Chapter 65: On the River

I was never much of a sailor although I had worked on the Bay one oyster season with an uncle of mine who lived just north of Annapolis. I learned a lot in a short time over there including a few things about girls. I was maybe fourteen or fifteen and never thought of anything but girls. Nevertheless, under my lieutenant's questioning, I had to admit that I could swim and that I knew bow from stern and a little something about sails and such. He sent me down to the river where that was a dilapidated ketch or snow or some such craft loaded to the gunwales with flour and ready to sail upriver to supply our hungry army in the river forts. The crew had deserted after being fired upon and the owner and his wife and daughter were the only ones left aboard. I arrived late in the day when the river was turning red.

I introduced myself, ogled the women a bit since both were first class lookers, and asked what plans they had. The ship's owner, a grizzled fellow with a bad eye and a missing thumb, said his orders were to deliver the flour to a pier six miles north of Newburgh and get paid there. His cursed his vanished crewmen colorfully and at length.

"Tain't safe til y'gets above West Point," he said, shaking his head. "Tain't wirf it neither." His wife nodded agreement, She was at least a generation younger than the man. If she was thirty I'd have been surprised, and he was nearer sixty, maybe more. His face looked like an old saddlebag and the little hair he had left was pewter colored.

"Ain't been paid, y'know," he declared, squinting up at me. "Mought make it if'n we kin stay out in the middle there. And if them damn'd black-sided war boats don' catch us."

I looked out at the old river than was churning past, carrying a lot of limbs and such from spring floods and ice melts way upstream. The unpainted boat sat deep in the water, and its sturdy single mast and long bowsprit held flapping canvas that looked to be more mending than cloth.

"I'll try it, if you want?" I said, showing off for the women shamelessly.

"You ain't takin' my boat nowheres," the man said, jutting out his bewhiskered chin.

"Now Silas," his wife said, holding his arm. "This boy'll do for a crew. Look a'the size of him. That's what he meant."

I glanced at the daughter, who was yet to say anything. She sat in the sternsheets, her arms folded across her chest, her mouth a thin line, ankles crossed, a very pretty little piece but icy as January. So we used the time to tighten down the canvas covers over the big bags of flour and repair some of the well-worn rigging. They left me with some food and went off to their hovel at the dockside while I saw to it that my horse would be cared for and spread my bedroll in the low-ceiling cockpit just forward of the shaky rudder, splintered seat and worn tiller.

I was almost asleep when someone stepped aboard, and I quickly had my big knife in my hand.

"You all right?" a woman's voice asked. "Have enough to eat?"

The old man's wife introduced herself as Nancy and sat beside the tiller looking down at me, smiling, licking her lips. "You sure about this here trip north?" she asked.

I ran my hand up her leg and smiled back at her. "Getting more sure all the time," I said.

"Damn," the woman whispered as I gripped her thigh, "you do take liberties."

I pulled her down beside me without much effort and absolutely no struggle. Her mouth was full and moist, her tongue was active and her body warm and lush. I laid her down, flipped her dress up, rolled between her wide-spread legs, entered her easily and had her up on her shoulders whinnying like a colt in jig time. She wrapped her legs about my waist and devoured my mouth while I rogered her to a highly satisfying conclusion that rocked the boat wildly and left us both sweat-soaked and panting.

"By damn," she said when we pulled our sodden groins apart, "by damn."

We lay side by side on my blanket and some folded sails, feeling at each other's body and hoping for some more pleasure. "How did you come to marry old Silas?" I asked her while she stroked my limp member back to life.

"Debts, mainly," she said as I massaged her hairy mound. She writhed beneath my hand when I found her rigid nubbin.

"You married before?"

"Oh, yes," she said, after pulling her mouth from mine. "He went off to Boston after that Concord fight. Died on Breed's Hill. Had a dozen stab wounds they told me, front and back. Poor boy."

"So," I asked running one hardening nipple through my fingers while I sucked her other breast.

"Ah, that's nice," she sighed. "So, I had a mortgaged boat and bills to pay. Silas come, came along and offered to take both them and me. I couldn't see a way out." She swung a leg over my body, bent low in the confided space and sucked my turgid member until it was upright and then impaled herself, and we began again.

I held her firm butt and pressed hard, really straining as it jerked and leapt inside her. She gasped and flexed back and forth on my spear until we found a rhythm that pleased us both. Then we swived on relentlessly until she spasmed and moaned, slobbering on my chest as she heaved about, gasping, "Harder, harder." I clenched my jaw, rolled her over, gave her all I had and finally collapsed beside her. Then she must have left because all three of them appeared the next time I opened my eyes.

The old man had me pull up the rusty anchor and untie his craft from the pilings. Together we pushed her out in the stream, got her turned about and the oft-patched sail hoisted. We headed north on the morning breeze. The owner steered and cursed while his daughter and I tended the sails and her step-mother unpacked some food. I enjoyed working with the girl whose loose-fitting bodice flapped about her bare waist and gave me a good view of her young breasts and spinal groove.

We made slow but steady progress, tacking a zig-zag path from bank to bank. After a couple of bruising hits, I learned to duck the swinging boom and had time to discover that the girl was Sue, ripe as a September apple I decided, ready to pluck. The old man called himself Brown. Sue and I bumped into each other enough times to say we were acquainted, but still she had not spoken to me when things got a bit exciting.

We had been on the river about an hour when the girl screeched, "Look!" and shots banged out at us from the shore. It was a long musket shot, but we saw splashes where the fire from the cliff top struck the water near us, and one shot tore at the jib sail. Mr. Brown turned sharply toward the right bank. I shaded my eyes and guessed it was militia or Germans up there, maybe a score of them blasting away, enjoying themselves. I could see the smoke clouds clearly but only heard the shots faintly when the wind was right.

"Damn," Brown yelled when a lucky shot hit the tiller, jarring his hand. He ducked his head and steered his heavy craft right into the river bank at a sandy place. The old boat shuddered. Brown tossed the anchor over the side, jumped to the shale like a man half his age and scrambled toward the hillside. "C'mon," he called at the women.

"No," his wife yelled at him. "I'm goin' on. We need the money. Sue can go back with you if she wants." The girl shook her head and then glared at me, pulling her gaping bodice closed over her high, pink orbs.

"Our home's over there, top a'that hill," she said, pointing. She had a light and pleasant voice. "We don't live down on the dock."

I hoisted the anchor back in and then had to jump off the bow into knee-deep water to push the boat free of the sand and get her back in the stream. Nancy took the rudder, and Sue and I got the sails trimmed. We stayed as close as we could to the eastern bank with good wind mostly from the south bellying out the sails now and then and almost pushing a rail into the river.

Rain whipped in just before sunset. At Nancy's order we furled the sails, and she let the boat drift to the shore under some oddly leaning trees. I doubt if we had made ten miles and had at least twice that far to go. We crouched together under a tarpaulin and munched some cold meat and bread.

"How long you been married?" I asked Nancy as she leaned back against the combing of the small cockpit.

"Hm," she mused, "almost a year now."

"What happened to your ma?" I asked the girl, trying to look pleasant.

"None a'your business," she said, tossing a bit of gristle over the side.

"She ran off with another boat owner, rich Tory down Brooklyn way," Nancy said with a smile. "Silas and me, we was living together already. Sue don't like me much."

"Whore bitch," Sue spat at the older woman.

"She ain't really his daughter. Her father died. He was some sort a'kin," the woman said, finding a pipe in her pocket.

"How long you been with him?" I asked the girl.

She shook her head. There were tears in her eyes.

"She's been used some," the woman said to me very quietly. "Silas dragged her out of a place up in the hills."

"He's my uncle," the girl said, wiping her nose on her hand. "Silas is."

"Hush," Nancy hissed at us. "Listen."

I saw to my musket and checked that my big blade was loose in its scabbard. Now we all heard the voices and the sound of brush being crunched underfoot somewhere in the dark woods. A lantern flickered open and then disappeared.

"I knows they's down her somewhere's," a man said in a husky half-whisper.

"Shit," said somebody else. "You sure?"

"I seen 'em too," a third voice said. "This here's the place."

"Over there, by them trees," the first said, and I heard a weapon being cocked.

I pushed the women's heads down a bit ungently and waited for our visitors to break from cover, but I never saw them until one stepped aboard at the stern, right behind me, rocking the boat. I came up swinging my musket and hit him in the face with the stock, flinging him back into the water with a roar and splash.

A gun flared from the shore, and I heard the ball strike the hull but could see nothing to shoot at. The man in the water floundered and splashed. He called for help once and then that distraction ended.

"Throw out that gun," somebody yelled from the woods.

"Go to hell," Sue yelled back.

Again a musket pan and muzzle flared, and I fired, but got no result. Then somebody out there in the dark cried out, "Nancy, that you? You got the flour?"

"Yeah," the woman replied, "but we got a problem." Her shoulder was touching mine in the tiny cockpit, her hands on my musket, holding it down.

"What?" came the yell. "Who's shootin' at us. Near blew my head off."