"Mrs. Clementine Fletcher, mmmm. I really do like the sound of that, Jaimy, I do," I heard her purr.
Oh, Lord...
Chapter 15
We did, as Mr. Fink commanded, cast off immediately, or almost immediately, for Higgins had to go sell the horses to Mr. Tweedie first. While he was gone, the rest of us stowed our gear below and then came back up on deck to await departure. When Higgins returned, he was not at all pleased, I discovered, as he stepped back on board.
"Damned thief! He knew we were at a disadvantage, so I could barely get more than the cost of our drinks from the blackguard!"
I put a restraining hand on Higgins's sleeve. "Dear Higgins, set your mind at rest. Right now the locals are having their way with us, but I promise you that it will not always be so. Let's live in the moment. All our gear is stowed and we should be at ease. After all, Higgins, the horses are sold, which means you do not have to ride one of them."
He agreed that this was a very fine thing, indeed, as he scurried about to see what cooking gear might be contained on this bark.
"Cast off!" roared Fink, standing aft at his steering sweep as soon as Higgins was aboard. "You, boy! Take off the stern line! Coil it down! Move yer ass, or I'll kick it all the way to Pittsburgh!"
Jim looked to me, angry. I gave a quick nod and mouthed do it and gave him a wink to let him know I understood the blow to his pride.
"Aye, aye, Sir," said Jim. He took off the line and coiled it expertly down on the deck, ready for its next use.
Our first day out on Mike Fink's flatboat is most pleasant. It's a fine, warm day and Fink, with what seems to be very little effort, keeps the boat on a leisurely course close to the eastern shore. I, naturally, waste no time in casing out the boat, which turns out to be a very well-made craft, well-found in her knees and planking. Quite new, too. As soon as I can, I go below, to thrust my shiv into various parts of the frame, but I can find no softness, no damp rot of any kind. A remarkable piece of work, I conclude.
The belowdecks area is fitted out with twenty bunks on each side, with curtains that can be drawn over each for privacy. In the center is an open hold for cargo, with a ladder going down into the bilges.
Jim Tanner is with me as we examine the inner hull of the flatboat. "Jim," I say, "I want you to watch this Mike Fink in every way, especially in how he handles this boat. Learn how to operate that sweep. Pretend to admire him and draw him out as to how this boat is run with a full crew on board. Appeal to his considerable vanity. I shall ask Higgins to do the same. All right?"
Jim nods, mollified now that he has a mission. I believe he is as happy as I am to be back on water, no matter fresh or salt and in spite of the boisterous Fink. There's not enough of a roll on this flat river to quicken the heart of any true sailor, but it's something.
Katy Deere, too, seems content to be here. With her skirt pulled up almost to her waist, she sits on the prow, her long legs dangling over each side. Her bow in hand, strung, nocked with a fishing arrow, and with its length of light line coiled beside her, she looks down into the dark water for whatever it might offer up.
Much later, when back on deck, I commend Mr. Fink on the quality of his craft and his skill in guiding it, and he guffaws in what I have already learned is his usual manner of speech ... or rather, his usual mode of shout, "Oh, yes, and she's a fine one! Fitted out for passengers, as you've probably already noticed. Yeah, I seen you crawlin' and nosin' around down there. Jus' took thirty holy pilgrims up to a tent revival up in Jacob's Holler! Two whole dollars each!"
"As big and strong and manly as you so plainly are, surely you could not have gotten this heavy craft with thirty stout pilgrims aboard up this swiftly flowing river?" I ask, doing the arithmetic in my head: Thirty souls upriver at two dollars each equals sixty dollars, while we four poor souls were charged one hundred dollars for going downstream. Ah, Mr. Fink, I do think you've got it coming to you.
"Nah! I had a crew of ten and I dumped 'em off up there. Mike Fink don't need no crew to navigate downstream, no, he don't!"
He looks slightly offended, as if anyone could think otherwise.
"I see," I reply, and settle myself down on the edge of the low cabin. The cabin, itself, takes up most of the deck room, leaving only a narrow path for what I now know would be the boots of the crew as they poled this boat upriver, or guided it on its way down.
As I sit watching the trees on the banks go slowly by, Higgins comes up bearing a tin tray with a cup and steaming teapot upon it. Somehow he has managed to find a clean white tea towel, which he drapes over his arm before he pours the tea from the battered pot we had gotten at Katy's place into the cup he had picked up from God-knows-where.
"Thank you, Higgins," I say, lifting the cup to my lips. "Ummm ... Wherever did you get the sugar?"
"It happened, Miss, that I—"
"Who the hell is she? Some kind o' princess or some-thin'?" asks the mystified Fink upon seeing this performance, for performance it truly is. "And who the hell are you to be waitin' on her like that?" He squats on the stern next to his sweep and peers suspiciously at us.
"In a way, she is, Sir," explains Higgins, imperturbable as always. "She is the chief executive officer and major stockholder of Faber Shipping, Worldwide. I am an employee of the same corporation and, as such, am performing my duties in that regard."
"Well, ain't that somethin'," replies Fink, considering this concept in the dark recesses of his mind. "Hmmmm..."
"May I pour you a cup, Mr. Fink?" asks Higgins.
"Might's well. Ain't got no whiskey, and damned if I was gonna buy any off that damned Tweedie, neither, thirsty as I am, which is very thirsty. Thirsty enough to drain a middlin'-sized lake, if'n I drank water, which I don't. Ain't drunk nothin' but good corn likker since the day they pulled me offa my mama's teat, I ain't. Hell, ol' Mama, Torty Fink, which was her given name, liked her corn, too, so I figure the mother's milk I was gettin' outta her was a good fifty proof. It was a good way fer me t' get weaned, as I see it."
At this, Fink throws back his head and bellows out a song at the top of his plainly very huge lungs:
OH, IF THE RIVER WAS WHISKEY,
AND I WAS A DUCK,
I'D DIVE TO THE BOTTOM,
AND NEVER COME UP!
OH, "CORN WHISKEY, CORN WHISKEY,
CORN WHISKEY," I CRY,
IF'N I DON'T GET CORN WHISKEY,
I SURELY WILL DIE!
He goes into a high keen on the word cry, drawing it out to something like "CA-RYE-EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE" before finishing off the verse.
"Tha's a good song, don't tell me it ain't," says Fink, well satisfied with his performance.
"An excellent song, indeed, Mr. Fink, and so well done, too," I say, applauding. Actually it sounded like gravel rolling off a tin roof, but the song itself has possibilities. I shall have to get the rest of the verses. But not just now.
"Thank you, girly-girl," says Fink. "I sung that song in memory of my dear mama."
"Mother Fink has gone on to her reward?" I ask. "I'm so sorry."
Fink gives a mighty pull on his sweep to get us closer to the shore. As the boat swings over, he again takes up his eulogy. "Yep, 'bout ten years ago, Mama'd been held in the Pigtown jailhouse for three whole days without a single drink, and you know that didn't sit right with Mama. Her mouth got so dry that a brace o' desert rattlesnakes set up housekeepin' in her throat, yeah, and her mouth got so dry that ever' time she spit, she spit out pure dusty sand. They set up a cement mixin' operation next to her cell window, to take advantage of the sand. Warn't able to get her plug o' tobaccy to soften up enough so she could even taste it, and we all know that ain't right. Well, she decided she warn't gonna take it no more, so she raised up a mighty roar and rattled the bars so hard that the very foundations of the jail shook. Then the plaster rained down from the ceiling and the windows all broke, so's they had to let her out, else the place'd fall about their ears."
"Your mother sounds like a formidable lady," ventures I.
"Yep, Mama was a big woman," continues Fink, in all seriousness. "Them Frenchy trappers tell me they named the Grand Teton Mountains way out West after Mama, and I believe 'em, cause if'n there's one thing them Frenchies know, it's grand teats, and Mama had 'em fer sure. One time, when she was off on a tear, she swung around a bit too fast and took out half the town of Natchez. It still ain't been totally rebuilt since that calamity, no sir."
Fink shook his head in wonder at the magnificence of his mother's physical qualities and then went sadly on to re-count her unfortunate end.
"Well, then Mama tramples three of them jailers to death on her way out of that slammer, and she hit the town runnin'. The first tavern she got to was the Dirty Dozens and she drunk it dry in under twenty minutes—that's beer, wine, them fancy lee-koors, and that fine, fine corn whiskey. She flung the last bottle aside and went into Horsehead Sally's and bellowed out for more. She drunk that place dry, too, of all their likkers and whatnot, even drank the birdbath dry, 'cause it was green and had feathers in it and stunk bad enough to be good. She kicked down the north wall of Sally's place and lurched over to Gypsy Judy's and done the same to that place, but, sad to say, the fact was that she was losin' her final battle. It looked like she was gonna be all right when she broke into Barkley's warehouse and found three fifty-gallon barrels of the best one-hundred-proof Kentucky likker. She clamped her teeth around the bung of the first one, pulled it out, lifted the barrel over her open mouth, and drank it dry. She paused to wipe her mouth—"
"As she was a lady, after all," I murmur.
"...and then she did the second. The townspeople gathered 'round in awesome wonder. Then she yanked the cork out of the third and drank it straight down, too..."
Fink pauses here, as if overcome with emotion, and then he soldiers on:
"Then she stood up, dropped the empty barrel, gave a mighty belch, which rolled over the countryside and blew out the windows of houses two hundred miles away, and then she just keeled over and died."
"Ah, so it was the drink that brought her down," I note. "Such a pity."
"Nahhh, that's what the townsfolk thought, and they sent for the doctor to come look at her mortal remains, which were considerable, believe me, and the doctor come and looked her over and shook his head. 'No,' he said, 'this poor woman did not die of the drink. She died of thirst.'"
"Of thirst?" I ask, mock incredulous. I do know how to play my part.
"Yep, it was thirst." Fink sighed, all grim. "There just warn't enough whiskey in that town to slake her thirst, poor woman. My mama died o' thirst." He sniffs back a tear.
I do not mention to Mr. Fink that I know of an Irish song that has the same punch line, because by now I've grasped the gist of this game and I enter into the spirit of the thing.
"My own dear mother also has passed from this world." I sniff, then work on coaxing out a tear of my own. "And she was of such purity of heart and soul that a band of a thousand angels came down from Heaven to take her up to her celestial reward. The archangel Gabriel himself played the Death March on his trumpet, and Saint Michael did beat his sword against his mighty shield to mark time for the holy procession. There were legions and legions of the saints and the sanctified on that Glory Road to Heaven, but none were deemed worthy to touch the hem of her snow-white garment. She sits now in glory at the left hand of God Himself."