The Expeditions (18 page)

And then the girl left. The next morning Thomas Coldwater woke in a sulk and bridled the horses, pissed on the cookfire. They drove on to Metropolis then Midway, Crawley misplacing his memories of the girl among fevered daydreams. Two weeks later in Golconda, Crawley at midnight laid eighty dollars coin beside Thomas Coldwater’s delirious form, then saddled the smaller bay. Eighty dollars was nearly all the money he possessed in the world, but he considered it a bargain to be rid of the man.

He spent much of the trip back to Paducah considering what he might say to the girl. That he was lost and seeking directions to Golconda. That he was verifying the effectiveness of his remedy. That he needed to speak with his dearly departed sister Alma. Kentucky rolled before him, the lush green hills like crumpled satin. That he had dreamed of her every night for fourteen days. That he loved her beyond reason and beyond the confines of his puny heart.

Her father’s house stood at the end of a grist mill road. It was a dogtrot cabin with a single window hung with parchment, a stick chimney warped near to collapse. The day was hot and a teasing breeze rose from the south. Crawley rubbed his face with creek water and gathered a spray of oxeye daisies, smoothed his shirt and hair, buffed his muddy boots. He rapped on the cabin door.

The girl opened the door. Her cheeks held a ripe tint; her shoulders were thicker and softer, less birdlike. Her expression moved in an instant from wariness to confusion to glee. She covered her mouth and squealed. “I prayed and you came! Good holy God.”

“The raven’s shadow disappeared—I’ve not seen it since.” Jonah Crawley shrugged. “And that is how she saved me.”

A swell of emotion had grown in Reverend Stone, far out of proportion to the story’s sentiment. He said softly, “You should’ve quit her while you might have.”

“I tried to, with all my soul. We were chaste for eleven months, until the day she turned fourteen.” Crawley shook his head. “I am sorry, Reverend Stone. She is my tonic, that girl. She is my life.”

The minister turned toward the wall to avoid facing the man. Jonah Crawley was thirty-seven years old to Adele’s fifteen; when Crawley was forty-one the girl would be nineteen. Nearly the same ages, Reverend Stone thought, that he and Ellen had been when they’d married. And so perhaps he and Jonah Crawley were more alike than he had imagined. Crawley was worried only for Adele’s happiness. He understood her presence in his life as a gift, inexplicable and undeserved. He believed their future together to be limitless and full of light.

“Do you love Adele, Mr. Crawley?”

The man nodded. “With every particle.”

“Do you love her as deeply as you love the Lord?”

Jonah Crawley stared at the minister. “It’s different, Reverend Stone. A different sort of love. Surely.”

“It is, yes. It has a certain texture, and warmth. And with it a sense of fragility. A fear that it might someday…disappear.”

Crawley rose with a defeated sigh. “I understand if you can’t marry us, Reverend Stone—most ministers wouldn’t. The days will go on. Not being married will just make us a little more damned.”

He set his hat upon his head. “Oh—there’s one more thing.” He patted his waistcoat pocket then withdrew a stoppered phial of yellow-green liquid. “For that cough of yours. An old Chickasaw remedy.”

Reverend Stone took the phial in both hands. He had no faith in herb medicine but nonetheless felt a deep bloom of gratitude, a chambered part of himself opening outward. He thought he might begin to weep. He set the phial on the bedside table, his fingers trembling. What is happening to me? he wondered.

“Don’t drink it all at once, you’ll get the sprays. Take half now, half tomorrow morning.”

“Thank you, Mr. Crawley. Truly.”

Crawley touched his hat brim as he opened the door.

“Arrange a place for tomorrow at noon,” Reverend Stone called. “Please. I will be honored to marry you and Adele.”

The ceremony was held in the upstairs room of Anders Lund’s saloon, a lawyers’ haunt with garish crimson wallpaper and a plaster replica of Michelangelo’s
David
propped in the corner. An organ grinder squatted on a three-legged stool before the fireplace, studying a picture magazine. Beside him was a table transformed by pine boughs into a makeshift altar. Jonah Crawley sat stiffly at the bar, dressed in a skyblue jacket and waistcoat, a yellow silk cravat blossoming at his throat. When Reverend Stone appeared in the doorway Crawley jerked upright and took the minister’s hand. His white cotton gloves were damp with perspiration.

“We’re ready to begin anytime, Reverend. I thank you again.”

“You will need a witness, of course.” Reverend Stone nodded toward the organ grinder. “Is he agreed to the task?”

“He is. Cost me two dollars extra.” Crawley laughed abruptly, his breath sharp with whiskey and onions. Then he became serious. “Does it matter that he don’t speak English?”

Reverend Stone smiled to calm the man. “I will need to speak with Adele for a short while. Alone.”

“Of course. She’s just in the storeroom.”

The minister passed behind the bar to the storeroom and knocked softly. A voice said, “One moment,” followed by a rustle of fabric and a chair’s loud scrape. Adele Grainger opened the door.

She looked so frail. She wore a yellow satin Trafalgar dress trimmed with crepe, white kid gloves with ivory buttons, a white lace fichu knotted loosely at her breast. Her hair was twisted into sugar curls and garlanded with orange blossoms, the flowers wilting on her powdered forehead. She looked like a girl playing dress-up in her mother’s wardrobe, and Reverend Stone imagined her standing in the rain outside Crawley’s wagon three years ago, penniless, her hair in knots and fingernails worried away. Adele squinted at Reverend Stone’s swollen face but said nothing.

“Goodness me. Am I the lucky first to admire your radiance?”

She glanced shyly away. “These gloves are the same old ones I wear for séances. The fichu I found in a rich lady’s gutter on Beaubien Street, just cast away. The dress is precious, though. It was my mother’s when she married my daddy, God rest her soul.”

“How wonderfully fine.” Reverend Stone paused to lend gravity to his next statement. “Young lady. Do you understand the significance of the matrimonial covenant?”

The girl nodded, her green eyes unblinking.

“You understand it as a lifelong joining between husband and wife, ordered toward their happiness and toward the procreation of children, that no man may put asunder?”

She nodded again. She was strangely calm, more old woman than young girl. She nudged an orange blossom higher on her brow.

“I was certain you did. I simply felt that I must ask.”

Reverend Stone grinned awkwardly as several long moments passed. A barman passed the open door, yawning as he tucked a shirt-tail into his trousers. He took up a tumbler and poured a measure of green liquor, then with a sigh drank it down. At last Reverend Stone said, “Tell me. How do you do it? Your…talent.”

Adele shrugged. “I merely listen. Though often it’s not listening as much as watching those who remain. They tell you plenty about the departed without saying a word. It’s engraved on them.”

“And the table?”

“Well, yes, the table.” She bit her lower lip to hide a smile. “The table is primarily for theatrics—I rigged it myself, quite cleverly I believe. Folks expect a show when they pay a quarter dollar.” She looked up at the minister. “But the spirits are genuine, Reverend Stone. Some of us possess a gift for the spiritual. You and I are similar in that way.”

He thought of his visions of souls, the ghostly haze that appeared and disappeared without reason; then he realized the girl was speaking of his vocation.

She leaned toward Reverend Stone and took his hand. “You have suffered a loss, but you mustn’t let yourself feel guilty. It’s common for a person to feel guilty when they suffer loss. The two are boon companions.”

He said nothing.

“Mr. Crawley helped me to surmount the loss of my mother. He cured me of my guilt and sorrow, my black feelings. He showed me how to aid people with my gift, how to cure them of their own sorrows, their own black feelings. He would not let me feel guilty, not the littlest bit. And now I am famous.”

Reverend Stone smiled vaguely. “You are a wise girl.”

“I know.”

Adele Grainger reached into her handbag and withdrew a closed fist, opened it into the minister’s palm: a tarnished silver chain fastened to a loop of rawhide. The hide was dimpled and scored, as though it had been chewed to relieve pain. She said, “For your journey. It’s from my daddy’s brogans that he wore all through the Indian wars. They kept his luck for nearly three years. He had a ball pass through his hat brim but he marched home, safe as a salamander. He’s living still.”

Reverend Stone draped the chain between his fingers. A lucky talisman: it was an inappropriate gift, but nonetheless he dropped it into his vest pocket. “Thank you, Adele. I pray it keeps me as well as it kept your father.”

“As do I. And there’s this—for your service today.” She pressed two gold eagle coins into the minister’s palm.

“Now, that is far too generous.”

Adele shushed him as she closed his fingers around the money. “Mr. Crawley and I are indebted far beyond two eagles. And besides, that’s just a lazy night’s work on Sixth Street.”

Reverend Stone thanked the girl, then excused himself and stepped out into the barroom. He touched Jonah Crawley’s elbow and said, “Now,” and the man’s face fell slack. He fluffed his cravat and tugged down his shirtfront, signaled to the organ grinder. The man dropped the magazine with a hiccup and cranked his instrument. A wheezy chord rose and thickened to a strong, clear melody: “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” Reverend Stone moved to the fireplace, smiled at the bemused barman. A moment later the storeroom door opened and Adele appeared, her skirts flared, a square of white tulle veiling her face. She clutched a bouquet of oxeye daisies.

“Good holy God,” Crawley said.

She hurried toward the altar, then as if recalling an instruction slowed her pace. A smile trembled on her lips. She glanced from the minister to the organ grinder to Jonah; then her smile steadied.

They stood before Reverend Stone at the altar as the organ sighed to silence. Adele’s smile had vanished. Droplets of sweat slid down Crawley’s forehead. A shout rose from the saloon below, followed by laughter and a man’s mincing falsetto. Jonah Crawley squeezed his eyes shut and heaved a sigh. The girl took his hand.

“We are gathered to join in marriage Mr. Jonah Crawley of Yonkers, New York, to Miss Adele Grainger of Paducah, Kentucky, and if anyone present has objection to this union let him speak.”

Silence; then a groan escaped the organ grinder’s instrument. Crawley smiled nervously.

“Jonah Crawley. Do you promise before God your unending love and constancy, your devotion and support, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, until parted by death? Do you promise this though you might be brittle in temper and low in spirit, though you might be burdened with sorrow and doubt, though you might find faith a dark and narrow path?”

“I surely do. Of course I do.”

“Adele Grainger. Do you promise the same?”

“Indeed I do.”

Was this how I appeared? Reverend Stone wondered. A stooped, nervous man beside a radiant young woman? That morning in the meetinghouse, he remembered, the gallery had been filled with crying infants, and the sound had been as satisfying as music. By March Ellen would be pregnant with Elisha.

“Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh, and she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and cleave unto his wife. And they shall be one flesh. And it shall be good, and blissful, and true.” Reverend Stone smiled. “My dear friends. It is with profound pleasure that I bond you in matrimony. Go forth together in His service, and may your days be long together upon this great, green earth.”

A squeal escaped Adele. Jonah Crawley’s cheeks were wet with tears, his jaw trembling as though he might be sick. He lifted the girl’s veil. She blinked, her eyes clouded with fear and longing, an achy fullness of joy. Jonah Crawley touched his wife’s chin and kissed her softly on the lips.

Part Three

One

They canoed eastward on a riffled gray lake, Tiffin sprawled across the gunwales as he described an idea that had emerged in a recent dream: that perfectly spherical pearls might be formed by continuously rotating pearl-bearing mollusks in an underwater device. Centrifugal force, he explained, would smooth the distribution of nacre about the pearl’s seed, and continuous agitation would induce prodigious growth. Elisha said little, struggling against a swirling breeze. Professor Tiffin’s cheek and lip were swollen taut, his forehead filigreed with dried blood. He had not protested when Elisha had steered the canoe east that morning, toward the fur post and Mr. Brush. Finally Tiffin drifted off to sleep, his hat tumbling to the canoe’s bottom. By nightfall they had traveled only two leagues.

They set out the next morning at dawn and by midafternoon had come to a familiar umber-colored river. They followed it past pine stumps budding with root sprouts, bayberry and shadbush blooming in swollen clumps, slender red maples poking through the mat. Death and renewal, the forest rebirthing itself. A marsh hawk skimmed over the knobby tract. Two hours later they reached the circle of split-log cabins and the naked flagpole. Mr. Brush was sitting on a stump before the commis’ house, whittling a tent stake. At the river’s edge stood Susette Morel.

“Welcome!” Tiffin scrabbled over the canoe’s side and splashed toward the woman, arms outspread. “Welcome back, my dear madame, welcome! One hundred thousand welcomes!”

Tightness gripped Elisha’s throat as he landed the canoe. He could not look at Susette.

“It appears you were correct,” Brush said dryly. “She claims she was lost. Ask her. She claims she was gathering herbs for supper and misremembered the camp’s location.”

“You were lost and now are found! And so we are reunited!” Tiffin seemed to be resisting an urge to hug the woman. At last he seized her hand and kissed it. “And we are utterly thrilled, all of us!”

She stood ankle-deep in the river, skirts gathered at her knees, holding a skillet. Her cheeks were flushed and wisps of loose hair lay pasted across her forehead. She smiled politely at Professor Tiffin; then her gaze shifted to Elisha. To the boy’s surprise he was overcome by anger.

“Seems odd,” he said. “How does a body become lost such a short distance from camp?”

“The sun was hidden by rain clouds. I lost my direction. It can happen like that in the forest, no matter the distance from camp.”

“I suppose we’re expected to take you at your word.”

“I expect nothing at all.”

“No matter, no matter!” Tiffin clapped his hands. “I propose that we continue onward at the first glimmer of dawn, after a hearty supper! No offense, young fellow, but your cookery skills are a fair stripe lower than our dear madame’s.”

“Your face.” Mr. Brush squinted, leaning toward Professor Tiffin. “You have been attacked.”

“No matter!” He threw open the door to the commis’ house. From inside he called, “A celebratory toast! Where is my beloved whiskey jug?”

“This discussion is not ended!” Brush waited, lips pursed; then he flung the tent stake away and snatched up his rifle and shot bag. To Elisha he said, “I will be back in one hour. I feel the need to shoot something.”

Elisha watched the man vanish into the forest. He felt suddenly exhausted, as though the tiniest movement would overwhelm him. He could not understand whether he should run to Susette or run away. She took up a cookpot from the riverbank and rinsed it; then she threw it tumbling away. She sobbed, a thick gasp. She looked as shocked and mortified as a child.

“My dear,” Elisha whispered. “I am so sorry. For my behavior—for what occurred the other night.
Please.
I am so very sorry.”

“There is no need to apologize,” Susette said. “I am the one who chose—”

“A celebratory toast!” Professor Tiffin appeared in the doorway with the jug held aloft. “Come, both of you—we must celebrate the joyful reuniting of the party!”

At Tiffin’s insistence supper was an elaborate affair, broiled lake trout and venison steaks, wild greens stewed with liver and kidney, flour biscuits with gravy and gills of Indian whiskey for toasting Susette’s health. The cabin was quiet save for the clatter of pans and Tiffin’s cheery instructions to the woman. Wind sluiced down the chimney and flared the fire, sent puffs of ash over the hearth. Professor Tiffin, as he ate, recounted their excursion to the Chippewa village.

“It is a large encampment of perhaps two hundred souls, quite attractively situated beside a fair-sized stream. The location was doubtless chosen for its fishing opportunities, as there was of course no evidence of land cultivation. We were granted an audience with a chief named White Wing. Do you know the man?”

Susette shook her head. She was seated near the hearth, her back to Elisha.

“A curious fellow. Solemn in the extreme, like many of their chiefs, and possessed of a subtle stubbornness. Earbobs the size of chestnuts, I suspect as an indication of his warrior status. I explained the purpose of our expedition, and he confirmed that, indeed, a narrative exists of the origins of the Chippewa people. He was reluctant to reveal any details—only elders of the Midewiwin society are privy to such knowledge.”

Tiffin set down his plate and tugged his frayed whiskers. “That night, however, I secretly observed a Midewiwin ceremony. An initiation ceremony, I believe, with ardent singing and music-making, the form of which strongly recalled certain rites of the ancient Hebrew people. I observed—”

“You were attacked,” Brush said. “Did that occur during your tea party with Mr. Wing?”

Tiffin dismissed the comment with a glance. “A minor misfortune—I stumbled over an exposed root. To continue, I observed Midewiwin elders reading from stone tablets that appeared to contain pictographic transcriptions of their ceremonial songs. The brave undergoing initiation was chanting an incantation, which I inter—”

“And in your excitement, you stumbled numerous times over an exposed root. A natural explanation for the bruising on your face.”

“‘Mock on, mock on, ’tis all in vain.’ Young Elisha can confirm every detail of my account.”

“Can he?”

Elisha stared into the fire, avoiding Mr. Brush’s gaze. He wished Professor Tiffin would stop lying.

“We are near to the image stones,” Tiffin said. “Very near. I expect that quite soon I will unearth written accounts of the origins of the Chippewa people, which will resolve forevermore the question of the unity of races—and, of course, secure my victory in our wager.”

“Secure your reputation as a fool, you mean.” Brush shoved his plate away. “This expedition is becoming as ridiculous as a bull with teats. Pardon my language, Madame Morel.”

A tense silence settled over the cabin. Mr. Brush arranged a pair of grease lamps on the table, opened his fieldbook and frowned at the pages. Professor Tiffin strode to the bookcase and took down a volume, threw himself with a huff on his throne of skins. Sapwood popped and hissed in the fire. Susette gathered the supper plates, and as she moved toward the hearth Elisha said, “Let me assist you. Please.” He hoisted the cookpot from its trammel, then followed the woman into the night.

Clouds had gathered in thin, low layers, violet and indigo against a black sky. Night animals skittered through the brush. Elisha followed Susette to the riverbank, then knelt beside her as she sprinkled sand over the plates. An ember of anger burned in his chest. Despite it he felt drawn to the woman, like a compass needle toward iron.

“We nearly engaged a new guide, figuring you wouldn’t return. Lucky for you Professor Tiffin is a terrible negotiator. Otherwise you’d be swimming back to the Sault right now.”

Susette glanced toward the cabin door. “Lower your voice.”

“I can understand why you ran away. What I can’t understand is why you came back. Can you explain me that?”

“I told you this morning. I became lost in the forest, because of the clouds. This morning I found my way back to camp.”

“You did not become lost in the forest,” Elisha hissed. “You ran away. You ran away without even a farewell, because you felt as guilty as I did for doing what we did. But then you changed your mind and you came back.”

“The sun was hidden and I lost my direction—you do not believe me, but it is true. It happens even to my husband.”

“Your husband. There. At least now you’ve said the word.” Elisha seized a plate and scrubbed roughly. “You don’t have to explain yourself. Seems you’d want to, but I guess a woman like you—”

“You know nothing!” Susette threw the platter into the sand. “You are a frightened little boy! You claim you are a scientist when you are nothing but a packer, you point your rifle at Chippewas when they want only to trade! You talk like a man but you act like a frightened boy, and now you think—what? What do you think you know?”

Elisha was frozen, wordless. Susette turned away and he said, “Forgive me. I am sorry.”

She began to sob in sharp, dry coughs. Elisha touched her wrist, suddenly unsure of how to comfort the woman. She is right, he thought, I am a frightened boy. He pressed his lips to her shoulder and her scent was achingly familiar. She looked at him with an intensity that momentarily startled the boy.

“I left because I was afraid,” Susette said. “But I returned because I am not afraid anymore.”

“I don’t get your meaning.”

The woman was silent for a moment; then she drew a thick breath. “I cannot return to the Sault.”

“Because of us. Because of our union.” Elisha took both of her hands in his. “I admit that I feel very guilty about what happened. But I—”

“Sometimes I deserve it, I say something bold or I raise my voice. Then I do not blame him. I deserve what he gives to me.”

“What who gives to you?”

She shook her head. “I try very hard but I deserve it. I do. I am bold and I deserve what he gives to me.”

“Susette—who are you talking about?”

She shook her head again, her cheeks shining with tears. A thin whine escaped her throat.

“Susette, my dear.” Elisha drew the woman to him but she pulled away. “You must tell—”

“I do not blame him for the strap or the switch or the cinder tongs. But other times it is too much. He is drunk and it is too much.” Susette’s words fractured into choking sobs. “When he is drunk he cannot feel how much he hurts me. He cannot feel when it is too much.”

Elisha said nothing.

“He has a fiddle. He takes the bow of the fiddle and he uses it inside me. Do you understand? He uses it inside me and tells me terrible things. I am a dirty chienne, a cunt, a whore. I am a dirty whore and I deserve to be treated like a dog. He hurts me.”

Elisha was numbed by the woman’s words. “Please, Susette.”

“Our cabin is one room and there is no place to go. He hurts me and then he plays his fiddle. He plays a song for me, ‘La Belle Susette.’ I lay on the floor and listen to him play, and there is no place to go.”

“Stop. Please.” He drew the woman close and she buried her face against his neck. Elisha stroked her shoulder as the night’s sounds melted away. He felt lifeless, his senses dulled and confused. He pressed his lips against the woman’s hair and closed his eyes.

An image rose in the boy’s mind of Susette’s cabin in Sault Ste. Marie: a dirt floor, a flattened pallet, a soiled chemise like a stain on the wall. A single small window, a wooden crucifix. He remembered thinking that it was no better than a Chippewa cabin, a case of savage blood dominating the white. The memory sent a chill through him. Elisha moved to speak but could not. His heart throbbed and he was mortified by its intensity.

“Is there no one for you there? Your mother, or a sister…”

His question trailed to silence. Susette drew away from the boy and wiped her face. “My mother is in St. Catharines. My sister is dead. I have no one at the Sault except my husband.”

“I will help you.”

She nodded, blinking back tears.

“I will help you—we’ll go somewhere, together. We’ll go to Detroit, take a room in a boardinghouse on Woodward Avenue. I know a man named Alpheus Lenz who might give me work as a specimen cataloger. We can stay there for a while and you’ll be safe. We can go to the Rogers Theater—we can see
As You Like It
!”

A tearful smile flickered across her face. “You are a sweet boy.”

“Or we’ll go farther, to New York or to Massachusetts. We can go to Newell, where I was raised. My mother and father are living there still. We can go there and live in a proper house, with some land for crops. We can raise beans and squash and you won’t ever have to worry about your husband, ever again.”

“You are a sweet boy, but I cannot go to Detroit or Massachusetts. I wish that I could, but I cannot. I cannot go anywhere that—”

Just then the cabin door creaked open. Susette squeezed Elisha’s hand, then clattered the supper plates into a stack. Mr. Brush’s shadow darkened the doorway; then the man cleared his throat and spat.

“You are a sweet boy,” Susette whispered. “But that is not how you will help me.”

They remained at the fur post until noon the next day while Mr. Brush cataloged mineral specimens and copied field notes, recorded a few last measurements of the compass needle’s deviation. Elisha wrapped ore samples in specimen pouches, penned a date and location on each pouch’s bottom. Professor Tiffin paced along the river’s edge. At last they loaded the canoe and started downriver through damp, feverish heat, a warm breeze rippling the river’s surface. “A song,” Tiffin urged Susette, “to pace our efforts!” The woman began a listless chanson.

Sparrow hawks circled overhead as the canoe entered the lake. They paddled past the Miner’s River to the Train River, Elisha recognizing the streams from his journey with Professor Tiffin. The forest was a mixture of white pine and hemlock and beech and sugar maple; the coastline was fine siliceous sand studded with granite boulders. They encamped at dusk and ate a supper of bean stew and panbread then collapsed around the fire. Elisha woke before dawn from a dream of menacing pursuit. The party set off at first light, and at noon arrived at the Chippewa village.