Dance on the Wind tb-1

by Terry C. Johnston

  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 fla
tboat’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!”