Michener, James A. (53 page)

He was so confused in his loneliness that sometimes he wanted to cry, but his stern heritage—half dour Scot, half stubborn German—plus a warning look from his father forced him to bite his

lip and march resolutely ahead. But at dusk, when he crawled beneath his blanket, he did not try to hide the fact that he was miserable.

But he felt no uncertainty about traveling with his father, and even though he did not fully understand why Finlay had fled Baltimore in such a hurry, he was sure that no blame fell on his father. A perplexed little boy, he stepped forth boldly each morning as they probed into the wilderness.

One evening as they plodded along the ill-kept road, trying to decide where to spread their thin blankets for the night, Otto saw through the growing darkness a light that shone from the window of some cabin situated well off the road, and the little hut seemed so established, so different from the wandering life he was leading that an overwhelming hunger assailed him.

'Poppa, let's stop here!'

'No, we'll find a valley before real darkness.'

'But, Poppa, the light!'

'On ahead.'

They kept to the road, this stubborn father and his son nearing six, and it was then that the little boy fixed in his mind the image which would live with him for the rest of his life: a cabin secure in the wilderness, a light shining from the window, refuge from the lonely, shadow-filled road. And it was also then, because of the way in which his father urged him to move on, that he first suspected that he would not be allowed to share in that forbidden warmth, at least never for long. And whenever afterward he saw such lights at night his heart hesitated, for he knew what they symbolized.

Twenty-five miles west of Hagerstown the Macnabs had to make a crucial decision, for there a path deviated to the north, heading over the hills to Pittsburgh, an enticing target.

'Is it true?' Finlay asked a traveler as they stood at the junction. 'Do boats with steam engines leave Pittsburgh and run all the way to New Orleans?'

'They do,' the stranger assured him. 'But you'd be wise to beware of them.'

'Why?'

'For three solid reasons,' he said. 'They're very expensive and would eat up your savings. They're very dangerous, for they blow up constantly. And the criminals who sail them will steal what money you have left, cut your throat, and toss you overboard. Stay clear of those boats at Pittsburgh.'

Finlay accepted this advice, but the more young Otto thought about the mysterious boats of steam that wandered down a thousand miles of river, the more obsessed he became with them, and

he pestered his father: 'Let's go to Pittsburgh. Let's take a boat. I'm tired of walking.' And when Finlay reminded him of the dangers the traveler had pointed out, Otto said pleadingly: 'But you would know how to fight those bad men.'

There's the money, too. We'll need all we have when we get to Cincinnati.'

With a melancholy the boy would never forget, the Macnabs rejected the steamboats and continued their way to Morgantown and on to Parkersburg, where at last they would join the Ohio River, along whose grassy banks they would walk the last three hundred miles to Cincinnati.

Otto was a thin, wiry lad who looked as if he might not grow into a tall or robust man. But he displayed, even at this untested age, a cool efficiency and a stubborn determination. He intended one day to sail down the river aboard a steam vessel, and as he walked he remained constantly aware that off to his right, somewhere, lay the great river, and he could imagine himself breaking away from his father, heading north and finding it. He was satisfied that if he ever did so, some boat would see him, stop, and pick him off the bank.

He was lost in such romantic thoughts one morning, when he let out a gasp which seemed to come from deep within, as if his heart had been touched: 'Oh, Poppa!'

For there, in full majesty, rode the Ohio River, highway of the nation, bringer of good things to alien parts. Much bigger than he had imagined, more sinisterly dark, in its motion it bespoke its power and the fact that anyone who ventured upon it would be carried to strange and magnificent places like Cincinnati, Louisville and Paducah.

'Poppa, look!'

From the opposite shore a small craft had set out, obviously intending to cross to where the Macnabs waited, and Finlay told his son: 'That's a ferry. It'll come to our side and carry us across.'

'We ride on it?' the boy cried with delight, and when another traveler said: 'We sure do, sonny,' Otto kept his eyes riveted to this reassuring sight.

But as he waited for the little ferry to cross the river, he became aware that something of magnitude was approaching from the right, and just in time he turned to catch the majestic approach of a large river steamer. Belching smoke, its great paddles churning the water, it was a thrilling sight. Well-to-do passengers lined its two tiers, their fine clothes enhancing its magnificence.

It was the Climax out of Paducah, one of that grand, adventurous fleet which had started under the imaginative command of

Nicholas Roosevelt in 1811 to bring steam navigation to the network of great rivers that bound the central areas of America together. 'Oh, Poppa!' Otto cried as the lovely boat passed, for he had seen his first riverboat and it had captured him.

On the ferry they crossed into Ohio, then followed country roads along the right bank of the river as it wound its way from Parkersburg through the empty wastes of southernmost Ohio and on to Portsmouth, where the Scioto River joins the Ohio. It was a journey of compelling beauty; the vistas changed constantly; at night solitary lights glowed on the opposite shore, indicating where some adventurous soul from settled Virginia had decided to test the wilderness in Kentucky.

Deer accompanied the travelers; and one evening a small bear approached their sleeping place when Finlay was absent, gathering sticks for a fire. Otto, who had never faced such an adversary before, hesitated for one frightened moment. Then, realizing instinctively that he must protect their belongings, he grabbed the nearest piece of wood and made right for the beast. Thrashing about with his little club, he bewildered the bear, but not for long. With a sweep of its paw the animal pushed the boy away, nudging him into a thicket.

Astonished at the insolence of the beast, Otto first shook his head, then glared at the animal. With a grunt to give him courage, he fought his way out of the brush, uttered a furious yell, and charged back at the little bear, who was now rummaging among the Macnab possessions.

Otto was prepared to do battle by himself, but his father, hearing the commotion, hurried back: 'Otto, no!'

The warning was ineffective, for Otto was outraged by the brusque treatment the bear had handed him and was determined to drive the creature away, but before he could resume his assault, Finlay rushed up and with a much larger stick belabored the animal, who growled, studied his adversaries, and rumbled off.

Trembling, Finlay sat with his son beside the river, and there they remained as the long twilight waned. 'You were very brave,' Finlay said. 'I'm proud of you.'

'He was stealing our food.'

'Never tangle with a bear.'

'But it was only a little one.'

'A bear's a bear, son. Don't ever tangle with one.'

'But you did, Poppa.'

Finlay could think of a dozen appropriate, fatherly warnings: 'Yes, but I'm a grown man.' Or, 'You were lucky it was a little

bear.' Or, 'If you have to fight a bear, don't use a stick. Get a gun. He stifled such admonition, for he believed that his son's action had been proper. Once allow a boy to run away from a serious challenge, he could continue to do so through life.

Softly he said, as if Otto were his own age: 'You were right, son. If you start to do something, keep going and finish the job.'

They followed the good road along the Ohio right in to Cincinnati, a growing town of more than twenty thousand where a few resolute Germans were already establishing firms to serve the various needs of the steamboats plying up and down the river. Three ferries crossed the river to service the citizens in Kentucky, and after several exciting days Otto told his father: 'This is better than Baltimore.'

In many ways the little boy talked and acted like a grown man; as frontier boys did, he was skipping a whole decade of his growing up; he was already a mature young fellow who had walked six hundred miles through the wilderness and fought his bear. He knew what loneliness was, and how a great river served people.

Because of his waterfront experience in Baltimore, Finlay had no trouble finding a job with a German merchant who needed his expertise in buying cattle and hogs for the river traffic, and in pursuit of this work, he often visited the glamorous steamboats that docked at Cincinnati. Aboard these craft he heard for the first time about the real wonders of the river: 'New Orleans! Finest city in America! Them Creole girls. Them great eatin' houses.'

At the age of seven Otto began running errands for his father, learning the names of the steamboats and their home ports, and in doing so, he fell under the spell of a river town much different from New Orleans. He first heard of it from a tall bearded boatman with a poetic touch: 'Tell you what, sonny, when you ship down the Mississip, as you surely will, the place you want to see is not New Orleans. The real spot is Natchez-under-the-Hill.'

'That's a funny name.'

'It's a golden name, like out of one of the Greek fables, like maybe the gods put it there to test men.'

He spoke with such music and strength that Otto leaned forward to catch his words, and as the man continued he became not an ordinary roustabout but a chronicler: To make things flower perfect, the gods built Natchez-atop-the-Hill, with gleamin' white houses and pillared porches and a score of slaves to keep things clean. That's rich-folks country, and river folks like you and me, we ain't allowed up there. For us the gods built Natchez-under-the-Hill, about the finest little spot in America.'

Aware that he had caught Otto's attention, he moved his hands

in ominous gestures to indicate knives and daggers and pistols and gallows-rope: 'A man don't watch out, they knife him. At night you hear screams, somebody's bein' murdered. You hear a splash! There goes a corpse into the Mississip. Men walk bent over, they're smugglers. In the saloons you can get Tennessee whiskey, rots your gut, or a bullet, ends your gut. And there are girls, and dancin' through the night.'

Otto missed not a word of this report, but the riverman would have been astounded had he known the impact his words were having on this flaxen-haired lad. But in succeeding days, when Otto heard more about Under-the-Hill, and when he had time to weigh exactly what had been said, discarding the poetry, he was wise enough, even as a boy, to conclude that the lower Natchez was a sorry place frequented by men and women of a low degree. He could not have explained why he was reaching this conclusion, or what it signified, but he was developing a powerful rejection of goings-on; he was becoming a youthful conservative, in the best sense of that word, who deplored gambling, knifing, girls who danced all night . . . and general irresponsibility. He opposed them all.

His father was also hearing a new word, one that would exert an equal influence on his life. Because Cincinnati specialized in butchering hogs, it was known as Porkopolis, and one of Finlay's duties was to provision riverboats with ham, bacon and sausage. One day after Finlay had loaded a boat bound for New Orleans with seventy salted carcasses, the satisfied captain paid him, then uttered a name Finlay had not heard before: 'We find ourselves with extra cargo space, Macnab. Could you scurry about and find us some bolts of cloth? Doesn't have to be fancy stuff, because it'll be transshipped to Texas.'

'Where's that?'

'Surely you've heard of Texas? Garden spot of the continent.'

'Where is it?'

'Part of Mexico now, but not for long.'

'What do you mean?'

'Texas is the ass end of Mexico, which don't give a damn for it. Each trip I make down the Mississippi, I carry men from Kentucky and Tennessee who's goin' to Texas. Stands to reason that with their long rifles, they ain't gonna be Mexicans for very long. They's gonna bring Texas into the Union, and the sooner the better, I say.'

'Why do people go there?' Finlay asked.

'To get rich! You plant cotton, it explodes in your face. You plant corn, you get two crops a year. Cows have twins in Texas, it's the law. And you get a league-and-a-labor, that's why.'

'What are they?'

'A league is four thousand four hundred and twenty-eight acres of pastureland, you get it free for cattle. A labor is a hundred and seventy-seven acres of better land you get for farming, also free.'

'I can't believe it.'

'You get it the minute you step acrost the border and say— What's your name? Finlay Macnab? When you step up and say "Here I am, Finlay Macnab" you get all those acres of the best land in America.'

'You said it was Mexico.'

'It'll soon be America, you can count on that.'

Macnab asked so many questions about Texas that he became known along the waterfront as a prospective settler, and one day a Mr. Clendenning invited him to lunch aboard one of the steamboats docked at the wharves. 'Can I bring my son?' Finlay asked. 'He dreams about steamboats.'

'To be sure,' Clendenning said expansively, and when they were seated in the spacious dining salon with its gold and silver ornamentation, the stranger told Otto: 'This is how we live on the great boats, sonny.'

'Do you live here?'

'Up and down.'

'You live on the river?'

'For the time being.'

'How long?'

'Until I've visited all the ports of call.' He now explained to Finlay that he was the traveling representative of the Texas Land and Improvement Company, headquartered in Boston, and his pleasant task was to sell future immigrants to Texas the best bargain this weary old world had ever seen. Pushing away the dinner plates, he spread an interesting series of documents on the table and said: 'This is scrip, authorized by the Mexican government and fully backed by the Texas Land and Improvement Company of Boston, Massachusetts. Each unit of scrip you buy entitles you to one acre of the choicest land in North America. Buy yourself three or four thousand units, and you're set for life.'