Authors: Karl Iagnemma
Back at the pier, he boarded the
Lake Zephyr
and found standing room against the steerage deck railing. The steamer was crowded with peddlers and soldiers and wary-looking immigrants, families hauling saddlebags and gunnysacks and rope-bound trunks, sailors lying drunk against the engine house. A child with tangled black ringlets stamped like a sentry around a rickety bureau. A Methodist preacher bawled above the din. Reverend Stone thought, I am now one of these itinerant sorts. The idea held sharp, illicit appeal. Just then Jonah Crawley and his daughter Adele passed, the man hauling a trunk’s fore while the girl struggled with the rear, a stick of peppermint clamped between her teeth. Reverend Stone called the man’s name and raised a hand.
“Reverend Stone!” Crawley dropped the trunk with a startled grin. “Are you quitting Buffalo? You’ve just arrived!”
The minister smiled at Adele. She took the candy from her mouth and curtsied expressionlessly. He said, “I’m headed on to Detroit. I suppose I would have passed Buffalo altogether, if I could have—though then I would have missed my viewing of the falls.”
Jonah Crawley’s grin blossomed into a smile. He was a difficult man to gauge, Reverend Stone thought. He might be a schemer or simply a harmless fool. Crawley said, “I trust you found your accommodation comfortable enough.”
Reverend Stone offered a placid nod. “Do you frequent that establishment yourself?”
“You said you were searching for cheap accommodation, Reverend. You must admit, the room was dog cheap. If you like, I can make similar arrangements for you in Detroit. I can offer several hotels of my highest approval.”
“I think I shall rely on providence in Detroit.”
Crawley’s expression betrayed a note of hurt. “You should come to one of my daughter’s performances while you’re in the city. We’ll be set up somewhere in the Irish quarter. I’ll let you in half fare.”
“What sort of performance?”
“My daughter is a spiritualist medium.” He laid a hand on the girl’s bony shoulder. “She has a talent to converse with those who’ve passed.”
Reverend Stone leaned toward the girl. Her eyes possessed a weary, womanly quality, and her cheeks and brow were marked by a scatter of pockmarks, tiny seeds flung by the wind. He said, “Tell me, young lady. What is the mood of those who’ve passed? Are they happy to be disturbed from rest?”
Adele shrugged. “It depends on the folks. Most seem to enjoy the occasion—my sense is that purgatory ain’t the most sociable place. Though some are plain rude.”
“What about those who are not in purgatory? Can you contact them?”
“Indeed. I can contact anyone who’s passed.”
Reverend Stone nodded. A rash of heat crawled over his skin.
Jonah Crawley said, “You’re not angry that Adele thinks heaven isn’t sociable, are you, Reverend? That’s not what she means to suggest.”
“With all respect, I have trouble allowing that the contact is genuine.”
“Reverend Stone! You don’t believe the deceased want to be heard?”
The minster’s gaze moved past the pair. A boil of anger had risen in his chest. He said, “The dead have passed to a place that is unreachable to the living, Mr. Crawley. They desire nothing this world might offer. Nothing at all.”
Crawley scowled pleasantly. “I allow that some girls are nothing more than low liars, selling copper in the name of gold. But not my daughter, Reverend Stone. I assure you. She has a sincere gift.”
A steam whistle sounded; then a chorus of shouts as the engine groaned to life. The
Lake Zephyr
’s smokestack sighed. A crowd had assembled along the waterfront, waving handkerchiefs in farewell as the engine built steam, and as the steamer slid away a barefoot boy ran sobbing to the pier’s edge. He waved his boater furiously, then flung it toward the departing ship. It spun out in a yellow streak then settled on a swell.
Adele Crawley turned to the minister, her large green eyes staring straight through him. “It’s a gift, Reverend Stone. I converse with the dead.”
Five
They set to loading the canoe at dawn, kegs of gunpowder and pork belly and dried peas, sacks of flour and coffee and rice and lyed corn, bags of salt and sugar and saleratus, rifles wrapped in oilcloth, Mackinaw blankets for trade, a parcel of soap and matches and tacks and cooking gear, tents and hatchets and files. A moment’s confusion; then the scientific instruments were located and stowed, Mr. Brush chuckling at his forgetfulness, his laughter echoed by Professor Tiffin and Elisha and Susette Morel. Giddiness spread like a vapor through the party. The sky lightened from indigo to a brilliant blue. The straits were a gleaming, empty turnpike stretching westward.
At last Mr. Brush settled himself in the canoe’s stern. The craft was long and slender, a yellow moon painted on its hull, and as Professor Tiffin stepped into the bow the canoe lurched beneath him. He yelped, steadying himself, then took up a paddle and hefted it curiously as Susette and Elisha took their places. The craft jittered on the rippling straits. Mr. Brush called, “On my mark—
we are off!
” and as one the party’s paddles dipped into the water. Professor Tiffin hooted as they surged toward the horizon. I do not deserve this good fortune, Elisha thought. I do not deserve this life. He felt swollen with gratitude that was near to tears.
Ring-billed gulls screamed toward the canoe then banked away. The beach was yellow sand dotted with dune thistle, edged by red cedar and maple and mountain ash. Elisha paddled with his gaze fixed on the passing shoreline. Within an hour the straits began to widen, and suddenly they entered the open lake, rollers tumbling out to the horizon’s black thread, the sky a vast blue sheet pricked by stars. Fat, fleecy clouds floated over the plain of water.
The party stopped paddling and let the canoe bob on the swells. “It must be a curse to be born in a land so beautiful,” Mr. Brush said. “The rest of creation must seem dismal by comparison.”
“Tahquamenon Bay!” Professor Tiffin shouted. “I have been told that voyageurs pause here to make tobacco offerings to their spirits, to ensure a safe journey. It is a Native myth, or perhaps a Catholic one. Is this true, Madame Morel?” The man swiveled to face her as the canoe rocked crosswise. “Est-ce vrai?”
Susette was dressed in the previous day’s clothes, along with a blue scarf trimmed with rabbit fur—a lucky talisman, Elisha figured, or perhaps her sole piece of finery. Her hair was freshly washed and fell in a thick black braid down her back. The boy wanted to press it like a scrap of silk against his cheek.
“It is not necessary,” she said. “Let us continue.”
“Nonsense—we shall pause so you can make your offering.”
“Come now,” Mr. Brush said gently. “The lady can make her own decisions. There is no need to ridicule her beliefs.”
“Nothing could be farther from my aim!” Tiffin said. “I am simply curious to learn if the practice descends from the Native rather than the French tradition. It is a burnt offering, you see, a way to appease their great spirits and celebrate their departure. The tradition likely dates back to ancient times—in fact, some Native tribes make burnt offerings of animals, just as the ancient Hebrews did. I personally have observed firepits containing burned bone shards. Interestingly, in many cases the bones were unbroken—just as dictated by Hebrew law, that no bone of paschal lamb should—”
He broke off as Susette untied the pouch at her waist and withdrew a stub of tobacco, fire steel and flint and wad of tow. She turned her back to the breeze and cupped the tow. She struck a spark into it and blew gently until a small flame rose, then she pulled the tobacco into shreds and set it afire. She held the smoking stub over the gunwale and mumbled a few quick phrases, then crossed herself as she tossed the tobacco into the lake. The scrap floated on the shallow swells.
“And now we are protected!” Professor Tiffin shouted.
Part Two
One
They paddled through mornings of damp heat and high, tissuey clouds. Their course skirted the shoreline, which varied from stony breakwaters to pocked sandstone faces to belts of smooth, sugar-white sand. Beach grass riffled like whitecaps in the breeze. Terns and sandpipers whistled at the water’s edge. At noon the party put ashore for lunch, Elisha gathering driftwood for the fire while Susette stirred peas and rice and pork belly into the cookpot. The boy’s neck was sun-blistered, his palms rubbed raw from paddling. Mosquitoes hovered in a haze along the beach.
Despite his discomfort Elisha felt buoyed by a happiness that felt akin to grace. It was like being in Alpheus Lenz’s study, he thought, that same gorgeous calm, the bookcases replaced by tall white pines, the specimens replaced by the creatures themselves. Lunch finished, Elisha assisted Mr. Brush in measuring latitude and temperature and barometric pressure, then accompanied the man on a quick mineral survey. The soil was siliceous sand mixed with loam, Elisha learned; the rocks were basalt trap and hornblende and sandstone and graywacke slate. He scratched notes in his fieldbook and labeled mineral specimens and blazed bearing trees, scrabbling to keep pace as Brush strode ahead. The man whistled a jaunty marching song, allowing Elisha to track him even when he disappeared among the trees. He was as relaxed and content as a man at a town fair.
The survey complete, Elisha returned to camp to find Professor Tiffin reclined beside the cookfire with a volume of Scott. The man rose with a groan and motioned for Elisha to follow him up the beach, beginning a discourse on glacial upheaval or fossil dispersion that quickly digressed to a litany of complaints. His trapezius muscles were strained from paddling. His buttocks were calloused and sore. Susette’s breakfast preparations were excellent but her suppers too powerfully seasoned for his palate. He would trade his grandmother’s eyeteeth for a veal steak and a gill of whiskey. Elisha nodded in commiseration, but somehow this only deepened his pleasure.
On the third afternoon from Sault Ste. Marie Elisha was sent on a hunt, and was passing through a grove of Juneberries when a loud scraping rose from the brush. A tall, slope-shouldered bear rose on its haunches not fifty yards distant. The animal was silky black, its small head dusted with wood chips. Elisha tore open a cartridge and fumbled with a cap as the bear pawed its face; then as he raised his rifle the bear turned and shambled away. Elisha’s shot splintered bark from a distant pine. He sat on the forest floor until his legs stopped shaking. Then the boy shivered with relieved laughter.
On the fourth afternoon from the Sault Elisha was strolling with Tiffin when the man spied a bone-thin mongrel splayed near the forest edge. The dog lifted its head as they approached, the effort seeming to consume all its strength. Its muzzle was stuck thick with porcupine quills, its head swollen to the size of a melon. Its leaden eyes tracked Elisha. “The inflammation is severe,” Professor Tiffin said, touching the animal’s neck. “We must shoot the poor beast at once.” Elisha charged the rifle and Tiffin laid the barrel against the dog’s ear; then he lowered the hammer with a sigh. He sent Elisha to camp for a piece of stewed pork, then laid the softened meat on the dog’s tongue.
Elisha soon realized that this was the expedition’s routine: mornings spent paddling along the lakeshore, afternoons spent surveying with Mr. Brush or walking with Professor Tiffin or hiking alone through the forest, his rifle at the ready. Evenings, they relaxed around the cookfire as Susette served mugs of peppery stew. Brush and Tiffin had discovered a topic on which they agreed: politics. They were both for the annexation of Texas, both agreed that His Accidency the President was a hooligan and disgrace. Both agreed that the Michigan legislature contained more rats than the Detroit River. Professor Tiffin cackled, his laughter loud in the black night. Fireflies flashed at the forest’s edge.
Elisha grinned at the men’s conversation, all the while watching Susette Morel. How were her afternoons spent? Fishing for lake trout or gumming the canoe’s seams, preparing the evening meal. Dreariness, Elisha thought; but she moved briskly among the men, saying little, the trace of a smile on her lips. Elisha longed to speak with her but could think of nothing to say.
On the fifth morning from Sault Ste. Marie Elisha rose at dawn to a gray sky and swirling northwest wind. The lake was whipped into dirty green peaks. His morning drowse hardened into disappointment, at the prospect of waiting out the weather. At the water’s edge Mr. Brush sat on a boulder, bent over his fieldbook, occasionally glancing up from his writing to frown at the lake.
Elisha took up his own fieldbook and moved a few yards up the shore from Mr. Brush. He dipped his pen and wrote:
June 16, 1844
The shoreline is here composed very pleasingly of siliceous sand mixed with various multicolored stones, including hornblende and jasper and agate, and interspersed with dense tufts of beach grass. Sea crows and sandpipers and plovers can be found ducking for food at the water’s edge, or nesting in scrapes on the yellow sandy beach. Some four rods inland the forest begins, first as a verdant stand of beech and red maple and striped maple, then interspersed with a few small hemlock, the canopy so dense as to nearly extinguish the sun’s light. Gazing outward from the forest’s edge, Lake Superior spans the horizon like a great blue bowl, its waves lapping the shore with remarkable vigor, as if it were not a mere lake but instead an immense open sea stretching to farthest China, or beyond.
He blew the ink dry, pleased with his first effort at description: it seemed to capture the essential nature of the place. Elisha began sketching a view of the beach and shorebirds and choppy lake; then he sensed a presence beside him. He looked up to find Mr. Brush squinting at his open fieldbook.
“Love letter to your girly friend?”
Elisha closed the book. “Just describing the region. So that I might remember it when the expedition’s ended.”
“An oil painting would serve you better in that regard.”
“I can’t paint. Though neither do I have the proper words to describe the landscape.”
“A body can learn the proper words.” Mr. Brush squinted out at the lake, nodding as if in confirmation of some fact. The man’s hat was neatly brushed, his boots polished to a black gleam. “Well! I am curious to read what you have written.”
Elisha offered the fieldbook and Brush paged to the most recent entry. The boy stared nervously out at the lake. A loon called, the sound like an infant’s wail. Bad luck birds, Elisha thought, a bad omen for the evening’s weather.
At last Mr. Brush grunted. “You have a sharp eye for particularity. That is good. However you spend far too much effort attempting to capture the region’s beauty.”
Elisha nodded uncertainly.
“There are infinitely many ways to describe a thing’s beauty, young man—and so beauty is difficult to describe
precisely
. However, precision is our aim! You must aim to be precise and all-seeing. An all-seeing scribe, recording the most interesting details of God’s creation.”
“But wouldn’t the scene’s beauty be considered interesting in the—”
“Beauty is the realm of poets and painters. Of
penniless
poets and painters.” Mr. Brush laughed. “Perhaps I am a poet myself!”
“I’d like to read your entry. If I may.”
The man hesitated; then he offered the boy his fieldbook. It was a green leather-bound journal with the initials
SB
stamped in gold leaf on the cover. Elisha turned to the second page as a shiver of excitement passed through him. He read:
June 16, 1844
Site loc apprx 3.5 mi N Pt. au Foin (Bayfield). 46º 33'. Large granite boulder on shore bears N 10 E. Elm, 14 in. dia, bears N 57 W. Beech, 24 in. dia, bears N 42 W.
Metamorph, mainly quartz (spc 0), sandstone, slaty hornblende(1), imperf. talicose slates (2), some argill. Veins of alum-slate, similar E Penn. Silic pebbles, some carnelian (3), chalcedony(4). No comp defl.
Soil silic sandy to sandy with silt loam. Poor. Terrain flat, dry, suitable Ry.
Timber primly beech & sug map, some wht pine—appx 9,500 bf per ac. 90–120 ft high, 3 ft dia avg. Moderate.
Elisha turned the page to find it blank. He said, “But you’ve barely described the region at all!”
The man smiled indulgently. Blue-black stubble shadowed his jaw. “I have described rock formations that are often found near iron-bearing minerals—and thus they are
interesting
. They are one of the interesting details of God’s creation.”
Elisha shut the book, disappointed by Brush’s logic. The man had described an important mineral specimen; yet there was no description of the region’s loons or lake trout, Juneberries or black bears. And though Brush was certainly correct about detail and precision, it seemed heartless to ignore the region’s beauty. He said, “But what about the remainder of the scene?”
Mr. Brush clapped Elisha on the back and turned toward camp. He called over his shoulder, “We shall leave that for the painters!”
The storm arrived that evening as low streaky thunderheads thrown over the forest like an ink-stained quilt. Raindrops spattered against the canopy; then a torrent began that stung a man’s skin and rose in a mist from the forest floor. Mr. Brush and Professor Tiffin and Elisha and Susette hurried to their tents, ducked beneath the oilcloth flaps. They gazed at one another across the smoldering cookfire. Elisha said, “Do you suppose the—” but the sky flared white and thunder ripped above them. The sound was like virgin pine splintering beneath an axe.
Elisha realized with a thrill that he’d been wrong: this was not like Alpheus Lenz’s study. Not the slightest bit. Lenz’s study was silent and warm, a shrine to contemplation; this was thunder and storm clouds and hunger and fatigue. A practical endeavor, as opposed to a theoretical one. It seemed fitting that Lenz’s specimens were stuffed and lifeless. Lightning flickered again; then a flame winked in the distance.
“I propose a toast!” Professor Tiffin called. He leaned forward and raised a flask into the downpour. “To the intrepid members of this expedition! And to knowledge, my sullen paramour—may she surrender her most intimate secrets, without shame or moderation!”
“Your language,” Mr. Brush said mildly. He chuckled as he tipped his flask.
Susette had kindled a low fire beneath her tent’s cover, and now she ladled out steaming mugs of whitefish stewed with rice and wild onions. Rain drummed against the oilcloths. As they ate the men discussed Lake Superior’s possible origins as described in Scripture; at last Mr. Brush suggested that Tiffin read a few verses. The party laid aside their empty mugs, nestled deeper into their bedrolls. Like a family around the hearth after harvest day, Elisha thought.
“Exodus seems fitting for this evening. A long journey through a dark land—yes?” Professor Tiffin swallowed a sip of water and cleared his throat.
He read about the wilderness of Sin and manna from Heaven, about the murmurings against Moses and water from the rock. About rest on the Sabbath, and war against the Amalekites. About Jethro and Aaron and Zipporah, Gershom and Eliezer. Elisha closed his eyes, overcome by a pleasant fatigue. He felt soothed by the tale’s familiarity.
But as Professor Tiffin read on the boy’s mood soured. It frustrated him—for why should he feel unhappy, here at the country’s edge with a scientist and surveyor and a strange, lovely woman? He was surrounded by beauty and nature’s rarest mysteries. He half-expected to awaken and find it all a dream. Then Elisha recognized the sour feeling as homesickness.
There had been many such nights, before his mother’s illness: firelight, murmured Scripture, raindrops tapping at the windowpanes. But after she fell ill the house quieted. Evenings passed in silence, Elisha and his father drifting like spirits through the empty rooms, startled by one another’s glimpsed presence. His mother was shut away in the bedroom, too weak even to see her son. Her cough pulled time forward in a sickening lurch.
Elisha spent his days at the creek behind the parsonage, at a willow-shaded bend thick with pollen and mudminnows. Afternoons, he walked to Joseph Eliot’s dry goods shop and purchased a penny’s weight of boiled sugar. He loitered at the candy counter until the man stepped into the storeroom; then the boy stuffed a carrot of tobacco into his trousers and hurried from the shop. At home, he huddled behind the chicken house and pulled the tobacco into shreds, set the fragments alight and watched them burn. He felt dull and vacant, lifeless, like a sleepwalker moving through an empty town.
One afternoon Elisha waited until Eliot turned away, then he leaned across the counter and palmed a bone-handled Barlow knife. As he reached the shop’s door a man said, “Son?” Joseph Eliot was standing at the storeroom entrance holding an empty coffee sack. He approached the boy and pried open Elisha’s hand, scowled at the knife.
“I’m very sorry. It’s for my mother.”
The man moved as if to speak; then he clamped his mouth shut.
“She’s very ill.”
“I know she is.” Joseph Eliot gripped the boy’s shoulder and steered him out the door. “You get along home now. Get.”
Three days later Elisha was back at the shop. Eliot watched him with an expression that was equal parts irritation and sorrow. Elisha dawdled at the candy barrel. He asked for a half-penny of licorice, then spilled a fistful of coins across the plank floor. The man knelt with a sigh, and as he did Elisha snatched up a yellow silk hatband and stuffed it into his trouser pocket. Joseph Eliot rose and slowly untied his apron. He took Elisha by the elbow and led him from the shop, then across the town green. The boy’s limbs felt numb. He could not form a thought.
Reverend Stone was a long time answering Eliot’s knock. When he opened the door his hair was disheveled and collar unbuttoned, his thumb stuck into a thick volume:
The Old Curiosity Shop.
He had been reading to her. Joseph Eliot said, “I apologize very sincerely, Reverend Stone. However we have a matter to discuss.”
In a nervous mumble Eliot explained what he had seen: the Barlow knife, the yellow silk hatband, the carrots of tobacco gone missing whenever Elisha visited the shop. Reverend Stone nodded, his expressionless gaze moving from Eliot to his son, then back to Eliot. At last he said, “Thank you, Mr. Eliot. Truly.” He ushered Elisha inside and closed the door.