Centennial (49 page)
Authors: James A. Michener
The news that they were not sailing till next day distressed Levi. “Why did he make us hurry so?” he asked petulantly, and Elly explained that no doubt Captain Frake had intended sailing, as planned, but that something unforeseen had come up. “No,” Levi said slowly, “I think he just wanted our fifty-three dollars. He wanted to get us aboard so we couldn’t change our minds.” They were so tired they fell asleep without solving the problem or trying the evening meal.
They ate a huge breakfast, then climbed down the gangplank to buy the gear they had failed to get the day before. At various shops along the waterfront they purchased rope and axes and buckets of grease for the wagon and replacements for broken harness and barrels of flour and bacon and all the last-minute things that storekeepers reminded them of. “You’ll want a second rifle,” everyone warned him, but he said, “I have the best rifle made.” However, a gunsmith showed him a fine used Hawken and assured him, “This is the best rifle in the world for the prairie,” so Levi bought it for eleven dollars.
It was half past eleven when he and Elly got back to the boat, loaded with gear and guiding a Negro slave boy who trailed behind with the rifle and the buckets of grease. At noon one of the ship’s stewards passed along the decks ringing a bell and calling, “Dinner for all! It won’t wait.”
Elly, of course, was hungry, but Levi said, “I’m going to stay on deck. I want to see them shove off.” A fellow passenger who heard this laughed and said, “We’re not sailing today.”
“We aren’t?”
“Not for days.”
Levi found this hard to believe, but at this moment the two-wheeled carriage he had seen the previous night came onto the levee, bearing the same handsome young officer. “Captain Frake? There’s a big dinner tonight after church. All right?”
“We’re leaving tomorrow, twelve sharp,” Frake responded, and the carriage disappeared.
So that afternoon Levi and Elly explored the city, restricting themselves to the three oldest streets near the river. With apprehension they passed the large and ominous Catholic cathedral; they had never spoken to a Catholic so far as they knew, but they had heard various Mennonite and Lutheran ministers preach about them, and that taught them enough to be cautious.
That evening at supper a passenger told them, “At seven I’m going up the hill to the Presbyterian church for worship. Care to come along?”
Elly said she would like that: “We should give thanks that we’ve come so far in safety,” and in the pale light of evening they walked past the streets they had visited that afternoon and up to the third level of the city, where on Fourth Street they came to that handsome old church with the white steeple and the picket fence.
From its portico they could look back down the hill and across the sleeping river to the quiet hills of Illinois. In that direction lay home, and never had it seemed so distant, so far beyond recovery.
The service was appropriate. It dealt with Ruth, who had gone into the fields of Boaz, and the minister read those extraordinary lines regarding the trick whereby Naomi caught a husband for her daughter-in-law, Ruth:
“
And it shall be, when he lieth down, that thou shalt mark the place where he shall lie, and thou shalt go in, and uncover his feet, and lay thee down; and he will tell thee what thou shalt do.
“
And she said unto her, All that thou sayest unto me I will do ...
“
And when Boaz had eaten and drunk, and his heart was merry, he went to lie down at the end of the heap of corn: and she came softly, and uncove
red his feet, and laid her down.
“
And it came to pass at midnight, that the man was afraid, and turned himself: and, behold, a woman lay at his feet.
“
And he said, Who art thou? And she answered, I am Ruth thine handmaid: spread therefore thy skirt over thy handmaid
…”
He preached for some minutes on this theme, but Levi heard none of the message, for he was speculating, with Pennsylvania Dutch forthrightness, on that curious phrase “and she uncovered his feet,” and he whispered to Elly, “I bet she uncovered a lot more than his feet,” and Elly blushed and whispered back, “It’s the Bible way of explaining things,” and he replied, “I could explain it a lot clearer.”
The minister now turned to his right, where in a special pew reserved for wealthy patrons sat the young captain Levi had seen at the levee. “One of our sons leaves shortly for the west to do our government’s work,” the preacher said, “and we join his distinguished family in wishing him Godspeed and safe return.” Levi looked at the captain and saw that he sat with a very handsome pair of women, a younger one who must be his wife, and an older woman with silvery hair who could be either his mother or his mother-in-law. They nodded sedately as the minister spoke of their captain, and he looked modestly at the floor. He was wearing a sword whose gold hilt projected at his chest, and now he transferred his right hand to the hilt, gripping it so tightly that his knuckles stood out. He was praying.
Now the minister turned to another section of the church, where a variety of couples sat, men and women in rude dress, and he addressed himself to them: “These strangers from Vermont go forth to a marvelous destiny, to take civilization and the word of God to distant Oregon. God surely will protect them on their way so that storms and famine and the deadly Indian shall not prevail. To the men I say, ‘Be strong,’ and to the women, ‘Be faithful.’ And remember that it was Ruth, of whom we spoke this night in another context, who delivered the immortal words which guide all pilgrims:
“And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God
.
“
Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me.
”
Levi slipped his hand into Elly’s, and whereas many of the women in the Vermont group wept, she looked straight ahead and gripped his hand as firmly as if she were a man.
When the service ended the young captain left his pew and passed among the Vermont emigrants, wishing them well and assuring them that he and his sergeant would be accompanying them through the worst of the Indian country and that there was little to fear. As Levi Zendt strained to hear this reassuring news he felt his arm being taken, and turned to see Curtis Wainwright, the man who had tried to buy his horses that morning.
“Hello!” Wainwright said amiably. “Glad to see you’re a churchman.”
“It’s a long trip. We need blessing.”
“Yesterday I was importunate,” Wainwright apologized. “Today I want you to meet our minister,” and he led Levi and Elly to the porch, where the minister was bidding his parishioners goodnight. “Reverend Oster,” Wainwright said, “I wish you’d inform these strangers that I’m a man of reasonably decent character. I’m afraid I frightened them yesterday.”
Reverend Oster turned and smiled. Grasping the hands of Levi and Elly, he beamed on them and said, “This is Curtis Wainwright, responsible citizen and good friend of this church. You can trust him in anything except when he’s trying to buy your horse.”
Elly laughed, and Wainwright said, “The wrong words, Reverend, the wrong words. I was trying to convince them they ought not take their fine horses onto the Oregon Trail. It’ll only kill them.”
“In that he’s right,” Reverend Oster said. “Our experience is that you must take oxen, not horses or mules.”
“What’s that about mules?” a new voice asked, and they turned to face Captain Mercy.
“Captain Maxwell Mercy,” the minister said. “I don’t believe I caught your names.”
“Levi and Elly Zendt, Lancaster, Pennsylvania.”
“Are you the couple with the Conestoga?” Mercy asked.
“That’s ours.”
“We’re going west together.”
“When?”
Captain Mercy broke into a laugh. “With Captain Frake? Who knows! He was scheduled to sail on Wednesday. He may make it by Monday.”
“Why did he make me rush so?”
“He likes to get his freight aboard ... fare paid.”
“But we’re eatin’ three meals a day.”
“Cheaper to feed you than to lose you.” He bowed politely to Elly and said, “Tomorrow buy lots of cloth and three pairs of shoes that fit. And as for the horses, they do not do well on the trail. If you can make a profitable deal, consider it.”
“I love those horses,” Levi said stubbornly, and the men knew that further argument was useless, for they were the kind of men who loved their horses too, and they appreciated his refusal to trade.
“He’ll have trouble,” Captain Mercy said as the Zendts left. “I’m taking mules—army orders—and they’ll give trouble enough.”
If Captain Frake had sailed on Friday noon, it is probable that Levi and Elly Zendt would have gone to Oregon without ever knowing that a place like Rattlesnake Buttes in Colorado existed, but the boat did not sail, so on Friday afternoon Levi and Elly strolled along the streets of downtown St. Louis, buying cloth and extra shoes, and as they turned a corner off what used to be Rue de l’Eglise they came upon a building unlike any they had seen before. It seemed to be a store but it was more like a theater. Its front was plastered with signs announcing Mr. L. Reed, Gastriloquist Extraordinary; Master Haskell, Wizzard of the Ages, Thaumaturgist and Metamorphosist; Madame Zelinah-Kah-Nourinha, Fair Lady of Turkey; and Last Time to See the Gigantic Elephant Discovered in These Regions by Dr. Albert C. Koch, now of London.
Levi looked at Elly as if to ask whether she wished to see these wonders; she shrugged her shoulders, and they were about to pass on, when the owner of the museum came into the street and cajoled them with promises of delights they could not even imagine: “You may never have a chance to see the mighty elephant, because next month we must send it to Europe.”
Since neither Levi nor Elly had ever seen an elephant, except in books, they diffidently allowed the man to sell them tickets, and in they went. It was, as Levi had expected, mostly a theater, with chairs and a stage onto which came a juggler and two pretty girls. Then Mr. Reed appeared; he was worth the whole admission, because standing alone with no equipment of any kind, he could make almost any sound you might care to hear: a roaring alligator, a train falling off a trestle, a trumpeter playing an aria from Donizetti, the explosion of a volcano.
The Zendts were quite captivated by Mr. Reed, and Elly was convinced he must have little bugles and things hidden in his mouth, but Levi asked, “How could he?” They were about to leave when the manager reminded them, “You haven’t seen the elephant,” and they passed behind a curtain expecting to see a live elephant. Instead, they saw something they would never forget: a truly massive skeleton of a gigantic mastodon that had lived along the riverbank thousands of years ago. They were so astonished that they barely heard the monologue: “... ate a ton of hay each day ... each mighty tusk twenty-two feet long ... the mother carried the baby in her womb for four years, seven months and nineteen days ... I want this young lady to lie down beside the foot ... it could crush her entire body with one savage blow ... the tail was nine feet long ... huge, huge, huge.”
The Zendts remained staring at the giant skeleton long after the other spectators had left, Levi in particular being captivated by it. “How could he find enough to eat?” he kept asking.
“You heard the man. A ton of hay every day.”
“But where would he find it?”
“If he had a trunk to match the rest of him,” Elly reasoned, “he could stand in one spot and sweep in a ton of grass.”
When they reached the streets they found themselves in a veritable flood, and Levi pondered how he might get Elly back to the boat without being drenched, but she said, “I’m not afraid of a little rain.” They were about to set forth when they heard themselves being hailed. “You there! From Pennsylvania! Want a ride back? This is going to get worse.” It was Captain Mercy heading for his nightly intelligence regarding the
Fell
.
When they were inside his carriage he told them, “I’m being sent west by the army. To select a site for a new fort. Sergeant Lykes, eight mules and me.”
At the
Fell
, Captain Frake warned Mercy, “We sail tomorrow at twelve sharp. And you better have them mules aboard, because this boat never waits a minute.”
So the Zendts went up the gangplank, and for some time they lingered on deck, staring at the lights of a city which had been hospitable, and Elly saw principally the dark river which was beginning to rise because of the excessive rains, but Levi saw only the elephant, massive and plodding and filling the sky with its premonitory form.
On Saturday, May 4, to everyone’s amazement, Captain Frake finally ordered his crew to fire up the boilers, bring in the gangplanks and cast off from the iron rings. At twelve sharp, as he had predicted, the
Robert Q. Fell
, with as full a load as the craft could carry, set out for the middle of the Mississippi and turned its bow upstream.
It was to be a difficult and ugly day, for whereas the steamboat did well in the slow-moving Mississippi, when it reached the mouth of the Missouri, that river was throwing so much water into the main stream and so much mud, that for some hours the
Robert Q. Fell
seemed to be standing still. Captain Frake grew plainly worried, allowed his craft to slip backward some distance, then headed for the Illinois shore. Ordering a major head of steam, he tried again, but his engine could deliver only six knots forward while the river was flowing four knots in the opposite direction.