The Expeditions (3 page)

He woke with a start at a polite, feminine cough. Prudence Martin stood at the pew’s end, hands clasped before her. Reverend Stone stood, stifling a yawn.

“Mrs. Martin. I hope you’re well on this admirable day.”

She curtsied. “I’m awful sorry to trouble you, Reverend Stone. I asked after you at the parsonage and Corletta said you might be here.” She paused. “I hoped I could get your counsel. About my husband.”

Prudence Martin was a nervous, mole-like woman, eyes narrowed in a squint and small hands worrying the fabric of her skirts. She had once contributed a significant sum to the congregation, and within days all of Newell knew the amount of her largesse. Her husband was a wheelwright who dozed, eyes half-open, through every service.

“Matthew Martin.”

Prudence Martin nodded.

“Please, sit down.”

She perched on the pew’s edge, her gaze darting to the minister’s tousled hair. Reverend Stone straightened, smoothing his shirtfront against his chest. She was not a pleasant woman, he decided. Soul the color of weak tea.

“He hasn’t been to meeting for nigh upon seven weeks. I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

“I will call at your home this week, to speak with him. Sometimes we all need to be reminded of the importance of faith’s rituals.”

“That’s not the primary trouble. He’s been studying on pamphlets by William Miller. He went to a revival in Springfield last Sunday and that’s who they were preaching on, William Miller. It’s all he wants to talk about, Miller and his prophecies, and he don’t care about a thing else.”

The minister noticed with distaste a rime of dirt along Prudence Martin’s jaw. Strange, he thought, how much pleasure people drew from the admission of sin. As though the act itself was nothing compared to the confession and inevitable penance.

“I’m familiar with Reverend Miller’s writings. He has made a peculiar reading of the Book of Daniel.”

Prudence Martin nodded. “My husband selled our silver and sent Miller the money. And yesterday he spent thirty dollars on muslin for ascension robes. Thirty dollars.” She leaned toward Reverend Stone, her voice taut. “He believes what Miller says about October and the last day. He believes it in his heart.”

“Does your husband ever speak about the last day? Does he ever describe it?”

She nodded once. “Near daily.”

“What does he say?”

A flush bloomed on the woman’s cheeks and washed across her forehead. “He says the righteous shall gather on the hilltops, to witness the new millennium. And there will be riotous voices and war with the saints, and a dragon.”

“A dragon.”

“A crimson dragon with seven heads, with crowns on its heads. And a beast like a leopard, with the feet of a bear and mouth of a lion. And he says the righteous—Reverend Miller and his followers—will stand amidst the chaos but they shall not be harmed. He says there will be a new Jerusalem, where the righteous will dwell alongside God as neighbors, just as we’re neighbors to the Boyers.”

Reverend Stone closed his eyes and frowned. He knew Prudence Martin’s words by rote, from Revelation, but it unnerved him to hear them from another’s mouth.

“And he says I will be thrown amidst the unbelievers and murderers and liars and whores, and cast down. And I will burn in hell. Forever.” Prudence Martin sobbed, a sharp, surprised gasp, then buried her face in her hands.

Reverend Stone reached toward the woman then hesitated, imagining her bony form shuddering against his shoulder. He touched her elbow, her skin startlingly warm beneath the threadbare homespun. He searched for a comforting verse of Scripture, but instead found an image of his son in the dim parlor, reading aloud from Psalms, his voice a soft high cadence, a song.

“Tell me, Mrs. Martin: is your husband afraid of the last day? Or is he made glad?”

Prudence Martin looked up, her lips trembling. Wildness shone in her eyes. “He says he’s glad, Reverend Stone, but I know he’s afraid. I can feel it. He’s dreadful afraid.”

Good, the minister thought. He should be afraid. Reverend Stone rose, and the woman rose slowly with him. “I will speak with him soon. You must pray for your husband, Mrs. Martin.”

“I do. I pray daily for him.”

“It’s a challenge to stay the right path—even an upright man like your husband can find himself astray. He may spend hours in prayer and contemplation, then fall prey to a moment’s weakness. He may live for years in purity and good intentions, then one morning wake to find himself…confused.”

Prudence Martin stared at Reverend Stone. Her right hand kneaded the seam of her dress.

“Read on the Psalms, Mrs. Martin. ‘Why art thou cast down, O my soul, and why art thou disquieted in me? Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.’”

“I’ll dwell on those words,” Prudence Martin said miserably. “I reckon there’s nothing else to do.”

Reverend Stone murmured a farewell, then followed Prudence Martin to the meetinghouse door. Outside, the sun lay half-hidden behind the western hills, orange and scarlet streamers rising in the chalky sky. He watched the woman trudge down the cider mill road, a column of dust trailing her like a phantom. When she’d disappeared he returned to the parsonage and took off his jacket and brogans, sat at his bedroom desk with the folded letter before him. Only when the light had failed completely and he was surrounded by darkness did he think to light a lamp.

He woke shivering in the moonlit dark. His clothes felt greasy against his skin and his forehead was damp with sweat, even in the night’s chill. Reverend Stone groped atop the side table for a phosphorus match, lit a candle stub and watched the room flicker into existence. He rose from his bed and shut the half-open window, dulling the crickets’ creaking, then sat at the desk with his son’s letter and a tin of McTeague’s Patent Toothache Medication. He placed four brown tablets under his tongue. He set the tin on the desk, beside the letter and whale-oil lamp. Tin, letter, lamp—the arrangement seemed somehow ceremonial, like objects on an altar. The tablets tasted of bitter herbs.

He removed his collar and unbuttoned his shirt then waited for the numbness to creep over him. When it did, the feeling was like a velvet mask against his face, a tickle in his lips and eyelids that slowed his blood to a thick trickle. He felt deliciously warm. He fumbled four more tablets from the tin and placed them under his tongue and leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

When the surge quieted Reverend Stone picked up the letter and read the date: May 30, 1844. Ten days previous. His son was likely in the far Northwest by now, amid foreigners and half-naked savages. The minister tried to recall Elisha as a very young child, before he’d grown solemn and distant, but he could summon only certain details. The mud-colored hair. The clear blue eyes, his mother’s eyes. As a child he’d been exuberant, delighted by life, but as he’d grown older this quality had vanished. What was the pitch of his voice? In his mind’s eye Elisha spoke, but the voice belonged to Edson.

Reverend Stone read the letter again, then placed it in a drawer. A moth fluttered near the candle, its wingbeats a soft patter. Outside the crickets’ song grew louder, as if in alarm. The minister took up the candle and a whiff of smoke caught his throat, and he coughed until his chest pinched and the rasp turned wet and thready. Without looking at his palm he wiped it on his trousers. He shuffled through the kitchen to the back door and stepped out into the restless night, waiting for the dark to coalesce into familiar forms: the squat chicken house, the pump like a stooped old man, the sharp roof of the privy. To the east, Newell was asleep, its men and women dreaming of wealth and distant lands. Good people, he thought. We are all good people, absurd and lovely. We are all God’s children. Reverend Stone understood suddenly that he must leave Newell and go to his son, to tell the boy about his mother’s death. The notion pierced him.

He heard a rough scratch, like a boot scuffing pebbles. The sound paused then resumed, quickening to a steady pace. Wingbeats burst from the chicken house. Beside the house, a pair of brilliant eyes flashed then disappeared. The fox. Reverend Stone stood motionless, listening to the chickens’ uneasy warble. He backed through the doorway and padded to the lumber closet, and from the back of the closet door he lifted an antique Springfield flintlock and tattered shot bag. He loaded powder and ball and primer then moved back through the kitchen and stepped out onto the wet grass. The scratching quickened and paused, quickened and paused. Reverend Stone glimpsed a smudge of motion and he raised the musket to his shoulder and sighted down the barrel at what he thought was the fox. The scratching stopped. Sweat rose on the minister’s forehead and hands and he tightened his grip on the gun. He waited.

He stood that way for a long time, until the night was quiet save for the rhythmic chirping of the crickets.

Three

Sault Ste. Marie was a garrison town set between wide, white-flecked straits to the north and a swampy cedar thicket to the south. Elisha and Mr. Brush arrived at noon on the
Catherine Ann
and took rooms at the Johnston Hotel. They were to stay four days, to purchase supplies and await Professor Tiffin’s arrival. That first afternoon the boy sat on the hotel porch, sipping ginger beer and sketching the half-breeds and Natives that passed on the muddy road. The edge of the white world, Elisha marveled. He could not stop grinning. It seemed impossible that they were but three days’ voyage from Detroit.

By dusk he had summoned enough courage to leave the hotel, so he started past a mercantile and Baptist mission and bowling parlor, a leather goods shop, a saloon with shattered windows. The buildings were sturdy but in poor repair, the paint peeling and windows grimy. Outside a shop called Indian Curiosities, a bald, elderly Chippewa lay sleeping in the dirt. He was dressed in a breechclout and filthy broadcloth shirt. A string of saliva ran from his slack mouth. The sole full-blood Native in Newell, Joseph Gooden, lived in a white frame house and dressed in store-bought clothes, attended Baptist services every Sunday, though Elisha supposed he couldn’t properly be called Native anymore. A town Native, perhaps, as opposed to the true Natives found here. Two species of the same race.

He continued through town to Fort Brady. The picket gate was closed; a bored-looking sentry leaned from a blockhouse window and called, “Tomorrow at sunup!” Elisha waved to the man then followed the fort’s perimeter to its western side, where an encampment of shanties and bark lodges were laid out, Native and half-breed women tending cookfires as children ran shrieking along the water’s edge, a thin yellow dog darting among them. A man’s laughter rose then trailed away. The air smelled deliciously smoky. Elisha slowed his pace to survey the women: they were tall and slender, dark-haired but fair, handsome in a coarse, foreign way. A different species again from the town women in Detroit.

Some ways past the encampment Elisha came to a low hill topped with tiny bark houses. What in the world, he thought. He kneeled before one of the dwellings, then froze as if gripped by icy hands. They were Chippewa gravesites. The houses were meant to shield the graves from scavenging animals. Elisha stuffed his fists in his trouser pockets and hurried back toward town. In the slaty light Fort Brady’s pickets loomed like castle walls; above them the garrison flagpole was a black needle. He thought he had never been more grateful for such a sight.

The next morning Elisha rose early, gathered some biscuits and cheese and his notebook and Professor Tiffin’s pamphlet, then set off to explore the swampland south of town. To his disappointment he recognized every birdcall: mostly warblers and brown creepers, a few cedar waxwings. He paused for lunch in a mossy clearing and opened Tiffin’s pamphlet at random.

For example, we learn in Chippewa legend that the god of sleep is called
Weeng,
and has numerous tiny, invisible emissaries armed with
puggamaugons
(war clubs). At night these invisible spirits sneak into bedchambers and search for lying-down persons. On finding one, they ascend his forehead and smite the skull, thus inducing sleep.

Readers will doubtless recognize
an identical image
in Pope’s creation of gnomes, in his
Rape of the Lock.
More interestingly, we find similar apparitions in the
hosheewa
of Mongol myth, as the esteemed Professor Linden of Harvard has noted in his
Survey and Notes on Ancient Mythologies.
In fact, if one inspects the known corpus of Native mythology, with an eye toward similarity of image and plot, one finds a great share of myths similar to our most familiar stories. Most notably, we find parallels to many Native myths
in the Old Testament itself
.

Elisha went on to read about the Native story of creation, in which a flood covered the world, drowning every creature except a great sea turtle, or
Mikenok,
upon whose back men stood and were therefore saved. He flipped to the final chapter. Professor Tiffin’s rhetorical style mimicked that of a laborer driving piles.

In this work I have proven, through logical examination of Native myth and language, that
FIRSTLY
the Native race shares
undeniable similarity
with Christian forebearers once located in the region of Judea. S
ECONDLY
I have presented argument that a community of these
ancient Christians
migrated by land and sea to our country’s far northwest, and begat the “savage” Natives that are today so
shamefully persecuted
.

The connexion of the White and Red races is a significant, though perhaps not quite conclusive, stride toward proving the unity
of all races of Man
. For if the Master Craftsman saw fit to create White and Red men from a single source, then He undoubtedly acted similarly with the Black man! And thus it is inevitably true, and
morally certain,
that all Christian men—White, Red, and Black—are
equal before the Lord,
and deserving of every freedom and right dictated by Natural Law.

The summary continued for several pages, followed by an appendix detailing the route ancient Christians might have followed during their migration to America: from Judea across the Caspian Sea to Russia, then overland through Bering’s Straits to Canada and down across the territory. Why not? Elisha thought. Odder journeys had surely occurred.

He ate a biscuit and retraced his own journey, from his father’s house in Newell to Springfield, by rail to Worcester and Lowell then by coach to Manchester. Strangers had regarded him with curious pity. He’d struggled to conceal his fear. And then by sleigh into the snowy forest to the lumber camp. He’d felt anxious and homesick, overwhelmed by dread. He wondered if the ancient Christians had felt the same way.

He returned to town near noon. Back at the Johnston Hotel, he unlocked his door then paused with a hand on the latch. The neighboring room’s door was ajar. Elisha called, “Professor Tiffin?” He knocked, and the door swung open with a groan.

A steamer trunk sat open on the floor, its contents strewn about: a folded shirt and rolled felt hat, a heap of small canvas sacks, a rock hammer and ruler and battered writing case. On the bed lay a closed journal: Professor Tiffin’s scientific fieldbook. A tingle crawled through the boy. He called, “Professor Tiffin?
Hello?
” Elisha entered the room and took up the book.

It was a plain ten-cent journal bound with cheaply tanned calfskin—purchased new for the expedition, Elisha realized. Its pages were empty of observations and measurements, hypotheses and theories. He riffled through the book, and as he did a sheet of onionskin fluttered to the floor. Elisha held it toward the window so that sunlight filled the page.

June 9, 1844

My Dearest Dear Heart,

Now I am gone from the city where you laugh and walk and sleep, and your absence fills this ship the way a thousand men could not. Not even the memory of your smile can lift my heart. My spirits are
laid low
without you.

Do not forget to deliver thirty
Vegetables
to Mason and Crane, ten
Consumption
to Benjamin Stover (Randolph St.), twelve
Schooling of Children
to L. Thacker. Also be aware of the following debts:

Thirteen dols. to Soward

Eleven dols. twenty to Pierce

Twenty dols. fifty to Isaac Rowland

Sixteen dols. to Wm. Rowland

Five dols. to Jos. Rowland

Please do not overfeed Biddle as you are wont to.

I will return with wonderful news that will
change our lives
. My dear, my soul—
che-baum,
as the Chippewas say. These days without you stretch forward like an eternity. My only consolation is a dream of return—to your voice, to your lips, to our bed.

I am, now and forevermore,
Your deeply devoted,
G.

Elisha replaced the letter feeling vaguely ashamed. He turned to depart but was drawn to a small framed portrait lying on the bed. It was a miniature painting of a Negro woman sitting on a carved wooden armchair, a lace shawl over her shoulders and white-gloved hands clasped in her lap. Behind her stood a plump, pasty man with orange muttonchops. He was dressed in a black frock coat and ruffled shirt and striped waistcoat, an opera hat. Wedding clothes. The sight confused Elisha; then he understood that she was the Dear Heart of the letter. The white man’s right hand rested on the Negro woman’s shoulder. A serene smile lay on his lips.

A clatter of silverware rose from the dining room, and Elisha froze. He moved to the doorway: muttered conversation, a clink of glass, the first whistled notes of “Fanny Gray.” He turned back to the trunk and withdrew a shaving kit, a pair of woolen socks, a pocket compass, a Hebrew lexicon in chipped black boards. Beneath the lexicon was a parcel wrapped in oilcloth and bound tightly with twine. He turned it over in his hands. It was the size of a Bible, though rounder and heavier, lacking a book’s crisp rectangular form. He picked at the knotted twine.

Footsteps rose on the stairs. Elisha shoved the parcel and lexicon and socks and shaving kit into the trunk and ran to the door. He stepped quietly into the hallway, and as he did a man appeared on the stairs holding a tumbler half-full of whiskey. He arched his eyebrows at Elisha.

“Good afternoon.”

“Good afternoon.”

Professor Tiffin sat heavily on the hall bench. He was stouter than his portrait’s likeness, with an infant’s creamy skin and squint eyes and soft, sagging chin. Coarse orange muttonchops marked his cheeks. The man was sweating and his shirtsleeves were pinned at the elbows, exposing hairless forearms and fingers like steamed sausages. He tugged at his stained collar.

“I resent the mundanity of town life—I much prefer the variety of a city like Detroit. I witnessed a Siamese elephant there last Monday. An exceedingly interesting creature: size of a steam locomotive, yet it could rise onto its hind legs for hoecakes. An Italian fellow rode it like a horse, just rode it along neat as can be. Far slower than a horse, however.”

“I suppose it would be.”

“Yes, on account of its colossal size requiring significant arterial pressure to induce motion of its limbs. It is physiologically impossible for such an animal to move rapidly.” Professor Tiffin removed his hat, exposing a pink scalp fringed by damp orange curls. He scrutinized Elisha as he rubbed his forehead. “And how did a healthy young fellow like yourself get joined with our humble expedition?”

Elisha had imagined the man as a stooped, older gentleman in a high-buttoned vest and pince-nez spectacles, his brow wrinkled by years of contemplation. Instead he looked like a lounger in a Woodward Avenue billiard parlor. Elisha said, “I read your pamphlet,
Language and History of the North American Indian Tribes.
It’s why I wanted to join the expedition.”

Professor Tiffin hooted, settling deeper onto the bench. “You will have me blushing!”

“And I aim to identify a new species this summer—a fish or plant or insect, anything. I want to be a scientist, like you and Mr. Brush.”

“You have your terminology misapplied, young fellow! We have a word in the sciences for men like Mr. Brush: we call them
toilers
. They are skilled professionals, adept at gathering specimens and running survey lines and executing sketches—but this is not the work of the scientist. Combining observation with hypothesis—synthesis,
suntithenai
—do you see? Drawing conclusions from a corpus of knowledge, to produce a greater truth. That is the prize. Do you understand?”

“Yes sir.”

“You see, facts are like rocks. They are dead. Ideas are like trees. They possess the ability to grow. Facts are useless except in service of an idea.” Professor Tiffin drank off the whiskey then handed Elisha the empty glass. “Toilers do, of course, serve a vital purpose. Science requires these people, much as a complex clock requires each minute screw.”

Tiffin’s manner reminded Elisha of his favorite uncle, Lawrence, who would visit yearly from Boston when Elisha was a boy. Lawrence’s first business upon arrival was to haul Elisha onto his knee and pluck a penny from each nostril. Professor Tiffin was swaying slightly, as if on a rolling ship; then Elisha understood that he was drunk.

“So, my healthy young friend! What would you like to be: a scientist, or a toiler?”

Elisha grinned. “Both. I’d like to learn from both Mr. Brush and yourself, if that’s possible.”

“You don’t recognize the significance of this expedition, do you? Our discoveries this summer will twist the nose of the entire United States!” Tiffin tapped Elisha on the knee. “Your grandchildren will be discussing this expedition. Your grandchildren’s grandchildren. And et cetera.”

“I’m very honored to be on this expedition, Professor Tiffin, truly I am. I admire your ideas deeply. You’re a great scholar of the Native people.”

The man belched softly. “I wish I had a hoecake. I am near starved in this funny little town.”

Elisha said nothing. The word
suntithenai
lingered in his mind, accompanied by a pang of gloom; it seemed a symbol of how little he knew. As a child he’d been indifferent in the schoolroom but a scholar in the creek behind his father’s house. And what had he learned? The feeding habits of fox sparrows. The differences between stone flies and dragonflies and mayflies. He’d spent his days knee-deep in the chilly water, the sun’s hot stare on his neck, gathering specimens and executing pretty sketches. A budding young toiler at work.

Professor Tiffin was regarding Elisha curiously. “Go now, take some fresh air. Go on. I am told it can be invigorating.”

Elisha hurried down the corridor. He was still holding the man’s empty whiskey glass. As he reached the stairs Professor Tiffin called, “Young fellow! What is your name?”

“Elisha Stone.”

“Elisha Stone! I shall teach you to be a scientist this summer. By expedition’s end you will be teaching me!”