Free Buffalo Palace by Terry C. Johnston Page B

anxious to be done with his leaving, Titus stood and waited for the horses to finish.
    Sergeant Clayton had Lancaster working corn mush into cakes by the time Bass returned. Culpepper sat by the fireplace, feeding the flames and heating a skillet in which he was melting bear lard to fry their breakfast.
    “You wasn’t about to run off without something in your belly, was you?” Lancaster asked, dragging his fingers down into a wooden bowl and emerging with more of the soggy cornmeal he began to pat between his palms.
    “What’s for breakfast?”
    The sergeant looked at Bass with astonishment, saying, “Here I thought you told us you wasn’t a breakfast man.”
    Drinking in the fragrances with a deep breath for a moment, he found the three of them looking expectantly at him. “S’pose I’ll take time this morning,” Titus replied. “Seeing how this be the last morning I figger to be eating with white folks for some time to come.”
    “A apple tart with hot buttered rum sauce,” Culpepper spoke right out of the blue.
    “What the hell you talking about?” Lancaster grumbled at the rounder man.
    With a shrug, the big-bellied soldier said, “Just sitting here thinking of what I’d like to have me a taste of.”
    Clayton set the piggin of water on the plank table with a clatter. The small pail was made with stave wood: that hardwood used to make thin-shaped strips set edge to edge to form a small bucket or barrel. He asked, “A apple tart, is it?”
    “Back to home in Nashville—that’s what was my favored thing to sink my teeth into.”
    “Your mama made it?” Lancaster asked.
    Nodding, Culpepper continued, “She made the best tarts—and always used some of my da’s rum to pour on ’em just before we sunk our teeth into ’em.” He smacked his lips noisily, then peered down at the skillet to find his lard had melted. “Hey, ol’ soldier—you best get them cakes over here in a shuffle-quick. I’m ready to cook!”
    Lancaster legged back the bench he had been sitting on and rose with the pewter platter he had piled high with mush cakes. “You’re gonna stay long ’nough to eat, ain’cha, Bass?”
    Drawing in another deep breath of that room no longer rank with the smell of rain and men living too close to one another—but now filled with the strong, corn-tinged fragrance of memories, Titus said, “Yes. Them pone cakes do sound good this morning.”
    “Pone?” Clayton repeated. “You from somewhere south, mister?”
    “Kentucky. Hard by the Ohio.”
    At the fire Lancaster slipped a fourth cake into the heated oil in the skillet. “Ain’t heard these’r called pone in a spell.”
    “My …” And he struggled to get the rest out without his voice cracking in remembrance. “My mam most times made all us young’uns pone cakes of a cold autumn morning.”
    “I growed up calling ’em hoecakes,” Culpepper declared as he jabbed at the frying mush with a long iron fork.
    “Maybeso they’re nothing more’n johnnycakes,” Clayton said, turning away from Bass as if he appeared to recognize something familiar in the look on the older man’s face.
    Titus was grateful the young sergeant had turned away as his eyes began to mist up and he troubled his Adam’s apple up and down repeatedly, trying to swallow the sour gob of sentiment that threatened to choke him.
    His damp leather britches and wool coat began to steam there in the heat of the mess hall—arousing a long-ago memory all of its own. The smells of frying oil, thecrackling of the wood beneath the heady fragrance of the crisping corn. He remembered those long years gone by: how his grandmother always used conte in baking some sweet treats—that spice made from powdered China briar she would mix into her corn fritters fried in bear’s oil, then sweetened with honey.
    At the side of the fire the steaming coffeepot began to boil, and as quickly Sergeant Clayton tossed in two hand-fuis of the coarse coffee grounds, then tugged on the