“Don’t know about that,” Morse replied. “Sandy’s ma, she was quite a lay when she wanted to be. Got all wide-eyed and squealing when I let her ride me. But that woman could wear a strong man down to the bastard bone. Luckily most times she just put up with what I had to give her and wasn’t trying to get her own. By the time she left, I was done playing slap-and-tickle with Bud’s ma, and him already in the oven.”
“Oh,” Doc said.
Ryan could tell from the old man’s face that Doc didn’t know how to properly respond to the information, and smiled at his friend’s discomfort. Doc’s Victorian ways still showed through from time to time.
“Bud’s ma, she ran as skipper on Dawson’s boat. She was his daughter, but old Dawson, he liked to have his way with her. Didn’t know it when I started sneaking around with her. Thought we was just hiding it from my first wife, but we was actually hiding out from her da. She turned out knocked up, Dawson knew it wasn’t his because he went barren from a fever when he was just a young man. His wife got burned up in a fire down in Docktown. He figured why go looking for another woman when you already got one at home.”
Ryan listened to the story. It was like a lot of others a man could hear out in the Deathlands. Incest, though, remained a taboo in most societies, but not all. Even the baronies recognized the need for fresh blood in the gene pool. The story was too familiar to offer any strong reaction, but it still brought distaste.
“When Dawson found out his daughter was knocked up, he come at her with a knife. Cut her up some.” Morse clucked his tongue. “She got away from the fucker and come running to me. Dawson, he was stupe enough to figure he could take me. When I saw what he done, I broke his neck. Didn’t chill him outright, though, just paralyzed him.”
“You let her chill the reprobate herself?” Doc asked.
Morse shook his head. “No. Junie, she was a good daughter. She wouldn’t have chilled her old man no matter what. Probably might have even gone back to him if I hadn’t chilled him. But I did. Took him out in the middle of the river down from Docktown, and propped him up in a cork-filled life preserver. Went fishing, using him as bait.”
“Paralyzed man good bait,” Jak said knowingly. Ryan wasn’t sure when the albino had joined them at the wheel. Jak sat on the railing, his body moving easily with the river current. “Got tribe in bayous break necks of outlanders, use ’em troll for gators. Works bastard good.”
Morse nodded. “Down where I took Dawson, they ain’t got any gators. Only heard stories about them, but that place has got mutie catfish near to three hundred pounds. Fuckers don’t come off the river bottom for much. But I cut the heels of Dawson’s feet just enough that they’d bleed good without bleeding to death. And him squalling like a woman the way he was, he attracted a lot of attention from the local catfish population. Too big to fish for them with a line, but I got four of them with a bow before they took Dawson to pieces and gobbled him down.” He grinned at the memory.
“So what happened to Junie?” Doc asked.
Morse shrugged. “We had some good years together. But she got kind of sick in the head. Mebbe it was all that shit her pa done to her, and mebbe it was the fact that she never did get over me taking him out and chilling him. But three years ago, she come up on me mad, waving a skinning knife in my face and telling me how she’s gonna cut my balls off. I slapped her back off me before she could do any serious cutting, but she come at me again. Broke her arm that time.” The sailor waved at his sons.
In response, the boys climbed the masts again and adjusted the rigging so that it better caught the breeze.