“No, I s’pose he wouldn’t,” Titus admitted, feeling backed into a corner as he watched the old man dust off the front of his clothing, so old and worn they were slickened, shiny with age.
The stranger dragged over the leather satchel he had worn over his shoulder when he’d first walked up to the fire. From it he took a pipe, then another, and finally a small pouch he pitched carelessly over his shoulder and caught in his hand behind his back dramatically.
“Would you care to share a smoke with an old man?”
“I would. Yes,” Titus answered enthusiastically.
“I take it you’ve smoked before?” He handed over the pipe and pouch.
“Years now,” Titus lied as he opened the pouch. “I been on the river. The Ohio clear down the Messessap to Norleans.”
With the pouch back in the old man’s possession, he asked Titus, “What brings you north to St. Lou?”
“Been wanting to go there for years now.”
“Years?” And he leaned forward to snag a twig from the fire, holding it over his pipe bowl.
“For about as long as I can remember.”
The stranger regarded Titus over the pipe bowl he huffed on until it glowed, watching the youth tamp the dark tobacco shreds into the pipe. “You’ve got it packed too tight for to draw good. Loosen it some before you try to light it.”
Titus nodded, feeling the hot burn of embarrassment rise along his neck.
“It’s all right, young man,” the stranger confided as he leaned back against the poor saddle and blanket Titus had removed from the big, bony horse he’d brought north from the Guthries’. “Every man has to learn for himself the feel of filling a pipe’s bowl, to sense when it is packed tightly enough. Too tight, it won’t draw and you can’t keep it lit. Too loose—about the same problem, and it smokes too fast or goes out on you. Rest assured, this is one of the lessons in life that all young men like yourself are bound to learn. Among many, many others.”
When he had loosened the tobacco and had it going, he drew in his first long pull of smoke. It bit and burned. Coughing, he flushed with embarrassment again.
“No matter, son,” the stranger said. “You go ahead and learn on your own.”
“But I learn’t four winters back at Louisville—”
“No need to be ashamed for a little cough or two—”
Titus interrupted, “Maybe I just be a little out of practice.”
“Likely so, young man,” he said with a grin. “Likely so.”
At last Titus felt the heady impact of the tobacco seep across his brow, similar to the first sensations he had enjoyed from a liquid elixir, the likes of Monongahela rye or spruce beer. Titus leaned back against the stump of a tree and regarded the fire, smoking contentedly. Then he asked as maturely as he could make it sound, “What is it you’re bound to the south to do?”
“Me? I always go to the south. And to the west, before I head north again to St. Lou.”
“Around and around in a circle?”
He pulled the pipe from his gapped teeth. “That’s what circuit-riding preachers do.”
“Should’ve knowed you was a preacher man. From the way you … the way—”
“I talked?” And he chuckled. “But—I ain’t one of the rappers. Trust in that.”
“A r-rapper?” Titus asked.
“A queersome breed of spiritualist, to my way of thinking, young man. One who summons communication from the dead, who make knocking sounds from the world beyond.”
He felt a chill course down his spine just from the mere mention of dead spirits, that instant thinking on Ebenezer Zane. “You ain’t one of them, is you?”
“Told you I wasn’t,” the stranger explained. “I make my circuit a month’s time every trip. As far south as I can go in two weeks before turning back around to head north to the land of the wealthy and very, very Catholic French in St. Lou. What is it you’ll be doing in that city you so long desired to visit?”L
“I don’t plan on visiting. I plan on staying awhile.”
“I see,” he answered, regarding his pipe bowl thoughtfully. “And pray—what can you do to provide for yourself? I take it you won’t be hunting for a living?”
“Don’t plan on it—but if’n I got to, I’ll do it.”
“Ah, yes. An enterprising young man who I am certain I will never find sitting on one of St. Louie’s street corners with all the rest of the tattered beggars, hands outstretched, pleading with all who pass by to drop in their dirty hands a ha’penny, a schilling, a guinea. Any trifle so they don’t have to work. Why, to think of it—there have been those who had the gall to call me a beggar!”
“You’re a preacher, can’t folks see that?”
He smiled widely, that gap between his two front teeth seeming to widen as he dusted off the front of his coat and shirt once more. “Yes. It is plain to see that while I am not a man of substance and means, I am nonetheless a man who takes care of himself and does not rely on charity. Tell me, my astute young observer of life and the manner of mankind—have you ever thought of taking up the staff of God and preaching His word?”
“Me? A preacher like you?”
“It is not easy work, let me assure you. But it is very, very satisfying.”
“No, sir. I never thought on it at all. I got me my hope to make it to St. Louie. See where things sit up there. Everything on beyond is wild and open.”
“Every man must find his own call. You’ve heard your own call, then. We’ll let it rest at that,” the old man said, seeming satisfied. “Yes. The beasts and the savages of the wild. Perhaps it is you are called to see them for yourself.”
“Maybeso I’ll get to do that one day.”
“By the grace of God, you will, my son,” the preacher replied. “Myself, why—I’ve traveled through the land of the red heathen for most of my life, and God has not once delivered me into the hands of mine enemies. Even the Shawnee, who were driven across the great Mississipp not long ago to begin a new life in the country south of Cape Girardeau. They and the Miami. On south, farther still, below the mouth of the Ohio, yes—I have gone among the Chickasaw, the Choctaw, and the Natchez of a time. All of them Eden’s children: savage in every respect and by and large not ready for the teachings of God.”
“So you just preach to white folks when you take your rides, make your circle?”
“It wasn’t always that way, mind you,” he explained, relighting his pipe with the burning twig as the night became all the deeper around them. “As a young man I first received the gift of tongues. I gave powerful sermons in the great cities of the east, dined in the finest of homes, held people in the palm of my hand by the thousands. Then one night at a camp meeting outside Philadelphia, I saw her.”
“Her?”
His eyelids fell contritely. “The woman who was to be my downfall.”
“Woman?”
“She sat in the second row,” he replied, looking off into the distance. “Once my eyes touched her, I could not take them off her beauty. No, not that she was the most gorgeous creature I had ever seen—for there had been others prettier. But there was something so altogether striking, appealing … seductive about her. With the way she stirred my carnal appetites—why, I knew immediately, there and then, that she was the devil himself come to tempt me.”
“The devil himself?” Titus asked in growing wonder, then swallowed, forgetting all about his pipe as he was completely drawn into the story.
“I spent the rest of the night preaching only to her. Forget the thousands who had flocked to hear my words that evening. Forget them all! I preached only to her. And in the end my faith was not enough. When the night was done and morning came through the windows of that grand hotel room, I awoke to find myself lying in bed beside that creature of temptation. I had succumbed. I had sinned. I had fallen as Adam fell—tempted by the devil made incarnate.”
“You … you had you … you diddled with that woman?”
The stranger nodded, gazi
ng now into the fire. “I suppose I could have gone on preaching in those eastern cities—but in my heart I felt the ruin. My safe, secure life of preaching to the wealthy and numerous along the Atlantic seaboard was over. I disappeared over the mountains, wandered down the Ohio, on down the Tennessee River, finding my way into the Cumberland as if guided by some unseen hand. Now I do what I have always done since leaving that rich, prosperous life behind: I ride and preach. Many a morning do I arise early to prepare myself to speak to a small congregation in some faraway place in the forest.”
“How you find them?”
The old man smiled. “God takes me to them, to all those who are in need, don’t you see? So I go among them, a new community nearly every day or so. Arising from my blankets before the sun and preparing my sermon. Sometimes there is a handful to listen to the word. Other times there may be fifteen or so. Faith is spread mighty thin in the wilderness, young man. Mighty thin indeed.”
“But no matter,” Titus commented. “You preach to ’em all, like God wants you to.”
“As God commands me to,” he answered. “Yes. Those sheep in my flock seem to suck the life energy right out of me anymore—never was it like this back east when I spoke in tongues, preaching for hours in tongues of the ancient and dead languages. But now these poor pioneering folk draw energy from me and my faith—sucking enough from this man of God that they can go from me back to their fields and their cabins to pit themselves against the harsh land for another month until I come round again.”
“And so you ride on to another place?”
“Yes, I do that. I go on, at first I am weak and limp as this frostbitten grass—my power sapped by the wayward sheep. Yet, I trust in God. On I ride to my next flock, gathering my strength all the while, renewing my vigor in the Lord—for God will provide.”
Titus gazed at the fire, the corn husks and chicken bones heaped beside the coals.
“Never should you doubt it, young man. The Almighty will provide.”
“And He will provide for you, my son,” the old preacher repeated the next morning after they had arisen, saddled, and were preparing to separate.
“I don’t know that I ever asked nothing of the Lord. Never been much of a one to pray.”
With that hard-boned and angular face of his, the stranger replied, “You yourself told me last night that for a long time you’ve been praying to get to St. Louie.”
“Maybe you misunderstood me. I ain’t never prayed to get to St. Louie—”
“But you’ve hoped, and dreamed, and done all that you could to get there.”
“And I am getting there on my own.”
A smile wrinkled the lined face. “You’re getting there because God is answering your prayer.”
Titus felt uneasy of a sudden, on unfamiliar ground. Frightened that he might just be in the presence of something far, far bigger than himself. “I don’t know nothing about that, sir…. What is your name anyway?”
Removing his old felt hat from his head and dipping in a little bow, he answered, “Garrity Tremble is the name.” He slapped the hat on his head and presented a hand to Titus. “Who have I had the honor of meeting and sharing so much conversation with?”
“Titus Bass.”
He tugged the hat down on his brow, saying, “Well, Titus Bass. I will be looking forward to seeing you again in St. Louis in something on the order of a month. Perhaps we can talk again about prayer at that time, for I must be on my way now. There are the faithful and the faithless who beckon me into the wilderness.” He swung into that old saddle atop that fine, blooded horse. “Many times have I prayed God to remove this burdensome yoke from my shoulders … but He will not. I certainly hope that what you pray for, Titus Bass—will not become a yoke locked about your shoulders.”
In bewildered silence he watched Tremble turn the big animal away and move off into the cold, frosty stillness of the forest. Before he climbed atop the old plowhorse, Titus cautiously placed a hand upon one shoulder, as if to feel for any invisible weight there. Then touched the other shoulder in the same way. Still not satisfied, he shook his shoulders as if to rock loose anything perchance resting there. And decided it was all a little ghosty and superstitious of him to believe any preacher knew what he was talking about.
To think of it! Him, praying! Why, Titus knew he’d never prayed a prayer one in his entire life—leastways ever since he’d stopped going to church hand in hand with his mam.
Folks must just get crazy with their praying and all that talk of God and such, he decided as he urged the plodding horse into a walk. Any man who gave up everything for a woman, then gave her up and counted on God to provide everything for him from then on out had to be a fool. If not a fool, then perhaps downright touched.
A man had to provide for himself.
Just as he always had, Titus figured.
Anything else was nothing more than superstition.
He found work in St. Louis his first day.
Reporting to the crowded docks the following dawn, Titus stayed all morning long at the shoulder of the man who had hired him. There he quickly learned what was expected of him in his new position. Instead of toting the loads on and off the boats at the great riverside wharf, Bass was hired as a tallyman. To count the casks and kegs, bales and boxes, oak barrels and hemp coils coming off from boats struggling north against the current up to St. Louis, to count as well all the cargo going onto boats bound for points south.
“You can count?” the man had asked.
“Yes, sir. I can count,” he had answered, a bit confused by that sort of question when he had shown up to ask for stevedore work, ready to tell of his experience in Owensboro.
“Can you write your numbers?”
“Yes, sir. It’s been some time, but I figure I can—”
“Good. Come with me and see if you can catch on to what I’m doing before the dinner hour.”
By noon the job was his. Struggling to control the great and unruly sheets of foolscap he had to write upon, standing at the tall but tiny desk he was instructed to place at the bottom of the cleated gangplank that stretched from the dock to a boat’s gunnel. There he was given the wharfmaster’s authority to make sure nothing came off, nor went on, without his first making a count of it in the proper column, in the proper box, afterward to make a final tally for his boss of what was now lashed on board for shipping, or what had just arrived for storage in one of the many stone warehouses that lined the great and bustling wharf.
By the following spring he’d had himself enough of that mind-twisting work and went off in search of something else, seeking something better to do one rainy afternoon when his labors with ink and quill at the dock were cut short as the skies opened up. By late afternoon, soaked and chilled to the marrow, Bass despaired of finding proper work for someone with such an adventuresome spirit as he. But then his keen nose caught wind of that particular scent of fiery charcoal and ironwork slaked in oil carried on the sodden air. He followed his nose, turning when necessary, until he found the livery hulking at the end of Second Street. One of the great doors was flung open, the man within standing over his hissing fire, shirtless and sweating on such a cold spring day—heaving up and down on a great bellows that shot tremendous blasts of air into that glowing bed of coals. His long graying hair he had tied back with a leather whang, worn in a queue popular at the time.
Standing there at the open doorway, drinking it all in—Bass knew why his nose had led him there. Why he was meant to work in this place.
He promised himself that he would never again despair of finding proper work for a man to do. Let others tally their counts or even carry cargo from one place to the next. But this—yes, this was proper work for a man. Fire and iron. Water and muscle. With them and his own unbounded will—Titus knew he could make anything.
There hung from nails driven into every post, and hammered along most every board that served as the livery’s wall, great hanks of thick leather. Some of it crafted into bridl
es, bits, harnesses of all description. And laying atop most of those nails were thin black strips of iron banding. Stacked back beyond the bellows and the fire lay wide sheets of iron in all shapes and thicknesses.
He breathed deep again, taking in the fiery fragrance of this place. It so reminded him of that short time with Able Guthrie. How the settler had taught him the use of hammer and anvil and fire, to bring a piece of metal to a red heat before repairing a plowshare or making new bands to secure around a maul they had just carved out of a huge chunk of hickory.
“Something I can help you with?”
His eyes came back to the big, lantern-jawed blacksmith. “You’re busy. I come back later.”
“I’m always busy,” the older man replied sternly, but without a hint of rancor. Then he sighed. “More work than I can do sometimes. What is it you need done?” He eyed the youngster up, then down again. “If it’s that rifle of yours, that will take some time. That’s close work. Not like this. And my eyes ain’t all they used to—”
“My rifle? No, sir. I don’t need no work done on it. Don’t need nothing worked on.”
The thick, heavy brows knitted. Titus watched some of the great diamonds of sweat run together in the deep crevices of that brow and become drops that tumbled into the man’s eyes. They must have stung, for he blinked and yanked a great red bandanna from his waistband, swiping it down the whole of his face.
Turning away, he said, “Then I’ve got work to do, young’un.”
With his back to Titus, his great right arm swinging up, then down with that sixteen-pound hammer clanging upon the anvil, Bass watched the man’s shoulders and arms ripple as he smashed a glowing semicircle of iron band between the immutable force of that hammer and anvil. Sparks sprayed in great gusts like June fireflies with each hammer strike. Muscle swelled and bulged with every arc of the arm, sinew strained and rocked with each blow to the unmoving anvil.
Bass swallowed, forcing himself to ask. Daring to speak. To wrench the words free—words that he knew he had to say, or he would forever be sorry they went unspoken.
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