Trail of Bones (11 page)

Authors: Mark London Williams

“
Tres bon pour les poissons
!”
Cruzatte said. Good for the fish. Apparently these guys believed
there were a lot of piranhas in the water or something.

But they kept the livers. The men liked
cooking up the livers.

Soon I was covered in blood myself. I wasn’t
happy about it, but if you’re going to eat food that used to walk
around you can’t keep fooling yourself either. But I still told the
Corps I didn’t want to hunt.

Right now, though, there’s a gun in my hand,
and members of the Corps are telling me to get ready to fire my
first shot.

What’s even worse is that this isn’t a hunt
and they don’t mean to shoot a buffalo.

They mean, “Fire at a human being when you
hear the order.”

Basically, I’m expected to murder someone,
because we’re on the verge of maybe getting murdered ourselves.

We’re on a sandbar, in the middle of the
Missouri River. Clark has named this little patch Good Humor
Island. Across from us is a tribe of Lakota Indians lined up
onshore, with their arrows pointed at us.

Clark is in front with a drawn sword,
looking real expedition-leader-like, yelling across the water at a
Lakota chief whose name, of all things, is the Partisan.

It’s a name for someone who takes a side in
a debate, or an argument, or a war. Lewis told me that. It’s a
funny kind of name, and, right now, about the only funny thing at
all on Good Humor Island.

In fact, as I stand here holding a rifle
that I really have no intention of using, the thought strikes me
that the Partisan could be a kind of Barnstormer character — a
ghost Indian, haunting people who took his land.

Buffaloner, meet the Partisan.

At the thought of it, I giggle. Everyone —
Indian, American, French — stares at me. Right. No laughing on Good
Humor Island.

Except maybe for one other rule-breaker:
He’s a Lakota boy, about my age, holding a bow and arrow, pointed
pretty much right at me. I think he’s the son of Black Buffalo, one
of the other chiefs. He’s been watching me the whole time we’ve
been here. Now, I guess, I’m his number-one target in case a war
breaks out.

Except that my giggle almost made him laugh,
too.

The Lakota, I learned, is a tribe that lives
by the river and demands a kind of toll from anyone who passes by.
A shipping tax. Even if what’s being “shipped” is you.

We just want to get upriver to a place
called Mandan Village. It’s where we’re supposed to be spending the
whole winter. We need to be there in a few weeks.

But we’re not spending the winter anywhere
unless we get off this sandbar. The Corps tried to pay the tax with
some knives, an American flag, an old but usable coat, some buffalo
meat, and some medals.

Those were the “Great Father Jefferson”
medals Lewis and Clark had with them to introduce all the tribes
they were meeting to the president, since the idea was that the
land now belonged to America, and the president was going to be the
main chief now.

You can imagine how that idea didn’t really
sit well with anyone who was already living here, with chiefs of
their own already picked out.

Plus, the Lakota are smart enough to know
that when the American “Great Father” takes over, they’ll be out of
the shipping-tax business, and they don’t want to see a good thing
go.

Well, not such a good thing for us in the
Corps.

Everyone was edgy and nervous. Maybe the
Indians could sense that no matter what they did to us — fired
their arrows, or let us pass — it might not really matter. Big
journeys change things. Lewis and Clark’s journey would change
things forever. Eventually tons of people would be pouring into the
West, once they knew what was out there. For the Indians, that
would be another kind of death.

Maybe the Lakota thought that by killing us,
they could just put that particular death off a little while
longer.

“I am going away,” Floyd had told me, right
before he died. “I want you to write me a letter.”

I was sitting there, silently, just like
Clark wanted me to. Not asking about “Fives” or anything else. I
thought Clark wouldn’t mind if I asked who Floyd wanted the letter
sent to, though.

But Kentuck never got to tell me. I went to
find some sheets of paper and one of those feather quill pens
everybody uses. I couldn’t use my vidpad in front of him. Though
maybe, if he was dying, why not? It wouldn’t mess up history too
much for him to have seen it, would it?

Anyway, when I got back to where Floyd was
laying, he was gone. Just like that. From nothing more than what
seemed like a real bad flu. Lewis called it something else — like
that thing babies get — cholera? No — colicky, that’s it.
Cholic.

I didn’t know that could kill you.

“We name this river Floyd’s River,” Clark
said at the funeral. We buried him on a hill in a really pretty
spot, and the men in the Corps fired off their guns. Cruzatte
played a sad fiddle tune, and Seaman howled, so it was an official
military event. I’d never been to anyone’s funeral before.

“We name this hill Floyd’s Bluff. Both will
bear his name for ages afterward, and those names will tell of his
great deeds. He was a brave and worthy man. And now he’s gone.”

Clark wasn’t a preacher and there didn’t
seem to be much more to say. He turned to the other captain.
“Meriwether?”

Meriwether shook his head. “Kentuck was
among the most cheerful of us,” he added. “The universe doesn’t
always reward cheerfulness. Perhaps, in honor of our friend, we
should all remain cheerful, out of spite. May God take his
soul.”

No one said anything else, but really, how
could they? They were all trying to figure out what Lewis
meant.

Everybody took a turn putting a shovelful of
dirt on Kentuck’s body. It was wrapped in an American flag, and I
could actually see his feet sticking out from it, down in the hole.
I put some dirt on him, too.

That must be why there always seems to be a
tiny part inside grownups that seems a little sad, because if you
live long enough, you see it. You
know
.

People go. Places, things.

You love them, and they still go. Thea knows
that now. Look what happened to her mom.

Even being unstuck in time, like I am, you
don’t get “do overs.” Not really. You can’t hold on to
everything.

Or anything. Sometimes.

Standing on Floyd’s Bluff, I couldn’t
remember from school if anyone on the Lewis and Clark expedition
actually died. What if they hadn’t, originally? What if I caused
that by being here, by changing history?

That’s what’s going through my head now,
here on Good Humor Island, with this big museum gun in my hand,
pointed at people I hardly even know. I’m pretty sure Lewis and
Clark survived, but what if my changing things means, this time,
they don’t?

What if things go really wrong in the next
few minutes, and a lot of us don’t even make it out of here?

“Eli?”

It’s York. The Indians seem fascinated by
him. They were touching his skin before. They’ve seen French fur
traders coming down the river, but they’ve never seen a black man.
It’s hard to imagine a time in America when having different skin
color was unusual.

“What is it, Mr. York?”

“You ready to fire that thing, if you have
to?”

“I’ve never fired a gun before. I’ve never
killed a person.”

“Well, me neither.”

“And I’m not going to start now! This isn’t
some Comnet game!”

“Some what?”

On the shore, the Indian boy, with his bow
and arrow, is watching me talk to York. You can see his eyes follow
us every time we shift positions.

I’d like to throw my gun down, to show how
ridiculous I think this all is, but any sudden move like that would
get everyone scared, and all those bullets and arrows would go
flying. But I wonder, if there was some way to signal a truce to
that Lakota kid, would he go along?

I’m not sure how it all went so wrong,
anyway. Clark had been going back and forth from our island, giving
gifts to the tribe for the last day or two. Maybe it was the “Great
White Father” medal that finally rubbed them the wrong way. Or
maybe it was when they tasted Lewis’s “portable soup.” That was
probably a mistake, as gifts go.

Clark had ordered us to set off from Good
Humor Island, but when we were getting the pirogues ready, the
Partisan grabbed the ropes to keep us from leaving.

That’s when we noticed all the arrows
pointed at us.

Lewis, for his part, calmly got out his air
rifle. He explained what it was, the translator told the chiefs,
and nobody moved an inch after that. Nobody gave in.

This silence is dangerous. Unless somebody
says something soon, shots will go off just from the tension.

Clark must be thinking the same thing. “We
are not squaws, but warriors,” he says suddenly, out loud.

I’m not sure that’s the kind of
silence-breaking that helps. I guess Clark is getting pretty
frustrated, too.

Why does he make fun of girls, anyway? Like
all girls are scaredy-cats and all boys aren’t. That’s not true. If
they met Thea or her mom, they wouldn’t say stuff like that. Or if
they met my mom.

Though it doesn’t exactly help to think
about her right now.

The Lakota translator is telling the
Partisan, Black Buffalo, and the others what Clark said. He gets a
reply.

“We are not squaws, either.”

I get it with my lingo-spot, before our
translator —Cruzatte — tells Clark.

Share…

What? Share what? Was that me thinking
that?

Somebody has to think of
something
,
though. These grownups will get us all killed.

What would Kentuck be doing if he were here?
Would it have changed our luck if he was still alive?

Kentuck…

With my non-rifle hand, I slowly reach into
my pants pocket and pull out the scraggly, leathery “Fives” ball
he’d given me. It feels like every eye in the world is watching
me.

I slowly hold up the ball. And then I start
to bend over and — slowly, slowly — lay down the rifle on the
sand.

Clark and the others are casting glances at
me, too, while trying to keep an eye on the Lakota. “Eli? What in
thunder are you doing?”

“Trust me, sir.”

Showing the Lakota I only have the ball in
my hand, I point across the river to the boy. He’s confused and
looks over to his chiefs for advice. The Partisan just shakes his
head no, without knowing what I’m going to do. Black Buffalo,
though, holds up his hand in more of a let’s-wait-and-see
gesture.

I make a sweeping arc with my hand, for
practice, without releasing the ball.

I found out at Floyd’s funeral that Fives is
some kind of handball game. Nothing to do with bats. But Floyd
wanted me to have it, anyway. For me it’s become a kind of
softball.

Cocking my arm back, I swing forward and
throw it — a nice, easy, underhand pitch — across the water.

It lands at the Lakota kid’s feet on the far
riverbank. He doesn’t know what to do. Black Buffalo looks at the
ball, back at me, and then at his son. This time, he nods. The
Partisan turns away in a huff.

The kid sets down his bow and arrow and
picks up Floyd’s ball like I hoped he would. He looks at me, and I
mime the throwing gesture. He gets it, and without even practicing,
throws the ball over the river, back to me.

We do that one more time. Though after I
throw the ball to the Lakota side, I make another deliberate show
of picking up a damp piece of willow tree driftwood and holding it
aloft.

The Lakota kid is puzzled, but he throws the
ball back again.

And now, as the ball comes flying toward me,
I swing, make contact, and hit the ball toward the boy and the
Lakotas. It falls a little short, landing with a plop in the water
near their feet.

Some of them scatter. An arrow whizzes by
overhead. One of the Corps is about to shoot back, and I think, how
ridiculous, I’ve ruined everything by taking an at-bat. Clark is
screaming “No!” and so is Black Buffalo — you can tell, without a
translator — but no one else fires, and the kid runs over to where
ball rolls by the riverbank. He picks it up again, and turns to
look at me…

…and seems to be smiling.

“What game is that?” Black Buffalo asks.

I’m so excited, I don’t wait for the
translator and answer, “Baseball!”

Clark and Lewis both give quizzical looks at
my evident understanding of Lakota.

“And if this is September,” I tell Black
Buffalo, “it’s just about time for the playoffs.”

The Lakota translator is giving me a
quizzical look, too. He’s never heard anything like that from any
of the fur traders.

I see that the Lakota kid is picking up a
stick, too. He stands, holding it the way I held mine, but not
before tossing the ball back over the water to me.

I guess he’s ready for an at-bat.

Men on both sides are lowering their
weapons.

It looks like the Corps of Discovery will
make it through the day and off of Good Humor Island.

And if that means I’ve messed with history a
little, it feels all right.

Chapter Twelve

Thea: Monticello

May 1804

We follow Jefferson outside, going back up
Mulberry Row.

Sadness…

Eyes watch us. There are a few nods, but
fewer smiles.

Jefferson occasionally nods back at a slave
or two, but doesn’t stop to make conversation.

…
sore…. tired…