Authors: Karl Iagnemma
Reverend Stone stared past the braves. He had purchased the book for one dollar, and now he was bartering it for two—a modest profit in Indian country. Despite the logic he felt despicable. Better, he realized, to give the boy his Bible. The Bible, at least, contained genuine medicine. White man’s medicine, but medicine nonetheless.
Small Throat shut the book. He glanced at the other brave; then he nodded expressionlessly. The sight took the breath from Reverend Stone.
“We go now!” A gravelly scrape rose from the riverbank as Morel shifted the canoe. “Allons-y! We go!”
“Take this also. Please.” Reverend Stone drew a carrot of tobacco from his jacket pocket. He’d acquired it the previous evening from Morel’s stores, while the man was gathering firewood. “Take it—I pray this is acceptable. I apologize sincerely if it is not.”
Small Throat accepted the tobacco, and before the brave could speak Reverend Stone clapped him on the shoulder and hurried toward the voyageur.
The river was a sluggish brown channel lined with silver maple and box elder and slippery elm, trees the minister recognized from Newell. Sunlight filtered through the canopy and fell like copper coins on the water’s surface. A surge of enthusiasm moved through Reverend Stone and he took up a paddle, but within an hour he felt feverish and weak. He reclined in the canoe bottom and tipped his hat forward. The elms waved past like vague, fond memories.
He woke sometime later to a cooling breeze: the sun had fallen below the treetops, the river darkened to a chocolate hue. The air smelled thickly of moss. They encamped on a grassy fringe and Reverend Stone fell immediately into a dreamless sleep. He woke before dawn, ravenous and full of strength. Morel prepared a hasty breakfast and they started forward, and near noon the river narrowed to the width of a corridor, white water rushing through a maze of stones. The voyageur steered the canoe to the river’s edge. He stepped into the knee-deep water and tossed a pack of stores ashore, then with a grunt lifted the minister onto the riverbank.
A canoe was overturned on the grass a few yards upriver. Reverend Stone said, “Whatever could that be?”
“Their canoe. Your son.”
“The expedition’s canoe?” Without waiting for a response he hurried to the craft. It was a white man’s canoe, the planks caulked with spruce gum, a yellow moon painted on the hull. An empty gunnysack lay near the canoe’s stern. Reverend Stone took up the sack and flour sifted down to the grass.
“They have been here!” He snapped the gunnysack and a chalky cloud billowed into the air. Reverend Stone laughed, a taste of flour on his tongue. “He has been here, on this very ground! My son!”
A tremor grew inside the minister. He bowed his head, blinking against tears. He saw his son hauling the canoe onto the riverbank, his mouth set in a thin line, cheeks pink with exertion. His shoulders slumped beneath the canoe’s weight. Reverend Stone crushed the empty sack beneath his chin.
But no, no—the image was wrong. For in his mind’s eye Elisha was a boy of thirteen, not the man of sixteen he was today. For a moment Reverend Stone wondered if his presence was a grave mistake, a gesture rooted in a reality that no longer existed; then he realized the question was meaningless. Mistake or not, he thought, I am here.
He returned to where the voyageur was bundling their stores into packs. Reverend Stone said, “They have been here very recently—I found an old sack with the flour still dry.”
Ignace Morel cinched a leather strap, shook it roughly to gauge the tautness. “This is for you.”
“To carry?”
The man cinched a strap on a second pack, then kneeled and adjusted the pack between his shoulders. He slipped the strap over his head, leaned forward until it stretched taut above his eyebrows. The man rose with a grunt. “Like this. Come.”
Reverend Stone squatted before the voyageur. He heard Morel hoist the pack; then he was thrown forward onto his knees and elbows. Reverend Stone gasped. The pack was like a millstone on his back. Morel dragged him upright, his hands scrabbling over the minister’s forehead, and then the strap was pinching his skin as the weight settled into his spine. He staggered sideways as though on a rolling ship, steadied himself against a sugar maple.
“You are ready now?”
“Yes,” Reverend Stone wheezed. “I am ready. Let us begin.”
Morel clapped his hands twice and started forward. He sang,
Jamais je ne m’en irai de chez nous, j’ai trop grand peur des loups….
A song about wolves, the minister thought, for me. He believes I am frightened, the poor fellow. Or he wishes to frighten me.
He followed the voyageur into the forest.
They moved slowly through the dim, lofty woods, hiking for twenty minutes then resting for ten, Reverend Stone sliding into a ragged sleep at each pause. His dreams were skewed childhood visions, which when he woke melted into memories: a gangly, sunburned boy tramping through a maze of hickories. Smell of deadwood and sweet fern, choking August heat. A warbler’s call like a child’s restless chatter. He was ten, eleven, twelve years old. He would hike all morning, past the last familiar brook or outcrop, until he felt a tingle of panic at having gone too far. He was enthralled by the forest’s beautiful menace: its saplings and dried bones, its whiffs of earth and death. He would lean against a hickory and unbutton his trousers, tunnel within himself until the world vanished into hot, white light. When it was finished he’d run homeward, aloft on currents of pleasure and guilt. And then a distant voice,
Will-iam,
two long, sloping syllables. His mother calling him in for the evening: even now Reverend Stone heard her voice with aching clarity. He supposed it was a sound no man ever forgot.
He staggered through the afternoon, befogged by memories. A girl stepped from the shadows: thick, freckled arms, feral eyes, white-blonde hair yanked back in a braid. Was she real or had he imagined her? She crouched behind a hickory, watching the boy through a V in the branches. And then a second memory, of the girl in a blue linen dress, hair loose and speckled with burrs, standing a dozen paces before him. Her name was Elizabeth Grady. She was a hired girl at Carroll’s. Her Saturday frolic, alone in the forest. They said nothing, their hands working, their eyes half-shut. Then the searing light, the choked cry, the gasp—and he opened his eyes to find her vanished. Surely he had imagined her.
They made camp that evening in a stand of white pine, Morel setting on the skillet while Reverend Stone reclined gingerly on his bedroll. Immediately he was asleep. He woke in a velvet dark, numbed by chills, his clothes damp with perspiration. Hunger gripped him; he uncovered the skillet to find corn mush jellied in grease. The minister raked up a handful and ate greedily. The food tasted thickly of blood. He could not be sure if the sensation was real or imagined. Reverend Stone wiped his hand on the grass and fell back on the bedroll.
And then he was blinking toward wakefulness. It was morning; sunlight was needling through the canopy. He was afraid to move, lest he upset the delicate balance that existed inside him. Finally he shifted, and bile surged to his throat. Reverend Stone lay very still. It occurred to him that he might yet be asleep, moving through a vivid dream; then the thought faded sickeningly.
“Drink this.”
Ignace Morel stood over him, offering a steaming mug of tea. The man had kindled the cookfire and pitched a pair of tents; his rifle lay on an oilcloth for cleaning. Birdsong cascaded from the surrounding pines. The voyageur said, “Today we stay here.”
“Why ever would we do that?”
“You are too weak. You cannot continue.” Morel thrust the mug at him. “Drink this.”
Reverend Stone took the mug and set it on the ground. He struggled to his feet. “We must go on. I insist.”
“Sit,” Morel said angrily. “You cannot continue. You must rest.”
“I have rested all night and much of the morning. Let us begin.”
The voyageur spat in the dirt. “You are a stupid old fool.”
“I insist we continue! Now, I am paying you to escort me, so you must escort me!”
Morel took up the mug and flung the tea into the cookfire. The embers sizzled. He unbound the minister’s pack and yanked out a cookpot and sack of beans, shoved them into his own pack. He tossed the lightened pack at Reverend Stone’s feet. Then the voyageur pulled up the tent pegs and folded the oilcloths into a parcel, grabbed the rifle and hoisted his own pack. Without a word the man started into the forest.
The pair continued on an eastward route through the morning, Reverend Stone concentrating on each footstep. Colors blurred before his eyes, greens and browns and bright, piercing blues. He was unable to assemble a thought. At some point he glanced up to find a fist-sized blaze hacked into a pine trunk, the exposed wood white as cream. He called, “Ho! Have you seen this?”
“Their mark,” Morel called. He was some thirty paces ahead of the minister. “They have been here not long ago.”
“Then we are following the correct route! Wonderful!”
Reverend Stone hugged the pine for support, breathing shallowly. He started forward and his knees unstrung, and he fell heavily onto his side, the pack rolling away.
The minister lay motionless on a soft mat of needles, inhaling their balsam scent. Yes, he thought, this is all I need. A week’s rest at the parsonage, in my bed, the sheets blued and crisp. Corletta in the doorway with a glass of molasses water and bowl of gruel. Faint lowing of cows from the Geary farm, murmur of voices from the meetinghouse: Edson leading the congregation in prayer. Yes.
Ignace Morel appeared above Reverend Stone, a scarlet weal from the portage strap marking his forehead. “You see now, you old fool? You are too weak, you see?” Morel squinted at the minister; then his expression clouded with concern.
Reverend Stone felt suddenly afraid. “You were right. We should rest for a while. For one hour.”
With a huff Morel set to making camp. He kindled a fire then put on water for tea, gathered an armful of balsam boughs, pitched a tent. Reverend Stone lay on his side, watching the man. From his trouser pocket he withdrew a battered green tin and read the label.
MCTEAGUE’S PATENT TOOTHACHE MEDICATION UNSURPASSED FOR SOOTHING PAIN AND DISCOMFORT IN CHILDREN AND ADULTS ~ A BOON FOR ALL AFFLICTED ~
He opened the tin to find six tablets. The minister placed two under his tongue then offered the container to Morel. The voyageur regarded it suspiciously. Reverend Stone rattled the tin. “Go on. They are a boon for all afflicted. And we are all of us afflicted.”
Morel squatted beside the minister and placed a tablet in his mouth. He squinted at the tin’s label. A few moments later he glanced up, as though listening to a distant sound; then the voyageur closed his eyes.
“I see strange visions lately,” Reverend Stone said. “Clouds of color hovering about people’s bodies, like they’ve been captured in daguerreotype but moved during the exposure. Or…or like they are draped with haloes. Do you know the word—halo? It is a ring of light about a man’s head, like an angel in a Renaissance painting, or a…I don’t know.”
“You see haloes.”
“Yes. Yours is black.”
Morel spread his right hand and turned it over, formed a fist. He grunted softly.
“For a time I believed it showed the color of a man’s soul—the halo’s lightness reflecting his purity, I suppose. But now…” Reverend Stone gestured vaguely. “I’ve encountered men who I believe to be virtuous, you see, enveloped by soot-colored haloes. And lost souls with haloes the color of chalk.”
“It is because you are ill.” Morel took the tin from the minister’s hand, shook the last three tablets into his mouth. “That is why you are see things. Because you are ill.”
“Perhaps. Yes.”
“Of course yes. You are very ill.”
Reverend Stone felt a surge of anger that slowly faded to nothing. The man was right: he was very ill. Even now he sensed a coldness moving through his veins, slowing his blood and stiffening his limbs. Thinning his lungs to wisps of flesh.
He was ill and might never recover. Reverend Stone considered the fact numbly. Ellen had brought blood on the third Sunday in March; on the fifteenth of September she lay motionless on the parsonage bed, her eyes fixed on the open window, curtains stirring in the breeze. Reverend Stone had been ill now eleven months. Yet what was there to fear, after all? He did not believe, as his father had, that a man’s fate was immutable. The rewards of the next life were surely a product of the deeds of this one. Reverend Stone imagined the experience as a sense of profound companionship with all humankind, his love for Ellen magnified a thousandfold. A thousand times a thousandfold. Yet even as he considered the notion a current of dread passed through him.
He wondered for the second time if he should never have begun his journey. He could have awaited Elisha’s return to Newell. He might have reached some understanding through prayer in the empty meetinghouse, his lungs soothed by the sweet Massachusetts air. Tears welled in Reverend Stone’s eyes. Cowardice, his old companion. And yet it occurred to him that a stranger might mistake his journey for an act of courage.
He rose, and Ignace Morel glanced up at him, blissfully calm. Reverend Stone said, “How much farther?”
“Three days. Maybe four.”
“So, then. Shall we continue?”
Without waiting for a response Reverend Stone hoisted his pack and started eastward into the forest.
Six
Professor Tiffin had begun working through the night, the hilltop lit by a ring of sapwood torches. From the campsite at the hill’s base Elisha watched the torches wink and flare like fireflies. Tiffin appeared at breakfast, his lips moving in silent conversation, sipped a mug of tea as he gathered food for an afternoon meal. The man’s fingernails were bloody, his face scaled with black dirt. Without a word he started back up the hill.
The man continued his routine through three days of smoky heat. Elisha spent mornings gathering wood sorrel and wild onions, sketching gray jays that flitted through camp. Afternoons he followed Mr. Brush on timber surveys into the vast tracts of pine, returning at dusk with a brace of hare or grouse. Elisha prepared supper while Brush completed timber density calculations, a contented frown on his lips. He said nothing about Susette or his proposal at the waterfall. Elisha wondered if he had somehow misunderstood the man.
On the morning of the fourth day Tiffin did not appear at breakfast. Elisha had fried a lumpy panbread and strip of pork belly, watched Mr. Brush eat with gusto. The man swallowed a last scrap of greasy bread then clapped his hands. “Well! I suppose it is time we investigated our esteemed colleague’s doings!”
Brush whistled a jaunty melody as he started up the hillside. He was the sort of man, Elisha realized, who was truly happy only when others were miserable. Or when others’ good fortune paled in comparison to his own. A shout rose from the hilltop and Mr. Brush paused. A grackle croaked; then a second shout that trailed to a long, jagged wail. Brush jogged back down the hill to his tent, snatched up a rifle and slung a shot bag over his shoulder. Elisha took up the other rifle, his chest gone tight. The shout repeated itself, falling to a chatter like a woodpecker’s report. With a start Elisha realized the sound was laughter: queer, low laughter in the empty forest. Mr. Brush broke into a run.
They reached the hilltop to find Professor Tiffin sitting cross-legged amidst a scatter of freshly dug holes. The man was barefoot and hatless, his scalp sun-blistered, his hair a wild crown. He was cradling a broad, flat stone like an infant. Tiffin was laughing. He smiled beatifically at the pair, his eyes brimming with tears.
“You have arrived at last! And so you are my witnesses!”
The tablet was the size of a Bible, sheared flat on its face and etched with faint symbols. The symbols ran in curving rows above a crude drawing of human figures linked arm in arm about a spiraling column: a bonfire or whirlwind, or ray of light. Above the column was an engraving of a star, or the sun. Tiffin scratched at dirt in the column’s grooves.
“It was buried beneath an ornamented bear skull! I had unearthed the skull two days ago, expecting it to be a vessel for a scroll, or a small tablet. When I found the skull empty I abandoned the site. Today I decided to delve deeper! I was desperate, you see—I have studied every grain of dirt on this hilltop! Look at this.”
Tiffin took up a silk specimen bag and withdrew a pinch of flour. He sprinkled flour over the tablet then wiped away the excess. The symbols were illuminated in bright relief, like chalk marks on slate.
“I was desperate, you see! I reasoned that the bear skull was not a vessel, but rather a notice to Midewiwin elders, that they were excavating the proper location! I was correct!”
Elisha was frozen, confused. Susette had claimed that the buried tablets did not exist; yet here was a buried tablet.
“Of course it is entirely logical that they employed stone rather than birch bark for such an artifact—stone is impervious to rot, which would be a significant concern for something stored in the earth for fifty years, or five hundred years—for five thousand years, even! The ancient Natives must have understood that moisture—”
“You are jabbering like an idiot,” Mr. Brush said. “What do those symbols represent?”
Tiffin touched his brow, momentarily overcome. “I do not know. Many of the symbols are unfamiliar to me. But these, here, are traditional Chippewa pictographic symbols. And these others—they resemble Hebrew characters, that with very few exceptions—”
“Tell us what they say.”
Tiffin chuckled nervously, glancing from Elisha to Brush. Again Elisha sensed stiffness in the man’s behavior, a rehearsed quality in his gestures and tone. Tiffin said, “It appears to be a description of a journey—a very long journey from a warm sea through a narrow strait, then into an immense, violent ocean. There is a character representing some sort of fish, or turtle. Then an account of many days travel on a river among a multitude of islands, and finally an arrival here, at the shore of this lake. There is a symbol of—what
is
it?—of a large, horned animal, a moose or perhaps a buck. There are many symbols that indicate natural features, which I do not understand. There is much that I do not understand.”
The man bit his lower lip to stop its trembling. “This warm sea—surely it is the Mediterranean. And the narrow strait must be Gibraltar, and thus the ocean is positively the Atlantic. It
must
be the Atlantic Ocean! This tablet describes a sea route taken by a band of Israelites, many hundreds of years ago, to this very region. It is an artifact of the ancient Christians, who begat the Chippewa race that exists today!”
“Bollocks!” Mr. Brush poked Tiffin in the chest. “You have delayed this expedition far too long with your asinine pursuits! You have done nothing in the past weeks except fart and read Shakespeare, and now you stand here with this, this
rock,
claiming it as a Rosetta stone! You are—”
“Jealousy! You are jealous! And you are terrified of losing our wager!”
Brush flinched, a flush risen to his cheeks. He chuckled hollowly. “You are nothing more than a charlatan and a goddamned liar.” The man snatched up his rifle and stalked away.
But his voice held a hint of wariness, and indecision. Of fear. Professor Tiffin stared after the man’s retreating form. At last he exhaled, and laid a hand on Elisha’s shoulder. When he spoke his voice was filled with wonder.
“My dear boy. Now our work begins in earnest.”
Elisha gathered his fieldbook and pens and executed a careful drawing of the tablet’s markings, working through the afternoon as Tiffin paced about the hilltop. The man muttered quietly, pausing to glance over the boy’s shoulder. When Elisha had finished Tiffin tore a blank sheet from his fieldbook and laid it atop the tablet’s face. He fetched a flask of water and soaked the paper, pressed it with his fingernails into the symbols’ grooves. Then he mixed a thin gruel of flour and water in a mug and poured the mixture over the wet sheet.
A recollection gnawed at Elisha as the man worked: that first afternoon in Sault Ste. Marie, at the Johnston Hotel. He had entered Professor Tiffin’s room and found a fieldbook, a wedding portrait, a squarish parcel wrapped in oilcloth. He struggled to recall the parcel’s precise size and heft: it had been heavy rather than light, perhaps as stiff as stone, perhaps the size of a Bible. A chill moved through the boy.
“When the cement has dried,” Tiffin said, “the symbols and characters will emerge in relief on the paper. It will form a precise replica of the tablet’s engravings, to complement your drawing!”
Elisha said nothing, his gaze fixed on the tablet.
“I will transport the tablet to Detroit, and you will transport the replica and drawing—we will go on separate ships, as an extra precaution.” Professor Tiffin smiled wearily. “We are poised on the very verge, my young friend—a moment between time before, and time after. Do you sense it? We will mark this moment together, you and I.”
“With the aid of this tablet.”
“The tablet is
enough,
my boy! This country is confused—we believe the human race to be divided and divided again, into black and white, Christian and un-Christian, superior and inferior. But of course we are equals before the Lord. We are a solitary, beautiful race. We shall make this country whole, every man and woman equal, black and white and red, young and old, free and owned. With this very tablet!”
“Please excuse me,” Elisha said. “I’m not feeling right.”
Professor Tiffin called after the boy as he hurried down the hill. At camp, Mr. Brush sat against a hemlock, fieldbook open across his lap. When he noticed Elisha he took up a pen and scowled at the page. Elisha fetched the cookpot and started into the forest, moving as if through a fog. He nearly passed the blazed cedar marking the turn northward toward the river. At the riverbank he sat on the overturned pot and covered his face with his hands. He felt a sharp, painful urge to return home.
Home. The word brought a twinge of confusion—for suddenly Newell seemed strange and distant, his memories embrittled by time. He could never return to his childhood bedroom, to the lazy afternoons at the creek behind the parsonage. To Corletta’s Sunday lemon custard, to his mother’s wry smile as she guided his hand over a half-finished drawing. Elisha’s thoughts lingered over an image of the woman, there in her sickroom bed. She was waiting, half-asleep, for her son to return; yet he could never return. He was as a ghost to her, or a memory.
And he could not return to face his father. He had left the man’s house without even a farewell, his heart choked with bitterness; even now his father’s memory brought a sullen ache. Elisha longed to see the man but not as a homesick boy: instead he would someday drive a fine red landau into Newell, around the town green then up the cider mill road, draw to a halt outside the parsonage. His father would open the door, and the man’s eyes would fill with shame and startled respect. Someday.
Elisha thought, I’ll go to Susette. Wait until I’m alone tomorrow, take a rifle and shot bag, some rice and meat and a frypan. In his mind’s eye Elisha retraced the party’s route through the forest to the canoe, then upstream to the Chippewa village. And then eastward along the coast to Sault Ste. Marie, where he could catch a steamer to Wisconsin Territory. He would meet Susette on the street in Milwaukee, and her first, unguarded expression would tell him if he’d come in vain.
But even as he envisioned the meeting Elisha realized his plan was foolish. Susette had not left her husband to be trailed by a lovesick boy. Her interest in him was as a messenger, nothing more. So where could he go? Anywhere else in the wide world, he supposed: Detroit or Cleveland or Buffalo or Philadelphia. Elisha sat for a long while, staring at the river’s dark surface.
Back at camp, Mr. Brush squatted beside his tent, oiling a rifle. The boy raised a fire then prepared a quick stew, and a short while later Professor Tiffin emerged from the forest like a soldier entering a conquered city. The man had washed his hands and face; he was cradling the tablet and fieldbook and whistling a tuneless rendition of “Sweet Mary May.” He leaned over the cookpot and inhaled theatrically as Mr. Brush’s expression tightened. Tiffin dipped a mugful of stew and sat beside the cookfire. As he ate the man traced his finger over the tablet’s symbols, an occasional grunt escaping his lips.
“Are you planning to share your findings?” Mr. Brush said finally. “Or will you simply groan all night like a mongrel in heat?”
“Fragments—mere fragments as yet! I am attempting to interpret the meaning of the scene in the tablet’s center. It appears to be an illustration of a ceremony. There are human figures surrounding a column, and there is an image of the sun, or a star. I suspect the scene depicts an astronomical measurement of the passage of time. Or perhaps it describes a particular event, to fix the year of the tablet’s creation.”
“And on the tablet’s reverse I suppose you have found a recipe for the transmutation of horseshit into gold.”
Tiffin giggled around a mouthful of stew. “Fret not, my jealous friend! You have played a critical role in this expedition: that of the shortsighted naysayer who was overcome. Many great advances have occurred in spite of such individuals. They are nearly de rigueur in narratives of great discoveries!”
“Great discovery or no, you have spent enough time at this site. By the expedition’s charter we must return to Sault Ste. Marie by the end of August. To accomplish this we must depart on the day after tomorrow.”
“You are attempting to provoke me,” Tiffin said quietly. “But alas, my jealous friend, the fair hand of science cannot be rushed. She is a bashful maiden, shy as the dawn. She does not reveal her secrets according to the clock.”
“You may remain alone, as you wish. Elisha and I will depart at dawn.”
“Elisha and I have made a prior agreement. He will remain here to assist me in further excavations.”
“This is not my affair,” Elisha said. “I want no part in this decision at all.”
Mr. Brush had finished oiling the rifle and now snapped the hammer shut. “True! This is not the boy’s decision—it is yours alone. You, who will not admit the true purpose of your investigation.”
Professor Tiffin was momentarily bemused. “And what is my true purpose?”
“It is simple. Your wife is a nigger, and you are a nigger kisser.”
“Watch yourself,” Tiffin said roughly. He struggled to his feet and pointed at Mr. Brush. “You watch your damned mouth.”
“And you would like to believe that the nigger you are kissing is fully human.”
Tiffin strode toward the kneeling man, and Brush uncoiled like a spring and struck Tiffin’s jaw, the sound like a cane rapped against a fence slat. Tiffin whirled backward, his hat tumbling to the ground. He threw a high, looping punch that Brush ducked with a blow to Tiffin’s ribs. The man’s breath escaped in a huff. He fell to a crouch and skittered away like a dog. Blood welled in a gash below his right eye.
“Quit now!” Elisha shouted. “Both of you danged quit!”
Mr. Brush stepped forward with his fists balled at his jaw. With a groan Tiffin lunged at the man, and Brush sidestepped the rush then pounded Tiffin with both fists between the shoulder blades. Tiffin sprawled like a drunk in the dirt. A whine rose from his prone form.
“Quit!” Elisha took up a rifle and tore open a cartridge, set the charge. He shook the rifle at the men. “Quit now, both of you! Please!”