The Expeditions (23 page)

“Perhaps you’re not digging deep enough,” Elisha said. “Or perhaps the tablets aren’t here at all—perhaps they were moved by the Midewiwin.”

Tiffin offered the boy an exhausted stare. To Elisha his manner seemed strangely stiff, a second-rate actor at rehearsal. “They
must
be here. There is an energy, a
potency
in the very air—do you not sense it? It is similar to the energy present at the Grave Creek mound in Virginia. The sensation is undeniable.”

“That is only your hunger.” Mr. Brush leaned over the cookpot and inhaled deeply. “Let us eat.”

Clouds had knitted into a dirty gray quilt and now lightning flickered to the west. The men shifted beneath the fly tents as thunder rolled overhead. A few fat raindrops hissed in the cookfire. Elisha imagined Susette huddled beneath a sugar maple, slowly recognizing the depth of her isolation as darkness closed around her. But no, no: she understood the forest’s solitude. She had understood it all along. He wondered if she might be headed back toward camp then immediately realized she was not.

Professor Tiffin sat staring into the cookfire, his plump face pinched like a knot of dough. With a sigh he opened his fieldbook and began to write. Notes from his excavations, Elisha figured, or a letter to his wife describing the day’s disappointment. Confessing his fear that the expedition would yet fail, promising her it would not. Revealing the solemn, secret hopes that until now he’d hoarded like a miser. And so Mr. Brush was right: Tiffin was nothing more than a dreamer, pursuing a dream that had never existed.

“Professor Tiffin?”

He started at his whispered name.

“Best of luck with your excavations tomorrow.”

The man smiled sadly, his eyes glistening in the firelight. “Young fellow,” he said. “Luck is for fools.”

The forest southeast of camp was pure white pine spread across a low, flat valley. Mr. Brush spent the morning measuring trunk diameters and crown heights as his excitement grew. “First-quality pinewood,” he marveled. “Enough to construct one thousand homes—this single stand, here—frame to shingle!” Elisha recorded Brush’s measurements in a neat hand. As they hiked he scanned the forest from floor to canopy, waiting for a flash of motion and the queer, subtle conviction that he’d observed an unknown species.

But his thoughts meandered to a vision of Susette sitting cross-legged before a cookfire, a tattered
Godey’s Lady’s Book
on her lap and a flush risen to her freckled cheeks. Elisha willed his attention back to the present. A true scientist, he thought, would glance at this forest and recognize an unknown species like a stranger in a roomful of friends. But to Elisha the scene appeared infinitely complex, as anonymous and confusing as a city of thousands.

He recalled with a note of embarrassment his hope that the expedition would be like a long, lazy afternoon at the creek behind his father’s house in Newell. There he had understood the seasons’ habits, the arrival of bloodroot in April and warblers in May, the water’s gradual thickening as it was gripped by November’s cold. But here nature’s customs remained stubbornly hidden. Elisha moved slowly among the towering pines. Despite his disappointment he did not feel wholly discouraged; for there was beauty enough to soothe any regret. Nature’s great consolation, he thought, was its beauty.

They came into the swale after lunch and followed it northward, the white pine dwindling to a thicket of cedar. Sometime later they heard a rush of water, then they stepped out along a slow, rocky river. Eighty yards upriver was the waterfall. It tumbled down the ridge face in a rippling arc, settled into a foam-covered pool. Elisha figured the drop to be fifteen yards.

But as they drew nearer he realized he’d underestimated the falls’ vigor. The cataract churned into a boiling white chute then smashed down against a spill of black rocks. Cold mist shimmered in the air. Black spruce and tamarack and white cedar overhung the pool, their trunks bearded in velvet moss.

“An ideal site for a lumber mill!” Brush shouted, above the water’s roar. “A large mill operated by an ambitious young fellow might cut today’s pine in two winters! Tell me, boy: what would you estimate the hydraulic power of this waterfall to be?”

“I don’t know.”

“Think! Consider the height of the drop then estimate the quantity of water falling at a given instant. It is a simple calculation. Think now!”

Elisha squatted at the pool’s edge, struggling to recall the proper formula. At last he said, “Ten horsepower. Perhaps twelve.”

“Twelve horsepower? With a drop of fifteen yards and rate of flow of, say, seven hundred cubic feet per minute, I would estimate a gross power of twenty-five horsepower. Perhaps thirty. A surplus of power for operating multiple saws.”

“Yes. I underestimated the rate of flow.” Elisha scattered a handful of pebbles into the pool then wiped his hands on his trousers. “We should search the upper river. Susette might have fished the upper river after she’d finished here.”

Mr. Brush stared at the boy for several long moments; then he started toward the ridge face.

The upper river ran quick and deep until it surged against the falls’ rim in a sort of weir. Boulders loomed like massive fish beneath the water’s surface. Upstream the river vanished toward the horizon, a wedge of glimmering water cutting through the forest. Two fat porcupines waddled through the brush at the river’s edge.

“Your manner troubles me,” Mr. Brush said quietly. “When I pose a question your inevitable response is, I don’t know. You do not attempt logical analysis of the problem. You do not attempt even a reasoned estimate of the solution. Your response is only, I don’t know. Like an idiot child. I don’t know.”

“I’m sorry. Sir.”

“Luckily, logic and analysis are skills that can be learned. That
must
be learned, if you are to be engaged in a practical art.”

Again Elisha felt an urge toward apology. The feeling exhausted him.

“However.” Mr. Brush took up a pebble and scratched at it with a thumbnail. “My proposal is in earnest.”

“Which proposal?”

Brush spread his arms wide. “A lumber mill, of course! A large, modern mill sawing every stick of white pine in the region, with an ambitious young fellow at its command! You could be that young fellow.”

Elisha said nothing.

“We have been blessed with a rare opportunity, my boy. You must understand that. This is supremely rich territory. However it is only as rich as we report.”

“I don’t follow your logic.”

Brush laid an arm around the boy’s shoulders and gestured toward the surrounding forest. “We are humble scribes, Elisha. We are recording details of this magnificent creation. And while iron ore and pine timber and hydraulic power might be present in this territory, they shall not truly exist until we have
recorded
their presence. Do you understand? And when this territory has been surveyed and made available to the public—why, a gentleman with capital, such as myself, might purchase a goodly number of prime lots. And an intelligent young fellow—such as yourself—might command the subsequent enterprises.”

For a moment the man’s words refused to coalesce; then a shock raced through Elisha. “You are proposing to misreport the quality of the land. Declare the finest lots worthless to speculators, then purchase them yourself.”

Mr. Brush winced as though he’d been stung. “Not at all! I am simply explaining that we possess knowledge of this territory’s vast riches—and that we might draw on this knowledge for the nation’s benefit! You see Elisha, this country’s unique genius is that the good of the individual is always allied with the good of the nation.”

Elisha toed a bough of driftwood. An image of the man’s house on Lafayette Street in Detroit rose in his mind: the broad double doors, the Negro hired girl, the oak bookshelf filled with leather-bound volumes. The marble mantel and rosewood clock and gold Roman coins displayed on red silk. So he is nothing more than a thief, the boy thought.

“I am not interested in your proposal.”

“Well!” Mr. Brush smiled thinly. “That was a rather hasty verdict.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t want any part of such a scheme.”

The man cleared his throat, a pinched smile frozen on his lips. He seemed startled by the boy’s response. “You mean, rather, that you are not interested in learning a meaningful trade. You are not interested in becoming a practical young man. In certain ways, my boy, you remind me of your paramour Mr. Tiffin. Did you know that he is married to a nigger?”

Elisha said nothing. He could not look at Mr. Brush.

“And here we are, this very moment, searching for sign of the red nigger he engaged as a guide! Who has obeyed her defective character and vanished for a second time! My only surprise is that she didn’t attempt to collect the balance of her payment—I have yet to know a savage who passed an opportunity to wrangle money. It is inherent in their nature.”

Mr. Brush edged forward until his chest touched Elisha’s shoulder. Despite himself the boy leaned away. Brush said, “You must be troubled by Madame Morel’s disappearance. Stricken, even.”

His voice held a mocking tone. Elisha said, “Of course I am troubled.”

“Of course. And yet I sense—” Brush strode a few paces downriver then immediately turned back. “Tell me, my boy: How does a half-breed become lost in the forest in which she was reared? How does she become lost
twice
within a matter of weeks? It is incomprehensible—unless, of course, she intended to become lost.”

“I don’t follow your logic.”

“Of course you don’t. And neither do you know if she has gone back to the Sault with her pay. Or if she is watching us even now. Or if she has arranged to meet you in Detroit in one month’s time, far from the inconvenience of her husband’s gaze.”

Elisha began to respond but Brush raised a hand. “Consider my proposal, my boy. That is all I ask of you.”

Mr. Brush started downriver. As he approached the falls’ edge the man paused; then he waded into the river, the current rippling against his back. He braced himself against a boulder and bent over a driftwood limb wedged against the rim of the falls. From the web of branches Brush tugged free a sodden scrap of fabric.

It was a fragment of a woolen dress. Elisha immediately recognized the dress as Susette’s. The boy cried out, a strangled gasp that he prayed sounded sincere.

Mr. Brush stared at the fabric, then turned to Elisha. He slung the scrap over the falls’ edge. “Well,” he said dryly. “May the Lord have mercy on her poor soul.”

Four

“How is it possible that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost share the same indivisible essence? Have you never wondered? Of course the Trinity’s oneness is a profound mystery—but what wisdom are we, mere humans, to reap from such a paradox? For surely it would be easier to admit, say, the presence of three distinct deities. Yes?”

Ignace Morel grunted in response. Reverend Stone glanced over his shoulder: the man sat high in the canoe’s stern, glaring at the horizon, his cap pulled low against the sun. An unlit pipe was tucked behind an ear. The minister’s vision wobbled, then steadied. He was exhausted to the point of nausea.

“Of course, the relegation of doctrine to mystery is very convenient—theologians have been doing it for centuries. Yet it seems an admission of failure, does it not? A failure to honor God’s effort in sharing his Word.”

He realized that he was jabbering but could not seem to stop himself. He said, “I suspect the root of the issue lies with language. You see, we interpret the word
person
to mean an individual being; however the original translation springs from the Greek
prosopon
—the mask that theater actors wore during performances. So you see—”

“You must paddle. If you talk you must paddle.”

Reverend Stone sighed as he turned back to the fore. Before him, the sun was a painful dazzle on the lake’s surface. He bent away from the sight.

“So you see, a more useful translation might be
persona,
which suggests a role we play in a certain circumstance. Yes? One actor and three roles, the essence shared but the guise adapted to circumstance. A marvelously rich concept. A bit near to Sabellian heresy, I’m afraid, but rich nonetheless. Please, if you would be so kind.”

The voyageur hissed, then slapped a wash of spray over the bow with his paddle. Reverend Stone groaned at the water’s coldness. He dipped a mug over the canoe’s side and swallowed a draft of lake water, poured a second mugful over his sun-blistered neck.

“Now, you are thinking, An interesting point, but hardly revelatory. Certainly not equal to the profundity of the Trinity. Perhaps merely…practical.” Reverend Stone twisted back toward the stern. “I suppose I know of no better instruction for contemplating the trinity than Augustine’s dictum: Vides Trinitatem si vides caritatem. You see the trinity when you see love. Yes? This is paradoxical, yet it feels true. It feels somehow…complete.”

“Enough! Paddle.”

Reverend Stone smiled unsteadily. “Of course, you Catholics wouldn’t agree with many of these points, but our friends the Unitarians seem to get the gist.” He dropped the paddle and pressed a hand to his face. “I am sorry. We must stop.”

Without a word Morel angled the canoe toward shore. Reverend Stone drew a tin from his pocket, then reclined in the canoe bottom and tipped his hat over his face. He slipped a tablet into his mouth.

They had been paddling three days through airless heat, along thin stony beaches and cedar swamp and scraggly jack pines, the lakeshore’s monotony suggesting that they hadn’t gained a league. That first evening they’d camped on a spit of rocky sand, Morel staking a tent and gathering deadwood for the cookfire while Reverend Stone fetched a kettle of water. He’d set the kettle on then slumped down on a bedroll. He woke the next morning unable to move, his arms petrified by fatigue, the slightest gesture causing pain to knife through his shoulders. Despite himself he’d cried out. Morel hooted, clapped the minister’s back. “Allons, mon vieux!” Reverend Stone swallowed a pair of tablets then hunched before the cookfire until his muscles softened to butter. He’d hauled himself into the canoe. His paddle raised and dipped like a tailor’s needle into an endless blue sheet.

That second morning the pain had deepened to stiff, frozen cramps. He swallowed three tablets then lay motionless, his breathing shallow. Paddling, he attempted to focus on scenery: sunlight haloing a stand of birches, plover and goldeneye squabbling on the beach. A white-tailed deer standing frozen at the lake’s edge. When they put ashore Reverend Stone collapsed in the sand like he’d been shot. He coughed; then his stomach turned, bringing mucus and a thin rope of blood. The voyageur watched him silently. Reverend Stone shoved sand over the mess and closed his eyes.

Now it was midafternoon on the third day and they were encamped at the tip of a swampy beach. Morel had lit greenwood smudges to drive away mosquitoes, then prepared a stew of salt pork and lyed corn seasoned strongly with pepper. The minister accepted a mug and set it aside to cool. His hands were sunburned, his skin as dry as parchment.

“What is wrong with you?”

Reverend Stone shook his head. “A touch of croup. I’m not accustomed to this variety of labor, you see. Mine is of the spiritual variety, rather than the physical.”

Ignace Morel uncorked the whiskey keg and poured a careful measure. “That is not croup. This is croup.” The voyageur coughed, a hoarse bark from the back of his throat. “Now, this is yours.” He coughed again, a wet spasm that rose from the bottom of his lungs.

“It must be a miasma disturbing my lungs. I didn’t expect this region to be quite so damp. Or so warm.”

“You bring blood. That is not croup.” Morel stirred the cookpot, then puffed on the spoon and licked it clean. “We have no croup here in the north. God does not send us croup or consumption or flux. He does not send any of these. Only sometimes the shakes.”

“That must be due to the pure forest air. That, or your pure hearts.”

The voyageur smiled as he swallowed a mouthful of stew. “Yes, our good, pure hearts. We are good people, good Catholic hearts.”

“I had never suspected otherwise.”

Morel’s smile lingered on Reverend Stone. He leaned toward the minister and whispered conspiratorially. “I know what you are think. You think that we kneel toward Rome, that we worship the pope like God. That the pope will invade New York with his army, capture all the Protestants. That is what you are think.”

“That is absurd! You have been reading—” Reverend Stone coughed into his fist. “You have been reading some outrageous pamphlets.”

“Or maybe I am reading the truth. Yes?”

“Of course not. All reasonable men know that those pamphlets are nothing but lies. Lies and gross exaggeration.”

“And then these reasonable men burn churches. They burn convents. Yes? This is what they do in Massachusetts.”

Reverend Stone moved to speak but was gripped by a cough. He bent double as tears sprung to his eyes. He glanced apologetically at Morel. Slowly, the voyageur took up a flask and removed the cork, offered it to the minister.

“I know what you are think, but I do not care. You pay me, and I do not care.”

“You have been reading some outrageous pamphlets.” Reverend Stone blinked away tears. “I have the greatest respect for your faith. Believe me.”

Morel watched the man drink, a smile frozen on his lips. “I know what you are think. But now you need me.”

He lay awake past midnight, the taste of blood on his tongue. Despite the night’s heat he was touched by chills, his hands trembling like a drunkard’s. Reverend Stone brushed the mosquito netting from his face, took up the flask but found it empty. He tipped the last drops of water into his mouth.

The voyageur lay sleeping before the dwindling cookfire, a line of saliva glistening on his cheek. Reverend Stone studied the man in profile. Despite the tangled hair and scarred chin he was handsome, his jaw angular and strong, his brow blunt but expressive. A half-wild Adonis weathered by drink.

That evening after supper Morel had scoured the cookpot and mugs, sipping whiskey all the while, then rooted in his gunnysack and withdrew a canvas case. He’d carefully removed a fiddle, frowning over the instrument as he fingered the tuning pegs, rosined the stubby bow. Reverend Stone had glanced up from the Catlin book. The fiddle was small and blackened, with a scored belly and short neck, a pair of ragged soundholes. Morel positioned the instrument low against his breast. His left hand curled awkwardly around the fingerboard.

He’d raised the bow with a flourish, then launched into a jerky, rollicking hornpipe, stamping loudly on the beat, the bow rocking and bouncing over the strings. The fiddle’s tone was coarse but powerful, tuned sharp to pierce a tavern’s din. Morel’s eyes fell to slits. Reverend Stone found himself tapping the Catlin book’s cover. At last Morel quit stamping and pinched the tune into a quick trill, then stretched the last, low note out to silence. Reverend Stone cried, “Wonderful!” The voyageur nodded gruffly. He said, “Now, ‘La Belle Susette.’ For my wife.”

He began a song that was slow and sugary, played with long bow strokes and intricate fingering, a complexity more suited to a chamber violinist than a tavern fiddler. Ignace Morel frowned in concentration. Reverend Stone stared through the man, the song’s melody bringing an image of a rainy night in Newell, a lit-up temperance hall. Smell of whale oil and damp wool, groan of floorboards beneath a fiddle’s whine. A social dance sponsored by the Young Men’s Society, during the first month of his courtship of Ellen. Two dozen couples waltzed across the muddy floor, their faces agleam with sweat. A Negro fiddler stood on a stool beside the hearth, playing “Shady Grove.”

Courtship: the word had seemed part of another language entirely. Reverend Stone had paced in the room’s corner, in his mournful black suit, sipping spring water and grinning stiffly at the young men and women. Ellen was nowhere to be seen. One by one the couples approached, offering a moment’s conversation about the weather or the previous Sunday’s sermon before returning to the crowded dance floor. Reverend Stone looked up to find the fiddler regarding him with a piteous smile. He realized how ridiculous he appeared: a minister at a dance, awaiting a woman half his age—for what purpose? She no doubt viewed him as a kindly chaperone rather than an ardent suitor. As a father or friend, rather than a husband or lover. Reverend Stone nodded to the fiddler then drained his glass.

Outside it was cool and the evening’s rain had softened to mist. Crickets filled the air with a mocking singsong. Reverend Stone thought he had never felt as miserable. He turned up his collar and stepped down to the road; then he heard the distant snap of a coachman’s whip. A Concord wagon appeared at the far edge of the green. It rattled past the meetinghouse then turned toward the temperance hall, and before it rolled to a stop the door opened. Ellen stepped from the coach, wearing a maroon overcoat trimmed with fur, matching maroon slippers.

She looked like she’d just run a footrace. Her cheeks were flushed, mottled by a rime of powder, and as she fumbled with her bonnet the color rose to her forehead. A startled smile flickered on her lips.

Reverend Stone spoke without thinking. “A foul evening. I was just fixing to leave.”

What a fool he was. He began to correct himself but Ellen said, “I’ve just arrived from Worcester. I’m dreadful unsettled from the ride—we were nearly overturned outside Springfield. The coachman drove clear off the turnpike to avoid a broken-down chaise. Though I admit I’d begged him to make top speed.”

Reverend Stone allowed himself a note of hope. He said, “Your shoes.”

She glanced down: the toes of her velvet slippers were smeared with mud. Ellen groaned, then broke into a nervous titter. “I suppose it will be worth the loss if you’ll assist me.”

She presented herself like a waltzing partner. For a moment Reverend Stone stood motionless, puzzled; then he grasped Ellen about the waist and hoisted her onto the temperance hall porch. She giggled again. “My gracious! It was dry as a bone in Worcester.”

Now Reverend Stone marveled at the memory. The feel of her ribs, intricate and fragile beneath his grip. The hint of lilac water on her neck. Heat had rushed to his face, his breathing sharpening to a gasp that he’d masked with a dry cough. He’d felt shocked by the intensity of his desire.

It was a miracle, Reverend Stone thought now, yet at the same moment realized that their love was not unique. His emotions were identical to those of a million other men, on a million other nights. An ordinary miracle, then, as natural as sunrise. The notion was comforting, an affirmation of God’s grace.

But the thought gnawed at him as he fluttered toward sleep. It was impossible that their love was ordinary. There had been one autumn night, seven months after the wedding, when they’d lain huddled in bed beneath a layer of quilts. Ellen was pregnant with Elisha. The white heat of courtship had cooled. She’d been singing songs from her childhood in Boston, wicked ditties the minister had never heard.

The pudding is hot, the milk is sweet

The children cheer a welcome treat

Then off to bed, off to sleep

Soon father’s bed will bump and creak.

Ellen snorted with laughter, clapped a hand over Reverend Stone’s mouth. He was suffused with a strange greediness, as though a lifetime with Ellen could never be enough. Then she had described her vision of love.

“It’s like an invisible light,” she said, “a light within light. Like the shimmer above a candle flame, invisible but radiating warmth.” Ellen paused, weighing her words. “And the light is present everywhere, but becomes stronger when it’s reflected between two people. It becomes like sunlight through window glass, a certain intensity of warmth. And that is love, that concentration of light.” She touched her forehead to Reverend Stone’s chest. “Did you ever consider the thought?”

“I have indeed,” he said, unable to conceal his astonishment. “And I would describe it identically: light within light, and warmth. Yes.”

She had murmured contentedly but said nothing. Soon she was asleep. Reverend Stone lay awake for some time, filled with desperate gratitude. Tears welled in unpredictable surges. The feeling was unbearable, yet he did not want to sacrifice it to sleep. Only toward dawn did he close his eyes.

That, then: a shared vision of love. Surely it was rare. Surely such miracles were far from ordinary.

Now Reverend Stone jerked awake: a rustle from the forest, followed by a sharp hiss. Lynx, or perhaps raccoon. He edged closer to the cookfire. Overhead the sky was gray-black, a moonless, starless shroud. Reverend Stone whispered a prayer, that his wife’s soul might be at rest. He recalled Adele Crawley’s claims at the séance in Detroit: that Ellen was consumed with love, that she yearned for him, that she awaited his arrival in heaven. He prayed that the girl was correct.