From Sea to Shining Sea (94 page)

George straightened in his chair and began to concentrate his attention on Clarksville and the river road below: his old mill, the ferry, the jetty and ditch where his canal around the Falls was to have been, the old boatyard where his mechanical upstream boats would have been built, the half-abandoned town where his great city of Clarksville would have grown.

It was strange. He had not seen or heard anything to tell him William was coming. William was, as far as anyone knew, still away off east somewhere on his travels, advocating George’s causes, arguing with lawyers and creditors, perhaps stopping in Fincastle County to court his Miss Hancock. There was no reason to believe he would be coming along soon. Usually when he did come home from his travels, he would stop at his Mulberry Hill place first and send a messenger over to announce his return, and no such messenger had come. And yet, something told George:

Billy’s coming.

So he listened, and watched the river road, and didn’t touch his glass.

U
PSTAIRS IN THE GUEST BEDROOM
, F
ANNY SAT ROCKING
, with her right elbow on the arm of the rocking chair and her chin in the palm of her right hand, her index finger laid along her cheek. There were fine little squint lines around her beautiful eyes now and vertical frown lines on her pale brow. She rocked and rocked. In the room across the hall her two sons Johnny and Ben O’Fallon were having a lively discussion about crossing the Alps, a subject planted in their imaginations by their Uncle George. Johnny believed that Hannibal’s crossing had been more remarkable, but Ben felt that it would have been easy, using elephants to carry everything, and he favored Napoleon as the greater Alps-crosser. Their discussion was as spirited as if they had been veterans of those respective armies, and their voices rose and fell, erupting sometimes with scornful snorts and jeering laughter.

Standing here by the sunny window in front of Fanny’s rocking chair was her son Charles William Thruston, aged five, who somehow seemed a being apart from his older half-brothers, though they were careful never to exclude him. He was a quieter boy than they, and was more interested in dogs and horses than in martial history, and the few times he had been drawn into their arguments about great soldiers he had always brought up his trump card, the only military fact he cared to know: that his father had been a Revolutionary soldier before he was twelve. This would always silence Johnny O’Fallon, who was just now going on twelve and still played with toy Redcoats.

Charles William Thruston in fact seemed to remember his father as a boy soldier instead of a man. It was as if the shock of his father’s murder had erased the man, the Westport merchant, from little Charles’ mind, leaving only the boy soldier. Fanny sat rocking and looked at Charles and all at once the horrible images came up whole from her memory. Little Charles’ third birthday party. The father holding the boy’s hand while berating a surly slave man. The Negro beginning to tremble with anger. And then, suddenly, unbelievably, lunging forward with a kitchen knife in his hand. And Captain Thruston, bewildered, gushing blood, sinking to the floor, still grasping the hand of his screaming son.

Fanny groaned now as she always did at the memory of that moment. She tried never to think of it, but it surfaced so often from her memory, suddenly and unexpectedly, as now, making these awful upwellings of grief.

She had gone later to see the Negro hanged, but that had not helped. It had only made it worse somehow, had only given her another horrid set of images: the sudden yank on rope, the
thump
of the sudden weight on the gallows, the Negro’s contorted face and grotesquely tilted head, the feces dropping from his pantleg. It had not compensated for the other death, nor had it even seemed to have anything to do with it. Her brother William had taken her arms and guided her away from the spectacle, the body slowly turning, turning, the bulging eyes and craning necks of the crowd of white people.

“I hear a horse,” said little Charles, turning from the sunny window to look at his mother.

“You sure, darlin’?” she said after a moment. He was so crazy about horses he was always hearing them. “I don’t hear it.”

“I do,” he said.

Maybe he does, she thought. She got up and went to the window and stood behind him with her hands on his shoulders, looking down over the summery meadow that sloped away from the house to the distant trees by the river road. She saw and heard nothing but the rapids of the river. But there might be a horseman coming along down there. And she thought:

Might be Billy’s coming home. Lordy, that would be nice.

And then, having thought it, she somehow felt sure of it. This did after all seem like the kind of a day when William would show up.

“C
UPID
,” G
EORGE CALLED INTO THE HOUSE
, “
FETCH
glasses, and that bottle with the red wax on the cork! Here comes Billy!” And at that moment the interior of the house came alive with quick footsteps and excited voices.

He knew the horseman was William even before he saw him, because he had heard the horse jump the rail fence down by the sycamores—William’s own shortcut. And now here he came out of the trees onto the meadow at a full gallop, on a big gray George had never seen before, standing in the stirrups and waving his hat. George was standing on the porch laughing already, feeling better a thousandfold. Fanny and her sons poured out of the house, all smiles and cries of welcome. Cupid followed them out with a tray and set it down, beaming all yellow-toothed, then shambled down the porch steps with his hand up, ready to take the bridle.

“By the saints! I knew it was you!” George bellowed as William swung off with a wink and a nod at Cupid.

“Ha, ha! Just can’t sneak up on ye, can I?” William dumped his dusty saddlebags on the porch and began catching leaping
youngsters in his arms, hugging and patting them. Then he squeezed Fanny almost breathless, she hanging on him and kicking up her heels like a ten-year-old. Then William and George pounded each other on the back, and the red seal on the special brandy was broken. Homecomings in the Clark family were just as good as they had always been.

Later, when the children were out on the meadow playing shuttlecock with the new game set William had brought them, George and Fanny and William seated themselves on the porch in facing chairs. William quickly summarized all the news of friends and relatives back in Virginia, then took a long sip from his glass, sighed, set it on the floor between his feet, and drew a letter from his pocket. “D’you remember my particular friend Lewis?”

Fanny smiled. “The smart one, with the jug-handle ears.”

And George said, “The one so bowlegged his horse could walk out from under ’im and he’d not know it was gone till he fell on the ground.”

William threw back his head with a laugh and his merry eyes crinkled. “Well, as y’ know, two years he’s been President Jefferson’s secretary. He got those papers we sent for on your claims, George, and here they are, and we’ll work on ’em after bit. But also he’s writ me a letter that ought to interest you quite some, and I can’t wait any longer for you to hear ’bout it, so here.” He handed the letter to George and contemplated him as he read it, reaching over to hold Fanny’s hand.

George’s expression changed often as he held the rustling pages, changed from bright interest to deep thoughtfulness, with now and then a skeptically cocked eyebrow, a nod of approbation, or a shadow of sadness. He glanced up occasionally at William as he read. When he came to the end of it, he murmured, “So. The route to the Pacific.” Returning to the beginning then, he reread phrases, lingered over them.

“Well, for heaven’s sake, I’m perishing with curiosity,” Fanny exclaimed. “Read it out loud! Or let me.”

And so George began, his voice deep and deliberate, with the high, carefree shouts of the children in the background, and the tone of the letter was so confident, its scope so grand, that to Fanny it seemed that the words could have been George’s own, instead of Meriwether Lewis’s.

“‘My plan: It is to descend the Ohio in a keeled boat of about ten tons burthen … thence up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Missouri, and up that river as far as its navigation is practicable with a boat of this description, there to prepare canoes of
bark or rawhides, and proceed to its source, and if practicable pass over to the waters of the Columbia or Oregon River and by descending it reach the Western Ocean.”’ George paused, his eyes unfocused. He was remembering the Missouri, the wide, muddy mouth of it, remembering his hand in the water, remembering all those thoughts he had had so often about the veinwork of these very rivers. Then his eyes returned to the words at the end of his finger, and, moving the finger again, he read on:

“‘I feel confident that my passage to the Western Ocean can be effected by the end of next summer or the beginning of autumn.… Very sanguine expectations are at this time formed by our government that the whole of that immense country watered by the Mississippi and its tributary streams, Missouri inclusive, will be the property of the United States in less than twelve months from this date.… You will readily conceive the importance of an early friendly and intimate acquaintance with the tribes that inhabit that country.”’ George tapped the page with his knuckle. “This is Tom Jefferson talking through your friend Lewis. His notions are stamped all over this. By heaven, this stirs me, Billy!”

“Read her about the scientifics,” William urged. “It’s the very things you advised Jefferson clear back when he first wrote you about such an explorin’ trip!”

George looked up from the paper at William. “Ye remember that, do ye! Remember that day he wrote me about it? Why, that’s twenty years if it’s a day!”

“Do I ever remember it! It’s been in the edge o’ my mind ever since! Read that part, George.” All three were squirming.

“All right, here. ‘Other objects of this mission are scientific, … ascertaining by celestial observation the geography of the country … learning the names of the nations who inhabit it, the extent and limits of their several possessions, their relation with other tribes and nations, their languages, traditions, their ordinary occupations in fishing, hunting, war, arts, implements … diseases prevalent among them and the remedies, the articles of commerce they may need, or furnish … the soil and face of the country, its growth and vegetable productions, its animals, the mineral productions of every description, and in short to collect the best possible information relative to whatever the country may afford as a tribute to general science.”’ George paused and blew out a breath, shaking his head, and Fanny interjected:

“Mercy, but that’s a tall order! All that, and canoes as well?
Does he think he can do all that, that little man? How would he even—”

“Wait, sister,” said George, with a tilt of his head and a sly smile. “O’ course he can’t do any such a thing all by himself, and that’s why he’s writ the following words. Listen:

“Thus my friend you have a summary view of the plan, the means and the objects of this expedition. If therefore there is anything under those circumstances, in this enterprise, which would induce you to participate with me in its fatigues, its dangers and its honors, believe me there is no man on earth with whom I should feel equal pleasure in sharing them as with yourself. The President has authorized me to say that in the event of your accepting this proposition he will grant you a captain’s commission.’”

“Oh, my dear Billy!” she cried, jumping up and clapping her hands to his cheeks. “You! Why, if you go with him, he could do all that so easily it would be a lark! Oh, I’m so proud of you, Billy! Oh, haven’t I always told you you’d get some chance to make yourself as grand a name as any!”

“Hey! Hey,” he laughed, grabbing her wrists and pulling her hands away from his ruddy cheeks. “Hey, I haven’t even said yet I’ll go! Ha, ha!”

George kept scanning the letter. Then he looked up and said, “So, then. At last Tom Jefferson’s going to do it: the route to the Pacific!” He paused. “Will you go?”

“I’m considering it right hard. Thought to get your opinions on it.”

“My opinion ye fairly know: do it. I wish I could. Too late for me now, though. You do it, I say. Such a chance, by God, by God!” He shook his head and his eyes were moist and full of westering. “That about the States owning that land inside a year. What d’you reckon they’re up to? Buyin’ it from Napoleon, or what?” Three years ago Spain had ceded her Louisiana Territory to France, and since then every thinking Westerner had been wondering and worrying what the ambitious Bonaparte might intend to do in the New World.

“Lord knows what they’re doing,” William said. “By the way, Fanny, Lewis warns me this whole plan o’ his is a secret o’ the most delicate kind, so we dasn’t speak on’t outside of ourselves.”

“Good for me!” she exclaimed. “I fancy knowing something no other woman anywhere knows. If other women thought as I do, there would ne’er be gossip.”

They laughed with her, then George said, “If we lived by the Shawnee code, there’d be precious little of it. Their punishment for gossip about people is death.”

“What a splendid idea!” Fanny exclaimed. “Tho’ I doubt it would silence some Louisville women I know.”

“Ha, ha! I’ll say this, though,” William ventured. “We’d have no government. Every man jack’d be on the gallows a week after he took office!”

They laughed so that Fanny’s boys stopped their game and looked curiously toward the porch. George gazed upon William and Fanny and for the moment was almost happy. This news of the western exploration had so affected him that he felt as young as they. And it strengthened his old faith in Tom Jefferson. Once, not long ago, in a letter to Jefferson, George had asked him to consider William for appointment to some kind of leadership in the West where his abilities might be used and some honors gained, and he had reminded the President that he had every right to expect such a favor. And now this. It was obvious that Tom Jefferson still held the Clark name in high esteem. That was very gratifying.