with Floyd’s,” he said. “That way, he’d go to the white man’s Heaven.”
“I think that’s sad as shit,” T said. “But I know black people like that.”
“Sometimes, we identify with a thing in order to handle being swallowed up by it,” he said. For some reason, he glanced down between Joaney’s parted legs, at her Battery of Venus clearly outlined by her stretch pants.
Bill thought of the falling-out with the Sioux, who tried to exact a toll from the party before allowing it to proceed upriver. And how Lewis got so furious, and called the men to arms. Fortunately, a wise chief intervened. But Lewis never forgot or forgave it, calling them the “vilest miscreants of the savage race” and telling the whole country to treat the tribe as criminals and outlaws.
Joaney suddenly groaned and sat forward, a tiny muddy puddle now down between her shoes, silvery and reflective like sperm or a snail’s track. She grabbed his hand. Skyler looked over the seat at the floor, and nodded to T, who nudged Richard. Then they just stared at poor Jo, like some hapless family band, perplexed by this event, unsure whether to make a sacrifice, dance, or pray. Bill slipped away and spoke to the driver, then came back and took Joaney’s hand.
“Tell me some things,” she said.
“Like what?” he asked.
“I dunno, but goddammit, make it quick!”
He started talking, about how they found the backbone of a “fish” forty-five feet long, just lying out in the middle of a field. And how the tribes ran gangs of buffalo over cliffs, like Jesus stampeding the herd of swine into the sea. He told about Martha F., whom Clark named a river after, and whose true identity remained a mystery, a woman lost to time. And about the meat ration, which was barely adequate at nine pounds per man per day.
He told her Lewis’s favorite dish was dog, any style. He got her to half groan about George Shannon, who kept getting lost and running out ahead of the party. Sure that he’d been left behind, he raced out so far ahead that only a chase team of hunters on fast horses could catch him. Afraid of running out of things for her, he strayed into the taboo, such as Lewis’s talk of the “Battery of Venus,” whether the women displayed or concealed it. He talked desertion and mutiny, and about Newman, who was disbarred, and the deserter, Reed, who had to run the gauntlet four times while the men bashed him with their pencil-thick brass tamping rods. “What’d the Indians. Think of that?” she gasped.
“They thought it was barbaric,” he said. “But when Lewis told them the reason, they agreed that examples were necessary, even in the best families.”
Joaney nodded, breathing fast, staring ahead. She was into something hard and reliable now, and it had nothing to do with him.
“Did he help her?” she asked. “I mean, when she needed it the most?”
“He tried,” Bill said. “Lewis was mostly into bloodlettings and strong laxatives. He got her a drink made from crushed rattlesnake tail, and possibly that helped.”
She nodded, panting. Even in extremis, he found her very lovely and dear, her skinny arms and legs, her swollen breasts and big stomach that would deflate into a pucker, her knock-knees, her lithe wrists and ankles, her long neck and dark brow, and her aloneness, and her need, and then her aloneness again. The bus gusted up into the hospital drive and he got down to help the nurse with the wheelchair, and then got back on the bus though it tore him up to leave her there. What a mystery it all was. And what an awesome race of creatures, splendid creatures, women were.
At home, he told the story to Emily and Henry at dinner. Instead of calm family time, their dinners had turned anxious, with Henry constantly stirring through his food as if for a dead mouse. Emily didn’t have too much to say about it except that Joaney ought to have had someone with her, that he should’ve at least stayed a little while, and what was the matter with people anymore, anyway?
In his office later he couldn’t work, thinking about Joaney, and about Lewis’s command of herbal cures, how he would’ve known about purple cone flower, for instance, that it was good for madness and delivered real results in rabid dogs. Lewis hadn’t done much for Sergeant Floyd, who’d died with such grace that it sounded made up. He’d calmly announced that he was “going away,” as if on vacation, and asked Lewis to write a letter for him. How romantic. So where was the crying and the pleading? Where was death’s sting? And could Lewis’s account really be trusted? The main thing Tom asked for was a daily record of the trip, and yet Lewis wrote in fits and starts, leaving poor Clark to somehow fill the gaps. Of course, certain things could be checked out, like Sacagawea giving birth during a total eclipse of the moon. It was a difficult birth, but Indian women pregnant by white men suffered more in labor, as if they’d displeased the gods.
In bed that night, Bill tossed and turned, and Emily mashed a pillow down on her head. At that moment, for all he knew, Joaney was not only in pain but all alone as well. O, what a world it was, and what a life!
8. “…the residence of deavels…”
He poisons himself; Sgt. Floyd dies; Killing the first buffalo; A visit to a residence of tiny Christian devils; Geo. Shannon missing; York makes himself more terrible than they wish; A man confined for mutinous expression.
Reed lay without moving all the night long, for Lewis got up to check that he was breathing and not dead. For reasons he couldn’t fully fathom, he would not mention the carved ball to Clark or its 288 bumps, divisible by the twelve months or twelve disciples of Christ. Nor did Reed appear to recall finding it. And in a day or two, the private took up the old objects and implements of his former life as if by habit and was good and obedient as one might hope. Through a painful canal, he’d got new birth back into the tribe, and remember’d a purpose in the midst of his agonies there.
Days passed, and their visits to tribes along the way fell into a pattern of savage surprise at so many white faces and so much weaponry. One could scarce wish the situation reversed. Exchanging diplomatic half truths about aid on one side and obedience on the other, they kept on the move. He was never alone, but had the unlucky, rare gift for loneliness with a fellow human by his side. And wondered if God had a reason for making each mortal so singular and so painfully aware of the fact. And what’d become of his wounded French mistress? Where was she and did she touch her scar and think of him?
As he looked about, he seemed to see his life had already happened. He’d no great love like what lay before Clark, simple, easy for the taking. This job was prearranged before his birth, for the president was already his relative. He then stumbled on a grassy outcrop of what looked to be purest cobalt, weathered to a delicate creamy orange—and broke off a morsel. Having suddenly an awful hunger for that element, he thrust it into his mouth, while some distant part of him exclaimed, Poison! Poison! Spit it out! Like his mother shaking him the time he’d swallowed that one-cent piece.
His eyes and nose now burning, he stumbled toward the river, throat convulsed shut, tears scalding his face. With stung and puffy lips and swollen tongue, he could not even cry for help, and fell face first into the water and gurgled and sucked down mud and weeds. Somehow, Clark was now upon him and shaking him, asking not just what he’d ingested, but why. The grappling felt angry, and Lewis could not tell whether Clark was trying to push him deeper into the water or haul him up out of it. Clark spluttered and started into questions he could not finish. “Why did you—? What on earth were you—? What is the meaning—?” But the pure mineral had burned out his faculties and, as Clark dunked him, up seemed down, the sky was under him, the river above. What was more, he wished that it might never ever stop. Then abruptly he needed air and began to fight. He and Clark had each other by the neck and rose up each choking the other and the streaming drops appeared to fly sideways off their bodies. He let Clark go and was thrown or fell back into the water and there decided to rest. O, how lovely was a river! He would simply drift. Soon, though, his lungs missed the airy, chaotic world and he broke free again with the help of a multitude of male hands and voices. He waited to be pulled to pieces by those hands, but was lifted instead.
Later,