The Expeditions (17 page)

Professor Tiffin edged toward the lodge’s center. Elisha grabbed the man’s wrist but he twisted away, stumbled into the firelight. He stood petrified, mouth slack; then he staggered forward in imitation of the dancing brave.

A howl went up and two braves were upon Tiffin, one brave wrenching his arm while the other collared his neck. Tiffin screamed. They dragged him thrashing in the dust toward the lodge’s far end. Elisha ran around the gathering’s perimeter, his chest tight with fear, and saw the braves hurl Tiffin down to the dirt. The sound was like a sack of meal dropped onto a stone floor. He rolled to his knees and a brave kicked him in the stomach. Elisha cried, “Arrêtez!
Please!
” A brave stomped Tiffin’s back and the man crumpled, moaning. The second brave drew a skinning knife, and Elisha threw himself across Tiffin’s body and raised a hand. “Please,
arrêtez
! I beg of you!”

The brave seized Elisha’s throat and screamed in his face. The boy twisted away with a whimper. He scrambled beneath Tiffin and hauled the man to his feet. Blood welled from Tiffin’s forehead and seeped across his nose. He lurched toward the circle but Elisha locked his hands around the man’s chest and dragged him stumbling into the darkness. Tiffin smelled of vomit and whiskey. The braves shouted after them.

“I have the medicine in my heart,” Tiffin said.

“I know you do. Shush now.”

Elisha staggered through the empty village, ignoring the man’s mumblings. At the lake’s edge, he eased Tiffin down beside the cookfire. The man’s head lolled forward; then he groaned and touched his swollen cheek. He stared thickly at Elisha. “I am sorry, my boy. I am so very sorry.”

“I know you are. Shush.”

“You must help me. You
must
.”

“I will.”

“Susette Morel is vanished—I cannot engage another guide. We may not ever reach the image stones. Do you understand?” Professor Tiffin searched the boy’s face. His teeth were marked with blood. “We are alone now, the two of us. You
must
help me.”

Tiffin reached for the boy but Elisha pushed his hand away. “You have to curb yourself! Quit your drinking and your foolishness with the Chippewas. You—”

Elisha broke off. For it was his own fault that Susette had left—this trouble was a product of his own drunken foolishness. He thought to tell Professor Tiffin about his encounter with the woman, then realized it would solve nothing.

Tiffin struggled upright. “We will continue onward tomorrow, the two of us. We have the Bayfield chart and plenty of stores. Providence will keep us.”

“We must return to the fur post. To fetch Mr. Brush.”

“Silas Brush is a fine woodsman—he will manage. We must continue onward! We will explain our circumstance when we return to Detroit—that we were threatened by enraged Chippewas and barely escaped with our lives! It is nothing less than the truth.”

Elisha said nothing. He could not look at the man.

“You must help me, my boy. You
must
.”

Elisha rose and took up a mug. “I’ll fetch some water. Don’t go anywhere.”

He hurried into the darkness and squatted on the riverbank, waiting for his breathing to settle. He felt queasy with fear. Two days ago I was lying beside a fire, he thought, listening to Shakespeare. And now I am here. Shouts rose from the ceremony. Elisha returned to camp to find Professor Tiffin slumped beside the cookfire, asleep.

He drew a blanket over the man then watched his chest slowly rise and fall. The drumbeats’ pace was that of a panicked heartbeat. Elisha fetched the rifle, then realized they had no powder or shot. Desperate laughter bubbled inside him. He rummaged in the stores for a hatchet, crouched against a boulder with it hugged against his chest. I will sit awake until dawn, he thought. The notion filled him with grim determination. Beside him, Professor Tiffin snored raggedly.

An aurora had spread across the sky, ghostly greenish clouds shot with amber ribbons. The colors pulsed as if in time to the drumming. Elisha recalled a passage from Ezekiel, about a whirlwind come from the north, a vast cloud, and a fire unfolding itself with great brightness. And out of the fire’s midst the color of amber. Ezekiel, the angry prophet, with his vision of Magog, his valley of dry bones. Elisha wondered what the Chippewas might make of such a display. Augury, he supposed. A symbol, of good or ill.

And they shall know that I am the Lord, he thought. And I shall destroy the foreigners and the enemies of Judah.

Overhead the sky trembled and flared, as though stars had exploded and darkness would be no more.

Six

He woke with eyes closed, the shadow of an anxious dream darkening his mind. Where was he? Clap of hooves and wagon wheels, a church bell’s clang. A boy’s voice singing out,
Tyler’s excesses exposed! Read every shocking word!
A mouse’s rustle. He felt queasy, weightless. He did not want to open his eyes.

When he did, Reverend Stone faced a blurred version of his boardinghouse room: an airway filled with sun, a crumpled hat perched on the bedstead, a torn, mud-smeared jacket sprawled on the floorboards. A pitcher and chipped basin on the bedside table, beside a washrag stiff with blood. Reverend Stone reached for the pitcher and a hot splinter drove into his ribs. He wheezed sharply.

He stared at the mottled ceiling and explored the geography of his pain. His wrists and ankles were stiff, the joints scraped raw. His legs were scored with welts. The fingers of his right hand were kinked, the nails crusted with blood, and the entire arm was numb as wood. His throat was bruised. Reverend Stone touched his cheek to find the skin stretched and swollen, hot beneath his fingertips. It felt like a mummer’s mask pressed against his face.

He raised himself to an elbow and sponged his neck with the bloody rag, then fell back, exhausted. Howell’s money was gone. Reverend Stone thought he might be sick. A moment later he woke: the sun had shifted lower, the street noises become sparse and indistinct. The supper hour. Hunger pierced him; he rose and ate a crust of bread, chewing slowly. Visions of mud and fury crowded his mind, but he closed his eyes and drew a long breath and prayed a muddled appeal for forgiveness. Forgive me my weakness, O Lord, and my courtship of sin. Forgive me my scorn and suspicion of others. Forgive me my greed and my doubt in Your providence. Forgive me my pride. Accept my failings, Lord, and deliver me into Your grace. Reverend Stone repeated the petition until the words vanished. Then he lay listening to the sound of his own breathing.

He rose feeling superbly calm. He walked a few stiff turns around the room, fetched the Catlin book and a half-empty tin of toothache medication then reclined and fumbled five brown tablets into his mouth. He paged through the book, glancing at pictures of dour Natives dressed in beads and skins, their hair arranged like spurting fountains. His eye caught on a mention of the Great Spirit, their childish notion of God.

I believe that the North American Indians have Jewish blood in their veins, though I would not assert (as some would)
that they are Jews,
or that they are
the ten lost tribes of Israel
. However Indians, like Jews, believe that they are the favorite people of the Great Spirit—and they, like Jews, seemed destined to be dispersed over the world, and scourged by the Almighty, and despised of man.

Along with the Catholics and Millerites, Reverend Stone thought. At least they are not alone. His eyelids and nose began to tingle, his breathing to thicken. He read on.

The pious missionary finds himself here, I would venture, in an indescribable confusion of vice and ignorance, that must disgust and discourage him. And yet despite this I have ever thought, and still think, that the Indian’s mind is a beautiful blank, on which anything might be written, if the right mode were taken to do it.

An image formed in Reverend Stone’s mind of a schoolhouse slate covered with scrawl: She sells seashells on the seashore. Able was I ere I saw Elba. He grinned painfully.

Voices rose in the corridor: a man arguing with the proprietress. Then a rap at the door and Mrs. Barbeau’s muffled voice: “Open up this door. You’ve a visitor claims to know you.”

Reverend Stone rose gingerly and unlatched the door. Jonah Crawley stood in the hallway, holding a straw hat and wearing a corn-yellow waistcoat and maroon jacket, his hair oiled into a cowlick. His offered the minister a confused stare. “Good jay. What’s become of your phiz?”

“Mr. Crawley,” Reverend Stone croaked, “what a fine surprise. Come in, please. I fear I can offer little by way of hospitality.”

Crawley stepped into the room as if into a smallpox pesthouse. He glanced at the ceiling and warped floorboards and flattened tick, then his gaze returned to the minister’s face.

“I’m afraid there is just the one stool,” Reverend Stone said. “My Empire chair is gone for repair.” He attempted a smile and pain flared across his cheek. He sat heavily on the bed.

“Well. My goodness.” Crawley produced two gnarled red apples from a jacket pocket. “I’ve brought these but I don’t figure they’re much use to you, what with all that swelling.” He set the apples on the bedside table then took up the pitcher, filled an ironstone mug. He offered it to Reverend Stone with an encouraging nod.

The minister’s throat felt like it was lined with flannel. When he’d finished drinking he asked, “Do you by chance have a mirror?”

Jonah Crawley chuckled. “I don’t, lucky for you! You look like—my gracious—like fresh beefsteak on a butcher’s counter. No: ground beefsteak. I guess you fared worst in the exchange?”

Reverend Stone recalled a flailing blow, a crush of bone beneath his fist. A shameful thrill rose in him: He had fought. He had passed the coward’s trial.

“I suppose that is true.”

Crawley chuckled again, then scanned the room and motioned grandly. “Well! It’s finer than it looks from the street, at least. Though from the street it looks like a Neapolitan bordello. Pardon the expression.”

“Just strolling through this part of the city, were you?”

Jonah Crawley dragged the stool beside the rickety bed. Through the slender airway came a riot of snuffling squeals, a call of
chuk chuk chuk chuk:
a hog reeve walking his rounds. He said, “In actuality, I’d hoped to ask your guidance on a certain matter. And I have brought you something. A gift.”

“A gift?”

He reached inside his waistcoat and produced a folded sheet of cream-colored vellum. He opened it to a large square, offered it to the minister. “This is for you. A gift.”

Reverend Stone angled the sheet toward the light. A drawing of an animal covered the page, a stag or antelope with spidery hairs dangling from its back labeled
Two Hearted
and
Dead
and
Yellow Dog
. It was a map of Michigan’s northern peninsula. The hairs were rivers, the animal’s horns a curving spit of land. Notes were penned along the peninsula’s northern coastline:
Rapids, Portage Route, Indian Sugar Camp, Good Canoe Landing.
A thick black line wandered from Sault Ste. Marie westward along the coast, then down inland and back east, a notation reading
Silas Brush & Geo. Tiffin’s Intended Route (approx).
In the map’s corner a compass rose was sketched in the form of intertwined trumpet vines.

“What in a Wednesday is this?” Reverend Stone whispered.

“Your boy’s route, drawn by Mr. Charles Noble himself—as near as he could figure, anyway. It don’t look to be especially precise, I know. I pressed for more particulars but that’s all he claimed to know.”

Reverend Stone’s lips trembled. He brought the vellum close to his eyes. “How can we be certain it is truthful?”

“Oh, I’d wager it’s truthful enough. Men like Noble generally tell the truth when there’s no more to gain from lying.”

The northern peninsula’s eastern tip was dense with river and trail markings, regions of swampland and marsh, but the interior was blank save for a few scattered crosses:
Baptist Mission. Fur Post. Abandoned Fur Post.
Elisha’s route wound through the heartland, a stone flung through empty space. Reverend Stone lay the map on his chest. He said, “Mr. Jonah Crawley. I am indebted.”

“No, I wouldn’t term it such.” Crawley ducked his head as a pleased grin spread over his face. “I wanted to assist you, Reverend Stone. Purely that. Of course, I hoped you might want to assist me in return. But you’ve no obligation.”

The minister said nothing.

Crawley straightened on the stool. “You see, I would like to be married.”

“Mr. Crawley! My sincere congratulations!”

“I’m not a deeply prayerful man, but I want to be married proper. For my bride’s sake—I want her soul to be in the pink of health. Mine’s too far lost for concern.” Crawley grimaced as he pinched the brim of his straw hat. “That was meant as a joke. Of course I don’t mean that.”

Reverend Stone sensed that the man had not finished speaking. Jonah Crawley’s gaze was fixed on the sun-filled airway. “Adele, you see. She is not quite my daughter. She is my betrothed. We’ve meant to be married for some while, but never managed it.” Crawley wiped his face with both hands. “She is with child.”

Reverend Stone nodded as a prickle raced over his scalp. He could not find a single thing to say. Adele Crawley, with her pockmarked cheeks and weary, womanly eyes. Perhaps it was plain to everyone except himself that the two were a pair. His country greenness was showing yet again.

“How old is Adele?”

“Sixteen. No—fifteen.”

“And yourself?”

“Thirty-seven.” The man blinked rapidly and turned away.

“Well. Mr. Crawley.” Reverend Stone found himself worrying the map edge. He set it down to avoid fraying the vellum. “You have no doubt identified your sin: lying with a woman before matrimony. ‘Let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband.’ Yes?” He leaned forward to peer into the man’s face. “Under such circumstances I’m afraid I cannot join the two of you. I am truly sorry.”

Crawley nodded.

“What creed is the girl? And yourself?”

“Adele’s Methodist. Myself the same, I suppose—I’ve heard them preach as much as any other.” Crawley pursed his lips. “I did not intend to lie with her, Reverend Stone. It was merely a traveling arrangement at first, sharing a bed. Purely thrift.”

A wave of nausea rose in the minister’s stomach, and he swallowed hard to subdue the feeling. He needed a tablet. He said, “Tell me. How did you come to be with her?”

Jonah Crawley sighed, a long whistle. When he spoke his voice was tinged with wonder: Adele Grainger had saved his life. He had met her three years ago in Paducah, Kentucky, traveling at the time, an itinerant salesman of Indian herbs. The remedies he sold were ground nettles mixed with tobacco and powdered manure, with a sprinkle of whatever was handy. For cholera cures a pinch of wood ash. For ague a trace of dirt, damp with horse piss.

His partner was a violent half-breed Chickasaw named Thomas Coldwater, who drummed business in a ragged eagle-feather war bonnet and leggings, spent his earnings on claret and opium. Crawley had been raised in a temperance house but quickly adopted Coldwater’s habits. Entire days disappeared, Crawley waking in strange cities at midnight, the half-breed muttering beside him and the horses near starved. He felt anxious and miserable, overwhelmed by fear, as though he were living beneath a raven’s black shadow.

They worked their way from New York down through Pennsylvania and Maryland then on into the prairillons of Virginia. Rheumy old women came to them. Spotty young men. At first Crawley was startled and delighted that folks would buy their wares; then his delight faded. Girls bearing wheezy newborns. Shaky folks of every age. Dyspeptics and consumptives and yellow-eyed malarials. Gentlemen and whores and darkies. The country was everywhere sick, everywhere dying. Folks handed Crawley worn half-dollars and blessed his name, then solemnly accepted a bag of shit.

One morning in Big Lick Crawley rose at dawn and stepped from the wagon with his old flintlock pistol. He was naked save for his boots. He walked a circuit around the touring wagon then squatted in the mud and shoved the pistol barrel in his mouth. It tasted of clay and bitter metal. Above him the sky swarmed with ravens, their stench fouling the air, their wingbeats deafening. He realized that it wouldn’t matter a cent if he pulled the trigger.

So he did. The powder flashed and sizzled, the rusted hammer snapping uselessly. Crawley laid the gun down and curled into a ball. Thomas Coldwater found him there hours later, whipped him awake with a Negro lash. Crawley feigned drunkenness to avoid the half-breed’s mocking questions.

They traveled together for three more years, through the Carolinas and Georgia and Alabama then back up north, the raven’s shadow ever near. They had been three days in Paducah when he was awakened by a rap on the wagon frame. He poked his head through the gate flap: a sallow, barefoot man stood beside a green-eyed girl with freckled cheeks and knotty red hair. The girl was prison pale, her hands trembling with fever, her chemise hanging like a scarecrow’s cloak.

The man spoke. His girl was ill in the lungs, a pneumoniac disorder. The town surgeon had bled her near empty. A slave root doctor had given her sticks to chew. Neither had helped. He needed some strong herbs. He feared she would die.

She had been so lovely, standing wide-eyed in her pink chemise, fingernails gnawed to nubs. Crawley shook Thomas Coldwater awake, asked him to mix a real remedy, a Chickasaw remedy, at any cost or trouble. The half-breed blinked at him. Finally he laughed. “No such thing as real. Stupid white coot.”

Crawley told the girl to come back that night, then set to making his own remedy. He boiled sprigs of comfrey root and tansy and elecampane, added horehound and creosote and a dollop of honey. His spirits blackened as he watched the mixture bubble. His life was lies. He knew no trade, had no particular skill save for making pleasant conversation. His Indian herbs were shit and dirt and lies, his life was lies. He added five grains of Thomas Coldwater’s opium to the thick mixture. Then he added five more grains and a slug of claret.

She returned alone that night in a mizzling rain. Crawley had clipped his beard, brushed his coat and hat and steamed his shirtfront, and for good measure combed the tails of the mangy Cleveland bays. When the girl tapped at the wagon frame his appearance caused her a moment’s confusion; then with a flourish he produced a phial.

She flushed deeply. “Please accept my sincerest apologies,” she said. “I’ve no coin to buy your remedy. I can offer you a séance in barter.”

“She peered inside me,” Crawley said. “I can’t describe it otherwise. She summoned my dead grandam in conversation, but mainly she was speaking to me. About my loneliness and fear. About my lies. She told me I’d been running up and down the country to avoid something that was chasing me. She was right.”