.”

“R-rabbit Hash,” he said around a mouthful of meat.

“That ain’t far down from Cincinnati,” Ovatt remarked. “Heard of it.”

“Ain’t much to the place,” Titus replied. “Few shops, a cooper and blacksmith is all.”

“Don’t matter how big a place is,” Kingsbury said. “All that matters is what you feel ’bout it after you’ve gone and left it behind.”

“You got you plans, Titus Bass?” Zane asked. “I mean—now that you’ve put Rabbit Hash at your back?”

He swallowed that bite almost whole, sensing it slide all the way down his gullet. Titus didn’t think he could take another bite, his belly suddenly complaining that it was stretched to its limit.

“Wanna go down to Louisville. Heard lots ’bout it. I was figuring on looking up some work.”

“Some work?” Root snarled acidly. “Why, who’d hire a skinny strap of chew leather like you to do anything?”

“I’ll do anything. I handled mules and a ox in the fields, an’ I can hunt—”

Root let out an explosive grunt. “Shit! Man can hunt wouldn’t come in here near starving like you was.”

His shoulders rounding with the man’s crude laughter rolling over him, Titus hung his head. “I just never … didn’t see no sign of any game.”

“Don’t pay him no mind,” Kingsbury said. “Root’s just the sort of critter what ain’t happy less’n he can complain till every other man’s feeling low as he is.”

“That’s right,” Zane added. “His mama raised him on sour milk!”

“Least my mama knowed better than to take a full-growed skinny boy like this to wet-nurse.”

Ebenezer Zane turned on the youngster. “Titus Bass, tell me true now: ain’t you been weaned and whelped?”

His eyes muled, not knowing just how to respond to such a damned silly question. “Sure … certainly I am. I’m full growed.”

Three of them roared with laughter, and Zane slapped his thigh while grumpy Root flung out the last of his coffee at the fire with a hiss.

“That settles it, Reuben,” Kingsbury said matter-of-factly. “The boy’s been weaned, so you don’t have to worry ’bout none of us gotta wet-nurse him.” Ovatt and Zane roared anew.

“That is, if Titus Bass figures on asking us for a ride down to Louisville,” Zane said.

Ovatt stepped closer as his laughter sputtered to an end. “What you say, Titus Bass?” He pointed toward the nearby river. “You wanna float down to Louisville on that there Kentuckyboat?”

“Kentuckyboat?”

The pilot answered, “Just ’nother name for a flatboat, Titus Bass.”

“Some calls ’em broadhorns too,” Hames Kingsbury explained.

“So, tell me, now,” Ebenezer Zane said, “you wanna walk downriver to Louisville—or you feel like floating with us?”

He studied the big flatboat tied up at the bank some twenty-five feet away and felt his mouth dry. “I ain’t … never been on a boat afore.”

“How long you been in Kentucky?” Kingsbury asked.

“All my life.”

“You was born a Kentucky boy?” Ovatt inquired.

He nodded. “My grandpap come in long back.”

“Before or after the French got throwed out?” Zane asked.

“Afore.”

Zane leaned back, smiling in that dark hair that fully framed his big face. “By damn, fellas—this here boy’s about as Kentucky as they come. Now, me, I was borned on the Kentucky side of the Big Sandy River—just ’cross from Virginia. Near a place called Savage Branch. But I was still young when my folks up and moved back to Point Pleasant in Virginia. My pa figured out he never was gonna be no good at farming.”

“That’s why I left to get down to Louisville,” Titus admitted.

“Makes us both Kentucky boys,” Zane replied. “You had your fill?”

“Yep, I have.”

“And you decided to float with us?” Ovatt asked.

“You might as well float,” Kingsbury said. “Damn sight easier’n walking.”

“He gonna ride for free, Ebenezer?” Reuben Root growled. “While’st the rest of us work?”

“I figure I can use Titus come the rapids below Louisville.”

Titus asked, “Below? You mean after we gone past Louisville?”

“We’ll be tying up at the wharf in Louisville—see if there’s any load we can float down to New Orleans. Then you help us get on through them chutes,” the pilot explained. “That’ll pay for your passage down. We’ll put over to the shore and let you off a few miles down from Louisville. You can walk back up. That work for you?”

After running it over in his mind quickly, he nodded once. “I s’pose it’ll do nicely.”

“By the by, Titus Bass,” Kingsbury said, “can you swim?”

“Yes, sir. I been swimming down to the crik ever since’t I was a young’un.”

“You ever swum in the Ohio?” Ovatt said gravely.

Bass only wagged his head.

“It’s different’n swimming in a swimming hole, son,” Zane declared. “Sinkholes and whirlpools, chutes and undertows—you a strong swimmer? Keep your head above water?”

“I can do that good as any man.”

“All right, then, I won’t feel need of tying a rope around you to keep you tied to me when we go through them Falls. You’ll be on your own—like the rest of these’r hired men.” Zane stood. “The bunch of you best bank that fire for the night and get to your blankets. I smell more rain afore morning, and that’ll make for a soggy getup. I figure we’ll cook coffee on the boat to make us a early start.”

Wiping the back of his forearm across his mouth, Titus asked, “’Sides the river giving you the fits—what about Injuns?”

They all stared at him a moment with strained faces. He felt his stomach flop, thinking he might just have hexed them for some strange reason.

“In … Injuns,” he repeated. “I just figured—”

“We don’t got no more worry ’bout Injuns,” Zane interrupted. “Leastwise, not on the Ohio no longer.”

With excitement tingling up from his toes, Titus leaned forward and prodded, “How ’bout down on the Messessap?” And he watched how they all went about their own affairs, their eyes busy at the fire, or what they were whittling, perhaps a new tattoo Heman Ovatt was scratching on his bare ankle.

“Injuns on the Messessap is just one of a whole shitbag full of dangers a boatman has to stare in the eye ever’ trip down to Norleans.”

Then Kingsbury chimed in, “Likely you won’t even see a Injun what ain’t got hisself drunk down to Natchez or Nawlins.”

“Don’t you even worry ’bout it, for the Ohio’s got real quiet these days, and the Messessap is a big, wide river,” Zane said, exuding confidence.

With Mad Anthony Wayne’s stunning victory over the Wyandot at Fallen Timbers in 1794 and the resultant Treaty of Greenville, Indian problems for Ohio riverboatmen had been eliminated. But—that was on the Ohio. South on the Mississippi and its tributaries the bellicose tribes continued to ambush, attack, and kill unwary boatmen.

Kingsbury suddenly stood and rubbed his hands down the front of his thighs. “You got a blanket there, Titus?”

“I do.”

“’Nough to keep you warm?” Zane inquired.

“It’s done me handsome so far.”

“You get cold—tell me,” Kingsbury said. “We got more blankets on the boat.”

“And if it starts to rain,” Ovatt added, “you can allays find a dry place with us up there under that roof.”

Bass looked over at the flatboat, nodding when his eyes came to rest on the canvas awning stretched over the ridgepole that ran nearly half the length of the flatboat. “Keeping dry does sound good. I thankee for the company.”

“And the victuals,” Reuben Root snarled.

Titus replied sheepishly, “Yep—and thankee for the victuals too.”

“Think nothing of it, Titus Bass,” the pilot said as he turned away and strode off. “I’ll give you your chance to work off those victuals and more—come the Falls of the Ohio.”

“Get back from there, you idjit!” Heman Ovatt bellowed.

Suddenly Titus was snagged and whirled backward, stumbling over a coil of thick oiled hemp lying underfoot.

“The boy didn’t know!” hollered Ebenezer Zane, piloting the flatboat at that fifty-five-foot-long stern rudder.

Ovatt grumbled, gesturing off along the gunnel, “Just go piss somewhere down the side.”

His face burning in embarrassment, Bass stuffed himself back into his britches and scooted past the angry oarsman.

“Anywhere there will do, Titus Bass,” Zane advised.

Feeling all four sets of eyes on his back, Titus turned toward the brown, frothy river and pulled his penis out again, hanging it over the Ohio flowing slowly beneath their flatboat.

“Ain’t your fault,” Hames Kingsbury explained from his thirty-five-foot-long starboard oar on the far side of the craft. “No one told you it’s bad luck to piss off the bow of a boat.”

“Only one thing worst’n pissin’ off the bow of a man’s boat,” Reuben Root growled, then spit some tobacco into the water. “That’s having a god-bleemed woman on a boat.”

“I’ll know now,” Titus replied, dog-faced with shame. “Won’t never do it again.”

“Make sure you don’t—you know what’s good for you,” Root snarled as he settled back in behind the larboard oar, one of that pair rivermen might also refer to as “sweeps,” used more for helping the pilot navigate the flatboat than for propelling it.

“Don’t pay him no mind,” Zane reminded. “Just sit back and enjoy the ride, boy. Think on all the fun we’re gonna have ourselves come we make Louisville.”

For another moment Titus watched Ebenezer plunge the wide, flat end of his huge rudder back into the water, angling it from side to side as the pole rested in a waist-high, Y-shaped wooden fork at the stern of the boat. Turning from the pilot, Titus found Kingsbury motioning him over to the right, or starboard, side of the flatboat. He heaved himself up atop the wooden crates containing nails, from there crawled over some huge oak casks filled with flour, then finally sank onto a few open feet of the deck just in front of the oarsman.

“It’s like anything, boy. First time for ever’thing. You’ll learn.”

“I never rode a riverboat afore.”

More than seven thousand board feet of straight yellow poplar had been felled, milled, planed, and drafted in the construction of Ebenezer Zane’s flatboat back up the Ohio in Pittsburgh. In that city, and downriver at Cincinnati and even Louisville during this golden era of river travel, hundreds of master carpenters and woodworking craftsmen were kept extremely busy right along the banks of the stately Ohio. Gunnels, cross ties and stringers—all were held together by hammering in more than three thousand wooden pins hand-carved from seasoned white oak. To this framework, built upside down at the water’s edge, were then fastened the long sections of poplar planks. That done, all seams were tightly caulked with more than fifty pounds of oakum, untwisted hemp rope pulled apart and soaked in oil or tar, then hammered into every joint across the bottom and up the entire six feet the flatboat’s sides rose above the waterline where the craft might take on some of the river in passing through whitewater rapids or the white-capped river swells during a storm.

To complete a flatboat having reached that stage of construction, the builder would pile rocks on one side of the craft until it tipped right side up. From there on the craftsmen would fashion one sort of raised cover or another, to provide protection for the crew and their sand-box fire pit as well as what cargo they would not chance leaving out in the rain and the river’s worst elements—that roof made either out of wood with shake shingles of oak or cedar, or, in the case of what Ebenezer Zane had come to prefer, a simple oak framework over which he stretched the versatile, and much cheaper by far, oiled Russian sheeting.

Averaging sixty feet or better in length, at least fifteen feet or so in width, the flatboat was normally called upon to carry a minimum of forty or fifty tons of cargo downriver. Such craft came to be known by many names: Kentuckyboat, from the land of its crew’s origin; New Orleans or Natchez, for that crew’s destination; broadhorn, after its huge steering oars, fastened at both stern and bow; in addition to being affectionately called ark, after the boatman’s biblical predecessor.

Ebenezer Zane outfitted every one of his craft with “check-posts”—what boatmen sometimes referred to as “snubbing posts”—those ends of a half dozen of the cross ties extending at least a foot or more above the gunnels every ten feet or so along both sides of the boat; with a muscle-powered capstan the crew could turn with capstan poles to slowly haul in the hawsers of oiled rope by which the rivermen would secure the boat to the shore or wharf at both bow and stern; in addition to a foot-powered leather boat pump, in the event the craft began to take on more water than the men could bail before they would tie up for the evening and replace any oakum guilty of leaking between the boat’s seams. Here in the early part of the nineteenth century, flatboats were constructed for the nominal cost of $1.25 per linear foot, about $75.00, American money. By the time Zane had his craft fully outfitted, he had invested less than a hundred dollars before dickering over the purchase price of his cargo.

There were some businessmen who operated their floating stores, blacksmith shops, tinners, and cooperages, as well as river-going taverns—those “dramshops” and whorehouses—from their gaudily painted flatboats along limited stretches of the Ohio. These were commonly referred to by locals as “chicken thieves” because of their propensity for thievery from settler farms nearest the riverbank. Yet most flatboat owners used their craft to transport cargo from the upper Ohio to the lower Mississippi. To those who preferred the aesthetic lines of a canoe or even a crude bateau or pirogue paddled by buckskin-clad frontiersmen, the flatboat was nothing more than a large, plain, rectangular box allowed to bob in the river’s current with some help from a pair of boatmen on their rudders as well as other crew who manned the oars along the sides. But while it would never win a beauty contest, the Kentucky-born flatboat got the job done: moving early-American commerce downriver.

“You any good with that rifle of your’n?” Kingsbury asked, giving his head a nod toward that part of the deck nearby that was covered by the awning. It was there that Ebenezer Zane had stowed the youngster’s few belongings.

“Thought I was,” Titus answered after a moment’s reflection. “Always had good luck when I went out hunting. Don’t have a idea one why I’ve been off the mark last few days.”

“Said you ain’t seen any sign?”

“Not a thing. And that’s strange too.”

“Only two things my pappy told me would run game out of the woods,” Kingsbury replied. “A storm coming, or Injuns.”

For a moment Titus studied the sky downriver to the southwest. “Must be a storm coming, like you said. Can’t believe it’d be Injuns.”

“Sure it could be,” Heman Ovatt commented as he clambered over to the side of the boat and unbuttoned his britches. “Injuns still thick as ever south side of the river. Every now and then you’ll hear what they do, jumping boatmen coming back home up the Trace.”

“The Trace?”

“Natchez Trace,” Kingsbury explained. “We float down with the goods to Natchez or Nawlins, sell the empty boat too—and then we hire us a wagon back north to Natchez on the Mississap. From there on a man has to buy himself a horse to ride, or he walks.”

“Walks all the way back where?”

Ovatt answered, “Clear up here to the Ohio country where he can put hisself out to work another trip that same year.”

“Man can make two trips a year if he hurries back north on the Trace,” Kingsbury added.

“Why don’t you just float on back north?”

Ovatt snorted, grinning as he fastened his buttons and turned around to look at Bass. “Look out there at that water you pissed in not long ago. Which way it taking us?”

“Downriver.”

“That’s right,” Ovatt replied. “Ain’t no getting a flatboat back upriver less’n it’s more work than it’s worth.”

“Some crews used to pull their boats back upriver from Nawlins,” Kingsbury said. “Most sells their boats along with the freight.”

“Man like Ebenezer Zane there can make him a tidy profit from this trip,” Ovatt said. “Tell the boy what you paid for this boat, Eb.”

The pilot called out, “Less’n a hundred dollars, Pennsylvania value. Listen, boys: let’s move ’er more to the center of the channel.”

“Up to Pittsburgh,” Kingsbury said as he put his shoulders into the oar and Ovatt crawled forward to resume control of the bow rudder, “a flatboat like this’un costed Ebenezer a dollar and a half for each foot. Some hunnerd dollars, since’t this boat’s just a little longer’n sixty-some feet.”

“And she’ll sell for ten times that much we get on down to Norleans,” Zane boasted. “Fifteen dollar a foot or more for the lumber. They hongry for good hardwood down there.” He slapped his hand on the gunnel beside his rudder. “Close-grained poplar. None better, Titus Bass.”

“Damn, but she’s fogging up, Ebenezer!” Reuben Root growled from the port side of the craft.

“Soup gets up much more,” Zane flung his voice the length of the boat, “get huffing on that horn, Heman.”

For several minutes Titus watched the fog coagulate on the brown surface of the Ohio, obscuring most of the banks on either side. Growing more and more worried, he finally turned to peer back at the bushy-headed pilot. Wisps of fog-mist clung to the wild sprigs of Zane’s hair as if it were smoldering. Ebenezer suddenly threw all his weight against his long-tailed rudder, giving the flatboat an ungainly lurch.

Frightened, Titus turned back around, peering forward, his face gone as pale as the grain of newly hewn oak. “H-how’s he know where to point this boat?”

Kingsbury started to grin, concentrating his squint on the bow piercing the wisps of fog, as he replied, “Don’t you worry, boy. Ebenezer Zane knows this river, and he can push through soup better’n most men. Feels his way.”

“Feels … feels his way?”

“Watches for signs on the bank when he can see ’em, but mostly he keeps his eye on the water. Water out in the middle of the channel runs different than the water close to either of them banks. ’Sides,” Kingsbury explained, “if he gets into real bad trouble, he’ll call me to take over up there on the gouger for Ovatt.”

“Gouger?”

“That front rudder,” Hames explained, his jaw working hard. He was so skinny, his sagging jowls appeared ready to topple him. “He knows I’m about the best gouger on the river. Working together, Zane and me, we could turn this here sixty-foot boat around on a ha’penny ’thout no trouble we get in a real fix. And if Ebenezer don’t feel good about making it down a certain stretch, then he’ll sing out and we’ll all put ’er to one shore or t’other,”

The rain came into his face, gentle at first, but cold. Then as it began to lance down harder, the fog began to dissipate, clinging only in long, thick patches strung along either shoreline, puffed back among the trees and brush that huddled just above the water.

“Heave back, Ovatt!” Zane bellowed.

Heman raised his gouger out of the water and secured a loop of rope over the end of the rudder to secure it just above the surface of the river. Turning back to the other three boatmen, he grinned as he began to sing loudly.

“Some rows up,

but we rows down.

All the way to Shawnee town.

Pull away! Pull away now!”

For the answering chorus Zane, Root, and Kingsbury joined in: “Pull away! Pull away now!”

“Tomorrow you’ll be in Louisville,” Kingsbury explained as the other three went on singing their chantey in the pelting cold rain. He snugged his shapeless hat down on his head as Titus scooted closer to a stack of crates to escape most of the driving rain. “We’ll get you your first taste of likker, Titus Bass. You ever drank afore?”

“Never,” he answered, pulling his oiled leather jerkin up around his cold ears, wishing he had brought himself a warm hat. Perhaps one of those ones his mother knitted for her entire brood. “My pap always had likker around, and he drank it come a wedding or a funeral or a reason for all the menfolk to say serious words about something.”

“Never just for the fun of it?”

He looked at Kingsbury as if he were crazed. “Why, no—I never saw a man take a drink of likker just for the fun of it.”

“Allays had to be a reason?”

“Yep. An’ he said I’d get my first drink when I was finished with my schooling and joined him on the farm.”

“I see,” Kingsbury replied. “Didn’t finish your school neither, did you?”

“Nope.”

“An’ you sure as hell ain’t joined him to work the farm, have you, now?”

“Nope.”

“Way I see it, you ain’t done nothing your pappy told you to do—so it don’t make no sense to me for you to go drink the way your pappy told you to.”

Inside him there was a sudden leap of freedom, almost like a fluttering of wings. “We gonna get us a drink of likker when we get to this here Louisville?”

“Get us a drink?” Kingsbury roared. “What do you say to that, Reuben?”

Root cried out, “We’ll damn well drink that river town dry if they ain’t careful. And we’ll get our honey-daubers wet too!”

“Just for good measure!” Ovatt joined in.

“You boys don’t go spending everything I give you to last the whole trip, now,” Zane cautioned. “There’s still a hell of a lot of river left after Louisville.”

“Natchez!” Ovatt sang out wistfully. “Sweet, sweet Natchez!”

“Norlins is the place! By damned, I’ll wait to have my spree come Norlins!” Root cried out exuberantly.

Kingsbury leaned forward, lowering his head toward the youth, both of his arms wrapped along the shaft of his oar. “You ever had you a woman, Titus Bass?”

“S-sure I have. Had me a special girl.”

“An’ you run off, leaving her behind?”

He gazed down at the deck slick with rain. “She wanted to get married up to me right off.”

“But you had you other things to do, right?”

“S’pose you might say.”

“Damn right, Titus Bass,” Ebenezer Zane roared. “Lots of gals out there in the world, many of ’em ready to climb the hump of a likely young lad such as yourself.”

“You had you that special gal of yours?” Kingsbury pursued.

His head bobbed. How eager he was to be a man among these men. “More’n once.”

“Whoooeee!” Kingsbury exclaimed. “Then you’re ready for a real man-thumpin’ woman, Titus Bass!”

“I … I don’t—”

“Not that young gal of your’n back where you run off from,” Kingsbury interrupted. “We’re talking about getting you a real, live, honest-to-goodness, fleshed-out woman who’ll just love to take you under her arm and teach you all she can teach you.”

“T-teach me?”

“’Bout getting your stinger wet, Titus Bass,” Zane added.

Kingsbury leaned forward and slapped the youngster on the shoulder. “I’ll even put up the price of getting you diddled!”

Ovatt asked, “Before or after you get him drunk, Hames?”

“Before, during, or after! Don’t make me no difference—Titus Bass here’s the young’un gonna get his pecker stretched as long as a riverman’s gouger! I figure I’ll just pour some likker in him, and the boy here will tell me when he’s damn good and ready to climb aboard a gal.”

“Mathilda’s house?” Zane asked.

Wide-eyed, Bass quickly turned back to look at Kingsbury.

Hames nodded and replied, “Mathilda’s house, it is. Not a finer lick in all of Louisville.”

“Lick?” Titus asked.

“A whiskey house men flock to,” Kingsbury explained. “Just like the critters you hunt flock to a salt lick.”

Then Bass inquired, “Who’s Mathilda?”

Again it was Hames Kingsbury who explained, “It’s her inn what has the sort to make any man happy, by damn!”

“That’s right,” Root said, a rare smile creasing his face. “Louisville’s the last place on the river till a boatman gets down to Natchez or up to St. Lou.”

“St. Lou?” Bass asked, remembering. “You ever go up there?”

As he looked from man to man, they all shrugged their shoulders. Then Ebenezer finally said, “None of us ever been upriver to St. Lou afore, boy. Place might be coming of age soon, what I hear. But for right now it ain’t much of anything but Frenchies.”

“Just like down to Norlins,” Root added.

“Ain’t nothing for us up to St. Lou,” Kingsbury said. “We make fine money floating goods from Pittsburgh and Cincinnati downriver to Nawlins. St. Lou just filled with Injuns and them fellas trade with the Injuns for the furs. More of them all the time.”

“Got all the Frenchies I ever wanna rub shoulders with down to Norleans,” Zane declared. “I don’t need to go looking for more up to St. Lou.”

“Less’n it’s the sort of gals come out of Madame Lafarge’s,” Kingsbury said.

The pilot grinned widely in that bushy, unkempt beard and nodded. “Them kind of Frenchies I can stand to rub on all the time!”

Turning back to Titus, Hames Kingsbury winked. “We’ll get your pecker dipped in the honey-pot tomorrow at Louisville. An’ downriver at Natchez—that’s Ovatt’s favorite place. Then we’ll see about getting you up on top of a fine French gal down at Madame Lafarge’s come we reach Nawlins.”

“Titus Bass,” Zane hurled his voice, “a stroke of real luck you running onto this’r boat of rivermen, it was.”

“With us—by damn—you’re gonna swaller your first likker,” Kingsbury agreed with a smile. “An’ go dip into your first real woman too!”

By the time Ebenezer Zane began shouting his orders for them to put in at the little harbor at the mouth of Bear Grass Creek the next afternoon, the eastern sky behind their backs had turned as gray as the slate lining the canyon of the upper Ohio, and the west ahead of them roiled with dark thunderheads, whipped to a froth by a wind that shoved the taste of a cold rain straight into their faces.

“Steady on that gouger!” the pilot ordered, watching the river, his two oarsmen, and Heman Ovatt struggling at that bow rudder.

“Get ready to bring her over!”

“Ready when you are, Ebenezer!” Ovatt bellowed.

From where he crouched out of the cold wind and coming mist, Titus watched less and less of the four rivermen as he turned his attention to the increasing signs of civilization they had been passing in the last few miles. Infrequent squatter farms had eventually given way to larger spreads until there were more and more lamps lit in the windows of cabins and shops as Ebenezer Zane eased them over to the Kentucky side of the Ohio.

While there were three other towns in the immediate area—Shippingsport in Kentucky, along with Jeffersonville and Clarksville across the river in Indiana Territory—Louisville had not only been the first river port, but from the start had remained the most successful, primarily due to the small harbor that lay at the mouth of the Bear Grass, which made for an ideal patch of calm water where boatmen would tie up and lay to before braving the Great Falls of the Ohio—just downriver from the town.

“Aport! Ho! Bring her hard to port!”

With the pilot’s command Ovatt lunged against the small gouger, clutching it beneath his armpits, pushing the rudder toward the starboard side of the craft. At the same time Zane was performing the opposite maneuver with his larger, longer, deeper-plunging stern rudder. While the bow of the flatboat began to swing out toward the main channel of the river, the stern was already inching in toward the south shore as they cleared the northern boundary of the bay, a grassy, timbered fingertip of rocky land.

“Goddammit! She’s cluttered up, Ebenezer!” Root bellowed his warning as they all got their first view of the crowded port.

“I can damn well see that!” Zane spat. “Loosen up on that gouger, Heman!”

As soon as Ovatt brought the rudder out of the water, the flatboat’s bow eased back into line with the stern as Zane worked his rudder back and forth in long, sure, deep strokes. More than half a hundred flatboats already bobbed in the bay, tied up bow to stern all along the shore, every last one of them awash in the saffron light of at least one oil lantern as the rainy twilight flooded out of the western sky. On shore the wharf bustled as men shouted and barked their orders, hefting loads on and off the boats, clomping up and down the sagging gangplanks, laughing and cursing.

Beyond, on up the southern bank, lay the flickering yellowed diamond dots of Louisville. Titus hadn’t seen this many people in one place at one time since last summer’s Longhunters Fair—likely not since his family’s last trip to Cincinnati.

“Hames, you and Reuben give me some drag!”

At the steersman’s order both Kingsbury and Root dipped their oars into the murky Ohio and braced their legs in the bottom of the boat as they sought to slow the flatboat’s speed. The river tugged, shoved, popped its might at the oarsmen, both of them grunting, huffing, hunching over their work as their voices blended with the loud creak of wood and iron strained to the limit at both gunnels.

“Likely we can put to on the far side of the harbor,” Kingsbury advised, his words no more than a growl as he fought to hold his oar deep in the moving water.

“Figure you’re right,” Zane replied. “Heman! Swing her about and take her across to yonder side!”

Once more Ovatt plunged his gouger into the water, bringing the bow out more in line with the main current of the Ohio as the pilot sweated in concert with him, together keeping the flatboat all but on a dead reckoning for the far side of the Bear Grass harbor.

“Dig in, boys!” Zane reminded his oarsmen. “More drag! More drag! Mind you, I’ve never landed over here, so we don’t know what we got in store for us.”

In the fading light Titus found himself growing more scared as the broadhorn rushed on across the mouth of the harbor toward the south side. There the number of flatboats thinned out and dwindled down to nothing as the lights of Louisville lumbered past on their left, then winked out of sight behind them.

Bass inched around to ask of Kingsbury, barely above a whisper, “What happens we don’t land here?”

“Ain’t no don’t, boy. We gotta land here. We don’t—we’ll face the Great Falls of the Ohio in the dark.”

A shudder ran down his spine. “In the dark?”

“And a man might just as well put a pistol to his own head as head down them chutes at night, with this wet weather blowing into our teeth way it is. You know how to pray—you might wanna give Ebenezer a hand.”

“He p-praying?” Bass asked, feeling himself go weak inside. He’d never been on rough water, much less any falls.

“Hell no, he ain’t prayin’!” Kingsbury replied with a grimace as the oar just about dislodged him where he had his legs braced between some kegs of nails. “Ebenezer’s too damn busy saving this boat—”

“Hard to port, Heman! Put everything you got into it!”

“She’s fighting me, Ebenezer!”

“Stand on it!” Zane commanded. “Don’t let ’er throw you off!” Then he flung his voice down at the youngster. “Titus Bass! Crawl up outta there and lay on that gouger with Heman!”

He started to rise slowly, cautiously, frightened.

“We need you up there right now, Titus,” Kingsbury urged.

“That boy ain’t gonna do us no good!” Root snarled.

“He will too,” the pilot snapped, fighting his rudder. “Get up there now, Titus—and help us get this god-damned Kentuckyboat landed.”

Clawing his way around barrels and over crates, Titus eventually slid down onto the slippery deck in what foot room there was standing opposite Heman Ovatt.

“Lay on it!” the gouger ordered.

Bass hurled himself onto the short shaft of the rudder, face-to-face with Ovatt.

“You don’t weigh much, do you?” Ovatt grunted.

“My mam … she always trying to fatten me up. Said … I had me no tallow. Only b-bone and gristle.”

“Push! Or pull, Titus Bass!”

Zane hollered above the cry of the wind and the hammer of the rain, “We’re doing it, boys!”

Titus didn’t allow himself a look right then, able only to feel the lurch and bob of the flatboat’s bottom as it passed out of the river’s main channel, heaving over toward the calmer water near the Ohio’s south shore. By now the mist had become a steady rain, cold as springwater running down the back of his shirt and jerkin.

“Bring ’er over hard, Heman. Bring it over, Titus Bass!” Zane cried out. “Reuben, bring your oar out and get this’r stern line ready.”

In less time than it takes to tell, Root had pulled his oar from the hammered surface of the brown water and slid back to the rear of the craft, where he laid a loop of thick oiled hemp over one shoulder.

“There’s some likely stumps up ahead, Ebenezer,” Reuben suggested. “They been clearing more and more land.”

“I’ll bring you over and you snag a likely one,” the pilot advised with a grunt.

As Zane brought the slowing flatboat side-sliding to the shore, Root bent and lunged toward the bank in a smooth, practiced motion. He landed on the shiny grass, his moccasins slipping on the mud. He went to his knees but was up in a fluid motion, ripping the coil of rope from his shoulder to fling a great loop of it around the stump of a long-ago girdled tree.

“Tie ’er off stout, Reuben!” Zane advised as the flatboat began to ease on past the stump where Root stood knotting the length of hemp as thick as a man’s four fingers.

At the first straining creak of the stretching rope, it proved certain the huge, oiled knot was going to hold, bringing the stern of the craft closer to the shore as it bobbed on down the bank.

“Bring it about, Heman! Show the boy what to do!”

“Push, goddammit!” Ovatt commanded. “Now’s the time to push!”

Together they plunged the gouger deeper into the water speckled with icy, hammering rain. Beneath him Titus could feel the bow of the boat beginning to sweep around, held firm astern by the one line to their rear, the front of the craft being nudged over by the strong muscle of the river’s current against the gouger and the two men who clung to her.

“Hames! Take the bowline ashore!”

Against the steady drumming of the rain atop flat oaken kegs and barrels, against the hardwood crates, he heard Kingsbury grunting up behind him with his burden, listened as the boatman dragged the rope across the top of their cargo, heard him land in the sodden mud onshore. Kingsbury flung a loop once around a second tree stump, and working in concert with the two men straining at the gouger, he steadily took up the slack in the rope, easing the bow into the shore.

“Tie ’er off,” Zane commanded, stepping away from his rudder pole for the first time in those long, anxious minutes. He twisted from side to side, working a kink out of his back, then tugged down the brim of his shapeless hat before disappearing beneath the awning.

“You can let go now,” Ovatt said.

Only then did Titus realize he still had a deathlike grip on the gouger pole. It took him a moment before he could get his cramped fingers to obey his wishes. When they finally came off, he flexed them.

“C’mon, fellas,” Zane called out, reappearing from the awning. He scooted to the left side of the craft and heaved himself down into the mud.

Ovatt was next, while Bass was the last to land. His legs felt unsteady beneath him at first, what with struggling to keep his balance on the bobbing, weaving flatboat.

Ebenezer Zane was beside him, grabbing his shoulder, helping him straighten there on the shore. “C’mon, boy. I owe you a drink. This Titus Bass did fine, did he not, Heman?”

“He did better’n fine, Ebenezer. He did a man’s work this afternoon.”

Zane pounded him on the back. “Then a man’s drink it is for Titus Bass.”

“At the Kangaroo?” Kingsbury asked.

“Hell, yes,” Zane replied. “There is no better place where we could celebrate this boy’s passage to manhood in Louisville.”

Twenty families accompanying George Rogers Clark on one of his many forays in the Old Northwest during the Revolutionary War had first settled in the area in 1778. Until Thomas Jefferson purchased the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon Bonaparte, Louisville officially served as the young country’s western port of entry, with headquarters for a single U.S. customs agent. Now some thirty-two years later the town boasted a population of at least five hundred, and growing. Besides the grogshops, alehouses, and inns frequented by the rivermen, there were a score of more respectable hotels and restaurants, as well as two long blocks of shops and stores of all description. The town even boasted its own theater, recently built in 1808, establishing what the Louisville Gazette called a true home for “the golden era of Drama in the West,” where theater patrons had “created a high standard of taste and judgment.”

But try as Louisville’s respectable citizens might, it was still the river that had created the town, and it was the river from which Louisville drew its sustenance. Here, close to two out of three men in one way or another owed their livelihood to the Ohio flatboat trade. All along the wharf surrounding the harbor pulsed the bustling commerce of boat building and repair, the riverbank crowded with wagon masters loading goods for their trek inland to the heart of Kentucky, from dawn till dark throbbing with the jostle and shove of draymen and hired lackeys.

Louisville was just about the most exciting place Titus had been in his life. All he had ever dreamed of already, and he hadn’t yet moved a step from Ebenezer Zane’s flatboat.

“The ever-loving Kangaroo!” Hames Kingsbury sang out prayerfully as they pushed on up the soggy bank. “God, but I hope to lay eyes on sweet Mathilda.”

To which Zane exclaimed, “That ain’t all you want to lay on her, I’ll wager!”

All five of them belly-laughed as they strode through the mud into the splotches of hissing torchlight fronting the infamous low-roofed Kangaroo Tavern. Titus stumbled into something, leaping over it as he peered down at the ground.

“You’ll have to watch where you’re walking,” Ovatt advised, “there’s more of ’em.” He pointed out the half-dozen or more bodies sprawled here and there among the mud puddles shimmering in the torchlight dancing on the breeze outside the tippling house.

A crude door blew open and out poured three men, two of whom had a secure hold on the third. A burst of noise, squeals of womankind, and sharp gusts of cruel laughter rolled out in their wake. Intent on their business, the two shoved their way right through the boatmen, stopped, and heaved the one between them into the night. Bass watched the man hurtle a good ten feet through the air until he landed facedown in the rutted muddy lane, where he struggled to rise on all fours at first, then gave up and sank back into the mire.

“Such’ll teach you: don’t never get yourself thrown out, Titus Bass,” Zane warned with a wag of his finger.

The other three rivermen laughed as Titus’s eyes followed that pair of monstrous, stoop-shouldered bouncers back into the Kangaroo.

“Maybe there’s ’nother place—”

Heman Ovatt snatched him by the arm, Kingsbury securing the other as they set him in motion between them, all four laughing.

“There ain’t ’nother place holds a candle to the likes of the Kangaroo!” Hames cried as they passed beneath two wavering, spitting torches and plunged into the tavern’s raucous, smoky depths.

“Man overboard!”

Titus whirled at the frantic cry of alarm, finding a disheveled riverman perched high atop the huge stone mantel fronting the fireplace, weaving for a moment before he flung himself out into the crowd with abandon. A half-dozen others caught him, some grumbling their curses, many laughing, a few splashing ale on his head as they lowered him to the soppy floor below. There on his belly he thrashed with his legs and stroked with his arms disjointedly as if swimming, worming his way across the floor’s mud and muck in good fashion as more and more of the drinkers continued to splatter ale on the swimmer.

Titus found the noise almost ear shattering, unable to make out a single voice in the mad, raucous cacophony—

“Man overboard!”

Another cried out, causing Bass to whirl and look as he was swept along with his crew. This caller as well flung himself out from the wall into the crowd, which broke his fall, then dropped him without ceremony onto the muddy puncheon floor. But like a great beached carp, this one flopped over on his back and began to mimic something of a crude backstroke. Keeping his mouth open for the most part, the swimmer gaped like a fish as he inched himself along in that worming backstroke, swallowing most every drop of that ale bystanders sloshed upon him from above. Titus watched until the swimmer, his front completely soaked, disappeared among the tangle of legs in the milling throng.

“Three Monongahela rye for these fine boatmen,” Zane was ordering as Titus clattered to a halt within their fold, the pilot immediately drawing Bass to his side as he held up two fingers on the other hand, “and a spruce beer for me and my young friend here.”

Three men worked the bar, tapping kegs of ale with great bung starters and mallets, pouring out mugs of the Ohio River’s most famous rye. With a clatter and a slosh their five pewter mugs appeared before them. As the other four all grabbed for theirs, Ebenezer Zane took his in hand and picked up the last, unclaimed mug.

“Here, Titus Bass. I figure you ought’n go slow—this being your first night’s carouse as a man. That pissant rye these boys love to swill takes some getting used to. Me? I prefer my ale, with a foamy head or no. Potato squeezings or spruce drippings—it’s all the same to me. Drink up, lad!”

Titus watched the pilot throw back his chin and take a long and mighty draft, his hen-egg-sized Adam’s apple bobbing up and down between those muscular cords in his neck that throbbed beneath his thick beard.

Taking the mug from his lips, Zane dragged a forearm across his hairy face and whirled on the barman. “Another of that fine ale, my good man!”

When he had his second and had turned back to his crew, the pilot leaned in to Titus, saying, “Now it’s your turn. Drink the first one fast like I, boy. And the second you can savor the taste.”

“Swaller? Swaller it all … like you done—”

“Just like I done.”

“G’won, Titus Bass,” Kingsbury prodded as the other three boatmen crowded close, faces gaping apishly.

He figured it would be nothing much to fit his belly around that mug of ale—just a matter of swallowing until he had drained it all. With the first sip he found it not unpleasant, a woodsy taste to it, some effervescent tickling his tongue. Then he was swallowing in good order, barely aware of the boatmen around him chanting their encouragement as he tipped the bottom of his mug up higher and higher. From the corner of his eye he watched them cheer him on, hoisting their own mugs in waving salute until there was no more for him to drink.

“What’d you think of that?” Heman Ovatt asked with a slap to the back of his shoulders.

“Yes, you li’l river rat—what’d you think of that?”

At the sudden, strange, and very female voice, he whipped around to find a skinny woman sliding herself into their group, picking up Kingsbury’s arm to drape it over her shoulder.

“Ah, Mincemeat,” Kingsbury cried out, his eyes come alive with an inner fire as he seized one of her ample and half-exposed breasts in a huge hand, then clamped her jaw in the other, holding her prisoner while pressing his mouth on hers.

“I’m next, I’m next!” Ovatt cried, standing right there to press himself against the woman when Kingsbury drew back to take a breath and another swallow of his rye.

“An’ how ’bout you, Ebenezer Zane? You want your welcome kiss too?” she asked when Ovatt had finished kissing her.

Still aghast at the woman’s sudden appearance, how she allowed the men to hungrily fondle and kiss her, Titus stood there dumbfounded, his eyes muling as he watched Ovatt reach up to fondle the flesh across the tops of her rounded breasts, exposed as they were all the way down to just above her nipples, pushed up to their full extent by the bodice she had laced beneath them. Skinny as she was, they were about as big a pair as any breasts Bass had seen.

At that moment it grew warm in the Kangaroo. He became discomforted inside, gazing as he was at her pale, mottled flesh there in the murky, smoky lamplight.

“Thankee anyway, my sweetness. Mathilda working tonight?” Kingsbury asked as he brought his head up from kissing the woman’s cleavage.

“Ain’t she working ever’ night?” the woman asked in reply, her full eyes coming to rest on Titus. “After all, she owns this place where you pigs come to rut, don’t she?”

“Any new girls?” Reuben finally spoke up before he drank at his rye.

“Nary a one,” she replied. “Mathilda had a signed writ on three more new ones to come downriver from Pitts—but a feller down Natchez way made ’em a better offer.”

“Bet that made Mathilda a wild one!” Zane declared.

“Wild? You bet. None of us could live with her for a week after that,” she explained. “Then she up and sent a writ back to Cincinnati for what new girls she could get to come down on the next boat.”

“When’ll that be?” Root asked.

She turned to him slowly, her distaste for the man plain as paint on her face. “Be a long time.”

“What?” Root complained. “There’s boats like ours coming down all the time—”

She snorted as she took hold of Ovatt’s mug, saying, “Not boats hauling people cargo.”

As she tossed back some of his rye, Ovatt said, “Settlers going downriver—we see ’em all the time.”

“Not the same as a bunch of women, now, is it, you mud rat?” she snarled at Heman, her eyes flicking back to the youngster. “Not many wanna take up valuable cargo space with whores, now, do they?”

“Think Mathilda be happy to see me?” Kingsbury asked as he snugged her tighter against his hip.

One side of her chemise slipped off a bony shoulder, exposing just a bit more of one breast. Yet she did not take her eyes off Titus. “She’ll be happy to see you. Seeing that you’re one of the few don’t punch her so she’s gotta throw you out. One of you pig rutters gonna tell me who’s this skinny river rat you dragged in with you?”

“This’un?” Zane replied, slinging his weighty arm over Bass’s skinny shoulder. “Why, this be our new hand. Joined up couple days back on the river. Kentucky side of the river, that is. Like me, the lad’s a Kentucky man: southwest of Cincinnati—where you say them new girls be coming from.”

“What’s your name, boy?”

He licked his lips and looked away from her face. “B-bass.”

“What’s your christened name?”

For a moment that stumped him.

“His name is Titus,” Ebenezer answered for him.

With a bob of his warm head he echoed, “Titus Bass.” Immediately he turned to Zane to ask, “Can I get another?”

“Like that, eh?”

Bass agreed, glad to tear his eyes from the roundness and cleavage of the woman’s flesh. “Tasted real good. Makes a fella thirsty for another.” His head felt warm, the skin on his face burning too.

And he felt warm low in his belly when his eyes yanked back to look at her.

“S’pose you go find Mathilda for me?” Kingsbury asked. “You do that, Mincemeat?”

A loud voice suddenly called out, “You staying with them, Mincemeat?”

The five of them and the woman all turned to look at the table where a trio of men hard at their cups motioned her back over their way.

“I’m staying here, Briggs.”

A second man grumbled sourly, “You was here with us first.”

Zane slid in front of the woman protectively. “The lady said she was staying with us. There’s plenty others here for the likes of you.”

“The likes of me?” the third one of the trio cried out like a branded mule. “You’re a fine one—”

Then the woman shoved back in front of Zane, holding her arms out between the two of them. “Briggs, you and the rest ain’t never met this’un before, have you? If you had, I figger you’d know better. He’s a real snapping turtle—”

“Don’t look all that mean to me,” Briggs snorted. “Kinda old, ain’cha?”

“Shuddup, Briggs,” she snarled, slapping a hand against his chest, causing his two companions to guffaw. “Makes no matter, ’cause I’m sure you heard of him somewheres on the river anyway. Eb—this here’s Nathaniel Briggs. Briggs, this here’s Ebenezer Zane.”

The stranger’s eyes went wide as his mouth stammered, “Eb … Ebenezer Zane, is it?” The color drained from Briggs’s face as he repeated the name.

“Then I wasn’t wrong: you heard of this here half snapping turtle, half earth trembles, I take it?” Mincemeat asked. “Learn’t what happened last time he tied up here in Louisville.”

“Some talk of it,” Briggs said, his voice quieter as a few others around them at the crude bar squeezed in closer. “Last summer, wasn’t it?”

“I don’t aim to have no trouble here.” Zane clasped an arm around the woman’s waiflike waist.

“Naw,” Briggs replied with a quick wag of his head. “Just like Mincemeat said, there’s other girls hereabouts.”

Titus watched the riverman turn and urge the other two off into the crowd. Then Bass shouldered his way back into that group, anxiously asking, “What happened last summer to you what made them three back away?”

Zane bent over and whispered into the woman’s ear. Titus saw the tired expression on her face change to something a bit more animated as she brought her eyes to rest on Bass.

The pilot straightened to say, “I’ll tell you about it some other time, Titus Bass. But right now—we’ve got beer to drink, and Mincemeat here has agreed to be your friend for the night.”

She patted the wide, colorful sash the pilot had knotted around his waist. “Just as long as it’s money what’s good for a girl to spend here in Louisville.”

“Since when you become particular what you get in trade?” Ebenezer asked. “Guineas, pistoles, or shillings. Even hard American dollars—”

“What you’re to pay me with this trip down, Ebenezer Zane?”

“Coin,” Zane boasted. “American and English too. Hard money you can spend anywhere.” He whipped back around to the bar, where he slammed down his pewter mug. “Barman! Another beer for my friend and me.” Then, twisting to look at the woman, he asked, “What you drinking, Mincemeat?”

She eyed the youngster and said, “I’ll have what it is Titus Bass is having himself.”

“Another beer, good man!” Zane ordered.

At the same time the woman slid out from under the pilot’s arm and pressed her hip against Titus’s groin, threading an arm around his waist, rubbing her cheek right up against his so that he could smell her breath. Already she had likely drunk her fill of Monongahela rye. He found her face pocked with the ravages of some past pox, her cheeks flushed as she pulled back from his face and peered up into his wondering green eyes. With her skinny fingers Mincemeat stroked first one of his cheeks, then the other.

“Been a long, long time—it has,” she said huskily to the rest of them, pressing her hip into his groin all the more insistently. “A goddamned long time since’t I last had me a peach-cheeked boy like this’un!”