The Expeditions (4 page)

He spent the afternoon lying on the beach near the fort’s pickets, watching Native fishermen navigate the straits in their flimsy bark canoes. They surged through the foaming water, a steersman guiding the craft while a second Native dipped for fat, wriggling whitefish. The boy was at first enthralled by the men’s dexterity but soon grew irritated. He envied them the simplicity of their task: no ideas or synthesis, just a canoe and a net and a river full of fish. He wished he had his sketchbook.

At six Elisha returned to meet the hotel supper bell, and as he passed the parlor he heard Mr. Brush’s voice. He glanced through the open door: Brush and Professor Tiffin were sitting beside each other on a settee, Brush stiff-backed while Tiffin hunched forward with his chin in his hands. They were staring across the room.

A woman was sitting beside the fireplace. She was dressed in half-breed garb, a blue strap dress and calico scarf. Her hair was the color of a crow’s wing, black overlaid with a glossy blue hue. Her cheekbones were sloped like a Chippewa’s but her forehead was high and broad, her nose dotted with reddish freckles. She was gazing intently at the two men.

“Her knowledge is not the point in question,” Mr. Brush said. “It is solely her gender. A woman of her stature cannot bear a fully loaded pack.” Brush bowed toward the woman. “With all respect, madam.”

“It is a commonly accepted fact, proven by no less an eminence than Dr. Samuel Mitchill, that Native women have heartier constitutions than white women. Edwin Colcroft describes Chippewa women completing portages while bearing ninety-pound bales of furs. Catlin describes similar feats performed by pregnant women.”

“She is but half Native.”

“I can bear as much as any man,” the woman said suddenly. Her English was tinged with a French accent. “More than some, even.”

“And regardless, we have no other possibilities to consider.” Professor Tiffin sighed. “Her husband is
absent,
you see. Every healthy voyageur is departed for the summer. It’s only soldiers and drunk men in this funny town, and we
must
depart!”

“Your language,” Mr. Brush said. “We are in the presence of a lady.”

The woman turned to the window. Outside lay a dusty strip of road and beyond it the beach, the straits, then the Canadian shore with its bright, tiny cabins. She studied the scene with her lips pursed. It was as though she wanted badly to speak but did not know the words. Elisha guessed that she might be twenty-two years old.

He stepped into the parlor. Neither Mr. Brush nor Professor Tiffin noticed his presence; then the boy cleared his throat.

“Ah, young Elisha,” Tiffin said. “Let me introduce Madame Susette Morel. She is the wife of Monsieur Ignace Morel, the voyageur I engaged to guide us this summer. He was to sail with me from Detroit, however he never came aboard. Apparently he is nowhere to be found.”

Elisha smiled at the woman. Her eyes were the color of peat. A faint white scar, like a chalk streak, ran along her jaw. Susette Morel nodded stiffly to Elisha then turned back to the men.

He sat on a stool and attempted to study an engraving above the fireplace. It was a scene of Canton harbor crowded with junks and schooners and Chinese fishing boats. Elisha’s gaze moved back to the woman’s scar. She was older, he decided, twenty-five or even thirty. A tobacco pouch was knotted to her sash. Beside it hung a beaded knife sheath.

“I propose we travel without a guide,” Brush said. “We will pack twenty pounds extra weight each, rely on the Bayfield chart for reference. It is incomplete but likely adequate. With all respect to Madame Morel, it would not be proper to travel in mixed company. This is not a pleasure tour.”

“You will not find the image stones without a guide.” The woman edged forward. “They are located far inland, through a very big swamp. They are impossible to find unless you know them. You need a guide.”

“Well! In that case we will enquire at a Native village about their location. Natives living nearby will no doubt know the whereabouts of these precious stones. We will engage a trustworthy savage to lead us the final distance.”

“A trustworthy savage!” Professor Tiffin gasped in feigned astonishment. “Do you suppose such a mythical creature exists?”

The supper bell rang. Immediately footsteps moved across the ceiling and down the stairway, accompanied by muted conversation, a burst of laughter. A heavyset gentleman glanced into the parlor and said, “Hurry or you’ll lose your chance!” The kitchen door shut with a bang.

“Perhaps we should continue over supper,” Elisha said quickly. “We’ll compromise better with food in our stomachs. And then we could hear more from Madame Morel.”

“In fact, we are settled.” Mr. Brush rose and bowed to the woman. “Madam, I thank you for your patience.”

“We are not settled!” Professor Tiffin jerked upright, his nose nearly grazing Brush’s chin. Their difference in height seemed to startle Tiffin. He said, “Hear me now, friend: We will not find the image stones without a skilled guide. We will certainly not find them with a crude map and our good intentions. Now, this expedition’s commission authorizes me to engage a guide, and Madame Susette Morel is the guide I have chosen to engage.”

“This expedition’s commission was drafted by a shallow-brained clerk in the land office in Detroit. It can be amended to account for unforeseen circumstances.”

“If you do not agree with my decision, you are not obliged to join me on the expedition!”

“I am the sole recipient of all appropriations. Without my presence you will not be paid.” Mr. Brush smiled impassively. “If you had arranged your affairs more carefully, we would be negotiating with this woman’s husband. We would not be involved in this gander pull.”

The men stared at each other with expressions of polite distaste. Susette Morel strained toward the pair, fists clenched in her lap.

“I am prepared to leave in two days’ time. Myself, this fine woman as our guide, and young Elisha Stone as an assistant.” Tiffin turned to the boy. “Yes?”

Heat surged to Elisha’s face. He nodded once.

Mr. Brush shook his head as the smile faded from his lips. For a moment he looked old and tired, his eyelids heavy and slack. To Tiffin he said, “You would have been better served staying in Detroit, waiting for your imaginary guide to appear. You seem ill-suited for practical work.”

Outside a musket cracked and echoed, followed by a distant cheer. Supper at the fort. Susette Morel looked from Mr. Brush to Professor Tiffin to Elisha. She seemed as though she might curse the men or burst into tears.

She said, “Merci beaucoup, thank you very much,” then rushed from the parlor.

He spent the next morning pacing along the straits west of town, then walked a roundabout path back to his hotel room and stripped off his clothes and lay on the bed, his thoughts adrift among images of Susette Morel. Her hair was liquid black, her cheekbones smooth planes. Her skin was suntanned but freckled, a mixture of Native and French, but when she spoke she was neither Native nor French, nor American.

Elisha could not decide if she was beautiful. It was her foreignness that confused him, her accent and strange clothes. As though the idea of beauty was being described to him anew. The boy trailed a hand down his chest, tried to will himself toward sleep. After a while he rose and scrubbed his face with cold water, then dressed and took up his hat.

He stepped into the mercantile and Hudson’s Bay Company post and Indian curiosity shop, scanning the few female faces, then hiked eastward toward the fort. The picket gate was open and a group of soldiers were tossing quoits beside the blockhouse. Inside, Native men sat in a ring outside the Indian Agency, conversing in low tones. Elisha walked a circuit of the grounds, stepped inside the sutler’s and hospital. Susette Morel was nowhere to be seen.

On a whim he peered into the Catholic church. A service was in progress. A handsome priest with a shock of black hair stood before an assembly of white women and soldiers and a single, somber Chippewa. “‘I am the living bread which came down from heaven,’” the priest said, “‘and if any man eat this bread he shall live forever.’” His English was marked by a German accent. “‘Except ye eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.’” The priest repeated the scripture in halting Chippewa and the Native nodded silently. Elisha wondered what the man might make of such a lesson.

He spied the woman at the edge of the Native encampment. She was sitting outside a small log shanty, mending a fishing seine that was draped around her like lace skirts. The shanty’s window was hung with oiled parchment, its door propped open to reveal a table and pair of chairs, a stained pallet on the floor. A gray chemise hung like a ghost on the wall. Beside it was a carved wooden crucifix.

The sight startled Elisha. The cabin was no better than a Native lodge, with its bark walls and dirt floor and smoke hole hacked in the roof. The Chippewa blood dominating the white, he figured. He ventured a few paces forward then took out his notebook and pencil. He sketched the woman’s face in profile, her forehead and taut lips and long, Roman nose. She was beautiful—of course she was beautiful. A beautiful woman living in a dark, comfortless shanty at the country’s edge. He glanced up to find Susette Morel regarding him impatiently.

Elisha clapped shut the notebook. “I was sent to find you! I would like to apologize for the confusion at the hotel yesterday evening. And for not offering you a proper supper, at least.”

The woman looked back to her mending. “I do not require any apology. I know how to cook a proper supper.”

“Still. I pray you’ll accept my regrets. It was a poor showing on our part, truly it was.”

Susette Morel said nothing. Elisha watched her work the frayed cords, running a shuttle between the split sections then drawing them tight with twine. Her fingers were as cracked and weathered as dried tobacco leaves. He attempted a smile then scratched his jaw. He could not formulate a clever comment.

“I also came to ask if you could depart as early as tomorrow morning—to act as the expedition’s guide, of course.”

Her fingers stopped moving. “He changed his decision?”

Elisha understood that she was referring to Silas Brush. “You don’t need to worry about Mr. Brush—I’m planning to discuss with him tonight. Or else Professor Tiffin and you and I will go on our own, just the three of us. I bear some influence on these men, you see. I am the assistant scientist and surveyor.”

Susette laid the seine at her feet and gazed warily at Elisha. “He said I was not strong enough to bear a pack in the forest. He was interested in engaging my husband only.”

“As far as I can see your husband’s not here. And we absolutely need a guide. So!”

Elisha cringed at the false jauntiness in his tone. He watched Susette Morel absently smooth her skirts, the wool as patched and mended as the fishing seine. A flicker of excitement seemed to pass through the woman. She said, “What about payment?”

“You’ll have to negotiate with Mr. Brush—I’m not in charge of matters financial. My job is to identify animal and mineral and plant specimens, form ideas and hypotheses.” Elisha was suddenly aware of his shabby bowry and worn trousers and shirt; then he wondered if such things mattered to the woman. “Where is your husband, anyway?”

“Montréal, or Rainy Lake. Or Detroit.”

“And why didn’t he join up with Professor Tiffin, like he promised?”

The question was impertinent but the woman merely shook her head. “My husband makes his own choices. I cannot explain the choices he makes.”

She set down the seine and rose, still fussing with her skirts as though to calm her nerves. Elisha could not decipher her expression: at once excited and wary, courteous and remote. She was nearly as tall as the boy. She stepped toward Elisha and despite himself he leaned toward her.

“What shall I tell Mr. Brush? If the terms are not acceptable I could try to negotiate—I could speak with Mr. Brush on your behalf.”

Susette Morel smiled, exposing small white teeth like kernels of corn. “Tell him I can depart tomorrow.”

Elisha nodded.

“I will need payment when we reach the image stones. Full payment.”

“That should be acceptable—it
will
be acceptable! I’ll speak with Mr. Brush tonight.”

“You will need pork and grease and rice and flour. Kegs of powder and shot. Plenty of salt and sugar and coffee. You have all this?”

“Mr. Brush has arranged it all, don’t you worry.” Elisha grinned. “Professor Tiffin aims to study Chippewa artifacts—he believes that Natives are descended from ancient Christians. That’s why he wants to study the image stones, to link them to the ancient Christians. He believes that Natives and white men and Negroes belong to the same equal race. He’s written pamphlets on the subject.”

Susette Morel was staring at Elisha as though he was a specimen in a cabinet of curiosities. A faint smile grew on her lips.

“I speak a little French, from school—bonjour, bonsoir. Je vous prie, madame.”

The woman laughed. “Je vous
en
prie.”

“Je vous en prie! Of course. Parlez-vous français? Qu’est-ce qui se passe?”

She moved another pace toward the boy, and Elisha’s grin faltered. “You are nervous,” Susette said softly. “Why are you so nervous?”

He turned and stumbled toward the fort a few paces, then stopped. “Be ready to depart tomorrow at dawn! This’ll prove to be one of the great scientific expeditions of the age—your grandchildren will be discussing it!”

The boy cursed himself as he hurried away. Dang it all, anyway. A thing isn’t worth a whit if it don’t make you nervous.