Dance on the Wind (38 page)

When Ovatt finally let the mighty Root yank him away, he sank into Reuben’s arms. Then he spat on the body, spat again. “Killed the best man on the river! That’s what you done!”

Completely numbed, Bass stood rooted to the spot, unable to move, not believing what the others were saying. It simply couldn’t be. Not Ebenezer Zane! Not the man who had taken him under his wing, promised to teach him the rivers, the flatboat trade, to introduce him to the right whores in Natchez and on down to New Orleans. The man who these last few weeks had become like a real father to him. Not Ebenezer!

“I’ll throw this bastard over with the rest,” Root said as Ovatt crumpled next to Zane’s body.

“We gotta get downriver,” Kingsbury commanded as he crawled back in under the awning. “Can’t stay here now.”

“Burn them canoes afore we go,” Root said.

“Just scuttle ’em,” Ovatt growled with a shake of his head, anger making the man tremble. “They’ll sink sure enough.”

“Ebenezer?” Titus asked in the midst of all their talk, taking another step forward.

“There might be more coming,” Kingsbury declared.

“Ebenezer … dead?” Bass repeated with another step, staring at the body in the dim, starry light.

“Nawww,” Root disagreed with Kingsbury. “Ain’t no more coming. This is the same goddamned bunch the boy here run onto out hunting. They come downriver follering us. Ain’t no more coming.”

“Still the same,” Kingsbury said, his voice edged with
pain. “We gotta get on down past the Chickasaw Bluffs.
^*
Safer water.”

“Hames might be right,” Root said. “Them jumping us like this might just mean them red devils are out to put the steal on some of the river traffic.”

“Awright—we’ll go,” Ovatt finally said as Titus reached his side. He looked up as the youth knelt beside Zane’s body. “Decent thing to do … we gotta take Ebenezer on down. Figure out what we oughtta do then.”

“What we gotta do from here on out,” Kingsbury corrected with a wince of pain as he rubbed the shirt bandage around his arm. “With the boat. And this load.”

Barely hearing any of the others’ talk, Titus sank to his knees, reaching out his hand, pulling the blanket back from the pilot’s face. “Didn’t have a chance.”

“What would Ebenezer Zane want us to do?” Ovatt asked.

Bass peered into the crushed and battered face of Ebenezer Zane, feeling the tears of frustration, of loss, come over him, ease slowly from his eyes.

“He’d want us to finish the trip,” Root replied. “You always finish what you start—Ebenezer Zane always said.”

A hand came out to rest on Bass’s shoulder. Then a second. He looked up to find Ovatt standing over him now, Root as well. Kingsbury slid up nearby, clutching his upper arm tightly.

“He liked you, Titus,” Hames said. “I never knowed Ebenezer Zane to take to young’uns afore.”

“But he liked you, for certain on that,” Ovatt said, patting Titus on the shoulder.

“Said you’d do to ride this goddamned river with,” Reuben added quietly. He patted the youth on the back of the head as Titus hunched over, beginning to cry.

Heman added, “Ain’t nothing better Ebenezer could say ’bout a man.”

Hames Kingsbury dragged a bloody hand beneath his nose angrily, then snorted, “And by damn, fellas—that’s
something Ebenezer Zane was right about from the start. You’ll do to ride this goddamned river with, Titus Bass.”

More than a day before Titus’s hunt had set a terrible wheel in motion, Ebenezer Zane had piloted them out of the mouth of the Ohio—for the last time.

They floated on downriver another day after the Chickasaw attack, deciding to take their chances that night by anchoring at the downstream end of a tree-lined sandbar where they figured no redskin on the river would find it easy to discover them tied up among the clutter of living brush and dead sawyers.

After scuttling the three canoes that cold night of the attack, they had wrapped the body within a section of oiled Russian sheeting Ebenezer kept stowed away for repairs to the awning, binding the dead pilot tightly within his shroud using a wrap of one-inch hemp before carrying Zane out to lay atop some casks containing cured Kentucky smoking leaf.

After that short autumn day of denying what needed doing, the four of them gathered beneath the oiled awning at their sandbox fire and boiled coffee, finally speaking of the unspeakable.

“Never thought he’d go this way,” Kingsbury admitted softly.

“Still can’t believe it,” Root added, as if it soured his stomach.

Ovatt looked into the other faces, asking, “What you figure we ought’n do with him?”

The three only shrugged, stared back into the fire, each man deeply possessed of his own thoughts.

Eventually Titus asked, “What you think Ebenezer would want you to do for him?”

One by one in turn the three looked up from their reverie and stared at the youth.

“I just figured—you all knowed him much better’n me,” Bass explained. “Thinking one of you should have an idea what Ebenezer’d want done. Maybe we ought’n talk about getting him back to his family for burying.”

“He ain’t got no family,” Root explained. “Heman told you ’bout his woman … what happed to his boys.”

“But he’s gotta have a mam or pap,” Titus declared. “Surely he’s got some kin back to home.” He watched the heads shake. “Aunt or uncles? Brother or a sister?” Still the boatmen wagged their heads.

“Got no kin he ever spoke of,” Kingsbury said.

Kingsbury nodded as he stared at the tiny flames, rubbing one of his jowls thoughtfully. “He started floating the Ohio and Mississap years ago when he was just a young feller. Always said he didn’t leave behind no family to speak of.”

Ovatt stated, “I reckon that’s why he took such a real liking to you, Titus.”

“How old you figure Ebenezer was?” Bass inquired.

With a wag of his head Root said, “I don’t have no likely idea. Man looked older’n he really was—or maybe he was older’n he looked. No telling with all that hair, and life being so hard on the river.”

“He had no family, but he had to have a home,” Titus protested. “Place where he come from.”

“Don’t think so,” Kingsbury answered. “He done two floats south to Nawlins each year. Finish off selling his goods, then sell off the boat timbers, and we’d walk north on the Trace. Get back up to the Ohio, Ebenezer’d go straight on to Pittsburgh for to get one of the boat outfits started on a new broadhorn for his next trip downriver.”

“No family?” Titus repeated as the sad and utter rootlessness of it sank in. “An’ no home neither.”

“River was his home,” Ovatt stated.

Rubbing his palms along the tops of his thighs thoughtfully, Bass said, “Then you men was his family.”

They looked at one another for a few moments.

Finally Kingsbury spoke. “Maybeso you’re right. We was as much his family as any man’s got family.”

“Then to my way of thinking,” Ovatt agreed, “it’s up to us to decide what’s best to do for Ebenezer.”

“Gotta bury him,” Titus said.

“Where?” Root asked.

Bass gestured with a thumb over his shoulder. “Where he lived. Out there. On the river.”

“Bury him in the river?” Kingsbury echoed.

“Certain of it,” Ovatt replied with a slap to his leg,
then pushed back a shock of that red hair from his eyes. “Damn right—we oughtta bury him in the Messessap.”

“Why not the Ohio?” Root asked, hard-eyed. “He was more a Ohio boy than a Messessap boy.”

“Can’t haul his goddamned body all the way up the Natchez Trace with us,” Kingsbury grumbled.

“Why cain’t we?” Root demanded.

“Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat! He’s gonna … he’ll be … ah, goddammit!” growled Kingsbury. “Ebenezer gonna start going bad, and the man deserves to be planted afore he starts stinking enough to turn the noses of heaven!”

“Hames is right, Reuben,” Ovatt stated firmly. “Nothing we can do about what’s landed in our laps. We can’t go a’hauling him all the way back up to the Ohio—so we oughtta just figure out what’s best to do by Ebenezer down here on the Mississap.”

“He allays liked Natchez,” Kingsbury mused out loud, then looked up to gaze at the others around that low fire that reflected a crimson glow from each of their faces in the cold darkness surrounding their boat.

“Thought we decided we was burying him in the river!” Root snapped.

“We can,” Kingsbury replied. “We’ll just do it when we get to Natchez.”

“He liked some of those places Under-the-Hill,” Ovatt agreed. “’Bout as much as he took to Mathilda’s Kangaroo.”

“Then we’ll wait to bury him till we get to Natchez,” Kingsbury said with great finality. “And put him to his eternal rest in the river opposite the harbor.”

The next morning before full light they had secured the body of Ebenezer Zane atop their cargo, released the hawsers, and slipped away with the cold brown current of the Mississippi. Only four of them now: three boatmen, and a youngster who kept staring at that shroud, unable to shake off the feeling that it had all been of his own making.

“You’re carrying more’n any one man ought’n carry,” Kingsbury said that night as he relieved Titus at watch after they had tied up in a small, brushy cove against the river’s west shore.

“Can’t help it, the way things turned out.”

“No man ever can say how things gonna turn out, Titus.”

Bass wagged his head. “He’s dead because of something I done, or didn’t do. Dammit!” he grumbled under his breath. “I don’t know rightly which it is.”

“Listen and let me tell you the way Ebenezer lived his life, son,” Kingsbury said as he settled beside the youth. “Life is only what happens to you after you get borned of your mama. You can’t help it, so you go on living if you’re lucky enough, if you ain’t one of them babes what dies in the birthin’. You do what you must to stay alive for a few years, and then dying is something that happens at the other end of your life, he always believed. Just make sure it’s a quick’un, Ebenezer said. Better’n going slow, painful.”

Stifling a sob, Titus said, “I damn sure hope he went quick.”

Hames continued, “I figure Ebenezer Zane got his wish, Titus. He went the way he wanted to go—and by damn, that’s a lot more’n most of us’ll ever get when our name’s called on the roll up yonder.”

“I don’t know much of what to think about heaven.”

“Ain’t much to think about, really. We’ll find out all about it when we get there.”

Bass looked up at the boatman, then asked in that icy stillness, “You figure Ebenezer Zane is gone on to heaven already?”

Ovatt chuckled softly, patted Titus on the back reassuringly. “Hell, he’s there already.”

Kingsbury nodded. “I’d wager he’s got a bunch of them angels already learning to tie hawsers and work a gouger, how to dip their oars an’ turn their heavenly flatboats right around in midriver.”

Even the sour-faced Root grinned when he said, “No doubt Ebenezer’s even got ’em singing some of his bad songs too.”

“Bad songs?”

Hames smiled, staring up at the dark canopy. “Songs what God wouldn’t want none of his angels learning—
them’s the kind Ebenezer Zane will go and teach ’em. Probably got some chewing tobacco too.”

The hurt overwhelmed Titus when he sobbed, “I miss him.”

Kingsbury looked at the youngster’s sad, hangdown face. “We all miss him. But God’s got him now, so we’re bound away to get Ebenezer Zane’s last flatboat down to Nawlins—just the way he’d planned.”

“Then we’re heading back north?”

“Buy us another boat and hire us on another load—float on down again come spring,” Kingsbury replied.

And Ovatt added, “Like Ebenezer allays done.”

“Just like he’d want us to keep doing—even ’thout him here,” Hames said.

It had been another cold day of floating, watching the land flatten even more while the river itself began to meander before they sailed past the settlement of New Madrid squatting on the far west bank of the Mississippi. Founded in 1790 by Colonel George Morgan, a New Jersey land speculator, who was in turn sponsored by the crown of Spain as a means of establishing a foreign outpost reaching far up the river, by 1810 the village was inhabited mostly by Americans who had been struggling against the fickle river for twenty years. Less than two dozen ragged houses sheltered a rough, indolent population that included a handful of Spaniards, some French Creoles down from the Illinois, and a few hardy German immigrants. A pair of poorly stocked stores charged outrageous prices for what little they had to offer, especially if a traveler did not carry the right nation’s currency then in vogue and was thereby forced to pay a rate of exchange bordering on river piracy.

South from there the terrain flattened even more, the extensive floodplain preventing any real settlement through what appeared to be a boggy, impenetrable wilderness. In more than a week of travel the boatmen alternated periods of extreme boredom with snatches of terror while they negotiated treacherous stretches of the Mississippi popularly known as the Devil’s Raceground—where to Titus it felt as if some unnatural force picked up the crew’s flatboat and hurled it downriver a few miles at a dizzying pace … and later at the Devil’s Elbow—where
they had to fight constantly to steer the boat around a maze of innumerable sandbars while twisting this way and that through corkscrew turns as the river bent back on itself. Here Kingsbury had to battle the stern rudder, with Heman Ovatt on the gouger, both of them struggling to keep their broadhorn close to the east bank lest the strong current pull their boat right into what the rivermen called “the woods,” that broad floodplain west of the Mississippi, a tangled, confusing maze of bogs where a crew would have little hope of ever returning to the river’s main channel.

“See that high point yonder?” asked Ovatt of an early morning two days later.

Titus looked into the distance where Heman pointed south. “What is it up there?”

“That’s the fourth Chickasaw Bluff.”

“Chica … like the Injuns killed Ebenezer?”

Ovatt nodded. “Chickasaw. Up top there sits the army’s post. Called Fort Pickering.”

“S’pose them soldiers can see a long way up there,” Bass replied as his eyes came back to watching the river for sawyers and planters. He sat at the bow, clutching one of the long, sturdy poles, ready to push off any dangerous object that posed a threat to their boat by bobbing too close in the muddy, sometimes swirling current.