The Expeditions (9 page)

Tiffin seized another carrot of tobacco, laid the pork and tobacco before the first Native. He said, “Madame Morel, tell him we would be grateful if they would guide us for the next days. Tell him immediately.”

Before Susette could speak the first Native mumbled a short phrase. She said, “They want whiskey and powder. Not meat.”

“Listen to me now,” Brush said. “You tell him that this parley is ended. You tell him that if he troubles us a moment longer, white men from the fort will arrive with as many rifles as the trees in the forest. You tell him he will be driven from his fishing and hunting grounds, and his family will starve. Tell him now.”

“Do not say any such thing!”

“Tell him now.” Brush’s words were clipped by rage. He shifted the rifle in his grip, and as he did the Chippewas dashed to their canoe, the first Native’s hat tumbling from his head. Susette shouted as Professor Tiffin stepped forward with arms outstretched, shouting
Ahnowatan! Brothers!
The Chippewas ducked behind the canoe and reappeared with muskets at their shoulders. Elisha fell to one knee and leveled his rifle at the smallest brave. He felt so weak that he feared he would drop the weapon. The Chippewa muskets looked to be antique fowling pieces, though at close range Elisha knew their age would matter little. If they fired a volley it would be a terrible scene indeed.

Susette spoke. Her voice was calm and measured, the tone of a mother reading Scripture to a child. Elisha stared into the smallest brave’s eyes: they were black-ringed like a raccoon’s, betraying a tension bordering on panic. His musket was aimed at Elisha’s stomach. Beside him, the taller brave stood with a musket laid across his twisted arm, as though on a gnarled tree limb. Susette continued to speak, and with a rush of relief Elisha understood that she was saying far more than Brush had intended.

At last she stopped speaking. The silence was broken by a seagull’s chatter. The first Native muttered a short phrase.

“They will depart. They will not trouble us. Put away your rifles.”

A vision rose in Elisha’s mind of the party laid out along the beach like cordwood, blood washing over the gray stones. He prayed that he wouldn’t be sick. Susette stepped toward Elisha and yanked his rifle barrel down. “Now! Let them depart.”

“I am going to address them,” Tiffin said. “And you are not to interfere.”

“Do not say anything foolish.” Mr. Brush had not lowered his rifle.

Professor Tiffin’s face was beaded with sweat. The first Native’s musket was trained on his chest. “Tell them I am seeking news of their ancestors, of their grandfather’s grandfathers. Tell them I will learn of their ancestors’ great acts of courage, and that I will tell the entire land, and that their Great Father the President will be awed, and that white men will treat them with respect. Tell them they will be given gifts of fine land, and gunpowder, and whiskey, and tobacco, and they will never want for food. Tell them.”

Susette spoke for a long while. The first Native uttered a few words, then as one they lowered their muskets and stowed them inside the canoe. The first Native crossed the beach, his stare fixed on Mr. Brush, and took up the pork and tobacco, then fetched his hat and dusted it off before settling it on his head. He walked slowly back to the canoe. The Natives hoisted the craft into the shallows and swung gracefully aboard, then set to paddling. Within moments the canoe had vanished into the white mist.

Susette said, “He wishes you success.”

Two

In Detroit Reverend Stone took a windowless room on Miami Avenue and collapsed into bed, his throat torn to wet shreds, the ceiling blurring before his eyes, his ears feeling like they were stuffed with tow. Sleep washed over him, his waking hours obscured by feverish daydreams. On Saturday he pulled himself upright and stepped slowly down to the street. Sunlight pierced his eyes. He stumbled along the sidewalk as if dragged by a team of horses.

The surgeon was a cheery bewhiskered Englishman wearing a black linen coat stiff with bloody stains. He ushered the minister into a makeshift operating theater in his parlor, seated him in a high-backed chair fitted with leather straps. The floor was strewn with sawdust. The surgeon laid two calloused fingers alongside Reverend Stone’s neck. The man grunted. He said, “You feel set to burst.”

“I suffered a coughing spell on the steamboat. I felt—” Reverend Stone paused. “I felt as though I was ascending into the heavens.”

The surgeon chuckled. “I suspect you’ll remain earthbound for some hours yet. Is this a common occurrence?”

Reverend Stone thought to tell him about his visions of souls, the ghostly colored nimbuses. “No. It is rare.”

The man squinted into Reverend Stone’s ears, pinched his earlobes. “Besides the consumption, I would hazard you have a touch of milk sickness. It’s an illness of the nervous faculties, symptomized by spells and paleness and morbidly strong arterial excitement. It can cause weakness, queer sights—over time it can cause a crippling of one’s mental powers.” He straightened. “Of course if you are interested in a professional diagnosis I can supply one, for two dollars.”

“I don’t think that will be required.”

“Then.” He cuffed Reverend Stone’s shirtsleeve and from a coat pocket withdrew a leather thong, cinched the minister’s arm. He tapped the crook of his elbow until a thick blue vein rose like a worm beneath the skin. The surgeon turned to a sideboard and a tarnished pewter tray filled with instruments. A moment later Reverend Stone heard the quick scuff of a blade being stropped.

Outside the window, a hatless Native stood talking to a ruddy Irish constable, their peculiar accents audible in the quiet room. Every nation of the world, Reverend Stone thought, here at the country’s edge. The notion confused him somehow. He glanced at the surgeon, and as he did an airiness lifted him, a pink haze surrounding the man’s form. Reverend Stone drew a sharp breath.

“Now, then.” The surgeon tapped the minister’s arm. He pressed a steel lancet against the vein, and for an instant the split skin showed; then a scarlet line welled and thickened. Blood slipped down Reverend Stone’s forearm and spattered on the sawdust. He watched for a moment then turned away.

“I’ll take just enough to settle your pulse.” The surgeon turned to his instruments, whistling a lilting child’s tune: “Pop! Goes the Weasel.”

Reverend Stone wondered, as the seconds passed, how much blood it might take to calm his heart. He imagined his lips turning gray, his fingers stiffening as sawdust clotted around him, the surgeon whistling all the while. A strange euphoria overtook him.
The natural body is an obstruction to the soul or spiritual body.
Reverend Stone wished he had a tin of tablets, then realized he didn’t need them.

As blood drained from his arm the minister felt as though his body was rising from the chair, up to the parlor ceiling, then through it into the cloudless blue sky.

He felt strong enough that next Monday to emerge onto Miami Avenue, the sidewalk slick with rain, buggies slapping down the wide clay street. The sky was an iron-gray sheet. A sweet, loamy smell hung in the air.

He walked to the Grand Circus and watched traffic swirl around the fountain, then closed his eyes and listened to the wagons’ jolt and creak and clap, the click of horsewhips, the shouts of hackmen in French and German and country English. The din of commerce. Boot heels thundered on the sidewalk planks. Detroit was a hundredfold louder than he’d expected. He continued along Macomb Avenue, past a silversmith and druggist and crowded gambling hall, a grocery, a brick Presbyterian church with its doors propped open. The sidewalks were teeming with newspaper sellers and laborers and ladies in crinolines carrying silk parasols. At State Street, the Catholic Orphan Asylum stood beside the Protestant Orphan Asylum. Reverend Stone grinned at the sight. He was filled with wonder at the city’s rush and vigor.

Hunger pangs prodded him. He bought an ear of corn wrapped in newsprint from a Negro sidewalk vendor, unwrapped the
City Examiner
and surveyed the day-old stories. Congress appropriating two thousand dollars for the purchase of shoehorns. The steamer
Atlantic Star
catching fire and exploding while at dock in Baltimore, killing dozens of cattle. Summer snowstorms wreaking chaos in London. Fifty crates of raisins received and for sale at Z. Chandler’s. Reverend Stone rubbed grease from his fingers on the paper’s edge. The stories seemed as eccentric and irrelevant as fiction.

He scanned the back page for news of steamboat departures, and his eye caught on a notice entitled “Delusions.” It read:

Our country appears to be sadly affected with delusions just now, the consequences of which are quite frightful. How are we to account for this? We will not venture an explanation. One thing is certain, however. Profligate and designing knaves too frequently seize upon these delusions as a means of livelihood, and inculcate false doctrines, such as the new clique of Millerism. This sect has attracted of late a great number of converts from other faiths, most notably at the recent revival in Monroe.

Even here, Reverend Stone thought, at the edge of civilization. The thought was troubling but offered a hint of comfort. We are all of us the same, even the Natives and Irish and Jews and Chinese. He wadded the paper and dropped it beside a hog snuffling in the gutter.

At the Military Square Reverend Stone asked a hackman for directions to the public land office, then followed the instructions to Woodward Avenue and a two-story stone building with white columns flanking an outsized door. Inside, he paused to regard the baroque, shadowy ascension scene painted on the ceiling: The artist had endowed Jesus with a tense grimace as he reached toward a spiky, radiant sun. It was as though Christ was afraid of being impaled by sunbeams. The overall effect was one of grotesque comedy.

The surveyor general’s office was located on the second floor, at the end of a long marble hallway. The door was painted to read
Charles A. Noble
. Reverend Stone tugged at his shirtsleeves and straightened his hat while a voice inside the office murmured, “Thirty west, township forty-five north, section fifteen, Joseph T. Smithfield. Range thirty west, township—”

He stepped inside and the voice paused. A man wearing a boiled shirt and green-tinted spectacles looked up from behind a desk. At the room’s rear, a sober-looking man sat with his feet propped atop a low bookcase, one hand tucked into his waistcoat, his shirtfront spotted with tobacco juice. A robe of flesh swaddled his neck. The office smelled strongly of vinegar.

“Mr. Charles Noble?”

The man squinted at Reverend Stone. His brows formed a single thatched hood above deep-set eyes.

“I would like to discuss a scientifical expedition that I believe was commissioned under your authorization.”

“And which expedition might that be?”

“It is directed by Mr. Silas A. Brush, to the northern peninsula. I suspect it departed Detroit some three weeks ago.”

Charles Noble worked a quid in his cheek but said nothing.

“My son is a member of the expedition. Elisha Stone.”

Noble swung his legs down and turned to a rolltop desk. He flipped open a large logbook and licked his thumb, began slowly turning pages. Reverend Stone moved a step forward and the bespectacled man’s expression tightened.

“Yes,” Charles Noble said, “Elisha Stone, packman and general scientific assistant. We are agreed that your son is joined to an expedition directed by Mr. Silas Brush and Professor George Tiffin. A good fellow, Silas Brush. A uniquely philanthropic individual.”

“I would like to know their intended route. I am on an urgent errand to locate my son.”

From the street below came a cornet’s melodic tunings, then a snare drum’s rattle and a child’s squeal of laughter. A parade was assembling. Reverend Stone glanced at the bespectacled man: his expression had softened to a curious stare, his eyes barely visible behind the colored lenses.

“Now. What you are proposing is difficult.”

“Why is it difficult?”

Noble slapped the book shut. “Many people are waiting to see what Mr. Brush will discover in the northern territory. The possibilities are illimitable: timber, rich farmland, minerals. Already there are rumors of copper and gold. Knowledge of his route might well inspire land speculation.”

“I am not at all interested in what the expedition might discover. My only aim is to locate my son. Certainly no one besides myself is concerned with that knowledge.”

Charles Noble chuckled as though indulging a child. “You would not be the first father to trade on his son’s name, Mr. Stone.”

“Reverend Stone.”

“Pardon?”

“Reverend Stone. That is my common address.”

Noble dribbled a dark stream into a tarnished brass cuspidor beside the desk. He glanced at the bespectacled man; the man smiled faintly, then turned to the ledger on his desk and scratched in the margin with a dry pen.

Reverend Stone felt as though he was playing a game in which he did not understand the rules. He ignored the feeling and smiled pleasantly at the two men. Charles Noble remained expressionless, fingertips tapping the logbook.

“My sincere apologies,” Noble said finally. “It is a violation of statute to offer details of an expedition’s route before its completion. I hope you can sympathize.”

“I can offer my word before God that our discussion would remain private.”

The bespectacled man spoke in a reedy, gentle voice. “How might we be certain you are who you claim? With every respect, Reverend Stone, we’ve seen dreadful bad behavior from speculators.”

The minister drew a worn Bible from his breast pocket and passed it to the man. He swallowed hard to quell a cough. “That is my inscription, in my hand. William Edward Stone.”

The bespectacled man appeared unmoved. “So it is.”

Outside, a brass band struck up a march that rose above a choir of children’s shouts and a charcoal peddler’s hoarse call. Charles Noble paced to the open window. He shook his head, his fleshy neck wobbling. “We cannot offer details of an expedition’s route, whatever the circumstance. It’s the nature of men to be greedy—surely I don’t need to advise you of that. I have seen men forfeit their honor at the faintest whiff of money.”

“Have you?”

Noble scowled at the minister. “I have seen it firsthand! Just last month one of our surveyors was found falsifying timber reports, so that an accomplice could purchase the choicest lots. The accomplice was a wealthy gentleman but the poor surveyor could barely afford tobacco. Now they are setting together in jail. I imagine they have some right interesting discussions about greed.”

The march faded as the brass band set off toward the river. Charles Noble stuffed a hand into his waistcoat. “Now. It is nearly impossible for us to provide details of your son’s route.”

“Nearly impossible.”

The man turned to the window so that Reverend Stone could not see his face. “As I said, it is astonishing what effect money can have on men.”

Reverend Stone nodded uncertainly. The bespectacled man looked away, fiddling with an inkwell. With a start the minister realized he was expected to offer the men money. A bribe. Heat rushed to his cheeks then coalesced in a knot at his throat. He clapped his hat on his head and said, “Thank you both for a remarkable discussion.”

“You are welcome to call at any time,” Noble said. “Any time at all.”

Reverend Stone opened the door, then paused with his hand on the knob. To the bespectacled man he said, “You should be ashamed of your activities.”

The man did not look up from the ledger.

“Both of you should be ashamed of your un-Christian activities. It is a disgrace. A disgrace to this city and a sin against God.”

“Why, Reverend!” Charles Noble’s voice was hollow with resentment. “Are you suggesting some form of impropriety? For if you are, I can assure you it exists solely and completely in your own imagination!”

“You know profoundly well what I am suggesting.”

“Then I pity you, sir, for owning such a wicked imagination—and as a man of God, no less!”

Reverend Stone thought to respond then recognized the gesture’s futility. He would accuse Charles Noble, and the man’s taunts would turn bitter and scornful, his face grow crimson with fury. Noble would stride to the door and command Reverend Stone to leave, and the minister would be alone in a strange city, rootless, waiting for a son who might never return. The thought exhausted him.

He turned without a word and hurried down the long hallway, his heels echoing on the polished marble. Reverend Stone thought he had never heard a lonelier sound.