Centennial

by James A. Michener

  “Why do you say that?” Elly asked.

  “Because you’re the kindest, sweetest girl God ever made, that’s why,” Laura Lou said, and now as the wagon rolled toward York, Elly Zahm was determined to be exactly that kind of wife.

  As dusk approached they passed through York, a tidy German town in which every house along the main street looked as if it belonged to a banker, and in time they came to a meadowland rimmed by tall trees, and here Levi unhitched the horses. He took a ridiculous length of time to curry them down and find them water, fussing over unnecessary chores, and Elly knew what was bothering him.

  Therefore she went about her own work, paying no attention to him. She arranged their belongings in the wagon so that they rode forward, and on the gently sloping floor, made their first bed so that their feet would be at the low part in the middle and their heads at the raised part aft. Then she got out the pan to cook the last of the scrapple Levi had brought along, but after a while she noticed that he was not chopping wood for the fire. “Where’s the wood, Levi?” she called. “I’m not hungry,” he called back, so with out comment she repacked the cooking gear and returned the scrapple to its damp cloth. She knew that he must be starving from the long day’s work, but she also guessed why he was not hungry, so in the fading light she made believe she was sewing.

  “You’ll ruin your eyes,” Levi said when he returned to the wagon, and there was such solicitude in his voice that she almost burst into tears.

  “Oh, Levi!” she said in a low voice. “I do wish I was pretty.” He took her in his arms and for the first time kissed her. “You’re pretty enough for me,” he said gently, and with a maximum of awkwardness and confusion and misapplied strength, Levi Zendt took Elly Zahm as his wife. So many of the guesses she and Laura Lou had made during their nightly sessions were nearly right that the nuptials had about them a pastoral grandeur, and when morning came Levi shouted, “Elly, I’m starvin’. Fry up that scrapple!” And he ate the whole pound and a half.

  The turnpike on which they traveled from York to Gettysburg was one of the busiest and best in the land, forty feet from one grassy edge to the other, with the middle sealed by a good MacAdam, as the recent innovation from Scotland was called. On such a road it was possible to cover thirty miles a day, if you looked after your horses.

  It was prudent to be traveling west in winter, before the spring thaw set in and the road began to wash in its weaker sections. As a freighter told them on the outskirts of Gettysburg, The trick is to reach Pittsburgh while the roads are still frozen. That way you miss all the trouble. Then you’re on hand when the ice breaks up in the Ohio River ... current runs fast ... lots of water ... and it sweeps you right down to Cairo like you’re on a magic carpet.” Stepping closer, he asked, “Mind if I give you a bit of advice, stranger?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I’d sell that Conestoga ... buy me a lighter rig.”

  “This suits us just fine,” Levi said.

  “Point is, when you get to Pittsburgh you’ll need a heavier flatboat. And they cost money.”

  “We’ll find some,” Levi said.

  “I must say you got fine horses, there.”

  “I like ’em,” Levi said as he snapped the lines.

  The Zendts liked Gettysburg. It was a quiet town in which nothing much happened. A few stores catered to the numerous travelers and the inns served good beer. The land surrounding the town looked as if it would be fine for farming, and the stone fences that crisscrossed it enclosed rolling fields dotted with cattle and horses.

  “If a man didn’t have his farm around Lancaster,” Levi said, “this would be a likely spot. I like rolling hills that lead to woodlands.” That night, on the western edge of Gettysburg, they slept in a grove of shagbark hickories, and the stately chestnut trees that boys love, and tall shy walnut trees, last to leaf in spring, first to grow bare in autumn.

  “There’ll be no wood like this out west,” he mused, and in the twilight Elly saw him picking fragments from the shagbarks. “If these hickories were in Lancaster;” he called to her, “they’d be worth a fortune for smokin’ hams.” She realized how much more painful this emigration was for him than for her, because he was leaving behind a way of life that had proved fruitful—sausage-smoking, the market stall, hickory trees and walnuts, and stout barns—while she was leaving absolutely nothing she cared for but the affection of Laura Lou Booker. The love that she already felt for her stolid Dutchman intensified, and she determined to make his new life as easy as possible.

  “Time for bed, Levi,” she called, and he came to it gladly, for each night she made it more enjoyable.

  It was only one hundred and eighty miles from Gettysburg to Pittsburgh, but the road had to climb over several chains of steep mountains and the going became’ difficult.

  East of Chambersburg, Levi had his first trouble with the wheel that had caused Amos Boemer to lose his bells. Customarily, he walked on the left of the wagon, but today, reins in hand, he was riding the lazyboard. This was a piece of strong white oak which could be pulled out from the left-hand side of the wagon. Sitting there, he was able to work the brake and control the reins. Elly was inside tending her chores when he became aware of a slight squeaking behind him. At first he suspected that he might have left a little pressure on the brake, but that was not the case. Inspection of the wheel showed that the iron rim had begun to work loose, and this was a serious problem. It meant either that the hickory in the wheel had warped, or that the iron had expanded under the heat of the road.

  “The road’s frozen!” Elly said when he suggested this as a reason.

  “Feel the iron,” he told her. It was warm.

  At the next village they pulled into a wheelwright’s, who told them the bad news: “It’s what we call a creeper. A wheel that’s weak in every part, but poor in none. Spokes work loose. Hub wobbles. Rim-wood shrinks. And the goddamn rim expands.”

  “What should I do?” Levi asked.

  “Reset the whole wheel,” the expert said.

  “I couldn’t just wedge it ... to take up the slack?”

  The man laughed raucously. “Son, you’re travelin’ three thousand miles. How long do you think a wedge would last?” He took Levi to the three other wheels and showed him how solid they were. “As good wheels as a man sees,” he judged, “but this’n’s just a poor wheel.”

  “Why?” Levi asked.

  “Why does a sow farrow eight pigs that grow into real hogs and one that remains a runt?” the wheelwright asked, laughing at his analogy.

  “How much?” Levi asked, cutting him short.

  “Two dollars, and you can have the wheel tomorrow noon.”

  Levi knew the man was giving him sound advice, and the charge was not excessive; the rim would have to be heated, hammered and slipped over the rebuilt rim while red-hot. As it cooled it would adjust itself to the wood, forming a permanent, trustworthy bind.

  “Will it be good for three thousand miles?” Levi asked. “It’s a creeper, son. In that goddamn wheel you have many parts, and right now all of ’em is figurin’ out how to wreck you later on. Keep the wood wet when you get a chance. Watch it. And whenever you get to a blacksmith, have him look at it.” He studied the Conestoga and said, “Whoever built this rig knew the difference between a saw and an ax. He built it good.”

  Two days west of McConnellsburg came the first big test, the fording of the Juniata. It wasn’t the main Juniata, of course, for that would have required a bridge, but it was a substantial branch and in the last days of winter it carried a good flow of water. When she saw the stream confronting them, Elly cried, “You mean we take the wagon down into it?” and her husband asked, “You got any better ideas?”

  He walked across the ford and found that the icy water came no higher than his thighs. “The horses can do it,” he said confidently. “You stay in the wagon.”

  This she refused to do. With her instinct for protecting her man and his property, she wanted to be whe
re she could assist him if the horses reared or the wagon began to slip. And no matter if her skirts got soaked.

  So Levi stayed at the left side of the wagon, keeping the reins in his hands, while Elly guided the two lead horses. The descent into the Juniata was steep and slippery, and she fell into the frigid waters, which covered her for a moment. She came up gasping, frightening the horses. They were on the verge of rearing, but she regained her footing and tugged strongly at the head horses’ bridle.

  “Ho! Ho!” she called, spitting the water from her mouth and guiding the horses to the opposite bank, where the footing was impossible. Again she stumbled.

  “You’re a pretty sight!” Levi called as he drove the horses forward.

  “That water’s cold!” Elly called back as she watched the horses straining up the muddy bank, hauling the heavy wagon behind them. As the water ran off the wheels and in rivulets down the horses’ flanks, she came back to Levi and said, “There’ll be many rivers before Oregon. We’ll learn to do it better.”

  “I was glad you were there when the horses started to act up,” he said, and as she clambered inside to change her clothes she felt that their marriage had become a real partnership.

  After Bedford they had to make a choice. They could keep to the north and follow the old Forbes Road over the Alleghenies into Pittsburgh or they could hold to the south and use the newer Glade Road through Somerset. “Forbes Road is twenty miles shorter,” the blacksmith said as he shod the two bought horses, whose shoes were beginning to wear. “Glade Road’s longer and costs more for tolls, but it’s an easier way over the top.”

  “Are the mountains bad?” Levi asked.

  “Mountains are always bad,” the blacksmith said, “and no matter which road you take, you’ll get a bellyful, but if I was doin’ it ...” He hesitated, not wishing to give advice if it wasn’t wanted.

  “What would you do?” Levi asked.

  “I’d whip up my horses and go for the Glade Road and thank God that I’d escaped the Forbes.” He thrust a red-hot shoe into his tank, and when the sizzling stopped, added, “You’re lucky son, to have the choice. Not so long ago there was only the Forbes, and in winter them mountains killed you.”

  “We’ll follow the Glade,” Levi said, “because the more mountains we miss, the better,” but even so, before they got to Somerset they found themselves on mountain roads so steep they doubted the horses could pull the wagon up. This was no idle fear, for in two days’ journey they passed four wrecked wagons and three dead horses.

  At the crest of one mountain, as Levi looked westward and saw what loomed ahead, he lost heart and told Elly, “My God! These are only the Alleghenies. Three thousand feet high. Do you realize how high the Rockies are?”

  “Fourteen thousand,” she said, and they stared at each other.

  Should they go on? They did not discuss the problem openly. But each knew that this was the moment of decision. This was their last sensible chance of rejecting the brutal trip to Oregon, the last opportunity for turning back. The fording of the Juniata had been a foretaste of the greater rivers to come; these difficult mountains were but a prelude to the fearsome Rockies.

  As the six horses rested from their exertion, the two young travelers judged their own courage, and unfortunately they lacked important information which would have made their decision easier. First, the height of any mountain is significant only in relation to the height of the tableland from which it rises; the low Alleghenies, rising steeply from sea level, were just as high as a ten-thousand-foot mountain rising from a tableland of six thousand, eight hundred feet. Second, a remarkable pass through the Rockies had been discovered by trappers, and it involved no elevation higher than eight thousand feet, so that if a man and his wagon could breast the Alleghenies, they could conquer the Rockies.

  If the Zendts lacked this reassuring knowledge, they had something better. They had youth and they had courage, and now Elly put her hand in her husband’s and said, “We’d better get into the valley before night.”

  In spite of the difficult mountains, which the Zendts surmounted better than most, they were by no means lost in a wilderness. Over the entire distance from Lancaster to Pittsburgh, there was some kind of inn available at almost every mile. Often they were rude, filthy affairs, but they did have oats for the horses and hot soup for the travelers. Families avoided the inns wherever possible, preferring to sleep in their wagons rather than risk the bedbugs inside, but when a heavy snowfall hit west of Somerset, blocking the highway, the Zendts did finally halt at Slack’s Tavern, where they placed the six grays in a protected stable and themselves in quarters only a little warmer and much less clean.

  The room assigned them was shared by four other travelers of dubious cleanliness. Since the bed which he and Elly were expected to use was already occupied by two of the gentlemen, the newlyweds decided to sleep on the floor. Even so, fleas and other insects made sleep almost impossible, and this became the first night of their marriage which could not be termed congenial.

  It was a relief to get back on the clean, frozen highway, and on the fourteenth of March, as winter was ending, they came to that spot east of Pittsburgh where the Youghiogheny joins the Monongahela to form a considerable river. Elly burst into the silly song that Laura Lou had taught her:

  “The Youghiogheny and the Monongahela,

  They run together to the Allegheny,

  Where they all join hands, they all join hands

  And what do they make? The O-high-O.”

  With an excitement that surprised them, they urged the horses on, keeping to the right bank of the Monongahela until they reached a plateau where other travelers had halted to look down upon that mysterious spot, so vital in American history; there, as the song decreed, the dark and turbulent Monongahela came up from the south to join with the quieter Allegheny coming down from the north, forming, at the triangle where Pittsburgh stood, the mighty Ohio.

  They caught their breath when they saw the magnitude of the city below them, its dark furnaces standing along the rivers, its powerful smokestacks throwing coal fumes in the air as scores of products were being forged. It was a scene of enormous energy, of boats passing back and forth and trains coughing into tunnels. There were more houses than either Levi or Elly could have imagined, built on hills so steep that no horse could climb them, and over the whole area hung a smoky pall of energy, sometimes hiding the houses and the rivers, sometimes breaking into separated clouds between which the Zendts caught peeks of the activity that marked this amazing site.

  “It’s like Chimborazo,” a man at Elly’s side cried ecstatically.

  “Like what?” she asked.

  “The volcano on the equator,” he said, marveling at what he saw below him:

  “Endlessly burning, fires of the inner soul

  Leap up toward heaven, leaving dark soot below.”

  He pronounced heaven as if it were spelled hebm, and Elly asked, “Where are you from?” and he told her, “London. I’m writing a book about our former colonies.” He looked with awe at the scene below and cried, “Nothing in America is greater than this.” He flung his arms wide and said, “This is the Chimborazo of the spirit, the American Birmingham, our Birmingham improved upon. Through our mistakes you learn.”

  He left his own party and led the Zendts down from the overlook and into the reality of Pittsburgh. Where they saw dirty houses and streets cut off from the sun, he saw unbridled energy and new opportunities for Germans and Irishmen and French expatriates. “Pittsburgh is the first really good whiskey I’ve found in America,” he exulted, and Levi wondered what he was talking about.

  As Levi guided the large Conestoga on his way to the waterfront, men stopped to show their sons the antique wagon with its high rear wheels, and Levi felt a sense of pride at being the owner of such a rig. But when he reached the rivers at the triangle and saw the magnificent and lacy boats that set forth from that spot on their way to St. Louis and New Orleans, he understood when
the captain of the first one he approached laughed at him, saying, “We couldn’t take a wagon like that aboard here, young man. This is for gentlemen and their cargo.”

  The second river boat he approached, the Queen of Sheba, was even more elegant than the first. It resembled one of the many-layered wedding cakes made by Stoltzfus: the boat’s upper tiers were supported by thin white columns and protected by green-striped awnings. Men in gray suits and ladies with parasols lounged on the topmost deck, gazing with languid interest at the busy scene. “Hello,” one gentleman cried, “a real Conestoga!” and all moved over to watch Levi rein in his horses.

  “Fine set of grays you have, young man,” the gentleman shouted down, “but they’re pulling too heavy a wagon.”

  “Where you heading, miss?” a lady called, and Elly replied, “Oregon.”

  This name occasioned such excitement that the gentleman ran down three flights of broad mahogany stairs, and with that impulsive generosity common to the west, insisted that the Zendts join them for refreshment.

  “The horses,” Levi protested, whereupon the gentleman commandeered a black boy and handed him five cents. “You guard these horses,” he said sternly, and the Zendts were whisked aboard and up the palatial stairways to the top deck, where they were surrounded by curious and admiring strangers.