Snowbound and Eclipse (59 page)

The embargo has stopped our shipments of furs to Europe, so St. Louis languishes in debt and despair. Its warehouses bulge with rank-smelling peltries and skittering bugs, and some prominent citizens cannot afford the meanest tax.

I have seen Antoine Saugrain frequently, and he has gently and tenderly taught me the signs of my own decay: memory loss, lapses of judgment, difficulty with speech, an uneven hand that shows up in blots and tiny or oversized letters or crossed-out words, fits of unseemly passion, ranting, puzzlement, and above all, incoherence. I face those things. I, Meriwether Lewis, face
incoherence,
when I will blubber out words that do not connect and defy logic. I face
the end of my very
self,
and that thought is more than I can endure.

He teaches me to understand my decline, for it is the only thing he has still to give me: the stigmata of my doom on my hands and feet, the cruel ciphers of the devil getting his usury for one voluptuous moment. That is the medicine the doctor portions out for me; that and a profound and sad affection he has formed for me, and a willingness to share in my desolation. The little doctor has become the physician of my soul. He charges but little now, but always manages to comfort me.

I do not always heed his counsel, and he has stopped chiding me. I take my powders when I need them because I am desperate for them, and I drink spirits at the balls and parties I attend to conceal my affliction and drug away the pain and fever when they pounce. The world sees nothing of any of this, for I still cut a fine figure, but no one, especially the women, has ever looked deeply into the eyes of their governor and seen the hell within.

Mr. Bates braced me again the other day. He has a catalogue of injuries which he writes down in the ledgers of his soul, and now that list is heavier than he can carry. He imagines himself a good official watching zealously over the public purse. I see him as an obstructionist, stopping my projects, quibbling about authority, finding fault with my every act, and spreading his toxins through St. Louis. He would have me leave for Washington so he might govern in my absence. I have no plans to go, but he has found the perfect way to force me: I will have to go east to answer his complaints.

“Do you think I don't know about your powders? I have friends all over St. Louis!” he snapped. “You have no secrets from me, sir. Not all your high connections can save you!”

“My ague?” I asked.

“Ha!” he snapped.

“Mr. Bates, do you want my office? Is that what this is about?”

“Never, sir. I am no usurper. I would be your loyal second, if you were but to consult me, but you never do.”

“What can I do to reconcile us?”

“Nothing. It is a breach that cannot be bridged. You have earned my enmity, sir, and your very presence offends me.”

I kept trying. “I assure you, sir, I am willing to listen and consider, and if I am misguided, I am willing to undo my arrangements.”

He paused, nonplussed for once.

“Give me specifics, Mr. Bates. Would you care to discuss my diplomacy with the Upper Missouri tribes? Are you content with the agents? Do I coddle the hostile tribes too much?”

“I have no desire to press my views upon you; it would only stay your course.”

I proceeded doggedly. “My appointments to office. You object to most of them. Pray tell me, what is wrong with, say, Boone?”

Bates drew himself up. “We have talked too much. I will not give you one bone to chew on. Go counsel with the high and mighty.”

I saw how it would go. “Set your own course, then,” I said sharply.

That is the polite expression of a complete rupture. Except for our official duties, we need have no other congress. He stalked out of my office, as if even that final caution was an insult to his prickly person instead of a way of accommodating each other while harnessed to the same wagon.

I stood at my desk, processing this latest bloodletting, and slowly took heart.

I plan to endure. I will heal myself and proceed. I have
let nothing slide and prosecute all manner of agendas to make this western border safe and secure and profitable, and a gem in the diadem of the republic.

I sometimes think the madness is upon me. I often walk to a place three miles up the river where there is a certain stony bluff that affords a view of the great blue Mississippi and the distant shores of the Illinois country rolling away. And there, I gaze upon life and death and think that the world is indescribably beautiful, that all of creation sings to me, every bumblebee and tern and eagle and field mouse and daisy. I go quite mad with joy, feeling the blood pulse in my veins and the moist earth-scented wind inflate my lungs, and the voice of the wilderness clawing my bosom.

And there I know I am a man, and will fight a man's fight, and will depart from a better world than the one into which I was born because I have set my gifts upon its altar. No matter that disease robs me of all but youth; my name will be remembered.

Someone will prepare the journals after I am gone and catalogue the plants after I am gone, and write a history of Louisiana after I am gone, and they will find my hand in it all, and none of it done on my account, but for Mr. Jefferson and the republic.

I never want to leave that sacred place where the world is inexpressibly beautiful, but the rain drives me off, or a passing fisherman breaks the spell and I am among people again. When I leave it is like descending a long path from a tabernacle to the mundane world, and I am no longer with the eagles, and at the end of the path is only Secretary Bates, and Dr. Saugrain.

John Shields is dying. George Shannon sent word, and asked if I might go see the doughty private in the Corps of Discovery. I sent word that I would.

We in the corps look after each other, or at least those of us in St. Louis. We were bonded into a rare brotherhood by three years of trial and fire; now we have settled into our vocations. Some have married. A few, like Sergeant Gass, have gone east. Most have foolishly traded their warrants for three hundred twenty acres of public land, awarded by a grateful Congress, for a few dollars. Frederick Bates bought some of the warrants for very little. Several men have entered the fur trade and gone upriver. John Colter is such a one, George Drouillard is another, Shannon another, and it cost him a leg which had been amputated after the fight with the Arikaras.

I have watched over them fondly, and with a deep affection and pride. They were good men to begin with, and some of them had been transformed into exceptional men by our common ordeal. I try to watch over the Field brothers, Private Labiche, and all the rest, and I know Meriwether does, too. Never a letter goes east from either of us but that we don't inquire after those loyal and greathearted men.

I had heard Shields was sick, but the news that he is sinking shocked me.

“Are you sure?” I said to the black boy who had brought me the message.

“Mr. Shannon, he asks you to go right quick, sir.”

I nodded.

Shields has a smithy at Fort Bellefontaine, a few hours'
walk from my office. He had traded his land warrant for a complete smithing outfit and is a respected gunsmith and blacksmith in the area, employing the trades he gave the Corps of Discovery. He had been a lean, muscular man with powerful shoulders and an iron grip. I could scarcely imagine such a Hercules sinking into the Stygian depths.

I saw nothing on my desk that required attention. The mid-July heat had already built, and I would be in a sticky sweat by the time I reached there, even if I should summon a carriage or a wagon. But I would walk. Walking keeps me hale.

I sent word to Julia that I might be detained and headed for the governor's lair, down the street, intending that we both should go and pay our respects to our corps man.

I found Meriwether studying a petition. The windows were open and he looked flushed by heat.

“Ah, Will!”

“You have a little time?” I asked.

He nodded.

“John Shields lies ill; they say he won't last. I have in mind paying him a call. Would you join me?”

“Shields? Shields?” Some strange light filled his eyes. “No. Busy, can't.”

“I'll get a carriage and trotters, Meriwether. It won't be but three or four hours there and back.”

“No!”

That rejection came so explosively that we stared a moment.

Then he retreated.

“I regret that I can't. Tell him so. Give him my heartfelt apologies and high regards. He's a good man. None better. He was our salvation several times when he made ironwork to trade to the Indians. If he dies, I'll grieve his passage.
If I can help find his heirs, count on me. If I can do anything …”

He subsided into a blank gaze. I did not know what was amiss, but Meriwether was acting strange again.

“You go; tell him his old captain honors him,” Meriwether said. “He gave his life for the corps.”

“He gave his life?”

“He wouldn't be so ill now if he hadn't come with us.”

“What is it that he suffers?” I asked.

“Fevers.”

I ransacked my memory. “You treated him and MacNeal and others with mercury for the venereal at Fort Clatsop.”

Meriwether nodded curtly.

“Do you suppose it's the venereal?”

Meriwether shrugged.

“Well, I'll find out and do what I can. Will the army or the territory bury him?”

Oddly, Meriwether didn't reply. He had slipped into his own world, and was slumped deep in his chair.

“My regrets, Will. I'd see him if I could,” he said.

I left him lost in reverie, went to my house, kissed Julia and peered at the sleeping infant, collared York, got a hamper of ham and bread and stew and jams from the kitchen, and we set off through a muggy morning for the cottage of John Shields, not knowing what we would find there.

We hiked north on a military road. The army had bridged Coldwater Creek, corduroyed over some marsh, and widened a horse trail into a wagon trace from the city to the fort that governed access to the Missouri River and did a lively Indian trade as well. Shields held a smithing contract there, and lived nearby.

York followed along behind me a few paces toting the hamper. We hadn't talked much since his return from
Louisville and I knew he was still looking for a way to be set free. He had been careful to fulfill his duties and to escape my wrath, but something between us had vanished.

The lifeless air seemed oppressive and forbidding.

I was perfectly familiar with Fort Bellefontaine, although it was a regular army post and not a militia site. And I knew Shields's cottage, so I headed there directly rather than paying my respects to Colonel Hunt, First U.S. Infantry, inside the post.

The stained log cottage baked quietly in the sun. Its shutters were open, letting light in and releasing silence to the world.

Someone must have seen us coming, because a door opened quietly, and a small composed woman greeted us.

“Gin'ral,” she said, her glance sweeping me in. I heard Ireland in it. She was no doubt some noncom's wife, hired to look after the dying.

“We've come to see Mr. Shields, madam.”

She nodded and motioned us in.

“I am General Clark.”

“Oh, sir, I know, and I'm Mrs. Tolliver, and me man is Corporal Tolliver.”

I glanced toward the bed. “How is he?”

“Oh, sir, you can see.” She spoke softly and tenderly.

In spite of the open casement, I smelled death.

Shields lay in a narrow bunk on the far side, his eyes open but staring sightlessly. His mouth had curled into a permanent O, and his face had shrunk around his skull, save for some thick lumps along his neck and cheeks.

The woman started to retreat, but I stayed her.

“Madam, please …”

She stood back. York hung back, too, and I motioned him in. He put the wicker hamper on a rude table.

“I brought some ham and some other things,” I said.

Shields didn't move; life was visible only through the slight rise and fall of his chest. I took off my hat and stood there before the ruin of a splendid soldier and a fine companion of three years of travel. Here was a man who had gone the whole route, across the prairies, over the mountains, down the Columbia to the salt water, and all the way back, as valuable a man as we had with us.

“Who's attending him?” I asked Mrs. Tolliver.

“The little Frenchman,” she said. “Saugrain.”

“What does he say?”

“I ask him, and he just shakes his head. He comes up to my neck, sir, and I look down upon him. I say to him ‘What is this malady, Doctor, that robs a good smith of life?' And he just pats my hand gallantly and says it is a certain fever of soldiers. Oh, may my man never catch such a thing!”

I stood over Shields again, trying to discover awareness in him.

“John, it's your old captain. Clark here. I'm here to wish you all the blessings God can bestow on a good man. You walked to the Pacific with me, did your job well, gave more than was asked of you. I remember you looked after your fellows loyally and faithfully, followed our command, used your abilities and trade to make the Corps of Discovery a success, and you stand tall now. You're the best of men.”

I discerned nothing at all. Those eyes did not track me. I studied that ravaged face, the lips that puffed oddly, the mouth caught in a death rictus, and I knew he was at the gates of eternity.

York edged close, uneasily, his eyes seeking permission from me and from the woman. He studied Shields a moment and then exhaled deeply, a great long gust of sadness.

“Mastuh Shields, I am saying goodbye. You be a good man, you my friend, and I am wishing you get well, but …”

He stopped, fearful that I would rebuke him for being too
familiar. But I didn't. They were all brothers on that trip across the continent; strangers at first, brothers by the time we had returned. And York was a brother, too, the brother of us all.