Dance on the Wind tb-1

by Terry C. Johnston

  In such deep thought his watch passed, and it was with reluctance that Titus turned over the two horse pistols to Ebenezer, who came to relieve him three hours later.

  “Likely there’s some stew left, but if not, they’ll get you a pullet or two and a loaf of that black bread. There’s plenty of beans to fill you up. But stay away from the spruce beer this night, Titus,” Zane had warned as he settled onto a crate to start his watch. “I need your head clear come morning.”

  So until that dawn he had filled himself with nothing more than Abigail Thresher, as hungry as he was for her, having done his best to pay no heed to the taunts of the other three boatmen when they warned him the whore would have nothing more to do with him once Ebenezer Zane had gone, taking his fat river pilot’s purse with him.

  “She said she likes me,” Titus had protested.

  “Playing with your diddle ain’t the only thing Mincemeat gets paid for,” Root explained, always the one out to pop another man’s bubble. “She gets paid for saying what she’s told to say.”

  “Ebenezer told her to tell me that?”

  Kingsbury only shrugged. “Who knows?”

  “She’s just a whore,” Ovatt said. “There’ll be others on the ride down. Why, if’n you was floating along with us, you could count on tasting some fine girls we reach Natchez-Under-the-Hill.”

  “And all them sweet Creole girls down to Nawlins,” Kingsbury added with a smack of his lips.

  “I ain’t got me any need to go south,” Titus argued with a doleful wag of his head. “West is where away I’m bound.”

  “St. Lou?” Heman Ovatt asked.

  “One of these days soon,” Bass answered.

  Kingsbury said, “A man goes west—you’ll need money to give yourself a stake. That’s fur country out’n St. Louie. Ain’t white man country west of there. You’ll need fixin’s.”

  “I’ll get me some work.”

  “What the hell can a farm boy like you do to make a man hire you for pay?” Root inquired.

  “I can find work,” Titus snapped quickly, wincing at the pain he’d felt with their talk about Abigail.

  “Yes, you can,” Kingsbury replied quietly, holding a flat hand against Root’s chest to quickly silence the other boatman. “No doubt you’ll find work here in Louisville real soon.”

  Titus had drowned himself in her flesh that last night, at least every time he awoke enough in rolling over against her, placing the woman’s hands on his flesh to harden it to stone once again. If in the end it was true that Mincemeat was feeling nothing more than any working girl who got paid to do what she was told, then—Titus decided—he’d sure as hell make sure Ebenezer Zane got his money’s worth out of that last night in Louisville.

  As good as it felt with her at the moment, as excited as she could get him with her body, it was afterward that got him to thinking. Like he was doing now in this damp, fragrant tavern as they finished their coffee near the fireplace as if soaking up all this warmth for what ordeal was yet to come, waiting for Ebenezer to tell them it was time to push away.

  And he wondered what it was that made a man want to stay on with a woman after they were through coupling. It had to be something more than just a man’s knowing he could climb atop that woman again whenever he wanted. There must surely be something else he had yet to learn of this mysterious tangle of things between a man and a woman—more than he had learned at the threshold from the pretty Amy Whistler, and now from that full-growed woman what could please a man no end and was called Mincemeat.

  What made some men stay on and on with a woman, while at the same time urging him to move on from both of those he had known so far?

  “It h’ain’t getting any better out there, Ebenezer,” Root grumbled from the open doorway where the cold air gusted. Beyond Reuben was a gray streaked with white slashes.

  “Best us be going,” Zane said with resignation.

  “We could stay over, sit it out,” Ovatt declared.

  Ebenezer turned to them slowly, hitching up his belt, and smiled inside that hairy face. “We got everything tied down and we’re ready to put off. Nothing’s holding us no more. I want out of Louisville and put the Falls behind us.”

  Kingsbury started, “Maybe Ovatt’s right, Ebene—”

  “Any of you’s free to stay what wants to,” Zane interrupted, though his voice remained quiet and calm. He turned to the youngest among them. “Even you, Titus. No reason for you to get on that boat now. We’ll do just fine ’thout you.”

  “Said you needed me.”

  Zane shook his head. “Weather like this, it don’t matter much anymore. Best you stay.”

  “I made a promise,” Titus said, sensing the curiosity of the other men nettling him. “You an’ me made us a bargain. I aim to keep up my end of it.”

  Zane regarded him briefly, then took a step forward, slapping a hand down on Bass’s shoulder. “Good man.” Looking at the rest of them, he explained, “Any of the rest of you decide to stay, Titus here can take your place.”

  For a moment they looked at one another, almost furtively, perhaps waiting for one of their number to stave in. Then before any of them could, Zane suddenly emboldened them with his words.

  “Good for you, men. Like I always been proud of you—taking on this river, no matter what face it showed us. And now Heman’s got him a new man to help with the gouger when the water gets rough.”

  Ovatt nodded at Bass. Titus swallowed, for the first time in his life feeling as if he was a part of something bigger than himself. One of these reckless men who would once again pit themselves against the icy river.

  That was when Ebenezer held up a clenched fist at waist level, speaking not a word in explanation. Kingsbury immediately set his clenched fist atop Zane’s, then Ovatt’s atop his. When Root had added his to the top of the stack, they turned their eyes to Bass. Eagerly Titus slipped between the muscle-knotted shoulders of Zane and Kingsbury to join that small circle and made his short-fingered hand into a fist that looked so outsized by all the others.

  With that fifth hand atop the rest, Zane declared, “This is the shaft that water and wind may bend but will never be broken as long as we stay together as one.”

  “Let’s go to the Mississippi!” Kingsbury roared.

  As the four men yelped and cheered, turning aside to sweep up their blankets and oiled coats, Titus stood for but a moment in that spot, somehow still sensing the power of those clenched, veined fists his had joined, no matter how briefly, feeling as if the others had just vowed to prop him up, support him, watch over him like one of their own. A short, strong staff carved of man’s will and camaraderie. In that moment all doubts took to the wing, freeing with them all remorse in leaving the Kangaroo and the woman behind.

  Once more his life appeared black-and-white, without shades of indecisive gray. Just as it had when he’d determined to leave home behind, Titus sensed the certainty of what lay downriver. The sureness that he was being pulled on by what lay out there.

  “You’ll stay with Heman,” Ebenezer ordered as the four of them pounded up the cleated gangplank, clambered over the gunnel, and began to scramble off in different directions as the sleet spat at them in gusty sheets out of a leaden sky.

  Bass turned to find Root still onshore and leaning into his work, lunging against the thick rope that held the flatboat’s bow fast to the wharf. With the knot eventually loosened, he heaved the rope toward Ovatt, who began to coil it up near his feet as Root trudged back through the icy mud toward the last rope securing the stern. With that second knot freed, he flung the loose end of the rope to Zane while making sure the loop was still secured around one of the wharf’s stanchions. When Root had crawled on board and was dragging the cleated gangplank atop some of the crates, Zane dropped the free end of the rope and released them from the wharf. The thick hemp flopped to the surface of the ice-flecked water like a huge oiled snake suddenly dropping from a great height. Kingsbury began to haul in the rope as the pilot whirl
ed about to seize up the long arm of his rudder.

  “Push us free,” Zane ordered.

  Root and Kingsbury took up fourteen-foot hardwood shafts, each of them going to the gunnels, where they planted the ends of their poles against the wharf and heaved with the thrust in their legs. Foot by foot, grunt by grunt, the two lunged against the poles, easing the laden flatboat out from the tangle of other craft moored at the wharf. Slow it was, the gray water slogging beneath them little by little. Back and forth Zane worked his rudder, shouting an order from time to time to Ovatt on the gouger as they edged on out into the middle of the harbor. Then, just beyond the last finger of land surrounding that cove on three sides, Titus felt the perceptible nudge of the Ohio against the hull beneath him. Now the water seemed to pick up speed, and the boat with it as they rounded that last glimpse of Louisville and Zane piloted them into the current.

  “Sing out—you see anything a’floating!” Ebenezer called to the others. “We done this many a time, so ever’ one of you knows what we’re needing to draw for water!”

  “What’s he talking about?” Bass inquired as he leaned on the short gouger pole across from Ovatt.

  “This ain’t a high-water time to be floating down the Ohio,” Heman explained. “Come autumn and winter, water gets low so we might just see us a lot of planters and sawyers from here on out downriver. ’Specially when we get yonder to the Falls, where the water gets all boiled up.”

  “What’s he mean by drawing water?”

  “We’re heavy,” the boatman explained. “Sitting down in the water some, instead of riding on top. So we’re gonna need deeper water to run the chute.”

  “Chute?”

  “There’s three of ’em at the Falls. One of ’em’s better’n the others sometime during the year. Depending on how deep the river is, how fast she’s moving. It’s up to me to sing out to Ebenezer soon as I can tell which chute is the one he ought’n take us through the Falls.”

  As the boat picked up speed, with the wind whipping the icy sleet into them out of the west, Titus felt his insides drawing up like someone had dashed them with pickling spice. Water was one thing. Swimming in it—hell, even floating on it was one thing. But this bobbing within an onrushing current, totally at the mercy of the Ohio as it suddenly narrowed itself southwest of Louisville, rushing them onward to the Great Falls, was quite another.

  He quickly looked about at the other three boatmen. Root had one hand gripping the gunnel as the icy water began to slap against that side of the flatboat. Time and again he swiped his face clear of spray and sleet as he squinted downriver.

  Then Titus heard the sound that made his blood go cold.

  Turning with a jerk, he peered into the sleeting mist ahead of them. Not only was it that low rumble which seemed to pull them perceptibly closer still, but also his inability to make out the source of the nearing thunder which caused his belly to churn and flop. In all that gray he could find nothing ahead of them that gave him the slightest clue—nothing but the gradual narrowing of the river’s channel between its timbered, rocky banks.

  “You hear it, don’t you?”

  Without tearing his eyes from the far bend in the river, he nodded to Ovatt.

  “That’s the Falls,” Heman went on. “You allays hear ’em afore you see ’em.”

  “Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat!”

  With a start Titus turned from downstream to look at Kingsbury, finding the boatman intent on watching the river channel as he clung to a rope with one hand, the other clamped on an oar he held just above the frothing water. Beyond Hames Kingsbury he watched Ebenezer at the stern, yanking downward on the soggy brim of his wool-felt hat, pulling up the woven muffler over the lower part of his face before he leaned against the rudder to urge the flatboat a little closer to the northern shore.

  “Keep ’er coming some more, Ebenezer!” Ovatt bellowed into the growing noise of their plunge.

  Zane asked, “It look to be the Indian chute?”

  Ovatt nodded, shouting, “Not as bad as one time we rode through here!”

  “Keep your eye peeled on that rock at the bend like I teached you!” Zane instructed. “You tell me when we reach that.”

  “See the rock yonder coming at us,” Ovatt explained now, his voice quieter against the swelling of sound around them. “By the time we reach that rock on the north bank—Ebenezer’s gotta have to choose which’t chute he’s gonna put us through the Falls.”

  “If he don’t do it then?”

  “There ain’t much time left if he ain’t ready,” Heman replied. “See how he’s doing now? Lookee, see how he’s moved us into the middle channel of the river. That way he can go to the Kentucky chute. Or he can stay here in the river chute. Or the likeliest way at low-water time like it is now gonna be for him to jump us over into the Indian chute. Off the starboard side here,” he said, pointing off to the right shore.

  “How come they call it Indian chute?”

  “Hell, Titus. ’Cause that’s Indiana Territory there you’re floating by. That’s how come.”

  Despite the rising growl of the water, the Great Falls of the Ohio weren’t actually falls at all. More precisely, they were a long series of terrible rapids that churned up the river to a froth between the banks, narrowing as the river passed Louisville. Anyone on the Ohio could plainly hear the water pounding on the rocks for as much as a mile upriver. A trip through the chutes was much, much easier at high-water time, anywhere from late spring to late summer, but as Heman Ovatt had explained, the rapids became all the more troublesome during the autumn and winter due to low water and many more exposed rocks. While a pilot always had his choice of which one of the three chutes he would select to negotiate the Falls—such a decision became critical to the lives of his crew and the safety of their cargo during low-water time. In earlier days of canoe travel on the Ohio, many of the more faint of heart even chose to put over to the Indiana side, unload, and portage their cargo past the rapids.

  “Some cap’ns hire on a pilot back there at Louisville what knows the Falls,” Ovatt explained. “For two dollars there’s a few guides what make a good living just getting flatboats through the Falls.”

  “But Ebenezer knows what he’s doing?” Titus asked, wanting an answer to dispel his uncertainty.

  “He’s the sort would never let another man pilot his boat anyways. Sure enough—the Ohio might toss us around some this time o’ year—but Ebenezer gonna get us through.”

  The growling belly of that thunder of water colliding with rocks grew until it seemed to drown out all other sound but the nerve-grating creak of the flatboat timbers. Looking at the icy, wet boards beneath his moccasins, Titus watched them shift and twist. He gulped, as if to swallow down the panic he felt for fear the boat would break apart as the river flung it toward the point where Ebenezer Zane would have to make his decision.

  The closer they raced down the middle channel of the Ohio, the lower the clouds and sleeting mist sank down both slopes on either side of the river, clinging among the sycamores and birch, ash and poplar, then spilled onto the surface of the river itself. Swallowing the rock Zane used as his landmark.

  Ovatt called out, “You see, Ebenezer?”

  “Hell, no, I cain’t see it!”

  “Can’t see the rock up there—what you want me to do?”

  “We’ll just count to twenty. Should be there by then. Count ’long with me.”

  Heman Ovatt tore his eyes away from Zane and stared off downriver just as the craft took a noticeable lunge to starboard, nearly loosening Titus’s grip on the gouger. Ovatt had begun to count, loudly, over the increasing noise of the water pounding on the sides of the flatboat, against the rocks around the far bend, and the increasing hammer of icy sleet beating against canvas and wood and flesh.

  Every now and then during those next few seconds Bass caught snatches of Ebenezer’s voice counting along with Ovatt. The gouger’s voice rose in anticipation with each successive number as the entire crew str
uggled to catch a glimpse of something telltale along the starboard bank while the mist continued to swallow upon them.

  “How’s he gonna see where to go?” Bass asked anxiously.

  “He ain’t.”

  “Heman!” Zane called out. “Less’n you got a better idee—I’m gonna set her in the Indian chute!”

  “Fine by me!” the gouger called back, his voice sodden, flooded out in some spray as Ebenezer suddenly heaved his bulk against the rudder and set the flatboat creaking as it hurtled across the racing current.

  Titus clung to the short gouger beside Ovatt and worked up nerve enough to ask, “We gonna put over and wait till we can see what’s ahead?”

  Ovatt tongued his tobacco quid to the other side of his cheek, bent his head over the gunnel, and spit, the brown streamer smacking into the bow of the boat directly beneath him. “Ain’t nowhere in the Falls a boat can put over. We gotta ride it through.”

  “R-ride it through,” he repeated without conviction.

  “Ain’t nothing we can do now but ride, Titus. Just hold on and ride through the Falls—no matter if there’s hell on the other side.”

  By the time Ovatt finished his words, they were all but swallowed up by the roar of irresistible liquid fury pitted against immovable granite. As the shifting winds nudged the sleeting mist this way and that, Titus captured a glimpse here and there of the shore on one side of the river or the other beneath the roiling fog. Closer and closer Zane moved them to the northern bank, the boat’s timbers complaining audibly, protesting the strain as the Ohio flung the five men and their flimsy craft ever toward the upstream opening of the Indian chute.

  “We in it now!” Ovatt sang out at the top of his lungs.

  Barely able to hear the man right beside him, Titus turned to glance at the other three boatmen. Able to accomplish nothing with their oars in the rapids, Root and Kingsbury had laid their oars aside and crawled to the stern of the boat, clinging to the gunnel close by Zane in the event the pilot needed their muscle on the main rudder.

  “This the start of the Falls?” Titus asked.