Dreadful Skin Read Online Free PDF

detail than necessary; but I told her the truth about our money situation—and I told her that she should stay with her family as long as it was necessary, since I couldn’t provide for her the way I did before. I told her, in short, that I’d made my fortune on the Mississippi, and I lost it to the Union.
    I did not tell her how, exactly. It would not have mattered and it would have bothered her something awful. She didn’t need to know about the camp. She didn’t need to know about the drinking, the wandering, and the smuggling.
    But I told her I loved her, and I meant to repair the rest.
    For two years, I’d been rebuilding my reputation—transporting goods and people up and down the Tennessee River. I taught the roof captains how to watch and guide, and I helped apprentice the mud clerks until they could dock a boat without scraping bottom. I’d done it all before, and I believe that my advice and guidance proved invaluable. I was paid for it, anyway. They needed people like me on the rivers.
    The south was being “reconstructed,” as the politicians liked to say it. I had another word for it, but it was not a polite one that I would have used in front of my wife.
    But any construction needs ready supply, and a man with my experience could make a fair living off a river. Granted, a man might need to make a few deals he couldn’t share with his family—but I was accumulating a stash of such secrets, and I was getting better by the day at keeping them covered.
    I might say, if anyone asked, that all it took was a stash of good scotch.
    My wife would have objected, though. That’s why I brought her a nice bottle of wine—a glorious green bottle with a foil-trimmed label, straight from France. I bought it from a dealer who was wending his own way down to New Orleans, or so he said.
    Maybe it was a ruse, and maybe he had some other plans. He didn’t owe me the truth, and I shouldn’t have bothered him for it. I do know this much: the first two bottles I drank alone, and they were as fine as the labels promised.
    I saved the last, and assumed the best. But Nancy never got to try it.

VI.
    Supper was held at the same time, every night, and if you wished to partake, you were welcome to appear. I went every night, in part because I was bored for company, and also because I was hungry. The other passengers always asked me to say Grace, and I didn’t mind. I was thankful for the food. The cook was uncommonly good; I would have ridden that boat another week to let him feed me.
    I want to say he came from farther down the river. I thought I overheard—or maybe I just inferred—that he was from New Orleans.
    There was always wine to go with the meals, but you had to be quick and beat the captain if he was there.
    The poor man. I don’t know what happened to him. It must have been tragic. He said he was on his way home to his wife; and when he said it, there was a blink and a twitch of his neck that told me one or the other wasn’t true. He might have been going home, or he might have been going to his wife. I don’t know which.
    At the end of the night—after the captain had drunk himself to bed, and after the others had turned in for the night as well, I was left with Christopher at the table.
    There was a serving girl, I think her name was Laura. She was pretty and dark. I made a joke with her once, about how we both kept our hair covered all the time. She smiled politely and ducked herself away from me.
    Laura came and took our plates and Christopher was mellow, itching to play.
    “You could deal some cards, if you like,” I said.
    His eyebrows went up.
    “I know how to play,” I told him. “I haven’t got much money, but I can play for fun, if you like.”
    He thought about it and then laughed. “Listen Sister, I don’t know if I’d feel right about that. But I do appreciate your offer. Would you like a little nip of brandy instead?”
    “You’ll drink with a nun, but you won’t gamble with one, is