Read The Shirt On His Back for Free Online

Johnny had asked himself: what was Frank Boden doing there ?
    'Boden
hated it, Tom said,' Shaw went on in his light, scratchy voice. 'Wouldn't
drink. Wouldn't play cards. Hated it - an' hated every soul in the place.
Farrell shared that loft above the store with him. From the start they was
always pushin' at each other: Boden would go silent, Farrell would talk louder
an' dirtier. Once Farrell pissed on his books. Yet Boden stayed.'
    They'd
searched that low-raftered ten-by-ten-foot room - January, Shaw, Hannibal and
Tom - the morning after their arrival at Fort Ivy and had found nothing. Tom
had said that he'd searched it himself three times before they came, for any
sign of the half-written letter that Johnny had found, or any clue or hint as
to the 'trouble' he and his correspondent Hepplewhite had been plotting that
might help in tracking Boden down. There were few enough places to look. The
walls were bare log with the bark still on them, the rafters open to view from
below. A puncheon floor - split logs - provided no loose boards or convenient
carpets to cache things under. If Boden had had anything he didn't want Ty
Farrell to know about he'd taken it away with him when he left.
    And what did you
carry, January wondered, when you left your world behind ? Books? Letters? A Bible? The
only things he'd taken from his years in Paris had been a gold thimble and a
single gold earring in a camel-bone box, that had belonged to the wife who had
died there. If Farrell had pissed on his room-mate's books, Boden had probably
hidden whatever else was dear to him.
    With
odd, clear suddenness he remembered his hatred of 'Mos, the eleven-year-old son
of the other slave family with whom his parents and younger sister had shared
that single cabin-half. The older boy had bullied him, stolen his food, broken
or traded away to others anything January treasured, given him 'Indian burns'
and challenged him to do things that had nearly killed him. January could still
hear his high-pitched nasal voice, still smell the peculiar individual scent of
his flesh. He hadn't thought of 'Mos in decades. Yet he knew he would recognize
him even now, however the years had changed him, bearded or clean, hair black
or gray . . .
    Ty
Farrell would have known the man he'd lived with and hated, if no other had.
    But
he remembered, too, weeping with Kitta and the others, when 'Mos had been sold
away.
    After
a long time he asked, 'Didn't Tom think it was odd? That Boden stayed on in a
place he hated?'
    'Tom
figured it wasn't none of his business.' Movement downstream: the Mexican
trader whose pitch lay downstream of the AFC had led his mules to the water to
drink, his rawhide jacket a cinnabar flicker in the dappled shade. Despite the
placidity of the river, January could see how far up the banks lay the debris
of recent rises: whole trees uprooted, boulders of granite rolled loose from
the stony bed, matted tangles of torn-off shrubs. On the plains he'd learned
how quickly water could rise, and he didn't grudge the walk of fifty yards
through the cottonwoods he'd have to take the next morning to bathe.
    Shaw
sighed and scratched his long hair with broken fingernails. 'Tom's got about
as much imagination as a steamboat. They's plenty men in the East, gentlemen
like Boden, that has to stay beyond the frontier. Tom didn't think much of it.'
    You owe me .. . Had the oldest of the brothers spent sleepless nights, wondering how things
could have been different had he paid more attention to his inquisitive
junior's words?
    Had
his thoughts of vengeance fed on that possibility, or sponged it from his mind?
    'What
about the trappers?' They walked back up toward the markee again. Out in the
meadow in the long slant of the afternoon light, a bunch of Robbie Prideaux's
friends had organized a shooting match, a common pastime to judge by the shots
January had been hearing all afternoon. 'There's no way of knowing whether
Clopard and LeBel can keep their mouths shut if they