The Expeditions (8 page)

He stood with his hand on the door latch. He looked anxious but exhausted, his red-rimmed eyes searching the boy’s face then trailing to an absent stare. It was as though he did not recognize his only son. At last he drew Elisha into a loose embrace. The man smelled of old, rank sweat. He kissed the crown of his son’s head, then without a word stepped into the sickroom and gently closed the door. Elisha heard his voice resume its murmured narrative.

That night the boy gathered a spare shirt and comb and tin mug into a bundle, took a loaf of bread and chunk of salt pork and some cheese from the pantry. The house was quiet. He stood at his bedroom window, staring at the meetinghouse glowing white in the moonlight, the privy’s shadowy form, the pear trees gesturing toward the chicken house. In the next room his father lay asleep, and Elisha wondered if the man would even notice his own son’s absence. He smothered a bitter sob. He wanted to kick down the bedroom door, burst in on his father and shake the man awake. Instead Elisha opened the window, then stepped through it and started down the Springfield road.

Where had she been? Elisha wondered now. It was as though his mother was being hidden away, as punishment for some unknown sin. He could not understand it. She must rest, his father had told him countless times, turning Elisha away from the closed bedroom door. Your mother is exhausted. Go now. She mustn’t be disturbed. She mustn’t ever be disturbed.

When his father left the parsonage, Elisha would pad to the bedroom and press his ear against the closed door, try the doorknob. Locked. He would hurry to Corletta’s room, then follow the woman down the hallway, watch silently as she unlocked the door. His mother lay beneath a thick quilt, her skin clammy and pale. She smiled weakly. Elisha would pull a chair beside the bed and present his most recent sketches; she would take up a pencil and show him how to use shading to create depth, how to draw a viewer’s eye to the finest detail. Finally she would hold the drawings close, point out Newell’s citizens in the thrushes and toads and bumblebees. There was Aeneas Weatherspoon in a mantis’s bony elbows, Edson in a dung beetle’s blunt brow. Elisha himself in a wiry red squirrel. She laid a hand on the boy’s knee and closed her eyes. Her breath smelled of sour milk. Stiff, bloody handkerchiefs lay wadded on the side table. At last Elisha kissed his mother’s cheek and slipped from the room, fetched Corletta to lock the door. In his own room he curled on the bed and stared at the empty ceiling. He lay there for hours, until at last he fell asleep.

A punishment, then. Elisha knew his father was disappointed in his weak faith: Reverend Stone had compared him endlessly to Newell boys who had heard the call. One boy in particular, James Davidson, had shocked the congregation by walking stiffly down the meetinghouse aisle during a sermon, then dropping to his knees with a fevered cry. For weeks there’d been talk of sending him to seminary in Cambridge. Reverend Stone had gone three days without speaking to his son; finally he told Elisha that he should be mortified. The son of a minister, yet lacking any trace of God’s will.

Elisha had confronted Davidson that afternoon in the town green. The boy was sitting against an oak tree eating a pear. Elisha asked, “How did it feel?”

“Did what feel?”

“The vision. Or whatever it was. Your fuss during the sermon.”

Davidson giggled, pear juice running down his chin. He said, “Like this.”

He rolled to his knees and cried out, with precisely the same pitch and quaver as in the meetinghouse. Elisha stared, aghast. James Davidson rose and placed the wet pear in Elisha’s palm, then ran across the green.

Now the boy started at a nearby rustle from the forest. He waited, motionless, but the sound did not repeat itself. Perhaps, he thought, I’m not homesick at all—perhaps this gloom is simply a product of the weather. Immediately he understood the thought to be false. He crouched deeper into his bedroll. Outside, rain whispered through the spruces. He thought, this is a scientist’s life: hours spent alone in a dark forest, or alone in a musty library, or alone on an endless lake. A man’s only companions were his voice, his instruments, the rain, the dark. No one explained the world to a scientist. He found answers only in nature, or in himself.

That’s a rich one, Elisha thought.

They set out the next morning despite a marbled sky and cold spray gusting off the lake. Elisha bent over the paddle, his lips pursed to stop their trembling. To distract himself he counted each paddle stroke until he reached one hundred, then began anew. A hundred strokes closer, he told himself each time. To what he didn’t know.

Susette began to sing. Her voice wavered on the first notes then dropped to a low, pure tone, a choirgirl’s tone. The song was more a chant than a true melody, every fourth paddle stroke marking a phrase; as she sang the party’s pace fell in with hers.

Mon canot est fait d’écorces fines

Qu’on pleume sur les bouleaux blancs;

Les coutures sont faites de racines,

Les avirons, de bois blanc.

Something about a canoe, something white. Elisha felt a twinge of regret at his poor French.

Je prends mon canot, je le lance

A travers les rapides, les bouillons.

Là, à grands pas il s’avance.

Il ne laisse jamais le courant.

Rain had started as a drizzle, and with Susette’s singing and the lake’s gauzy spray their passage was strangely beautiful, as though they were paddling through a cloud. After some time the rain stopped and Susette fell silent.

“Madame Morel, don’t quit just because the rain did.”

She glanced back at the boy but said nothing. He bent forward and said, “You have an awfully sweet voice.”

“You claimed to speak French, but I did not hear you singing.”

Elisha chuckled nervously. The presence of Mr. Brush and Professor Tiffin made him feel awkward and furtive. “Yes, well. My singing is worse even than my French.”

“I was told there are many French in Detroit. My husband told me this. He said that there are many voyageurs living there. That a person might hear French in the street every day.”

“Indeed, you can. There are French barbers and French tailors, a man named Chocron. The Berthelet market is owned by a Frenchman. I suppose I haven’t yet spent enough time in Detroit to practice my French—I’m from Newell, Massachusetts. That’s where I was raised.”

“I have never been in Detroit. I would like to see it someday.”

“You should visit! I could show you the Berthelet market and the French tailor—though of course your husband likely knows their locations. But if he doesn’t I could show you both, together. We could make a tour, just the three—”

Susette had stopped paddling. Elisha followed her stare to the horizon, where a gray shape slid through the mist. As he stared, the shape materialized into a canoe.

“Ahead.”

Professor Tiffin’s paddle paused, dripping. The canoe was three hundred yards distant, near enough to see three hunched forms in a vessel that was too small to be a bateau or canot du nord, but was closer in size to a Native bark canoe. Elisha strained forward. A chant rose from the distant craft.

“Are they voyageurs or Natives?” Elisha asked. “Are they Sioux?”

“Chippewas, on their way to the Sault,” Tiffin said. “Hopefully they’ve fresh meat of some sort—we can trade for tonight’s supper.”

“Start ashore,” Brush said. “We shall let them pass. If they want trade they can come to us.”

A moment’s silence; then Tiffin said, “There is no cause for alarm—we’re too deeply into Chippewa territory to encounter Sioux. And even if they are Sioux, they certainly won’t trouble a party of white men.”

Brush dug hard and the canoe swung shoreward. He took up an oilcloth-wrapped rifle from the canoe bottom and propped it between his legs. He said calmly, “Elisha, ready a rifle.”

“You need not be worried.” Susette’s voice held a note of strain. “They are not meaning trouble.”

Brush grunted as the canoe coasted toward a narrow shoreline scattered with plover. It was just a strip of stones beneath a sandstone cliff, as poor a landing site as they’d yet seen. He said, “We should be prepared, whatever the case. We are indefensible in this damned canoe. Pardon my language, Madame Morel.”

“How do we know if they mean trouble?” Elisha asked. He took up a rifle and removed the oilcloth. From his shot bag he withdrew a cartridge but did not move to set the charge.

“Put away your blasted rifle,” Tiffin said. “You will only provoke them! There are thirty thousand Chippewas in this territory. What, precisely, do you mean to accomplish?”

They skirted a massive boulder then angled back toward the beach, and as they bottomed on a swell the canoe lurched with a sound like a door dragged open. Plover rose in a flutter. Mr. Brush called, “Step out!” and jammed his paddle against a submerged rock, the canoe rolling sharply, water spurting through the split planks. The party swung over the gunwales, the surf a frigid shock at Elisha’s chest. Together they hauled the craft shoreward, Professor Tiffin stumbling on the slick lakebed, Susette groaning at the load.

“Drag it up the beach. Carefully!”

Tiffin staggered up the steep beach, his muttonchops pearled with water. Mr. Brush eased the canoe onto its side, quickly untied his pack and withdrew a scrolled cloth, unfurled it to reveal a faded American flag. He draped the flag over the canoe’s bow, just above the gashed planks.

They watched the Natives approach. The craft was but fifty yards from shore, near enough to make out the angular silhouette of the foremost paddler’s hat. The other paddlers were bareheaded. Elisha took up a rifle and wiped the hammer dry, in his nervousness dropping the percussion cap. Susette touched his arm and the boy started.

“You need not be frightened.”

“I’m not frightened.”

The woman held his gaze a moment then turned to the landing canoe.

The Natives splashed into the shallows and hoisted the craft, laid it atop a patch of stones some thirty yards distant. They started up the narrow beach. They were led by a tall, light-skinned brave wearing a tattered three-cornered hat and a scarlet cloak clasped by a medallion. He looked to be near Mr. Brush’s age. Behind him were a pair of like-looking braves wearing breechclouts and leggings and ragged calico shirts, their hair smeared with grease, their skin the color of sand. Brothers, Elisha figured. The taller brave’s left arm canted outward, as though it had been broken. The smaller brave’s eyes were ringed with black paint. He stared at Elisha.

“Bojou,” said the first Native. His medallion bore the likeness of John Quincy Adams.

“Bojou,” Susette said. She began to speak, a language that sounded like the German that Elisha had heard in Detroit’s dining halls, though muddied somewhat, the consonants drawn to a soft slur.

“What are you saying?” Mr. Brush asked sharply. “You are to say nothing except through translation of Professor Tiffin or myself.”

“I simply greeted them. I told them you are Americans. I said you have been sent by your Great Father the President to the far end of the lake. I told them you are here as friends.”

The first Native answered in a rasp, his expression calm to the point of boredom. His gaze lingered on Mr. Brush.

“They are Chippewas, from the Dead River band. He wishes to trade fish and deer meat for flour and tobacco.”

Elisha exhaled, a shiver of relief running through him. Of course they wished only to trade. Flour and tobacco. Of course.

“Tell them we would be gratified if they would accept a small gift.” Tiffin fumbled open his pack and removed a carrot of tobacco, held it aloft with an unctuous grin. He placed the tobacco at the first Native’s feet. “And tell them we will gladly accept whatever meat they might have, in exchange for more tobacco. Unfortunately we cannot spare any flour. Tell them we are as brothers to them!”

The Chippewas listened to Susette’s translation, then looked to one another in silent conference. They paced back to the canoe, scuffing across the pebbly beach. Mr. Brush took a rifle from the canoe and placed it at his feet.

“They are not meaning trouble,” Susette hissed. “Put away your rifle.”

The braves turned, each with a pair of fat whitefish held through the gills. Pink blood washed over the greenish scales.

“The meat—tell them we would actually prefer the venison.” Professor Tiffin sighed. “No matter!” He withdrew a second carrot of tobacco and placed it with the other. The first Native stared at the offering.

“It is not enough,” Susette said. “He is not satisfied with the trade.”

“That is all we will offer,” Brush said. “Tell the big buck. Now.”

The first Native spoke for a long while, his voice flat, his expression unchanged throughout the speech. Elisha studied the other braves: they shared the same low brow and broad, humped nose. Brothers, or cousins. Elisha wondered if the first Native was their father.

“He says we should turn back to the Sault. He says there have been Sioux war parties all along this shore during the past days. He says they have killed three Chippewas in the past days and taken two more as prisoner. He says that if we make him a present of whiskey and gunpowder they might come with us for some days, to protect us against the Sioux.”

“You tell him that we can protect ourselves far better than they.” Mr. Brush took up the rifle and laid it across his arms.

Before Susette could speak the braves tensed as if to sprint, and the first Native stepped toward Mr. Brush. Susette uttered a rapid string of syllables as Professor Tiffin raised his hands, shouted “Ahnowatan! Stop!
Ahnowatan!
”

“Don’t gesture with your rifle!” Elisha tried to calm the tremor in his voice. “They take it as a threat!”

“You damned fool, you will have us killed!” Professor Tiffin dragged a keg of pork from the canoe and opened his folding knife, pried up the lid. He withdrew a thick cut of side meat and shook it at the Natives, smiling desperately. “A gift, please! Some excellent pork!”

“That is far too much,” Brush said.