The Expeditions (29 page)

“Stop, please,” Reverend Stone said. “I beg of you both.”

“She is gone because you killed her,” Elisha said.

Morel yanked a percussion cap from his shot bag and cocked the rifle. He jammed the cap onto the weapon’s cone as the minister shouted
Stop!
and Elisha grabbed a gunwale and threw himself sidelong. The craft rolled sickeningly, and then they were in the river.

A frigid shock blinded the boy. He opened his mouth to shout and water flooded his lungs, drove him into a thrashing panic. Something heavy nudged his shoulder then tumbled through the cloudy water. He jerked toward a shimmering light. The river seemed as thick as syrup, and for an instant Elisha feared he was sinking; then with a gasp he broke the surface. His father slapped the water before him, eyes white with animal terror. Reverend Stone clutched Elisha’s face and shoved him under. Panic surged through the boy. He wrenched away from his father and surfaced, choking, then swung an arm beneath the man’s shoulder. A cough exploded from Reverend Stone’s bloody lips. In Elisha’s grasp he felt weightless and frail, a gunnysack filled with sticks. Downstream, the overturned canoe spun in the current, Morel scrabbling along the bow for a handhold. The voyageur dragged his head above the surface and gasped. He clung to the canoe as it drifted toward the far bank.

Elisha kicked toward the near bank, thrusting his father’s head above water. Reverend Stone clawed at Elisha’s arm. A pack of stores floated past, made buoyant by some trapped pocket of air, and Elisha recognized it as his own: his cooking gear, spare shirt, rations, tent, fieldbook. He groped after the pack but his touch sent it bobbing away. Elisha thought to pursue it then immediately turned back toward the riverbank.

“Vous êtes damnés de Dieu!” Morel shouted. The man was fifty yards downriver, clinging to the overturned canoe. “Vous êtes morts, vous êtes damnés de Dieu!”

Elisha’s boots felt as though they were made of stone. He paused to draw a breath and his father flailed, sent a blinding splash into the boy’s eyes.

“You must not struggle. Please! Kick your legs. We must reach the riverbank.”

Reverend Stone became very still, his breathing shallow and thready. Elisha jerked toward the near bank. It was just ten yards distant but his efforts brought it no nearer. A wave of fatigue passed through the boy and he sank until his mouth was at the river’s surface. His shoulders burned. Elisha went under and his toe scraped a rock, and the touch filled him with desperate relief. He surfaced, choking, probing the stony riverbed. At last he gained purchase and steadied himself against the current.

He dragged himself up a grade into thigh-deep water thick with river grass, then the boy fell to his knees, hugging his father to his chest. Reverend Stone whispered, “My good Lord.” Elisha crawled to the river’s edge and collapsed on the grassy bank. The water he’d swallowed came up in a gush, rilling back into the river.

A blackbird settled on a cattail and regarded the boy with a cock of its head. Elisha called, “Father?” and the man responded with a groan. The boy waded into the shallows.

Sunlight spangled off the water’s surface. Elisha shielded his eyes, scanning the river for any sign of their stores: the cooking gear, rations, tent, fishing hooks, knives, rifle, shot—every necessity for survival. A hundred yards downriver Ignace Morel stood on the opposite bank. Beside him the canoe was pulled partway up the bank. A paddle was snagged in the nearby river grass.

“Sales chiens!” The voyageur’s voice possessed a hysterical edge. “I was almost killed!”

“We must make a truce!” Elisha called. “A peace—do you understand? We will travel to the Chippewa village together! They will give us food!”

“The rifle is gone! The stores are gone! Vous êtes de sales chiens, you are killed now!”

“We must travel together!” Elisha tried desperately to calm himself. “If we travel together we can reach the village in one day. If you travel alone it will take three. Do you understand?”

“Offer him money,” Reverend Stone said. “That is a language he speaks.”

“I will pay you twenty dollars at the Sault! Fifty dollars! You must come to us, now!”

Morel took up the paddle and pushed the canoe into the river, then swung aboard. Without its load the craft rode high and jittery on the river’s surface. He steered the canoe into the current.

“Monsieur Morel.” Reverend Stone’s voice was weak but clear. “You must not abandon us here. You must not do such a thing. Monsieur Morel, please. I know your heart.”

“You have taken my wife,” Morel shouted. “I take this canoe. A fair trade, yes?”

“You must help us!” Elisha splashed forward until the water reached his chest. “We have nothing at all! We will die here!”

Ignace Morel laid the dripping paddle across his lap as the canoe angled slowly downstream. Elisha watched the craft vanish into the dazzling sunlight. “Monsieur Morel!” he called. “You must help us!” Water trickled as if from a paddle stroke. The sound repeated, quieter, then quieter again.

Sometime later a cloud passed before the sun, and the scene reappeared as an empty river bordered by sycamores.

Three

He had stripped off his wet jacket and shirt and trousers and now sat in his underclothes on the sunny riverbank, trying to ignore his hunger. He concentrated on breathing. When he closed his eyes he was immersed in oddly pleasant memories: a summertime oyster party at the creek behind the parsonage. A ride along the Connecticut River in a borrowed cabriolet. Murmur of laughter and conversation, dull trickle of water. A blackbird’s call.

He woke to find his son standing over him. Elisha had been probing the river’s bottom with a makeshift sounding pole, searching for their lost packs. He’d found only mud and stones, an occasional flash of trout. Now the boy knelt beside his father, water dripping from his curling hair. He resembled a Greek sculpture, Reverend Stone thought, with his curls and sun-bronzed features, his shoulder muscles carved in wet linen. The product of time spent in the world. The minister was filled with pride.

“The rifle and rations are gone,” Elisha said. “So is the fishing and cooking gear. But I’ve got a pocketknife and a tin of matches that’ll dry, and there’s porcupine and frogs and birch moss if need be—we’ll have little difficulty managing supper.”

“Do not trouble yourself with my condition,” Reverend Stone said. “I’m not at all hungry.”

Elisha winced at the man’s lie. “There’s a Chippewa village just a short ways downstream—we’ll go there and get some food. It’s just a day or two on foot, not more. We’ll hire Native paddlers and they’ll ferry us back to the Sault. We’ll be back in town in no time.”

“Monsieur Morel will be awaiting our arrival.”

“He won’t. He has nothing to gain from further trouble.”

“Then good riddance. I owe the fellow ten dollars.” Reverend Stone attempted a smile. “Monsieur Morel hired a pair of paddlers at the Chippewa village. One boy was named Small Throat. He reminded me of Byron Wills—do you remember Byron?”

“We must start at once. Please, Father. Let’s begin.”

Reverend Stone was chastened by his son’s tone. He rose, sighing to mask his discomfort, then donned his shirt and damp trousers. Without a word he followed his son along the riverbank.

They hiked along the water’s edge beneath a clear sky, passing through columns of blinding sunlight. Dragonflies were scattered like colored glass in the river grass. Reverend Stone shivered continually despite the day’s warmth. Elisha urged the man onward, pointing out low branches and loose stones, marking distance to their next rest. His tone was gentle but firm, like a farmer guiding an ill horse back to stable.

As they traveled Reverend Stone found himself wondering what Elisha’s mother would say to the boy, were she alive. More than anything he wished she could speak a single sentence to her son. It was not impossible, a single sentence, for those who listened at the spiritual world’s boundary. Adele Crawley, that extraordinary girl, with her candles and ashen skin—he would bring Elisha to her, the minister decided, when they returned to Detroit. He would bring the boy to Sixth Street, among the Irish and Negroes, and Elisha would hear his mother speak. The thought filled Reverend Stone with satisfaction.

They continued through the afternoon and at dusk made camp at a bend in the river. Reverend Stone built a fire while Elisha departed in search of supper. Hunger gnawed at the minister. Eventually the boy returned with only a few handfuls of birch moss; they ate then Elisha arranged beds of pine boughs beneath a leafy elm. Reverend Stone studied his son as he worked: the set of his jaw and his thick, curling hair—that was Ellen. And his blue eyes, his chin, the quickness of his gestures…She was present in his every movement.

But so, too, was he present in the boy. When Elisha spoke Reverend Stone heard his own voice beneath his son’s, a firmness girding his halting sentences. It was himself speaking many years ago, before countless sermons and blessings and prayers had smoothed his tone. The boy was his father’s son. Of course he could be nothing else.

“I was remembering a ride we took along the Connecticut River in a borrowed cabriolet—I believe it was Edward Fell’s cabriolet. You were just a child. Your mother had allowed you to pack the picnic basket, and you took the responsibility very seriously. Do you remember the day? It was autumn, a lovely afternoon. Your mother was singing:
Home, O home, O happy hillside home.
”

“
Home, O home, O cozy sweet refuge.
It was one of her favorites.”

“You remember! I could not be certain the day had actually occurred. I thought I had dreamed it.”

“I packed three jars of raspberry preserves, one for each of us, and some cheese and apples. There was no bread, or meat. We ate the jam and cheese together and Mother could not stop laughing.” Elisha smiled. “I wanted to drive the carriage home—I begged you to let me take the team.”

“And did I?”

The boy shook his head. “I can’t remember.”

Reverend Stone smiled at his son. He had denied the boy’s request, of course, and Elisha had cried until Ellen had quieted him with a song. Surely Elisha remembered. He said, “I meant only to protect you. I did not believe you were ready.”

“I know you did, Father. Hush now. Let’s sleep awhile.”

Reverend Stone allowed his son to help him down to a bed of boughs. Immediately he woke to a warm drizzle on his face. It took him some time to recognize that he was awake, that it was raining. He was too weak even to raise a cough.

He dragged himself upright and followed his son through a humid dawn, staggering through the forest as though drunk. In midmorning Elisha killed an old, slow grouse and started a cookfire. They let the meat roast for a moment then fell on it like savages. To his surprise Reverend Stone found he had little appetite. He watched his son eat. The pair rested for a while then started onward, and sometime later Reverend Stone steadied himself against a birch limb; as he did the forest sank into blackness. He blinked awake to find his son thirty yards distant, squinting back through the swampy brush.

“We’re nearly to the village!” Elisha hurried back to the minister and took the man’s hand. “There will be food, and canoes to take us to the Sault! Father, please.”

“I am sorry. We must rest.”

“Please!” Elisha kneeled over the man; then his lips tightened and he drew a sharp breath. “Lie down, Father. You must lie here, right this moment.”

Reverend Stone slumped to the forest floor. The pain was like a serpent inside him, brushing his lungs and stomach and bowels as it moved. He laced his hands over his chest but his fingers would not stop trembling. He began to feel afraid. Reverend Stone tucked his hands beneath his arms and closed his eyes.

He woke dew-covered and racked with chills. He was lying among spindly white birches beside a cold cookfire. A blackened spit held the remains of what appeared to be a porcupine. Elisha fed Reverend Stone some of the smoky meat, then gestured toward a pair of birch poles cross-laced with roots into a rude travois.

“You cannot carry me that way. The ground is too rough.”

Elisha grasped the man beneath the arms and helped him onto the travois. The serpent thrashed inside Reverend Stone, and he gasped. He reclined carefully against the thin struts. With a grunt Elisha started forward, the birch poles gouging the soft mat.

Reverend Stone understood that his body had failed and felt horrified by the suddenness of it all. Four weeks ago he was in Detroit, at the teamsters’ saloon on Franklin Street, drinking cider in the guise of a kindly tobacco farmer. The image was his father’s, he knew. Something in the memory exhausted the minister. The travois jerked over a root and Elisha cursed.

He had traveled so far to see his son and now he’d said very little to Elisha. Reverend Stone considered the thought helplessly. He must apologize to the boy. He had kept Elisha from his mother as Ellen lay on her sickbed, hoarding her love like a miser with a last coin; then when the boy disappeared Reverend Stone had cursed his memory. Unforgivable, even now. For so many years, the minister realized, he’d spent his days finding niggling fault in others, wearied by their pained confessions, wondering why they could not appreciate life’s beautiful mystery. Of course their lives were more arduous than he had ever imagined. His world was as small and false as an oil-painted miniature. He was a country preacher, nothing more. There was so much for which he might ask forgiveness.

He thought, I must reason with the boy about his faith. Elisha was a scientifical boy and would understand salvation’s inexorable logic. For surely Edson was wrong: skepticism perhaps slowed one’s acceptance of God’s love, but the resulting embrace must be all the stronger. The restless heart at last finding rest. And if not his father’s faith then another, everyone gathered in a rolling valley on the last day. He must convince Elisha to not surrender, to not close his heart for want of revelation. He must convince him that faith is a thunderstorm but it is also a faint breeze through the grass.

He thought, I must counsel the boy. Tell him that he will pray for guidance and that it will appear in many forms: as a trembling in his lips, or as an angry man’s shouted curse. As a cowbird’s call on a raindamp Sunday morning. That he will be like a hart seeking a brook, that he will desire pleasure and companionship and that he should follow these desires. That he will wake alone at midnight seized by loneliness and despair, besieged by whispers, and that he must summon the strength to continue toward an unseen shore. That the shore did exist. The shore always and everywhere existed.

He felt along the travois pole for his son’s hand. Reverend Stone squeezed the boy’s wrist, and Elisha stopped.

He had assumed it would be the cough that overwhelmed him but this was a simple fever, chills alternating with sweats, his muscles knotted and sore, his throat dry as paper. He felt exhausted to the point of weightlessness. When Reverend Stone closed his eyes his body seemed to rise among the pines; then he opened his eyes and the feeling vanished. Sleep, he thought. What I require is a night’s sleep, nothing more.

It was midmorning and he was lying on a litter of boughs. A low fire warmed his legs. Elisha pressed a dampened cloth against the minister’s brow, and with a prickle of alarm Reverend Stone realized the boy was doing what he himself had done for Ellen on her sickbed. What was missing was a stack of literary journals, Corletta’s low singsong from the kitchen. The meetinghouse’s weathered profile in the window. In his mind’s eye Reverend Stone saw himself mounting the granite steps and tugging open the front door, entering the coolness and mildew and dim, thick silence. He felt a pang of desire so intense it was nearly painful. The meetinghouse seemed to contain his entire life and now it was only a memory.

He did not want to die but looked forward to the moment with fearful curiosity, as one would to an arduous journey. He touched his Bible and the book’s presence comforted him. Reverend Stone felt a surge of strength. He attempted to sit up but his son whispered in his ear; he attempted to speak but his voice emerged as if from underwater. The minister relaxed down to the ground. He coughed, and when he’d finished Elisha daubed the corners of his mouth. Reverend Stone felt moved to pity, as though for a stranger. It’s myself I am pitying, he thought, then corrected himself. Not myself. My body alone.

It occurred to Reverend Stone that he had been twenty-nine years old when his own father had passed. Twenty-nine was a man’s age, yet he’d felt like a man only during the years after. It was as though his father’s presence had reminded the minister that he was a child. He tried to fix a pleasant memory of his father but what emerged was a vision of the fellow standing at the edge of a tobacco field, at day’s end, his figure consumed by a long shadow. Reverend Stone had loved his father but had never felt affection for the man. Strange, that the two emotions had never joined. He wondered if Elisha felt similarly about him.

Reverend Stone coughed again and terror gripped him. He was aware of his son’s touch. He heard the boy’s voice but could not distinguish the words; he heard himself speak but could not be sure of what he’d said. The serpent writhed and gripped his jaw, forced the breath from his lungs. He wished desperately for a single tablet. The pain tightened and Reverend Stone felt something shift inside him. When at last the feeling passed his tongue tasted bitter and he saw that the world had faded to the color of a smoke-filled sky.

He thought, So this is how it appears.

He was breathing shallowly and with every breath felt himself sinking deeper into a thick liquid. He began a prayer of thanksgiving but his thoughts unraveled. Where was he? Elisha was leaning over him, his breath smelling of stale tea; then the boy was grinning at him through a stand of sedge at the creek behind the parsonage. Reverend Stone had never understood the boy’s fascination with that creek. The peacefulness, he supposed, the familiar solitude. A child’s version of an empty meetinghouse. Then the minister was in a seminary classroom on a cold October morning, half-asleep, soothed by a man’s baritone reciting Scripture. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you; let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. Reverend Stone smiled. Wine-colored thunderheads scattered over the hills east of Newell. Ellen’s weary face in the mirror as she brushed her auburn hair. His father’s hands, Prudence Martin’s watery eyes, the call of a newsboy on Woodward Avenue. Edson’s scalp showing pink through his thin yellow hair.