The Expeditions (28 page)

When Elisha finished with his pack he followed the same procedure for the minister’s, then hefted the bundle with a grunt. He removed a sack of shot and transferred it to his own pack. Then he cinched the leather stays.

“Your companions?” Reverend Stone asked. “Would you like to say your farewells?”

“They do not deserve it.”

Reverend Stone waited for the boy to explain his insolence. “Come now, Elisha! Surely they deserve a farewell.”

“They deserve each other and nothing more. Believe me, Father.”

Elisha helped the minister to his feet. He hoisted the man’s pack, then settled it against his back and adjusted the portage strap. Reverend Stone exhaled sharply, steadying himself under the weight. Elisha fixed him with a searching gaze. “Can you continue?”

The minister nodded. He shifted from foot to foot, concentrating on breathing. The burden on his back was nearly unbearable.

“We are soon safe,” Elisha said, then gestured to the waiting voyageur and started westward into the forest. Ignace Morel hoisted his pack and followed the boy.

Reverend Stone surveyed the camp: two sagging tents before a cold cookfire, a kettle overturned on a patch of dirt, a worn flannel shirt fluttering from a low limb. Mr. Brush and Professor Tiffin stood like exhausted militiamen, hatless and bootless, arms folded over their chests. Reverend Stone could not decipher their expressions: gloom edged with anger, a sour farewell.
We are soon safe,
Elisha had said. I have arrived in the midst of something, Reverend Stone thought.

He raised a hand to the men then followed his son westward into the forest.

Two

They hiked back along the Indian trail through three long, humid days. Mornings brought black flies and evenings a warm, wisping breeze that yielded little comfort. Elisha and Reverend Stone trailed Ignace Morel, struggling to keep pace, calling out when the voyageur disappeared from view. The boy continually monitored his father’s condition. When they paused to rest Reverend Stone fell quickly asleep, his eyes twitching beneath their lids; but when Elisha woke the man he rose without protest and continued forward. He seemed immersed in profound concentration.

Evenings, Morel prepared suppers of game birds stewed with rice and seasoned strongly with pepper. Elisha found himself watching the man. He had imagined the voyageur as a crabbed, ugly gentleman, skin mottled by drink, tongue darting over wet, vulgar lips. But his appearance was nearly the opposite: thickset and vigorous, with smooth, tanned skin and handsome features. His accent when he spoke was a low, rich echo of Susette’s. Since their departure he had said almost nothing.

On the fourth day of travel they came into a swampy region cluttered with pepperbush and rhododendron, the ground heaped with deadfall, the air redolent of decay. Clouds of blue-winged butterflies whirled around them. They encamped that evening in a maple grove, and after supper Morel withdrew a canvas case from his pack and from it removed a fiddle and bow.

A cold shiver moved through Elisha. Ignace Morel ran a thumb along the bow, then bent over the instrument and twisted the tuning pegs as he plucked the strings. Reverend Stone woke from a doze and smothered a cough. Morel fitted the fiddle against his chest and raised the bow; then he launched into a fast hornpipe, stamping his foot to keep time.

“Remarkable, is it not? He is surely unschooled in performance, yet he plays like a backwoods Paganini. Like he has bargained his very soul.”

“His wife Susette spoke of his playing. She did not admire it.”

“He has composed a song for the woman—the title is ‘La Belle Susette.’ The beautiful Susette. Difficult to imagine that she was not flattered, the poor woman.”

Elisha said nothing. The voyageur seemed engaged in conversation with the instrument, scowling as the tune deepened then grinning as it rose to a sharp arpeggio. Sweat shone on his neck. The melody dipped then steadied, a pair of phrases carrying the tune until they disappeared under a run of notes, then emerged in a higher key. Finally Morel stiffened and the song drew to a slurred close. He raised the bow again.

“Ah! Here is ‘La Belle Susette’ now,” Reverend Stone said. “Maudlin, of course, but quite charming in its fashion.”

The boy’s throat tightened as he watched Morel play. Elisha could not manage to follow the tune. In his mind’s eye he saw the voyageur in a cramped, dirt-floor shanty, swaying over the fiddle as Susette lay motionless on a straw pallet. Then he saw the man’s livid face move over the woman. Susette’s eyes shone with fear. Elisha tried to push the image away but it remained as a lurid tableau.

The song halted in a squeal as Morel jerked the bow away. He returned the fiddle to its case, muttering.

“She spoke of your playing,” Elisha said. “Your wife. She spoke of the songs you would play for her, of your skill with the bow.”

“She never enjoyed the playing.” Morel carefully stowed the bow. “She would sit and say nothing. Or she would ask me to stop.”

“I didn’t say she enjoyed your playing. I said only that she spoke of it.”

The voyageur paused with his hands on the canvas case.

“Answer me something,” Elisha said. “If she didn’t enjoy your playing, why did you continue at it?”

“That is not a respectful question,” Reverend Stone said quietly. “You should apologize to Monsieur Morel.”

The boy laid a hand on his father’s arm. “And the song you composed for her, ‘La Belle Susette’: Did you compose it to please her? Or was there another reason?”

“Elisha!” Reverend Stone hissed.

Morel stepped toward the boy, his expression clouded by confusion and fury. He seemed uncertain which emotion the situation warranted. “You understand nothing. I composed the song to please her. Of course.”

“Strange, to compose a song for someone who hates your playing. Seems cruel. Seems like something you might do to injure a person.”

“Playing a song is never cruel.”

“Your wife claimed it was.”

A shadow passed through Morel. He stepped back a pace, his eyes like black stones. He said, “I played only when she deserved.”

“As a man must.”

Reverend Stone struggled to his feet. “Stop this conversation, both of you. Monsieur Morel’s wife has passed. His actions during her lifetime matter not at all. We grieve her absence but must take comfort in her new life with Christ.”

“You believe she is in hell,” Morel said.

“I do not!”

“You believe she is in hell, with every other Catholic.”

“Monsieur Morel!” Reverend Stone’s voice held a note of hurt. He laid a hand on the voyageur’s shoulder. “I know how the world appears to you now. The color is disappeared. You cannot see or hear or taste. It is difficult even to draw a breath. And yet the Lord said that he who believeth, even when dead, shall yet live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in the Lord shall never die. She will never die, my friend. You
must
believe me. She will never die.”

Ignace Morel shook away from the minister’s touch. “Do not pray for me! I do not want your prayer.”

“My friend—”

Morel opened the canvas case and yanked out the fiddle. He played the first slow strains of “La Belle Susette,” and Elisha strode toward the man but Reverend Stone seized the boy’s arm. The voyageur’s eyes were squeezed shut, as if against a cutting wind. He repeated the song’s first measures, faster, then faster again as the melody quickened to a frantic pace. His fingers stabbed along the fiddle’s neck. He seemed to be trying to condense the song into a single phrase, a pure musical word. A lock of hair fell across his face and Morel whipped it away. He bent double over the instrument, then a string snapped with a twang and the voyageur cursed and flung the bow far into the forest. Reverend Stone started. The bow settled with a soft rustle.

Ignace Morel dropped the fiddle, his chest heaving. He nodded at Elisha. “Now I will play her song no more.”

He dreamed of falling. In his dream Reverend Stone tumbled through thin green fluid, neither air nor water, his jacket rippling and trousers slicked against his legs. It was Sunday; he was dressed in a black store-bought suit and boiled shirt, polished black brogans. It was as though he’d been falling for a long time and knew he might never reach bottom. Bits of grass sluiced past his face. He tried to speak but could not utter a sound. The feeling, he at last decided, was oddly pleasant.

The sensation faded as Reverend Stone surfaced to wakefulness. Immediately he was gripped by alarm. His shoulders ached. His lungs felt empty, useless, like a pair of gashed bellows. He tried to return to sleep but his mind was filled with sharp white light. Reverend Stone rose to an elbow, breathing deeply.

My good Lord, he thought, preserve me. Wood smoke drifted over him, then Elisha said, “Father? Are you awake?” The boy’s hopeful tone filled Reverend Stone with dread. More than anything, he realized, he did not want to disappoint his son.

He forced himself upright and accepted a mug of tea. He was sweating and his tongue was filmed with iron. Reverend Stone leaned against a pine trunk and closed his eyes, dimly aware of a rustle of activity. He opened his eyes to find his son kneeling over him, beside a litter fashioned from birch poles and spruce root and Elisha’s spare shirt and trousers. Without protest Reverend Stone reclined on the litter, then the pair lifted him and started forward.

They traveled slowly through a blur of pine limbs and sunlight and brilliant swatches of sky, Reverend Stone clutching the litter as it wobbled and jounced. Sometime later they paused for lunch. Ignace Morel sat apart, studying the pair as he ate; the minister thought to address the voyageur but the prospect exhausted him. He accepted a flour biscuit and chewed slowly.

“We’re but two hours’ hike from the river,” Elisha said. “From the river it’s two days’ paddle to the Chippewa village, and at the village we can hire paddlers, be at the Sault in no time. And then we’ll get you a doctor, some medication. A good bed.” Elisha’s tone was tranquil yet somehow it heightened Reverend Stone’s alarm. He managed a smile.

In fact they did not reach the river until the following noon. It was a quick, stony channel, nearly narrow enough to leap across. Downstream, a pair of canoes lay overturned on the grassy bank. Reverend Stone waited as the men loaded the voyageur’s canoe, then allowed himself to be eased down into the craft’s middle. Elisha stepped in at the bow, then Morel settled himself on the steersman’s perch and took up a paddle. With a nudge they started forward.

The river widened and slowed as they floated downstream. Cool breezes rose off the water and set the sugar maples gesturing. Reverend Stone was struck by the scene’s beauty: the cornflower sky, the broad shimmering water, the wind like a pipe organ’s note through the maples. Pain needled him and he remained very still until it passed. It seemed wrong to be in pain amid such beauty.

“Not long now,” Elisha said. “Just rest, Father. Not long at all, I promise you.”

A female wood duck angled toward the canoe from the river’s edge. Protecting her nest, Reverend Stone thought. The sun edged behind a cloud, and just then Elisha twisted around, his sun-browned brow creased with concern. Reverend Stone smiled. The boy’s expression tightened; then he managed a nervous grin. The wood duck chattered raucously.

This moment, Reverend Stone thought—then the notion dissolved, leaving a swell of emotion so intense that tears welled in his eyes. He could not understand if he was feeling pleasure or pain. It didn’t matter, he realized. Reverend Stone said a prayer of thanksgiving and blinked the tears away.

From his position in the canoe’s bow Elisha could not see his father, so he listened for the faint rhythm of the man’s breathing. Images from the past weeks emerged: Susette tossing a smoking tobacco stub into Tahquamenon Bay; Professor Tiffin declaiming Oberon’s accusations, his cheeks flushed with whiskey and pleasure; Mr. Brush bent over the solar compass, calling out a measurement. For an instant Elisha could not recall the expedition’s purpose, then he remembered: timber and iron and the unity of races. Suddenly it seemed to matter very little.

They paused briefly for lunch then came into a wide stretch of river bordered by sycamores, the current a fast ripple. They had been paddling for an hour when Ignace Morel said, “I was to guide the expedition. I was engaged by Monsieur Tiffin in Detroit. She was not to go with you at all.”

The man’s tone was quietly bitter. Elisha thought to leave the remark unanswered, then he said, “You were absent on the day you’d agreed to depart. Professor Tiffin searched all over Sault Ste. Marie. You weren’t there.”

“I returned two days later—you should have waited! Instead you forced my wife to guide you. Do you know where she is gone?”

“Monsieur Morel,” Reverend Stone said. “You mustn’t ask such questions. They cannot be answered.”

“But she is drowned, yes? That is what they say. Yet she is like a poisson, like a fish in the water. It is impossible that she is drowned.”

“No one can say for certain what happened, because none of us were there,” Elisha said. “It was a terrible accident and that’s all. I’m sorry.”

Morel dragged his paddle and the canoe slowly yawed. “Why do you sound strange when you speak of my wife? Is it because you are sad, because you knew her so well? Is that how you know about ‘La Belle Susette’? Because you knew my wife so well?”

“You mustn’t ask such questions,” Reverend Stone said. “Monsieur Morel, you must stop this conversation immediately. You are behaving queerly, even by your own standards.”

Elisha turned to face the voyageur: he was leaning forward from the high steersman’s seat as if tugged by the force of his words. Elisha willed himself to hold the man’s gaze. “I don’t mean to suggest anything other than that I am sorry for your loss,” he said. “Your wife was a fine woman.”

“A fine woman.”

“Let us pray together,” Reverend Stone said. “Let us pray together, Monsieur Morel, for the soul of your beloved wife. Together we shall pray for her soul’s peaceful rest.”

Morel dug hard and the canoe jerked crosswise in the current. “Your father hates me because I am Catholic. He believes he will go to heaven and I will burn in hell. But he is wrong. You both will burn in hell. And I will be fiddling in heaven.”

“None of us will be fiddling,” Reverend Stone said sharply, “and none of us will be burning in hell.”

“Except the adulterer. The adulterer burns in hell.” Ignace Morel seemed possessed of a barely contained fury. “Your son will burn in hell with my wife, la belle Susette.”

“Monsieur Morel! I will not tolerate another word!”

“Ask your son.”

“Monsieur Morel!”

“Ask him!”

The voyageur stopped paddling and the canoe drifted in the river’s center, twenty yards from the nearest bank. Morel shoved his cap back on his sweaty forehead. His right hand trailed along the canoe’s bottom, fingertips touching the rifle stock.

“Listen to me now.” Elisha struggled to master his tone. “Your wife told me she was planning to go to the waterfall. She said she would let herself be carried away. I prayed with her to stop but she would not. She let herself be swept over the edge, and she is gone. Your wife is gone.”

Ignace Morel’s glare wavered. “You are a liar.”

“I prayed with her to stop but she would not. She was already gone, in her mind. She said she could not bear to return to the Sault. To return to you.”

“You are a liar!” Morel took up the rifle. It was charged but not primed, though Elisha knew that task would take but a moment. Even unprimed the stock would serve as a vicious club. “She is gone because you sent her away! Monsieur Brush told me. You laid with her then you sent her away.”