Dance on the Wind tb-1

by Terry C. Johnston

  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 Fren
ch 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 r
ose 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.