Sacajawea (94 page)

Clark had unbuttoned his shirt and was fanning himself with a branch of cottonwood leaves. Charbonneau stared at him in openmouthed surprise. Clark chuckled. “Now I have flattered you enough. What I want to say is this. The men feel”—he laughed—“that they alone are responsible for turning a weak, helpless Frenchman into a man with whom any one of them would be pleased to hunt or trap. They trust you according to the rules that make a white man a desirable companion in the wilderness. You are not an Indian. What do you say now?”

“You do not lie?” Charbonneau flushed.

“So—it pleases you. And will you now realize how badly you have treated Janey, who deserves as much or more than you for the success of this trip?”

Charbonneau plucked at the whangs on his sleeves and pictured himself the owner of many fine horses and fat cattle, with a farm of tall corn and fat bolls of cotton. In his imagination he saw his sons, Tess and Pomp, going to school in Saint Louis. He saw Sacajawea’s grinning face, Otter Woman’s flat smile as they sang beside the cooking fire. And then they all turned to Clark and held out a brimful bowl of stew and an ear of roasted corn before turning toward Charbonneau.

Remorse filled Charbonneau. He had repulsed friendship, and now he wondered why Clark had not, in turn, deserted him. How had Lewis been able to bearhis insults? Where had they found the kindness to stay at his side? Now he felt shame and turned his head away from Clark’s gaze.

“Well,” said Clark, “bring the child to me in a year or so. I will take him and bring him up as my own son. This I can do as a favor for Janey.”

“All winter I have thought of my son learning to read and write,” she whispered. Tears welled in her eyes, and a sob broke in her throat. She could not speak more. Scannon made a low moaning sound in his throat and jumped to her side, nuzzling her hand; then he went quietly back in the canoe with Lewis.

Scannon had developed for Sacajawea something as akin to a feeling of human affection as he was capable. For her part, Sacajawea respected and admired the adamantine spirit of the dog’s unsubmissive soul.

She turned her head to the other men. Most of them wore only the leather trousers she and York had sewn. Except for their beards, they were hardly distinguishable from the breechclouted Indians. In the crowd she saw York elbow his way to the canoes. Now the noise from the natives seemed deafening. York grasped her shoulder and bent down by her ear, but she hardly knew what he said. In his eyes there was the familiar, the well known, the intimate. He had been crying, and Sacajawea’s gaze struck fresh tears to his cheeks.

“It is all over, Janey,” he said, and though Sacajawea could not hear the words, she read them on the trembling brown mouth.

Hard, squeezing fingers sank into her shoulder, and she was twisted about violently against Clark’s chest. She threw her arms around him and kissed him on his hairy face. “I will bring my son to you. It is a promise.” She was barely able to hold back her tears. She turned away from both men abruptly so that they would not see her crying.

“She is proud,” York said to Clark with an amused inflection.

Clark, composed and standing in his canoe, felt that somehow he had deserted Sacajawea. He stared at her with unhappy, searching eyes.

Then Pat Gass called to Charbonneau, “Hey, Frenchy, fur companies aren’t run by men chewing bearmeat around a native campfire.” Gass’s broad face was deeply weathered, his lips wide and set in a manner that drew a crease line from each side of his straight, short nose to the corners of his mouth. His raven black hair was thick and long against his neck. His eyes, cool blue, always suspicious and seeking, warmed as he smiled and called, “The rules of the game are set up in Saint Louis these days. I’ll be there, and you should be, too.”

Charbonneau seized the hands of the nearest bucks and laughed suddenly, shaking off his remorse, and appearing now to have only hurt feelings. “Do you think I don’t know what I should do? I am a man of experiences.” He tapped his forehead. “And ability. I speak three, four languages, and I have a number of words I use with impressiveness.”

Gass called from the floating canoe,
“Au revoir
!” The canoes moved downriver fast. Far out, two men on the forward canoe fired a rifle. For some time Sacajawea remained there gazing at the empty river. Her son clung to her side. A series of clouds came up to cover the blazing sun.

The natives were speaking their feelings in a jumble of voices. “Our hearts are heavy.” “In the wind at night we will hear the white men’s voices, and in the day the sun will paint their shadows.” “Do not forget us, for we will be lonely.”

She listened until she felt that she must turn away to hide her emotions once again. Now the villagers talked of the stars, the earth, the water, the sights and sounds of the world that were everlasting. She had been away for two years, but as she looked inside herself she found that the time was not a succession of years or seasons, but a single unit of rich experience and lessons learned. She had gone on the expedition’s trail with a certain amount of indifference, as a follower, a slave to her Frenchman, Charbonneau. The chastening process had begun abruptly and had been complete. The learning had come more slowly, but it was thorough. She was genuinely sorry to be left behind.

Even under the cloud cover the day was hot and humid, and she flexed her knees and tried to hold back her tears.

* * *

Dropping below their old 1804 winter quarters at Fort Mandan, the two captains saw but a row of blackened pickets left. The cabins lay in ashes. Clark halted the canoes to go ashore. His private thoughts ran uninhibited in his head as he wandered among the ashes and the gray, wrinkled mushrooms that now covered the blackened grounds. His journal was objective and impersonal about the burned-out fort.

He shook his head at the blackened cabins and stamped the ashes off his feet. He moved from the heat-cracked boulders and blackened trees down toward the waiting canoes. He’d seen enough. His thoughts were dark as he stepped into an open glade that formed a gentle hollow in the center of a shallow basin to which the rains of centuries had brought a depth of rich soil. It was completely covered with asters, tall and pale and scarcely moving in this somewhat sheltered spot—no other flower grew there. The asters shone in the pale yellow light of a cloud-hidden sun like their namesakes, the stars.

Clark was strangely moved. He bent down over the flowers for a moment, and when he raised his head, his eyes were shining. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything more beautiful,” he said aloud, from the heart. “The fire did not come here—it could not burn everything.” And he bent once more over the asters, which shivered a little as a warm breeze passed through the basin, and then were still again.

Now Clark was thinking of home, the safe, peaceful plantation, and he saw the vivacious blue eyes of Judy Hancock as he gave her the gifts he had brought. She was called the most beautiful girl in Virginia, with her light auburn curls. So, he thought, I have two girls—Janey, a brown-eyed fawn, and Judy, a blue-eyed red fox. Clark jumped aboard his canoe and dipped the paddle into the water.

Lewis had settled himself in the white pirogue, moving his leg back and forth to relieve some stiffness. It would be nice to live like a gentleman again, with hot baths and no beard.

The expedition was leaving behind the grizzly bears wolves, rattlesnakes, hostile Sioux and Blackfeet as theyswept downriver, covering eighty miles a day. They no longer thought of a diet of roots, dog meat, and pounded salmon, the prairie heat and mountain cold, the prickly pears, wild roses, and blue camass, and the endless native powwows. They thought of home, with the smell of corn pone and molasses and the sight of women in calico dresses. The Corps of Discovery was soon to be heard from.
¹

Sacajawea, her son enfolded in her arms, was unconscious of the crowd waving and shouting toward the canoes as they became small dots upon the muddy water. She was unaware of the rocks and sticks under her feet. She stumbled forward toward the empty, rolling hills under the hot mid-August sun. She did not hear the whimpers of Pomp as she brushed past rosebushes and stinging nettles.

She stopped at the top of a long slope that rose easily from the river, a benchland where the village was situated. She turned to the west and saw that the plain reached out to high yellow hills that formed a ragged line against the sky. That way there were no trees, and the surrounding valley swept away on either side, empty and barren and immense. Land benches tilted upon one another like great red and amber slabs driven through the irregular contours of the tossing hills. She saw horse herds grazing on the plain. At the foot of the slope, round bull boats swarmed like fat-bellied polliwogs. Some of the villagers had followed the expedition downriver for a while and were now coming back, bobbing and twisting as they moved toward the shore. The river was half a mile wide, but the cries from the opposite shore, the barking of the dogs, and the beating of drums came clearly across the water.

Sacajawea’s thoughts ran past the yellow hills, past the shining mountains, onward through the haze to the great Stinking Waters of the west. They came slowly back over the Lolo Pass to the Great Falls, and to the land of the People. There a child waited for her to come back. Shoogan, her sister’s child, waited as the People waited for white traders to come with guns and ammunition. She thought of the enemy, the Blackfeet. Ifthey had guns, there would be no peace; it would be a season of wars and sadness in the two nations.

Slowly she turned to face the blazing sun. Down the yellow Missouri to a land she did not know went her white friends and the great black one, naked to the waist, his head wrapped in a red kerchief that fluttered against his wide, shining neck. She imagined the muscles of his back and thick shoulders as he paddled, sweat glistening in the sun on the knobs of his spine.

She was not the same as she had been before in these river villages. She knew things not known by her foster mother, Grasshopper, or Otter Woman, Fast Arrow, or even the one-eyed Chief Kakoakis. She would not be content to stay in this place long. She had goals and a horizon to follow. She had hope. She would teach her son these things. He would learn to read and write.

She wept in the dry brown grass where no disapproving Minnetaree could see her, away from the taunting eyes of her man. Pomp sat beside her, picking up stones and placing them in a small heap between his knees. A rush of self-pity filled her lonely heart. Her man did not care what happened to her. He would find another young
femme
when it pleased him. Otter Woman was glad to see her only because the lodge work could now be shared and she could have more time to visit, sit in the sun, and gossip. Today, the thick-walled lodges of the Minnetarees seemed oppressive with filth and darkness, because she had lived for two years almost completely outdoors, except in the coldest part of winter, in the clear air and next to Mother Earth. The wooden cabins of the white men were light, not filled with filth, even though at times smoke-filled. She thought, Squaws belong where they are, the way the buffalo belong where there is grass and distance. But not me. I do not wish to be thought of in the same breath with prairie dogs. They belong where they are. They were put there. I have moved. I have changed. The village is here and the same. I do not belong in it.

“Umbea.”
Pomp tugged at her leather tunic and patted her arm. His face was bright and full of laughing. A deer mouse scampered off, and the child tried to follow.

Sacajawea caught his hand and walked in the direction of Grasshopper’s lodge.

“I am happy you came first to see me after your friends left,” said the old woman. “You are a true daughter.” She clicked her tongue and smiled. “You are sad. I can see it. Sit and listen to your old mother for a while. The world will go on if you are not here. Boats will go up and down the river.”

Looking up, Sacajawea said, “I worry about my people and the strength of their enemies, the Blackfeet.”

“We are your people.” Grasshopper took a willow fan to Sweet Clover, who sat near the fire stirring the stew made with fresh corn. Sweet Clover did not look up, but began fanning her face vigorously, and her stirring became faster, so that Grasshopper began to shake with laughter. When the old woman looked at Sacajawea, she made herself calm and said, “The Blackfeet will kill and be killed. The sun will shine, and night and day will come. You are on Mother Earth to live and die. You can do and think what is best, but there is no use fighting things. You help others when you can, work, and live as best you can—that is all.” Her face puffed in and out in thought. “You can fight for what is right. It does not matter so much how you fight. It is what you fight for. A grandmother once said, ‘You have to stick to the row you are hoeing.’ In this life it is a person’s first right to live, even if he has to shed blood for that. And what you think is right has to come while you are alive. It is no good to you when you are dead. Am I telling you too much?” The old woman looked fondly at Sacajawea. “I am wearing on you?”

“No,” Sacajawea said quickly. “I need your thoughts.”

Grasshopper said softly, “It is good to hear you say so, my daughter.”

“You have a right to hear this,” Sacajawea said. “Chief Red Hair asked to take my son to his village, to teach him understanding of the markings on paper.”

“Your little Pomp?”

“At! My son would have much in his head.”

“You are young and silly. I doubt if you’ll take my word for it, but I will tell you. You think the white blood of a father dominates the mother’s blood. That is not even sensible.”

“Sensible!” Sacajawea’s mouth was wry upon the word. “How can you judge that?”

“Well so, then maybe not. I’ve done many things that were silly. If anyone had told me, three or four months ago, that you’d find your way back here, I maybe would have said he was in the world of spirits. And the day I took you into my arms and said you were my daughter—well, so there are times one has to be a fool. I did not have room to choose.”