Chapter Eighteen

Cordwood

Thursday, March 27, 1924

“That’s it for hatch 1,” Kevin said. The afternoon drizzle pricked the back of his neck as he spun in search of stray logs on the wet floor of the cargo hold. Finding none, he climbed out onto the deck and helped Tom put the hatch back in place.

They removed hatch 6 and set it on the roof of the cabin. Here the hold was still full of firewood, and the spitting rain painted the sawn ends of the logs. Tom knelt to extract them, sliding two at a time across the deck to Kevin standing at the rail. Kevin tossed them onto the growing pile of firewood on the bank.

The scow was tied up in Rock Creek Basin, where the mouth of Rock Creek was separated from the Potomac River by a two-hundred-foot-wide dam. Kevin looked out at Mike and Bess, who were tied to a tree in the vacant lot above the bank. They stood motionless in the drizzle -- probably asleep, he thought. Two other boats were moored in the basin and both were hauling sand from Smoot’s in Georgetown up to Williamsport, where they were building a power plant. They had been towed by tugboats and entered the basin yesterday through the tidewater lock. Probably waiting on their mules. Kevin arched forward to launch a stream of tobacco juice onto the bank.

“You posing for a statue?”, Tom groused. Kevin saw that half-a-dozen logs had accumulated at his feet.

“I didn’t realize we was in a rush,” he said. “Seeing as your visit to Reddy’s wharf don’t seem to have resulted in much of a scheduled appointment.”

“His kid said he was coming today. He’ll be here.”

“His kid don’t know his ass from a slice of melon,” Kevin said. “Seeing as I was negotiating an important inversion of our financial assets into hard money, maybe you could of waited around until Reddy come back, so you could talk to him directly.”

“That kid is old enough to know what’s going on with his daddy. Old enough to work alongside him at the wharf. And shit, the kid loaded two cords of wood hisself on our last trip!”

“That don’t mean he got a brain in his head,” Kevin said. He bent over and pushed two logs together, then lifted and flung them onto the pile on the bank. “He’s like his daddy alright, and Reddy is a bona-fide black darkie.” He hoisted two more as Tom slid replacement logs across the deck. “Not like your copper darkies, which is most of what you will see around here.”

“A darkie is a darkie,” Tom said, bending over the hold. “Ain’t no such difference.”

Kevin turned and wagged his head in rebuttal. “Shows how little you know about things.” He tried to look professorial. “Your black darkie is from jungle Africa,” he said. “He got arms like pythons, which come from swinging on vines. You ever look at the arms on Reddy Bogue? He could probably strangle a calf in the crook of his elbow. And he could grab two of these logs with one hand.”

“All I care about is can he reach that hand in his pocket and pull out some money,” Tom said. “Twenty dollars for seven cords is what I told the kid. And I don’t care if he’s a black darkie, copper darkie, or pine-tar darkie, long as he can do that.”

Kevin tossed two logs to the bank from the growing pile at his feet. “Now your copper darkie,” he said, “got a certain ease to him. He can be comfortable around a white man, and a white man can get comfortable around him.” He paused to adjust his skewed suspenders. “So you might see a copper darkie working at a hotel here in Washington. Or at a newsstand or a shine stand. That’s ‘cause he ain’t by origin a jungle darkie. Your copper darkie come from what they call the high savanna. Which is aerated and not so savage like the jungle. So he don’t need the python arms.”

Observing the logjam accumulating at Kevin’s feet, Tom stood up and stretched, shaking rain from his hat brim. He dug into his coat pocket for his flask and knocked back a swig.

“The way you can tell ‘em apart,” Kevin continued, “is density. Your copper darkie ain’t so dense as your black darkie, ‘cause he got lower muscle perfusion. So he can float in water like a white man. But your black darkie will sink like a stone. And that’s one reason you won’t see no black darkies on the canal. Them boys Cy Elgin used up last year was copper darkies.”

“I heared about a couple of darkies on the canal once,” Tom said, “and I guess they was pretty dark.” He tilted the flask again and shook his head as the alcohol burned his mouth. “It was maybe five, six years ago, and they was boathands on a barge coming down from Cumberland. They got to the Paw Paw Tunnel and the darkies didn’t want to go through. They was scared of a headless man they heared was haunting the tunnel.” He pulled his knife from its hip-sheath and flipped it, catching the handle after a single rotation. “So they got off at the entrance to the tunnel and walked over the mountain.” He flourished the knife for effect. “When they got down to the other side of the tunnel, their tongues was split in two like snakes!”

Kevin issued a low whistle and wiped juice from the corner of his mouth. “Might ‘a been a spell laid on ‘em by some other black darkies.”

“Maybe,” Tom said. “The captain and his other hand couldn’t tell or find out. ‘Cause them darkies was speaking a language that no man ever heard before!”

“Snake-tongue language,” Kevin said, with a knowing nod. “That’s a curse from jungle Africa. They should of taken their chances in the tunnel.”

Tom climbed down into the open hold to pull logs from the diminishing pile. They finished hatch 6 and switched positions. When the logs under hatch 2 were gone, Tom unbuttoned his fly and urinated into the sliver of basin between the scow and the bank. Kevin shuffled over to urinate alongside him. He checked his pocket watch. “Three-thirty. You sure Reddy is coming today?”

“That’s what his kid said yesterday.”

“Damn,” Kevin said, looking at the hillock of logs on the bank. “If he’d got here an hour ago, he could of caught up with us. Them black darkies can work, but that’s getting to be a pretty big pile.”

“Hell, who cares? After he pays us, that pile is his problem. He can spend all night loading his wagon.”

“A one-horse wagon ain’t going to do it. They’ll need to make a few trips.”

“Maybe he can get all his kin to help,” Tom said. “Get three, four wagons, and a whole crew of darkies. Hell, we still got what, twenty gallons left?”

“A little more than twenty.”

“Well maybe we can sell some of it to Reddy.”

Kevin snorted. “Hell no. Last thing we want is a crew of liquored-up black darkies thumping away a few feet from the boat. No telling what could happen. I ain’t never had no trouble with Reddy, but I never seen him drunk, neither. And his kid has some kind of wild look on him already, if you ask me.” He took a swig, then offered the flask to Tom.

“No,” Kevin said, “I think we should try to track down M-Street Reed on our way back through Edwards Ferry. He might take ten or eleven gallons. Of course, we should of caught him on the way down, so we could get rid of his paper down here.”

“A little more paper money won’t kill us.”

Kevin grimaced. “Shit. We got more paper than we need. Even after I go see Morrison tomorrow, we’ll still have over a hundred dollars in paper.”

“So what. You don’t want to be dropping silver dollars on every fleabag canal trader.”

Kevin smiled with feigned indulgence. “I realize that, Tommy. And I took it into account. Don’t forget, we still got seventy-five dollars coming from our friend Cy Elgin. And that will certainly be all paper.” He paused and leered. “Unless he persuades his little sister to offer us some non-monetary favors instead.”

“She’s a looker,” Tom said, “but a shady one. They should throw that in for free. In the spirit of doing good business.”

“I agree completely, Tommy.”

“What hatch you want to work now?”

“Let’s do 4. And then 3, which only has half a load, what with Geary’s barrels gone. Then we’re done. We can leave the wood under 5, since we still got whiskey in that third barrel.” He jerked his head toward the logs on the bank. “That will be close enough to seven cords that Reddy won’t know or care.”

Tom knelt down to slide logs from hatch 4 across the deck. “I still don’t understand,” he said, “what you got against paper money.”

Kevin heaved the logs onto the pile. “What I don’t like,” he said, “is that you don’t know what it’s worth!”

“It says on the bill. Five dollars. Ten dollars. Twenty dollars.”

Kevin rolled his eyes in exasperation. “That’s exactly what they want you to think,” he said. “Right up until the time they tell you it ain’t worth that any more. ‘Cause they changed the name of the bank that’s issuing the bills. Or because you got to exchange all your old green dollars for new dollars that they decided to print in a different color of green.” He spit out his chaw and replaced it with a generous pinch.

“That’s your government at work, Tommy. The same one that brought you Prohibition, amen. They can print money faster than you can count or spend it. They got experts that do nothing but dream up ways to suck more money out of people like you and me. But no matter how smart they are, they can’t print gold, and they can’t print silver. So that’s how I like to hold my money.”

Tom nodded and slung logs toward the rail. “I got no problem with gold and silver,” he said. “Long as we don’t give up too big a cut to get it.”

“Morrison’s charging us six percent on silver and twelve percent on gold,” Kevin said. “That sounds like a lot, but at least you’ll be able to feel the weight of real money in your hand.” He looked out at Mike and Bess and then peered along the dirt access road that led into the grassy lot. Through the gray mist there was no sign of Reddy’s wagon. “Damn, where is that darkie?”, he muttered, wiping an errant trickle from his lips.

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