Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier Page A

a man of about middle age, beginning to go stout through the barrel of his chest. He had thick freckled forearms haloed with ginger hairs, blunt hands with bulgy knuckles punctuating his short fingers. Every line of his face—eyebrows to eyes to cheekbones to mouth—was turned down. He had a thin strong nose and a high forehead and a chaw of tobacco lumped in his cheek. At close intervals he spit juice directly onto the floor. His clothes didn’t give away much. He had on a collarless white linen hunting shirt buttoned to the neck, the cuffs rolled to the elbow. A red kerchief and a necklace of curved black bear claws shining across his chest.
    —I need to talk to somebody about my colt that’s out in your pen, I said.
    Nobody even looked up from studying their hands. They were busy discarding and drawing and arranging their cards in tight artistic fans and holding their faces inert so as not to give away any of their thoughts.
    I said, That bay Waverley colt’s mine. Out back in your pen.
    I waited, and when the hand finished, Featherstone put down his cards and said, Son, ownership of a horse is a thorny thing to establish anywhere. Here, it’s well-nigh impossible. And besides, none of us is talking horses right now. That business has concluded for the day. We’re playing cards.
    I said, When could we talk horses?
    Featherstone said, Regular business hours.
    Another man said, That’s noon of a morning till one of a afternoon, with time out for dinner. But we’d admire for you to join us at table if you’ve got any money for us to take off you.
    Two or three of them laughed. And then one of them shuffled the cards in a showy precise way. He started dealing out another hand, the cards flying fast and sequential around the table, each card landing in perfect alignment with its predecessor until little discrete piles lay in front of the arrayed players. It took less time to do it than for me to tell it now.
    I eased up closer to watch them play. They had a game of Lanterloo going, but they soon came to the conclusion that the doubling of stakes at every hand allowed for a loss of money faster than was strictly entertaining, and Featherstone declared that all the intricate fooling with the ivory counters was womanish.
    So they switched to Put, and everything slowed down and concentrated.
    After a while of watching, I said to the room in general, Have you got something to eat? Pinto beans? Cold cornbread or just anything?
    One of the women on the pallet looked up from the book and said, See what’s in the pie safe.
    I went over to it and opened the punched-tin door and discovered a bowl of something grey and greasy and cold. It had set solid. A square-handled pewter spoon stood straight up in it.
    I looked at the women and said, What is this?
    I thought Featherstone was only paying attention to the cards, but he said, Groundhog meat and cabbage, with cow’s-milk and hog-grease gravy, thickened with flour and the mashed little brain from the groundhog.
    I tried to stir it with the spoon, but it rotated in the bowl as one chunk.
    —Anything else? I said.
    —Set that bowl by the fire and it’ll loosen up after a while, Featherstone said.
    —Is there not anything else? I said.
    —They’s some liquor in that pail, the one-legged man said.
    It was more a tub, half full of greenish corn liquor. A tin dipper with a crook at the end of its handle descended into it. A brown pottery crock of springwater sat nearby. I knew that the water was meant to cut the liquor with, but the crock was full and gave the impression of long disuse.
    —How often do you have to refill this water crock? I said.
    No one even looked up. Featherstone lifted the corner of his mouth. Not another feature of his face changed. I understood that slight motion to stand in place of a grin. I dipped into the corn liquor and took my first swig of spirits, and it was like fire coals melted into a cup.
    I asked the woman on the pallet what she was