“Whassamatta?” Jack jabbed a hand at Bass’s nose, then pushed his own face right down close to Scratch’s, plainly showing that one upper tooth that had clearly rotted, black against the tobbaco-stained others. “You better come hurraw with us—it’s your damned birthday!”
Holding the edge of the robe right under his eyes, Titus peered at each of them in turn. The snow fell lightly on their shoulders as they stood arm in arm with one another there around their roaring fire just beyond the crescent of their half-dozen canvas shelters. Every last one of them was bleary-and red-eyed, but none so much as Hatcher, whose wild expression once more convinced Titus why some time back his friends had come to call him “Mad Jack.”
“I had enough hurrawin’ last night,” Scratch said, his red-rimmed eyes feeling gritty. “Where’d you get that damned tonsil varnish anyhow?”
“Allays we save us some!” Caleb Wood cried out, hoisting his tin cup there beside Elbridge Gray.
“Good likker, h’ain’t it?” Matthew Kinkead sang.
Bass’s head felt about as heavy as an anvil as he tried to pick it up off the robes where he had collapsed sometime in the predawn darkness, not having the fortitude these other men seemed to exhibit as they kept right on drinking, singing, carousing, and merrily bringing in what they calculated to be a brand spanking-new year.
“C’mon, now! Come doe-see-doe a jig with the hull of us!” Isaac Simms begged, hopping around so energetically that his pale, whitish-blond hair shook like a lively burst of sunlight beneath his battered and greasy felt hat. “It’s your birthday, Scratch!”
As he rubbed grit from his eyes, Titus knew his head would not take any more swaying and swinging the way they had done all last night, dancing round and round, in and out among the others, thumping feet and slapping knees, singing out as loud as they could while beating on kettles with sticks to accompany Hatcher as he scratched his bow across the strings of that worn fiddle of his. Beginning as soon as the sun had set and the quarter moon was on the rise—hour after hour they kept right at it.
“We allays hurraw for the new year, y’ lop-eared sumbitch,” Hatcher slurred before he emptied the last dregs of his cup, then flung the cup aside. While he bent over to again retrieve his fiddle from that worn, much battered oak-colored violin case, he said, “Ye having yerself a birthday sure as hell makes a good reason for me and the boys here to keep on hurrawing right on into New Year’s Day!”
“Gimme some water,” Bass grumped, clutching his pounding, aching head between his hands. It seemed they all were talking too loud, stomping their feet, pounding those kettles no matter how poorly his head hurt—why, even these damned snowflakes were landing on him too hard, too cold, too damned loud.
“Get that back-strapped sumbitch a drink of water,” Hatcher ordered—then suddenly caught himself. “Water, Scratch? What the hell you wanna go an’ drink water for?”
Bass admitted, “’Fraid if I drink any more of that trader’s whiskey—I’m gonna puke in the fire.”
Jack bent there in front of Scratch’s face, the fiddle and bow swinging loose from one hand, the other hand plopped on the top of Bass’s shoulder to steady himself as he rocked slowly back and forth. “Damn, nigger—ye got more grit’n most ever’ man I ever knowed, Titus Bass. But ye sure as hell cain’t hol’t your likker wuth a Sunday preacher man!”
They all roared with that, which only made Scratch’s head thump and hammer all the more.
Stumbling a little as he straightened, Jack swung his arms out as he announced to the group, “This here’s the birthday of Titus S. Bass. Shhh—don’t ye ever let no nigger know the S stands for Scratch.”
“Here’s to Scratch!” John Rowland cried, shoving some of his bushy, unkempt hair out of his eyes.
And then Hatcher was sputtering again. “Scratch be a man ever’ last one of us can depend on, that’s for sartin—sartin sure. A man made of pure fighting tallow.”
“How the hell old are you?” Solomon Fish wondered, stuffing a hand beneath the gray wolf-hide cap of his, scratching at his blond ringlets.
“Hell if I can figger it out for you right now!” Titus snapped angrily.
“Hush your face, Solomon!” Jack ordered. “Dammit, here I am speechifying on this nigger’s birthday—so ye just keep respectful of this here serious occasion and keep yer ugly yap shut!”
Beneath his sharp hatchet of a nose dotted with huge pores forever blackened with fire soot and dirt, Fish growled, “Your yap uglier’n mine, Hatcher!”
“Bet you don’t know near the purty words Mad Jack here knows!” Elbridge Gray defended.
“Thank ye, child!” Hatcher roared. “Now, all of ye raise your cups to this here ugliest nigger you’re bound to see out to the Shining Mountains! It’s his birthday, by damned! And ain’t none of us likely to see a more flea-bit, skin-chewin’, squar-screwin’, likker-lovin’ coon in near all of God’s natural creations!”
With that Jack swung the fiddle up and jabbed it beneath his chin. Striking a pose, he dragged that old bow across those strings—succeeding in raising every last one of the hairs on the back of Scratch’s neck and grating on Bass like a coarse file dragged across some crude cast iron. If it weren’t for the sharp hammer strikes the whining notes caused in his head, he was sure Mad Jack’s fiddle playing would have made him throw up what he had left in his belly from last night.
Barely cracking his eyes into slits as Mad Jack’s music picked up its pace and the other liquor-crazed trappers set to stomping with one another, Titus spotted the kettle of water nearby. At the moment, he couldn’t remember being thirstier. Grunting with that self-inflicted pain, he lumbered onto his knees shakily, trying desperately to shut out what noise he could from piercing his head with slivers of icy agony, just as if someone were shoving his mam’s knitting needles into both his ears, jabbing them right in behind his eyeballs.
Fighting that cold, stabbing torture, Scratch peered down into the kettle, finding its surface crusted with ice. Angrily breaking the crust with his bare fist, Bass plopped over to squat in a heap, raising the kettle to his lips, where he ended up drinking less than he managed to splash in his lap—shaking so bad from a terrible concoction of numbing winter cold mixed with a brutal hangover and sprinkled generously with more of Mad Jack’s wild caterwauling and fiddle playing. He drank and drank until he suddenly needed to pee.
As heavy as his head felt, as slow as his leaden legs and arms were to respond to even the little he ordered them to do—this getting himself up and moving off from the fire, to head anywhere away from the raucous merrymaking—it came as a great rush of relief to suck in a chestful of the frightfully cold air. He tramped through the snow, farther, farther still, as the sounds behind him slowly faded and his head no longer throbbed nearly as loud, nor as fitfully as it had. When he was finally able to hear the critch and crunch of his own thick winter moccasins breaking through the icy crust of the old snow, he figured he had come far enough to have himself a peaceful pee.
Yanking open the flaps to his blanket capote, tugging aside the long tradewool breechclout, he let out a sigh and for the moment found himself no longer caring about much of anything else. How very quiet the forest became out here, away from the celebration—a grating, noisome celebration he was nonetheless happy the others were there to share with him. But here it was so utterly quiet, he could hear the faint hiss of his stream as it melted the icy crust. So, so quiet he was sure he could hear the snow falling, hear when each flake tumbled against his wind-burned, hairy face, when each flake spun itself into his long, curly, unkempt hair or landed on the sleeves of his thick wool coat.