by Win Blevins
The take was enough that Grumble gave Sam three dollars—nearly a week’s wage!—and Ten and Eleven fifty cents apiece.
“Good money for little work,” said Ten.
Grumble looked at Sam and said, “Think it beats working for a living?”
Though Sam supposed it did, he only smiled.
Grumble switched to a jocular tone. “All right, Ten, what’s this about Sam and Annabelle’s?”
“He needs to go back, that’s all.”
Sam was grateful to Ten for not spilling the beans.
“Sam?” Grumble went on, sweeping all before him.
“Girl there reminds me of my … girlfriend,” mumbled Sam.
Grumble appraised the situation with study of Sam’s face and half a century of experience.
“Go upstairs with her?”
Sam clinched up and jerked his head back and forth for no.
Grumble and Ten grabbed his arms at the same moment and marched toward the brothel.
“I wouldn’t mind seeing Lucia myself,” said Eleven from behind.
The parlor looked exactly the same as this afternoon, except that the fiery Lucia was missing. A mousy-looking man of about sixty, maybe a farmer, sat uncomfortably on a chesterfield, straw hat in his nervous hands. Annabelle welcomed them with the same effusiveness and introduced everyone. Sam looked at Janie to see if she was smirking at him, but she was playing her role, demure, and perhaps damaged. Sam smiled at her. Now that he’d acted a part, he admired the way she did hers.
He looked last at Rhondalynn. He couldn’t tell if she was smirking or smiling lasciviously. He decided he didn’t care.
Lucia came down the stairs, trailed by a black man as narrow and hard as a cedar fencepost. She went straight to Eleven. “You come for me, honey?”
“Believe so,” said Eleven, drawing out the words and looking at her with sex in his eyes.
“Excuse me,” she said properly to the fencepost.
He nodded and went darkly out the front door without a word. “Lucia’s on fire tonight,” she exclaimed of herself, and led Eleven gaily upstairs.
“Back already, Ten? Had some luck at cards?” broached Annabelle.
“Something like that. Annabelle, I need to introduce my friend here to his girlfriend.”
Annabelle was much amused. “Girlfriend?”
Ten waited. “Go ahead,” said Sam.
“Rhondalynn is a dead ringer for the girl he left behind, Katherine.”
Annabelle’s eyes lit up, and she got every detail Ten had to give. While they chatted, Sam eyed Rhondalynn standing against the lace curtains, eyeing him and smiling slyly. Finally Annabelle waved her over. “Katherine,” she began, “you have spoken so often of Sam, the man who left you behind. I did not know this was the fellow.”
She threw Sam her sexiest smile. “I have missed you, lover.”
Sam gawked at her moon-eyed.
“Go to it, lad,” said Annabelle. “Our Katherine hasn’t had a good loving since you left.”
All right! Sam decided. He would play a part too, the debonair man about town. He offered Rhondalynn his arm. “Shall we have a drink?”
At the highboy Rhondalynn was quick with the pour, Sam quick with the coins. Hadn’t he just earned three dollars?
“I’m so glad you’ve come, Sam,” she said.
“You haunt my dreams, Katherine.” On they chatted and flirted. Sam projected the exact memories of Katherine taking her clothes off, one by one, on the face and form of this new, enthusiastic Katherine. The more he looked at her body, the more Katherine smiled.
Finally she led him to the staircase, gently pulling his hand. Sam was grinning broadly, but something didn’t feel right.
“Go to it, lad,” cried Annabelle. The madam sang to the old spiritual tune,
“Rock-a her soul in the bosom of Annabelle’s
“Rock-a her soul in the bosom of Annabelle’s”
He reached up two stairs, grabbed her by the waist, swung her off her feet, held her to his chest, and kissed her passionately. She responded in kind, and more.
“Go, Sam,” cried Ten. “Cut your wolf loose.”
They dashed up the stairs howling.
Chapter Seven
Everyone showed up bleary to load new cargo about midday. Captain Stuart hired Ten and Eleven at two dollars a week each to be the boat hunters on the double hop on to Louisville and Evansville. Then the two Shawnees were going to go visit their families on the Wabash.
“I don’t feel right about taking your job,” Ten told Sam.
“I’m a crewman now. Besides, we can hunt together.”
“Good.” He stretched his shoulders like they were bothering him. “Damn, but I’m eager to be home.”
“Where’s home?”
“My folks live in a little village on the Wabash, north of Vincennes.”
“What’s Vincennes?”
“Old French trading post on the Wabash River. Indiana—Illinois state line. Eleven and I try to go back for the bread dance. Big ceremony for us.”
“I bet the captain wishes he could go,” observed Sam.
“Sly can go if he wants to,” said Ten.
“He’s got a business to run,” protested Sam.
“Yeah, part of him is white.”
“You forgotten money’s important?”
“In the Shawnee world, family counts for more.” Yet this was said lightly. Sam decided not to make anything of it.
On the late afternoon of the sixth day beyond Cincinnati, Frenchy brought the Tecumseh hard river left, and there, stretched serenely out in a nice little harbor at the mouth of Bear Grass Creek, was the waterfront of Louisville, Kentucky. It was the last place you could moor above the Great Falls of the Ohio. Even from here you could hear the roar of the falls below, and Sam tried not to think about them.
He was used to all the boats now, the many men working, the hustle and bustle, the routine of unloading lots of crates and barrels.
One sight, though, set him back—an enormous Negro working at a cart. He had a shaven head and a big gold earring. He wore no shirt, and his arm and back muscles bulged powerfully. The fellow was issuing sharp, clear instructions to white men doing the loading. Sam watched gape-mouthed. He’d never seen a Negro except at long distance, and hadn’t imagined one with the air of authority and vitality this one had.
“Le negre, he’s something, huh?” This was Ten in Sam’s ear.
Sam figured out who he meant and blurted out, “Who is that?”
“Jean-Jacques. Don’t know his last name. He’s from Montréal. His family, they own a drayage business.”
Sam gaped at Ten. He’d never heard of blacks owning businesses.
“Close your mouth, you don’t catch flies,” said Ten, and headed back for another load. Sam followed, and shouldered weight until he was about to collapse. He noticed Ten and Eleven never slowed down, and was envious.
Louisville taught Sam that the port life of a river man was repetitious. Most of the crew rampaged first to the taverns, then to the whorehouses, then back and forth. Sam wondered if Elijah took his hostility to bed, and decided he wouldn’t want to be the whore who found out. Frenchy stood watch. Sly Stuart disappeared to … no one knew where. The town boasted a theater, but none of them wanted to spend a whole dollar on it.
Sam went with Ten, Eleven, and Grumble to a tavern, where the cherub perpetrated his cons on the willing. Ten and Eleven wanted to have a couple of drinks, see the town, have a couple of drinks, visit the brothel, etc. Sam went with them, but he felt like he did when he waited for his mother to finish shopping. He tapped a foot, cast his eyes around for he didn’t know what, and yearned for life to begin. And begin and begin.
Later he would remember only two events from Louisville. One was in a tavern where a low class of ladies of the night did their horizontal work. Jean-Jacques walked right up to the table, sat down, and clanked his tankard on the wood in disgust. Ten and Eleven greeted him and introd
uced Sam. The big colored man rumbled to Ten and Eleven, “I’d be glad to see you, but I’m too disgusted.” He had a big, resonant, bass voice, and his English was French-accented and formal. Sam couldn’t believe Negroes talked that way.
“What’s going on?” Ten asked the black man.
“You know Marylou?”
Ten and Eleven said they didn’t.
“The one Negress they got here. She ran off. They won’t let me touch any of the white women. You can’t neither.” He regarded Sam. “Your friend got all the skirt here to himself.”
Sam couldn’t help himself. He asked the big man, “Is this color?”
Jean-Jacques gave him an ironic dazzle of smile, teeth gleaming as brightly as his shaved head and earring. “You raised upside down in the bottom of the outhouse? What isn’t color around here?” His easy tone took the edge off the words.
“Whores won’t…?”
Jean-Jacques laughed, a big, musical sound. “That’s why they had the Negress. Some whorehouses even have Indian women.” He regarded Sam bluntly. “What are you thinking, boy?”
“I never heard the term ‘Negress’ before.”
“You heard ‘Negro’?”
“Hardly ever.”
“Nothing but ‘Nigger’?”
“Yeah.”
“You best know,” he said, “I am in French le Negre, in English a Negro. I am a free man of color, and I don’t take kindly to ‘nigger.’” The words were spoken politely and the tone reasonably friendly, but menace lurked.
“Sorry,” said Sam.
“No offense,” said Jean-Jacques. “It’s just that your education has been lacking.”
When the sun rose, Captain Stuart stomped onto the deck, acting edgy. “Let’s go, Frenchy.” They said they were going to scout the Falls of the Ohio. The odd thing was, Frenchy came back alone. The rest of the crew showed up at midafternoon to load and launch. Still no Captain Stuart. Sam didn’t dare ask. Frenchy supervised the loading of the new cargo and didn’t say a word about the captain. With the usual pack-mule work, Sam hardly noticed the three constables until they were tramping around the deck.
“Where is Captain Silas Stuart?” shouted the head cop. He was a big, blustering fellow. Sam wondered why police always took an approach of, “I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down.”
Everyone just looked at him. No one knew, unless … Frenchy? Ten?
The constable barked at Frenchy, “I have a warrant for the arrest of Abigail McKenna, a woman who habituates a dancing and gambling hall, also known as Sally Sling. She’s suspected of being with Captain Silas Stuart of the Tecumseh. Where are they?”
Frenchy answered with a most eloquent Gallic shrug.
“I know, you swallow your English in front of authorities.”
Frenchy shrugged again.
The constables marched around the deck, peering at every man. Elijah gave them a withering grimace, and for once Sam was glad Elijah was on his side.
“I want to check the hold,” the head man said, and stomped in without asking permission. A minute later he came back into the sunlight blinking.
“What are your sailing orders?” Still barking at Frenchy.
“I’m ze captain’s brother,” said Ten in a phony French lilt.
From the look on the constable’s face, he’d believe that one when his mother was his father.
“We sail when we are loaded.”
“Bound for?”
“New Orleans.”
“Without Captain Stuart?” asked the constable mockingly.
“Wit’ or wit’ out.”
“The captain is abandoning his vessel?”
“Why you no ask him?”
“Oh, I will,” said the constable. “When I find him.”
The constables kept stomping around and waving their warrant.
The crew got the freight loaded.
Frenchy went to the hawser in front and untied. “We depart now,” he told the constables.
They smirked at him.
“Positions!” he cried.
Every man but Grumble took up a work spot, Frenchy on the tiller, Ned at lookout, the others on the sweeps. Frenchy gave the constables a questioning look. They looked back complacently. “Pull larboard and starboard!” Frenchy shouted, like nothing special was doing. On one sweep Sam, Ten, and Eleven looked at each other.
“The man said pull,” growled Elijah. They did.
The constables had to jump into the shallows to make shore. Frenchy gave them a nice wave.
The eddy took hold of the massive craft and floated it gently upstream. “Pull!” hollered Frenchy. The eddy kept easing the boat upstream.
When the stern nudged into the current, Frenchy cried “Larboard!” and swung the tiller to bring the bow downstream.
Sam always liked this moment, when the river grabbed hold of the tons and tons of the Tecumseh and began to carry them along. When they were fully into the current, Frenchy brought them around and cried, “Rest your oars.”
Sitting on the hold, Sam asked Ten, “What the hell is going on?” Sam was starting to cuss like the others.
“You got me.”
Eleven shrugged his shoulders. Nobody seemed to know anything.
“Be ready!” Frenchy sang out. Already the rumble of the falls was getting louder.
Frenchy took them to river right, near the Indiana shore. The Tecumseh immediately began to buck and roll. At the first downward plunge Sam fell, and nearly rolled off the hold onto the deck. “Starboard!” screamed Frenchy. His voice sounded like a squeak in the great roar. The boat plunged straight toward a huge tree that was hung across some boulders, its crown thrusting far into the channel. The current bobbed the crown up and down like the head of a drowning man.
The leafless branches gave the right side a loud scraping, but the Tecumseh cleared it. Just as Sam relaxed, Frenchy yelled “Push starboard, PULL larboard!”
Sam saw a row of boulders like shark’s teeth. The boat must dive to the left or crash on the rocks. He pulled until he thought his shoulders would pop.
They ran by the teeth at thrilling speed. “Ready to PULL starboard!” The last tooth, Sam saw, was big as a two-story house.
“Pull starboard!”
As if by magic the boat slowed, the water still boiling around it. Sam heard a huge sucking noise on the stern. They eased forward, and the bow swung left.
“Push both sides!”
And so it went for the entire two and a half miles, the longest ten minutes of Sam’s life. Sometimes the roar of the water was huge, louder than any steamboat engine Sam had ever heard, like somebody rattling rocks in a bucket when your head’s inside the bucket. Several times the bow rose out the water and smacked down with a great SLAP! The pilot called out a lot of orders, and once Elijah and Micajah yelled at each other like they were wrangling. But mostly the ride was wild and fast and exciting—maybe, Sam thought, like riding a seventy-five-foot-long horse at a gallop. He didn’t let himself think about what happened if you came off.
Finally they shooshed out into slow water at the bottom. “Scary!” shouted Ten.
“Wild,” said Eleven.
Sam stretched out on the hold, exhausted.
“We put in at Clarksville,” called Frenchy.
“Where’s that?” Sam asked Ten without opening his eyes.
“Few minutes.”
Sam put the missing captain, the falls, everything past out of his mind and felt the motion of the boat on the current. Evansville was next, yes, then Cape Girardeau, Chickasaw Bluffs (with Fort Pickering atop, said the captain), some other Mississippi ports, and finally the great seaport of New Orleans—he knew about all that. But what he liked was the feeling of the enormous river picking them up and carrying them off somewhere with a power far beyond their will or strength to control. They had choices—further left, further right, get into eddy sometimes, stop for the night. But the big energy, the will was the river’s. People said the
earth circled the sun once a year, an even more massive movement caused by some invisible force more powerful than any man could imagine. It shaped people’s lives, but no one could feel it. Nor could they feel the sailing through the immensity of space. Why didn’t people feel the wind of space in their hair?
Well, never mind, Sam was glad he could feel the energy of the river in his butt.
“Pull starboard!”
Sam jumped up, alarmed. What was going on?
A village nestled on the Indiana side. They went through the usual maneuvers like they were going to land. And there came a skiff with Captain Stuart as a passenger.
Captain Stuart, and … a lady?
Sam ran and helped. Yes, a lady. Sam gave her a hand. A real lady she looked, too, not like any he’d known, housewives and mothers and store clerks and, well, whores. She wore a light green, full-skirted traveling outfit with a jacket and dark green hat, and held an umbrella of the palest peach in one hand. The way the umbrella gleamed in the sunlight was enchanting.
“Thank you kindly,” she said to Sam, her voice Southern, soft, gracious. Her face was the most beautiful he’d ever seen. Not paying attention, he bumped the umbrella, and it knocked her hat off. He caught it and handed it to her. “Thank you, sir,” she said, the first time he’d ever been called that. Then he gawked. Her lovely young face was topped by a great pile of henna-colored hair.
The crew was gathering around now. Frenchy had even tied the tiller and come amidships, grinning slyly.
“Sorry I had to leave you boys on your own for the falls, but as you see I had a duty to perform for a lady. Abigail, this is the crew of the Tecumseh.” He ran through the name of every man. Some held their hats in their hand and acted deferential. Several eyed her sharply. “Men, this is Abigail Price.”
Not McKenna, Sam noticed. The men mumbled, “How do you do.” Miss Abigail responded, “I’m delighted to be aboard, gentlemen, and very much looking forward to the journey.”
“Sam, will you and Ten bring along Miss Abigail’s bags?” asked the captain. They were a big trunk and a sizable carpet bag. This was aside from the small ladies’ bags she dangled from each wrist. As they jumped into the skiff for her things, Miss Abigail paraded to the lean-to at the back of the hold, Captain Stuart in tow. The trunk was sizable but uncommonly light, the bag uncommonly heavy.
