would cost in Missouri, but that was his mother’s business.
He hitched Bullnose to the wagon and led him to the cabin door, proud that he could hasten their departure. “Ma, I need the box and the stuff for the wagon,” he called through the closed cabin door.
“Get in here and get some food in you. You got a long day ahead,” came the reply.
“Hurry up, Ma; we got to meet Mr. Crawford at the flatboat landing. Simmons won’t wait his boat.” Speed jerked open the door to see his mother staring into the fire as she ate. When she stood, she was a woman still several inches taller than Speed, generous of figure with a round pudgy face and straight brown hair parted in the middle. Speed knew her hair wasn’t as fancy as Annabelle Crawford’s but was the way a mother’s hair was supposed to look.
“Let me worry about Simmons and Crawford, young man. I got one egg left and you’re going to eat it.”
Although Speed thought it strange that she did not turn to face him as she said these words, he scooped the fried egg from the pan with a piece of bread and stuffed it in his mouth. He gulped a glass of water and then started putting his extra shirt and a few other possessions in a cotton flour sack. He knew Aunt Ruth’s Bible was still in a fold of the quilt in the wooden clothes box. It was his lone prize possession, an item dedicated by Aunt Ruth as a symbol of the great life that awaited him in Missouri.
When the sun had been up an hour, a Kentucky farmer returning from hunting rabbits saw the two of them, a solid woman perhaps deliberately plain in a serviceable dress and bonnet plus a white-skinned boy with a rip in his pants, proceeding along a country lane toward the Cumberland River. Had the same farmer been so nosy as to follow them along, he would have seen the little party arrive at the flatboat landing when the sun was now well risen and glinting on the wavelets in the river.
A fat, bald man called out from a craft floating near shore, “Get your stuff and get on board. You’re wasting my day. River’s slow for April. I got stuff waiting down-river for Nashville.” That was Flatboat Simmons, and the grease on his clothes was so established that certain areas appeared to be leather.
“Mr. Crawford’s got to come and get my ox and my wagon, Mr. Simmons,” called Joycie. “Just hold your horses. We’ll load and he’ll be here.”
“Guess you know Crawford better’n me,” replied Simmons. Joycie blushed crimson under her bonnet. The man continued, “Get your stuff on board and maybe he’ll be here.”
Speed was afraid Simmons would float away and the trip to Missouri, with all its promise of a new life, would collapse in the muck of the Cumberland riverbank. He felt himself tearing up and called, “Don’t worry, Mr. Simmons. We’ll be okay. I’m loading right now.” He began to splash through the shallows near the riverbank with an armload of their belongings.
Speed was stepping back on the shore to look for any last items before he saw it. The mouth of the snub-nosed flat head was wide open, fully displaying the folds of distinctive flesh that gave the snake its name. “Cottonmouth,” called Simmons. “Watch it, watch it.” Too late. The snake struck at Speed’s leg exposed by the tear in the fabric. Speed swatted the fanged head from his leg, then glimpsed the animal slithering away through the brown river water.
Joycie screamed while Simmons grabbed Speed back into the flatboat and threw him onto the deck. “Damn fool boy. Get yourself bit and mess me up. I should know women are bad luck. Shoulda never agreed to take you two.”
Simmons pulled out a rusty knife and cut crosses across the two small holes in Speed’s calf. As the blood began to flow from both of them, he sucked it and spat it over board. It was to this ghoulish scene that Buford Crawford and his Negro, Boston, presented themselves from the trees onshore. While Boston looked in wild-eyed amazement at the prostrate boy, the screaming mother, and the river man with blood smeared about his mouth, Crawford worked systematically to achieve his objectives for the morning. He waded into the river, oblivious of his fine shoes and tailored suit, pressed specie and coin up into distraught Joycie’s hand, and called over the commotion on deck, “Here’s for the land, the house, the ox, and the wagon.” Then he shouted at Boston, “Help me push them to the current!”
As Speed descended into swirling unconsciousness, he saw the Negro’s head disappearing on the other side of the flatboat and then felt the end of a wet rope whipping across his face.
Chapter 2––April 1835–– Down the River
Joycie could not leave Speed’s side. After an hour his calf had swelled as round as a six-month piglet and turned the purple of a storm cloud just before the rain. In his delirium Speed kept repeating, “The hole of the asp, the hole of the asp.” Joycie opened her wooden box to find one of her handkerchiefs, which she dipped into the brown waters of the Cumberland and applied to Speed’s fevered forehead.
Simmons used his sweep oar to keep the boat in the middle of the river where he could take maximum advantage of the April current and avoid the snags and sandbars closer to shore. Joycie looked up at Simmons.
“He will live, won’t he?” she pleaded.
“Don’t know,” replied Simmons. “Every hour he lives is good, long as he don’t get pneumonia. You ever see a prettier day? Look at those tulip trees over there. Bet those trees been there two hundred, three hundred years. Oh, she sure is pretty in April.”
Joycie cursed the boatman in her mind for remarking on the day when her son was comatose, but she kept silent. She offered a prayer to God that if he would spare Speed’s life, she would forever forsake the company of men and lead a righteous life for the rest of her days. The prospect of arriving alone in Missouri was more than she could bear. She resolved to drown in the river if Speed died.
“Mr. Simmons, when are we going to get there?” she asked in a flat voice.
“There, where?”
“Missouri, to Platte Purchase, Missouri, to our new place.”
“This flatboat goes as far as Cairo, Illinois. You get a steamboat from there. You might make it by September, depending on how fast the river goes. ”
As Joycie pondered this information, she realized she had begun this voyage with only the vaguest of understandings. She understood people left Kentucky and arrived at Missouri. Buford Crawford had told her Simmons would take her and her boy on a flatboat, but she had trusted that Simmons would take care of all of the particulars. Now she wondered if the dollars Buford Crawford had paid her would last all those months. As she considered her predicament, a blue heron broke from the shore and with rhythmic sweeps of its great wings landed on a snag downriver near the water, so she was not certain what was bird and what was branch protruding from the water. She wondered if it was her fate to likewise disappear with her son on some snag of a wilderness river.
“Mr. Simmons, can you go all night? Can we get to Cairo sooner?”
“Not here. Not on the Cumberland. The water’s too tricky. On the Ohio maybe.”
“Where are we going to sleep tonight?”
“On the flatboat. Too many critters on shore.” Joycie looked at the shore and saw that the trees came right to the riverbank. She could also observe that there were no beds or bunks on the flatboat. Just then Simmons let out a great whoop that startled the dazed woman. Simmons began to wave his hat toward a wisp of smoke on the southern shore. He put his sweep
