Creation (23 page)

“I may die here! It will be the land, and not the dreadful sea that finally swallows me.”

Johnny stops flailing and stands observing himself disappearing by inches.

Tom Lincoln still has not broken the surface. He wears, instead of the moccasins preferred by the Audubons, his fishermen’s rubber
boots. They have huge soles as wide as snowshoes, and let him remain on top. “What I need is a plank,” he says, quietly.

The others snort. There is no plank within a mile. Johnny’s pointer stands whining at the grassy edge of the bog. No one dares look his way in case he should decide to follow.

And now Time plays one of its tricks. Audubon remembers the skating parties of his youth, how he skimmed over the ice on the Schuylkill River.

One night he nearly flew. He was the brave young Frenchman newly arrived in Pennsylvania, next door to Lucy Bakewell, who put on blades for the first time and outskated them all on the frozen Schuylkill.

The girls want to hear his French, and his English, which is even funnier. They laugh, this night, whenever he speaks. They drink warm cider and clap their hands to warm them over the bonfire. Then comes the race. You are to circle the pond once and when you return to the bonfire, leap over a barrel which is laid on its side. He remembers the tour in the darkness, unseen, his cheeks and ears flaming from wine, his hair lifting in the wind. He flies toward the crowd of people, toward the firelight, skimming faster and faster, trusting his legs and trusting the ice. He gathers his legs under him and without slowing springs into the air, tucking them sideways. He enters the yellow light of the fire; he clears the obstacle. One barrel is easy; he lands on his blades on the far side without slowing. Then there are two barrels and another circuit of the pond, another entry into the fire’s glow. Then there are three, and the set of young men skating is now smaller. Somehow there are now five barrels and one rival, who hitches up his pants as a farmer would and advises: Fougère, drop out before you hurt yourself! The swaggerer loses courage and clatters ignominiously into the side of the first barrel, knocking the whole line askew. He waits for the barrels to be realigned and then does his triumphant tour of the pond, all eyes on him in the darkness, no eyes burning more brightly than Lucy’s. He clears all five easily. He is launched.

Lucy waits by the fire to hand him a towel to wipe his brow. He has his flute, as always, and when he does not skate he plays for Lucy, watching her out of the corner of his eye.

Once, while skating, he went through a thin patch and plunged into water. The shock of cold felt, curiously, like its opposite, like fire running through his clothing. But he was young then and that wild zeal surged through his arms and legs. He gave an enormous kick and pushed with his arms and shot forward over the ragged edges of the ice and found himself lying on his stomach several feet away, the wet of his clothing instantly gluing him to the surface.

His friends built a fire and massaged his limbs, undressed and dressed him again in pieces of clothing each one could do without — here an undershirt, there socks, extra trousers from the man who had prudently worn two pair, a muffler, a shirt, a topcoat. The sun shone and they laughed, bundling his cold wet clothing, the French shirt and jacket, which Anne Moynet had sewn for him a world away, and they all skated on down the river, laughing still.

H
E HEARS THE SONG
of the partridge.

Here too are young men, but not he. He imagines kicking forward onto the surface, crawling on his belly without breaking it: not possible. The heavy mould of mud works its chill right into his heart. He wonders if it is not easier to give in. He has had many setbacks. Might it be forgiven a man of forty-eight, when sinking in a bog, to merely continue to sink?

The partridges chuckle, luring him to his death or signalling for his rescue.

He watches Johnny now with a detached admiration: his son has devised a way to slowly withdraw himself from the sinking mass. He has lain back, arms out, with his gun in one hand lying alongside him to take some of the weight. He is wriggling slowly backward, toward his dog in the weeds. One belch of the quagmire could take his head under the surface. Meanwhile, Tom Lincoln approaches as stealthily as a hunter, speaking softly.

“Be calm — I am coming.”

But Johnny is out, out but not erect, lying on the surface. He tries to roll toward his father. The waves begin again.

“Do not come near me!” commands Audubon. He does not want to be disturbed from his reverie of giving in, giving up the struggle against the lack of light, the confinement, the rancid butter, the frigid fingers, the difficulty of creating a perfect bird in paint on paper.

Johnny, obedient, stops. His pointer is frantic, foaming, snapping on the edge of the bog.

“Stay!” commands Tom Lincoln. It is not clear to whom he is speaking.

Johnny slowly works himself, on his stomach, back toward the shore. Tom Lincoln waits, eyeing the distance between himself and Audubon, which is still long.

The dog ceases to bark and begins to moan. They cautiously turn their heads, all of them, so concentrated, each in his own predicament; two Montagnais men are speaking in their soft language to the dog.

Where did they come from?

Audubon knows. They have come from the land of enchantment. They wear the same red-and-black cap that was worn by the beautiful young woman of the day before. They bear the heavy silver crucifixes on their breast. And behind them they pull a toboggan. It is made out of planks, curved planks, and is pulled on a rope; they use it to carry their goods over deep snow. They shout something to Tom Lincoln, who does not understand. Then, bending, they take a few steps into the bog and push the toboggan, curled front first, toward Johnny. Johnny reaches out and catches it alongside himself; leaning on it, he moves the few remaining feet and manages to stand. Then he pushes the toboggan to Tom.

The curious wooden contrivance glides over the greenery that festoons the surface. In one patch it slows, and seems about to stop, but there is enough momentum for it to go farther. Tom Lincoln, nearly bent double, reaches out, careful not to disturb his footing, and catches it.

The rest is easy.

Except this.

Now, now that he is about to be saved, Audubon gives in to his fear; he begins to struggle against his suspension in the stinking mass. His acquiescence of minutes before is gone. The idea of letting go of his burdens suddenly loses all its attractions. Not yet! Not this time! He manages to raise himself six inches but the effort is rewarded only by his sinking a foot. He is terrified of going down now, of feeling his mouth and eyes fill with the greasy grey-black ooze, he is terrified he will not live to complete his Work, he is terrified of failure. He begins to thrash with his arms.

The young men approach him now, both on the surface, between them the toboggan. The red-necked partridges rise from the surface and offer their soft condolences:
Dyow. Cluck cluck cluck heh heh heh heh heh
.

O
NE MORE EVENT
makes the day miraculous. They are back at the shore, wanting to be near the ship’s stove, laughing over their near catastrophe, Audubon wrapped in Johnny’s coat. It was Godwin who rowed them to shore, and Godwin who waits to take them back. He says nothing while they climb into the boat, makes no intervention as they talk of the killing bog, the horror of its maw, the strange grace of the Montagnais appearing with the toboggan and disappearing again, so quickly, before they could be rewarded. They sit in the boat while Godwin and a sailor row them back to the
Ripley
. The soft chucking of the partridges comes maddeningly to Audubon’s ears. “What is that?” he says several times, listening. “Stop, please.”

The men obligingly halt the oars in the oarlocks. There is the sound.
GoBEK goBEK goBEK poDAYdo poDAYdo. Cluck cluck cluck
. Audubon cannot see the partridges but he is certain they are following him home.

When they row up against the sides of the
Ripley
, Godwin pulls out his basket. He lifts the lid on the basket and shows what
he has caught, a fine pair of willow grouse. There is much laughter all around.

Even bloody Godwin is helping him now.

Colour

A
udubon heard the sweet trill of a prothonotary warbler; he spied the bird in a flash of yellow, green, white and blue. “The colours, Maria!”

He and Maria were walking on Reverend Drayton’s plantation outside Charleston; John Bachman was far behind them with his gun. The forest floor was lit with azaleas and occasional purple iris. Deadwood crossed all the paths. He helped her step across the tree trunks. Her feet were impossibly small.

The path wound to the edge of the swamp, a patch of black water surrounded by trees. Grey and bearded, the trees stood like a thin drizzle. Their bases were bulbs half-planted in motionless green slime; the water itself was a flat surface mottled like marble. Amidst the trees were stumps drilled through by ivory-billed woodpeckers. The colour was layered from green, to grey, to the blue of the sky above. Audubon rehearsed the names of the trees: tupelo, loblolly pines, lodgepole pines, gum trees, red maple, red cedar, American holly.

He blinked and the birds emerged from their camouflage. A Lesser Yellowlegs pecked at the ground near the edge of the swamp, its long legs like stalks of grass. On the water, their presence betrayed by their bright red bills, were several wood ducks — the
Anas sponsa
, or Betrothed Duck. They went in pairs, the spectacular drake and his soft brown mate, gliding soundlessly, moving neither the water nor any visible part of themselves.

One dove and made the water boil for a moment.

He and Maria took seats on a dry clump of grass at the edge of the swamp, his gun at his side, their backs against the base of a tree.
They watched the gregarious turtles sunning on dead logs that slanted up to catch the beams, their necks lifted as if to test the wind. Occasionally a grackle seemed to fall out of a live oak, flapping like paper.

At first the alligators did not seem to be there at all. On the water were floating islands of vegetation next to which were grey logs, half sunk. But once the eye saw one log as an alligator, it saw every log as an alligator. The swamp was transformed into a waystation of sleeping alligators. He blinked again to make them recede.

The wood ibis stood breast-deep in the slime. Patient. Focused. The yellowlegs lowered his beak and took a stab with it. He missed and returned to his watch.

Just beyond Audubon’s foot was a lizard with a big pink fin under its chin, which it blew up, and then allowed to shrivel. The lizard wore its scarlet half-moon painfully, a brand. A diffident little blue heron stepped from the reeds, its long thin beak darting to stab the lizard. The heron was a deep blue, the blue of a clear sky at early dark lit by stars. It shone and shimmered, a dense, serene majesty. Audubon matched his stillness to the bird’s, memorizing its essence.

“I have painted this bird,” he whispered to Maria. “But I am not satisfied with my work. I tried to get that blue but I failed.”

After a few stabs the heron got the lizard. He swallowed it, conveniently in profile to Audubon; the prey was large enough so that the heron’s neck was distended.

The sun rose a notch overhead and vanished into the arms of a live oak. Woman, bird and man were in shadow. The little heron turned to face Maria and Audubon, thereby nearly disappearing; the blue of its plumage became a deep, absorbent black, like a blotter. Only the fine, drooping crest on top of its head remained blue: a little bit of the sky, perhaps, reflected.

“Do you not see?” said Maria. “The colour comes from the sky, from the sun. It is nothing but light seen through the feathers.”

Could this be possible? Or does he already know this? It seemed to him he did.

“Of course, Maria. I know that. The feathers act as an elaborate prism. That blue is not to be caught.”

“It is fugitive.” Maria looked at him and her eyes seemed to be laughing. “That is what I asked you once: can you make it last?”

The heron stretched its wings and flew. It sailed, breastbone like the keel of a little boat, across their line of vision and alighted not far away.

The word remained behind. Fugitive. Which meant it flies. It escaped, it was not real. He could not capture it, that blue. He could not replicate it with brush and paint.

As he had been fugitive, possibly all his life. He thought of explaining this to Maria, but it seemed an impossible task. He felt the pressure of tears in his throat and behind his eyes.

The birds themselves are not to be captured, which is why I love them
.

He reached out to touch her. She was silent and still beside him, leaning on the tree. It seemed terrible to Audubon that Maria was his dear friend, as dear to him as his beloved wife, and yet he had never told her his secret. Lucy knew, once. But now Lucy kept the secret more closely than he did, and spoke as if the lies were true. Secrets keep a man apart from other people, make him a fugitive. And lies make him afraid of love.