of her message.
She straightened, took a breath, sat back in the chair. “I think sometimes of each of us as actors on a stage. We are each part of a vast story that we don’t understand. We don’t know how or why the story began, or how it will end. The goal in living is to try to understand. But we have no script. We have only a little time. Sometimes our audience calls out suggestions. We can take them, or we can simply say and do what we believe to be the best to carry the story forward. Then our time is up, our part of the story ends.” Again she paused, her face tilted down, her eyes looking up, her lips smiling, shy. “These years are our time, Mr. Clark. We must do the best we can.”
They had sat on the porch at the end of many days, an hour taken before they parted, she into the house, he into his loft. For a few weeks in the winters of his youth between the end of harvest and the start of planting he had gone to the common school, had learned to read, to write a fair hand, to calculate, but more from the desire to escape Benjamin’s heavy hand than through a love of learning. Lucy had encouraged him, had loaned him spellers, histories, books she had used in high school. Now, by candlelight he would read, study, sometimes practice his handwriting. He had heard her some evenings playing the piano, singing. He had wondered if she knew that he listened, staring into the night, filled with ideas he could not understand, longing to be near her.
She had talked to him of books and music, poetry, of the great falls near Buffalo, of the canal building from Buffalo all the way to Albany, of the railroad, nearly a thousand miles of track for trains that could speed at thirty miles per hour, of the wonders of the world, of the wonders that would be. She had talked of places, peoples, of the Irish newly come to the area, of Indians, the Seneca, a powerful tribe of the Iroquois who had lived thereabouts for a hundred years and more, subdued by General John Sullivan fifty years gone, now rarely seen. “This is really their land,” she said, opening her arms. “Their people, others like them, have been here, all across the continent, for a thousand years, maybe more.” A sadness came to her eyes. “Every white person, every black person in America is a foreigner. Our parents or grandparents took the Indians’ land. We’re still taking it.” Her voice was soft, hushed, almost as though she were talking to herself. She seemed not bitter, not pitying of the Indian, not condemning of the whites, simply explaining her belief of conditions of the world in which she lived.
He had hardly known what to make of it. Benjamin had always spoken of the Irish, Germans, all white people who were not native to the area, as foreigners, people to be ridiculed, not to be trusted. As for Negroes and Indians, Ransom had never known anyone to speak of them as fully human, as creatures with thoughts and dreams, capable of kindness or caring, of love and hope. Why, they didn’t wear decent clothes or live in houses. Their skins were not white. They were not Christians. He had never thought of taking land from Indians as different from taking land from deer or bear. Indians just lived on the land, they didn’t own it. He had always thought of land as being for white people. But if Lucy believed these things, he had better think about it.
In late spring of 1833 he had seen a poster in town, a call for volunteers to join the army, go to Florida, protect the settlers from the Seminole Indians. He had stared at the poster for a long time, wondering about the army, travel, Indians, fighting. Lucy had talked to him of travel, the wonders to be seen, but he had never really thought of leaving Livingston County, his work, Lucy. He had learned through Lucy that the United States extended a thousand miles west and twelve hundred miles south, that what was referred to as “the west” began not far from Griegsville, that the American people represented a great diversity of cultures and economies, from barbarism to refinement. The white population had grown from four million to fifteen million. Suddenly a door to the world seemed to open, a chance for him to try a life that promised more than farming and horses.
The law had just been changed, a fellow could enlist now for three years instead of five. He could join up, travel, save money, come back his own man, not the judge’s hired hand. Maybe one day he might build a house. He could cut the trees, rive the boards. There was plenty of stone. A porch, a fireplace. Then, perhaps, Lucy . . .
He had put a shirt, a pair of socks, his knife, in a small worn carpet-bag Lucy had given him. It would be a fifty-mile walk north to Rochester. He had stood on her back porch, knocked. The judge had come alone. Ransom could hardly hear the judge’s words for the disappointment ringing in his ears. Something about returning after his enlistment, taking up the work again. The judge had shaken his hand, gripped Ransom’s right shoulder with his left hand. “The army is a school, Ransom, a hard one. You can learn a great deal, some of it good. You’ll travel, see things. Do your best. Come back, boy. You’ll have work with me as long as I live.” Ransom nodded, felt his eyes burn. Then the judge had turned, gone inside. Ransom turned, took a step.
“Mr. Clark?” It was Lucy. She had taken the place of her father, her back pressed to the door, one hand behind holding the knob. She stood looking into his eyes, lips parted, close to words. “Mr. Clark, my father says you may write to me if . . . if you like.” She didn’t drop her eyes. She held out one hand. He had never touched her. Now he took her hand in his fingers. It felt as fragile as the cup in which she had sometimes served him tea. At the touch he felt his own lips open, tried to swallow down what seemed to be a peach pit in his throat. “Yes.” A moment longer they stood, then her hand slid from his, she turned, opened the door, went inside. The door closed.
•
While it was true that the army provided food, clothing and shelter, the beef and pork were often rancid, the bread or “ship’s biscuit” moldy, the coffee weak, and all were to be prepared by the soldier himself if he was serving in the field. Clothing was of cheap and coarse material, too large or too small, with boots that sometimes fell apart within weeks. Shelter at the frontier posts where Clark had served were either drafty log structures with wooden bedsteads that slept two to four men, their only mattress being forty-four pounds of straw issued monthly for each pair of men, quickly infested with fleas and bedbugs, or in the field, tents with straw mattresses. It was common knowledge that the food and bread ration, the rough ill-fitting clothing and the housing had changed little in half a century, but some thought it a great advantage that just this year regulations had ruled that each man be issued eighteen ounces of baked bread rather than flour, though in reality it made the post bakery into a money-making machine, since it took less than eighteen ounces of flour to make an equal weight of bread. To augment the regular ration of raw or boiled meat and bread, men were encouraged to garden, fish, and hunt.
And it hadn’t been as easy to save money as he had thought, what with a sutler’s temptations. The army had authorized the establishment of a business at every fort to offer for sale to soldiers as well as civilians “necessaries,” which might include cheese, fruit, nuts, and tea, as well as needles and thread, books, paper and pencils, and, of course, whisky, beer, and wine. Clark had never indulged in liquor, only rarely had a glass of beer, but the fruit, nuts, writing paper for a labored letter to Lucy, and sometimes a book, broke the monotony of garrison life. The paymaster made his rounds every two months, and Clark had known men who spent their entire pay and more on luxuries and liquor. Meanwhile, the sutler had the right to sit at the pay table and take up to half a soldier’s pay to satisfy his debts. Still, he had traveled a thousand miles and more, had gained some understanding of the world and its peoples that only travel could provide, had managed to put at least a little money aside. He would keep saving, take it back to Lucy. In spite of Benjamin, he had begun to believe that he was worthy, that he was a man. He knew hope. He had dreams.
From Rochester he had been sent to join his regiment at Fort Mitchell on the west bank of the Chattahoochee River in Alabama. The fort had been built in 1813 along the Federal Road that connected Washington City with New Orleans. The road was created by the linking together of the various post riders’ paths, cleared sixteen feet wide through almost unbroken pine forest, the center eight feet cut close to the ground, sufficient for moving supply wagons, cannon, and men on horseback or on foot. Swamps and streams had been causewayed and bridged. It ran through the territory of the Muscogees, known as Creeks by white men. The fort had been named for the then-governor of Georgia, David Mitchell, and was located a mile west of the Chattahoochee River. It was the first stockade in a series built about a day’s travel apart west of the Chattahoochee and served as