Snowbound and Eclipse (68 page)

I have been arguing with myself. Sometimes Pernia glances at me, because my debate rages even to his ears, as he trudges behind us. I go east against my will. Far better to go west, toward the future, toward the setting sun, than east, to Washington and exposure. I will not be the old uncle up in the garret of the family home at Ivy. I will not be that Lewis. I will be only the other Lewis.

The censor in me mocks me: you will defame yourself all the worse, he says.

But I rebuke my censor: one can choose a living death, or one can choose a more honorable one that preserves the name of Meriwether Lewis for posterity. One death is tragic; the other is vile. I prefer tragedy.

But this ghastly judge residing within me will not be stilled. “Ah, they will count it a coward's death, a shameful death, your weak character and melancholia forever on public display.”

“Hush! You are wrong! What I must do requires all the courage I possess. I will preserve my name. I will not disillusion Mr. Jefferson. I will not disappoint my friends in the American Philosophical Society; I will not tarnish my honor; I will not mortify my family. I will not blacken the reputation of my Corps of Discovery. Let them call me a coward if they must, though what I intend is a sacrifice to honor. But I will spare my family, spare my friend Tom Jefferson, spare Will Clark, spare the corps. A good officer looks after his men; this is how I look after mine.”

I heard laughter from that corner of my soul.

“You would not know what honor is,” I said. “I will suffer shame, but preserve honor!”

Who was I arguing with? A phantasm, a nightmare, without flesh.

“You would not know what courage is, either,” I continued. “You would not even know what pain is, pain of soul, pain of body.”

Pernia said, “Are you all right, master?”

I smiled. “I am debating with myself,” I said.

My manservant stared.

That grim judge occupying my heart would not be still. “You, sir, are a coward, deathly afraid of pain.”

I acknowledged it. “Yes, I am.”

“You won't succeed. You cannot inflict pain upon yourself. You will botch it. You cannot point a loaded piece at your bosom and pull the trigger.”

He was nettling me. “I will do what I must do,” I retorted.

This specter in my bosom laughed, and it sounded like a flight of honking geese late in the fall.

I turned inward. We proceeded through an autumnal mid-October day, with iron-belly clouds scudding low. I looked back, half expecting that Neelly would ride up with the two strays, but he didn't. Pernia and the slave followed
behind my packhorse. I could not remember the name of the slave; only that Neelly owned him. My memory was flagging. I didn't doubt that someday I would not remember my own name. I suffered lapses constantly. I spent half an afternoon trying to remember the name of the officer at Fort Pickering, the man who would not let me have my medicines.

We were two or three days out of Nashville, but this country had yet to be settled. The dense oak and maple woods discouraged farming. I prefer open country, not this cloistering canopy. I pulled my flask and drank the harsh whiskey to settle my soul again.

Late this afternoon I espied a clearing ahead in a broad swale set in the oak-covered hills. It had been painfully hacked out of the dense forest, and at the far end of it stood a dogtrot cabin, that is to say, two cabins connected by roof in the manner of frontier dwellings across the South. And far beyond that, a log barn. And I discerned a yellowed corn crop rising among the black stumps that toothed the field.

Whatever the place, it would no doubt provide comforts for travelers such as ourselves. The trace ran along the very edge of the settlement, no doubt drawing trade.

I urged my horse forward, leaving my entourage behind.

At my arrival, a work-worn young woman in brown checked gingham emerged from one of the water-stained log cabins, and she was swiftly surrounded by urchins of stairstep ages.

I halted. “Madam, do you provide lodging?”

“Yes. Not fancy, but a roof. In there.” She pointed at the other cabin. “That's where the children sleep, but I'll move them in here tonight. Are you alone?”

“My servants follow, with packhorses.”

She nodded and pointed at the log barn. We negotiated a
price for myself, the servants, and the horses. A dollar and two bits in all, grain for the horses extra.

“I'm Mr. Lewis. And you?”

“Mrs. Grinder,” she said. “My man's up at the other place … but he'll be back soon enough. Very well, Mr. Lewis, I'll shake out the tick and get ready. I'll have some supper in a little bit.”

Grinder's stand, then. As I dismounted she vanished into the log cabin that would house me. The children shrank into the other cabin, which was redolent of stewing meat. Pernia and the slave walked up, and I steered them toward the barn.

“But put my trunks in there,” I added, pointing to my quarters.

They unpacked the horse and carried my heavy luggage into the dark confines, while Mrs. Grinder finished her preparations.

“Where's my gunpowder, Pernia?” I asked.

“In your canister, sir.”

“I want to recharge my pistols. I've neglected it. This is not a safe place.”

Pernia eyed me uneasily, and then took my horses off to water and rub them down, as he always did. I entered my new dominion, alone at last. I had not been alone for a month. My two trunks rested in a corner. A not very clean tick lay on the puncheon floor, and I supposed it would have its complement of bedbugs. But that would not matter. I had escaped at last.

Twilight comes swiftly this time of year, and I knew I would not have to wait long for darkness to fall. I pulled off my shirt and put on my blue-striped nightshirt over my pantaloons. Mrs. Grinder invited me in and offered me some stew, but I refused. Her ragamuffins peered shyly at me, astonished at my odd attire.

“Give it to the servants, madam,” I said.

“But you should have some, Mr. Lewis.”

I dissuaded her. I was not a bit hungry and my fevers were mounting again. “I would take a little whiskey if you have it, madam.”

Wordlessly she lifted a jug and poured a gill or so into a cup for me. But once I had it in hand, I didn't want it, and sipped but little.

“Madam, have you any gunpowder?” I asked.

“Gunpowder?”

“Yes. I wish to clean the damp powder out of my pieces and recharge them.”

“Oh, sir, Mr. Grinder might, but he's not present now, and it might be a while.”

I sighed. Would my intentions be defeated by that? I could not find my powder flask. Perhaps Pernia had it. Or perhaps it was in one of the trunks left at Fort Pickering. My two pieces were not loaded.

“Hidden it, have you?”

“Sir?” asked Mrs. Grinder.

“I was talking to someone else, my servant, madam.”

She looked about, saw no one, and stared at me.

“You cannot know what it takes to do what I must do,” I said.

“Are you indisposed, Mr. Lewis?” asked the poor woman.

“Madam, it's a very pleasant evening. I think I'll just sit outside and have a pipe before I retire, if that is suitable.”

“Oh, of course, sir, of course. I just thought maybe something is amiss. If you're indisposed I have a few simples I might steep for you.”

“No, madam, you look after your children, and trust the night.”

She backed away, carrying her pot and ladle and a trencher intended for my use.

I watched her retreat, confused, toward the barn with the stew, and settled down on a bench outside my cabin door. I pulled out my old briar pipe and tamped some sweet tobacco into it, enjoying the soft sweet quiet of the fading day, the thickening blue of a lifetime.

It came down to duty. I could preserve, for the republic, the Meriwether Lewis they knew and celebrated, or not. I knew what I must do, but didn't know whether I could summon that mournful courage to do it. And so I argued with myself that soft Wednesday eve in the oak groves of Tennessee.

I hated this!

Oh, if only I might repeal three years; but how sad and feckless to think it. I paced and argued, but there was nothing to argue. The nation had built a shrine to me, and I had befouled it. Like the whited sepulcher, it contained corruption within.

I could not go east; I could not ride into the City of Washington without betraying the trust invested in me. I could not sully the Corps of Discovery, my loyal and stouthearted men. I could not beslime my mentor and friend Tom Jefferson. I could not open the floodgates of gossip. I could not babble my case to Mr. Madison or Secretary Eustis, for they would be listening to gossip and not to me. I could not bear the thought of entering into the presence of my mother, with her searching gaze and saddened mien.

I watched night settle and listened to the crickets. I heard
the last of a day's toil in the cabin next door, and then the soft darkness settled over the farmstead. It was a gentle night, this eleventh day of October, soft and melancholic, the tang of the good earth in the night breezes.

There were black holes in a starlit sky, where occasional clouds obscured the universe. Even in that infinity, there was no place to go, no escape.

By the light of a stub candle, I stormed through my chattel and found the powder flask, which Pernia had artfully buried under my journals. I grasped the embossed canister and plucked it out of the trunk. In my other trunk I found my two brass-mounted Pennsylvania pistols, encased in a polished cherrywood box. I opened the box and beheld them in the drear rays of the candle. They were costly, reliable pieces, and had served me well during the expedition. They had put balls into grizzlies. They had comforted me in emergencies.

I lifted one, and felt the smoothness of the walnut stock and the coldness of the ten-inch octagonal steel barrel. I lifted the other, two old friends whose loyalty I did not question. The locks and frizzens were fine, the flints fresh. The pistols had been cleaned and oiled, and were ready for whatever use my eye and finger might put them to.

I charged each piece, pouring the full measure of good Missouri powder down the cold muzzle, patching a forty-four-caliber ball and driving it home, and then priming the pan. I hefted them. They felt fine, balanced, formed to my hand, and I pointed them here and there, at the candle, the floor, the wall, my trunks. Everywhere but at their target.

“You are a coward after all,” said my censor.

I responded by pointing the pistol in my right hand at my forehead.

Could I not do what needed doing?

I paced again, the pistols putting authority to my every gesture.

“Mr. Eustis, if you will just let me explain. There was no way to execute Mr. Jefferson's design to return the Mandan without some expense. The regular army declined, so we created our own. But it will pay off, sir. And the presents we distribute along the river will ensure the safety of our western flank in the event of another war. The British never stop stirring them up! You will see, sir, how well it was spent. And now I am ruined. It's a burden hard to bear. Can you remedy this?”

No response rose out of the night.

“Who can say I lack courage?” I cried. “I faced savages with drawn bows intent on killing me. I braved roaring white rapids in a hollowed-out log of a canoe. I walked into savage villages even as I saw their warriors spread out and arm themselves and prepare to butcher me. I chose what rivers and paths to follow, often against the perceptions of the rest. I ate dog and horse and other meats that repel most men. I sat next to murderous men armed with long knives. I urged us forward when the faint of heart wanted only to flee. I faced angry bears and buffalo. I suffered a grave wound without complaint. Courage I have, for any good cause. And this is the best of causes.”

All this I declaimed into the night, not caring who heard.

But there was only the hum of crickets. A wisp of smoke from Mrs. Grinder's fieldstone chimney eddied in.

And still I loved life too much.

“I am trapped! That is the sole reason!”

Then I thought of the unspeakable disease, of the shame, and thinking of the shame heartened me, and I thought I could do this thing if I could summon one swift moment of inner steel. Ah, that was the secret. One swift moment.

And still I could not.

I stepped to the door. Moist air met me. I saw no stars. The skies had been blotted out. I slumped to the stoop and sat dully, my mind purged of every thought. I knew nothing, scarcely knew my name, and could not even think of simple things. Maria Wood, she did not wait for me.

The calm eluded me. I had no more anodynes. I had snuff, and only a swallow of spirits. Violence was my only salvation.

I stepped into the inky black of the cabin, lifted the pistol in my right hand to my temple, and pulled …

I have tarried here at Locust Hill some days with the governor's family, trying to make sense of it all. Mrs. Marks has welcomed me, along with Meriwether's half brother John Marks. I will stay a while longer in Albemarle County, where the family and Thomas Jefferson are quietly putting Meriwether's affairs in order. But soon I will go to the City of Washington for talks with Secretary Eustis and President Madison.

The news reached me in Shelbyville, Kentucky, only three days after I had departed from my own family at Mulberry Hill, Indiana Territory, and started east to untangle the financial affairs afflicting the Clarks and the governor and the St. Louis Missouri Fur Company.

The blurred story in the
Argus of Western America,
published in Frankfort, shattered my repose, and I read it over and over, trying to draw from it the information I wanted. But it was mute on all the essentials.

I handed the shocking paper to George Shannon, who was with me, and we stared at each other, scarce believing that our captain had left us, and by his own hand. My mind crawled with doubts, but at the same time I was not surprised.