by Win Blevins
“You know, Father.”
“Yes.”
“And sometimes,” Baptiste plunged on, “she chooses sex and I run her through.”
“Are these thoughts willful, my son?” “Father?”
“Do you will these thoughts, my son, or do they just come on their own?”
“They come, Father, they just come. I don’t want them. I fight them. They come when I’m in bed, Father.”
“Are you sure, my son?” A long pause. “It is much more offensive in the sight of God if we will such thoughts, my son.”
“I’m not sure, Father. I don’t think I do.”
“Do you wish to confess anything more, my son?”
“No, Father.”
“Teo absolvo,” the priest began. Baptiste crossed himself and said a rapid Act of Contrition, as carelessly as though he had been saying it for years. The priest gave him ten “Hail, Mary’s” to recite as penance and suggested that he think, before coming back, about whether he willed his impure thoughts.
Baptiste flung back the heavy cathedral door and ran into the sunlight. He jumped across an imaginary mud puddle. He had this priest set up. He would think up some good stories for him.
MAY, 1816: When the days were getting long and the evening light lay in a soft glow on the wide river, Jim and Baptiste lounged on the sand beach in the late afternoons. They were watching the rivermen unload a keelboat one afternoon, hauling sugar and molasses from New Orleans and coffee from South America, when Baptiste decided to check out an idea. He went up to two men who were taking a huge barrel across a gangplank.
“Hey,” he yelled. No answer. The men kept working. “Hey, how can a fellow get work around here?” The taller of the two workers looked at him oddly. Then they dollied the barrel onto the levee, ignoring the boys. After a moment they came back.
“Work ye’d like, would ye? And what sort of work?” The man speaking was about forty-five, tall, heavy, dark, and sallow, as though he had been raised on ague and fever. He looked grave, and he moved and spoke very slowly. He was not smiling.
“Any work,” answered Baptiste, feeling a little scared now.
“Hang around,” said the tall man in an accent that was Kentuck’, “and we’ll see what we can do.” The shorter man grinned.
Baptiste was thrilled, and Jim impressed. They waited.
An hour later, just at dark, the workers quit. The two men came over. “I am called Mike,” said the tall one, “Mike Fink. This is Bill.”
“Jean,” said Baptiste distinctly, offering his hand. “And Jim,” he indicated with a nod. They shook ceremoniously all around.
“Boys,” said Mike, “we’ve nothing for ye now. But come back tomorrow before dusk and we’ll think of something.”
“I mean boat work,” said Baptiste, realizing Mike misunderstood. “I want to be a boatman and go to New Orleans and Pittsburgh and Ohio.”
Mike grinned. “À demain, Jean,” Mike waved, and walked away. A man of wide travels, he had a few words of the boy’s language to show off. “Meet us in front of the Row,” he called back, pointing.
Battle Row was a flank of two-story buildings at the north end of the levee. Intended as stores, the buildings were also serving as lodging houses and taverns for the deckhands; the limestone buildings, with high-peaked roofs and dormer windows with heavy double shutters, were getting disreputable. Welch, showing his pupils the levee, had pointed out the beams projecting from the tops of the windows. They were meant, he explained, for holding hoisting tackles, but they ought to be used for hoisting the thugs of Battle Row by the neck.
Baptiste and Jim arrived two hours before dusk. They had never met anyone who lived on the Row before. It was a quiet afternoon there. Most of the hands were not working—they were waiting for the next job—so they were playing. Some were pitching quoits—flattish iron rings that they tossed at sticks jammed into the ground, trying to see who could pitch the ring around the stick or get it closest. Some were playing euchre outside the houses. Some were wrestling—matches of throws. Most were drinking.
They found Mike and Bill down by the river just north of the Row, watching some men shoot at planks stuck in the sand. “Hallo Jean, Jim,” Mike cried with a toothy grin. He was stretched out. Between him and Bill was a girl of about 17, dirty and tough-looking. Mike nipped at her ear with his ringers, and she brushed his hand away half-impatiently. She was fixed on the shooting match. Everyone watched for a moment. The rifles of the day were huge—they shot lead balls half an inch in diameter—but not accurate in amateur hands. The Kentucky long rifles looked slender and graceful; some of the others, much heavier, were thick and short. It took a good man, a fellow who could judge the arc of the ball and the effect of the wind, to hit much of anything. These three men were hitting the boards regularly. “They some’p’n, ain’t they?” said the girl.
“This be Blue,” said Bill to the boys. “Pittsburgh Blue. She just come down from Pittsburgh with us, and she don’t know nothin’ yet.”
Mike lay back and looked at the sky unconcernedly. “Blue’s a good woman,” said Bill, and looked at Baptiste and Jim. “But you boys look a mite young to check that out.”
Mike looked at them with interest. “How old you be?” he asked.
The boys said “twelve” at the same time. Both were lying by a year.
“Then you are now men,” Mike said, “or soon men.” He put a big paw on his crotch. “You have balls,” he said. “Soon you have a man’s cock.” He looked at them straight on, seriously. “You have a man’s cock,” he said, “you are a man. Take no shit from no man.” He was making the French-Canadian accent thick for Baptiste’s benefit.
The boys just looked back at him. Mike was looking at the sky again. Everyone just lay there for a while.
Mike yawned and stretched. “Ah, you wanted to work. You ready?”
“Sure,” the boys said in unison.
“O.K. Bill, you ready to die?”
“Sure.”
“I am ready to die,” Mike declared easily, and stood up.
“Your job,” Mike said, “is to fill a cup with whisky. Can you do it?” The boys nodded. “Afterwards maybe you carry one of us to the cathedral and dump the body on the Bishop’s doorstep. That is if we miss.”
Mike and Bill picked up their long rifles off the sand and began loading them. They poured powder down the barrel, patched, rammed the balls home, primed the tiny hole between the flint and the powder, checked the flint. Bill handed Baptiste a stone jug. It reeked. Mike grabbed it and swigged deep. “You kill me first,” he said to Bill, and handed him the jug. Bill swigged. Blue was sitting up now and looking from man to man intently and with a slight smile.
Mike walked fifty slow steps away. Bill handed the jug back to Baptiste along with a tin cup. “John,” he instructed, “you fill this cup with whisky. Then carry it down to Mike—don’t spill any now—and put it on his head. Then stand back.”
Baptiste tiptoed toward Mike, holding the cup with both hands and staring at the sloshing liquid. When he got there, Mike was squatting down, ready for the cup. Baptiste placed it carefully, and Mike slowly stood up. The cup stayed.
Mike began to bellow a boatman’s song in French. Baptiste stared at him. Mike was singing at the top of his lungs, and looking about to grin.
“Stand off, John,” Baptiste heard Bill yelling. He had forgotten. He jumped back a little. Bill raised the rifle at the other end, and spent a long time sighting. Baptiste wanted to run and hide. He was about to cry when he heard the roar, and the cup went zinging off Mike’s head.
Mike grinned hugely, wiped the back of his neck with his fingers, and licked the whisky off. “It always gets me wet,” he told Baptiste, and they walked back.
Jim got to go down with Bill with the whisky and put it on his head. Mike made a ceremony of the shot. He stuck a finger in his mouth, tested the wind, and wiped the finger on his pants. He held the rifle straight for a long time. “Damn barrel’s crooked,”
he said. He squeezed slowly, there was an explosion, and the barrel flew up over Mike’s head. Mike saw Baptiste staring at him. “‘It’s O.K.,” he said, nodding. “Look down there.” Baptiste saw Bill picking the cup up from the sand.
They all lay down again, and Mike, Bill, and Blue swigged from the jug. Blue was lit with sass now.
Baptiste smelled in the air that he and Jim might have to leave. He got his mouth organ out of his pocket.
“That’s some’p’n,” Blue said to Mike.
“Next time you have the cup,” Mike said.
“I can go it.”
Baptiste started playing one of the rivermen’s songs he knew. No one said anything. He played it all the way through, and then put the mouth organ back without looking at Mike.
“That’s fine,” said Bill.
“You got a job as a boat band one day,” said Mike. “But now you gotta go. We’re gonna fuck.”
The boys walked silently across the levee in the half light. At the far end of the levee Jim said, “That’s some’p’n, all right.”
Chapter Three
1821
1819: Financial panic caused the closing of banks, foreclosing on Western lands, and the slowing of westward immigration through most of the 1820s.
1820, MARCH 3: The Missouri Compromise admitted Missouri as a state and prohibited slavery in most areas of the Louisiana Territory.
1821: William Becknell pioneered the Santa Fe Trail.
1821: Over the next decade coffee became a popular beverage in America, despite temperance efforts against it; some people considered it an aphrodisiac.
Eighteen Hundred Twenty-One
MARCH, 1821: Baptiste, Jim, and Winney ran to see where the singing came from. It was a Canadian boat song lifted by a lot of voices, blocks from the river in a middle-class French section. The house had tall windows and sat almost on the street, so they could see inside well. The parlor was jammed with people—a lot of girls elaborately decked out, some fashionable older men and women, and a lot of young bloods. Winney, who was two years older than her brother Jim and had been around more, said, “It’s their damn pancake frolic.”
“They do that during Lent,” Baptiste added, “when they can’t dance.”
High row, the boatmen row,
Floatin’ down the river, the Ohio!
The boatmen dance, the boatman sing,
The boatman up to ev’rything.
When the boatman gets on shore,
He spends his money and works for more.
Dance the boatman dance,
Oh, dance the boatman dance,
Oh, dance all night, till broad day light,
Go home with the gals in the morning.
When you go to the boatman's ball,
Dance with my wife or not at all,
Sky-blue jacket, tarpaulin hat,
Look out, my boys, for the nine tail cat.
Dance the boatman dance,
Oh, dance the boatman dance,
Oh, dance all night, till broad day light,
Go home with the gals in the morning.
The song was sung in French, and everyone was roaring, led by a fellow who didn’t care about prohibitions and danced alone. The girls and the older adults were French society, but the young men were of every class and nationality. They paid to get in, to cover expenses.
When the song ended, a rough-looking fellow dressed like a fur trapper started to tell a story about his adventures among the Indians. But then someone cried out and everyone gathered around a long table, the young men and girls in couples. An old man flipped a pancake, paper-thin, into the air and caught it, done side up, in a frying pan. With the other hand he flipped another one, managing the two pans with marvelous dexterity. Neither the cook nor the diners were allowed to touch these pancakes with a knife, fork, or spoon—fingers only. The young men grabbed the pancakes out of the hot pans, handed them to their ladies, who held them by an edge and dashed to be the first to dip into the molasses and start the whole process again. In a few minutes molasses was running down the fronts of shirts and dresses. It made Baptiste hungry.
“C’mon,” he said, and started for the door.
“They ain’t goin’ to have nothin’ to do with us,” Winney said sharply. She always talked like she knew best.
But Baptiste would try anything in front of Jim. He took out his mouth organ and stood by the front door playing as loudly as possible the Canadian boat song they had just heard. He played it all the way through, and nothing happened. No one came. He started playing it again, and rapped on the door. Jim and Winney fidgeted.
A matronly woman of about fifty swung the door open with a smile. Then she scowled. “What do you want?” she asked. Baptiste kept playing, but since he was the closest, she pulled his hand away from his mouth and repeated the question.
“We just thought the pancakes looked good,” said Baptiste in his most polished French.
The woman simply closed the door.
“You see,” jeered Winney,” we niggers. And you breed. Ain’t no white folks gonna invite us.”
“Maybe it’s just because we’re too young,” said Baptiste.
“Humphf,” Winney sounded.
It spoiled the evening, and they split and went home.
Winney always jeered at Baptiste for thinking he was smart, and for not knowing how those white folks were taking him in just so they could throw him out. Baptiste was tall, though too thin, and graceful, and had a winning flash of smile. He thought Winney noticed, despite her air of superiority.
He found her walking toward the Row one afternoon without Jim.
“Where are you going?” Baptiste used his high-falutin’-style English to tease her sometimes.
“To the Row, boy.” She kept walking.
“What for?”
“Gonna get some’n’.” He fell into stride with her, but she stepped ahead. “You ain’t man enough to get it. Or give it.” She flared her nostrils.
Baptiste was ready for her this time. “I’m man enough to whitewash your tonsils,” he said, trying to fix her in the eye.
“You dirty mind,” she said, and laughed. She was still walking backwards in front of him. “I’m goin’ after whisky. Man I know down there’s got some for me. Just whisky, that’s all.” She turned and ran off, laughing.
MAY, 1821: Baptiste sat down and leaned against the outside wall, to the side of the swinging sign that read Green Tree Tavern. He was lonely—Jim and Winney seemed to have disappeared, Clark was away on government business, and he was too shy to go to the Row for Mike and Bill and Blue.
There was always fun inside the tavern. Warren Ayres, the municipal politician who owned it, made everybody welcome. It had a big yard in back for wagons and it was filled every night with farmers and drovers and traders. Besides boozing, they sang heartily and told tall stories. Baptiste had never been inside. He put his mouth organ to his lips and began to play “All the Way to Shawnee Town Long Time Ago.” It was Mike’s favorite, and if Mike was in St. Louis, he would be in the tavern.
He felt a hand on his head. Blue was smiling sassily down at him.
“Evenin’, John.” She looked at him a long minute, and then decided. “I’m goin’ to join the party. Why don’t you come with me?”
She stopped inside the door, ran her eyes around the room, and headed for a corner table. Baptiste, sixteen now and taller than Blue, put an arm around her waist and made to guide her. “Mike and Bill are to cards,” she said, nodding toward the back, “and I don’t feel like socializin’.”
Baptiste waved at a waiter. “Who’s your friend, Blue?” the waiter asked, with a suspicious eye at Baptiste. Baptiste started to order something but Blue cut him off. “He’s O.K. Whisky, and sassafrass for him.”
Baptiste looked at Blue, wanting to catch her eye and then say something clever to her and get things going, but her eyes were flitting past him and around the room. The drinks came. Blue hadn’t said anything, and Baptiste wa
s feeling confused. Finally she looked at him and smiled, realizing. “You make some fine music on that thang. Give us a tune.”
So Baptiste blew “Shawnee Town” again, the verse bouncing, the chorus wailing plaintively but prettily. In the chorus he got up his courage and looked at Blue. She was staring into her whisky. He kept looking, hoping she would raise her eyes. Then he realized that she was avoiding someone. When he finished a heavy hand clapped him on the shoulder.
“I lof that song, boy,” he heard, and a big man drew a chair beside him and thumped down. The hand clapped him again. The man was huge—pot-bellied, thick-legged, with a chest as big as his stomach and biceps the size of hams. He stood way over six feet and must have weighed, Baptiste thought, 250 or 300 pounds. He was Baptiste’s idea of a giant.
“What news, Blue?” the big fellow asked, his huge arm around Baptiste.
“It’s trouble, Dutch,” Blue said flatly.
“Dutch Krieger, boy,” the fellow said, and offered Baptiste a hand.
“John.” Baptiste shook it.
“How come you think the lady doesn’t introduce us, huh?” Baptiste recognized the accent as like the German market peddler’s. Dutch called for drinks. Baptiste thought Blue eased a little closer to him.
“Who is this boy, Blue?”
“He’s a breed, and he ain’t no boy.” Her eyes played over Baptiste’s face. “At least I don’t think so.” She rubbed his knee.
“You a lot off woman, Blue.” She avoided his eyes.
No one said anything for a while, and Blue left her hand on Baptiste’s knee. A shout came up from one of the tables in the back, and Baptiste recognized Mike’s angry voice. Dutch ordered another round and chugalugged his. He was getting flushed.
