by John Jakes
Clapper scowled. “Does he bite?”
“Don’t think so.”
“Good. Miz Rachel hates mean dogs. That it?”
Abraham smiled. “Yes and no.”
“What the hell’s that mean?”
“My wife’s expecting a child in the fall.”
“Why, congratulations to you!” Clapper grabbed Abraham’s hand and pumped it, squeezing so hard the younger man winced.
Pale, Abraham said, “Any more details?”
Clapper pondered. “Nope. It don’t take me long to make up my mind about a feller’s cut, Mr. Kent. If you’re agreeable, it’s partners.”
“Partners,” Abraham said, declining to shake the hand Clapper once again extended. Anxious to tell Elizabeth about their good fortune, he started away, then stopped short. He pivoted back to the huge tree of a man who was busy pulling a few chips of wood from his chest-length beard. “Mr. Clapper, there is one very important detail we didn’t settle.”
“What, Mr. Kent?”
“You still don’t know where my wife and I want to go.”
Clapper thought again, then shrugged. “Don’t much care. You can tell me if you want to.”
“I’ve a deed to a plot of land on the Great Miami River, above Cincinnati.”
“Used to call it Losantville ’bout ten years ago—I read that in one o’ them guide books. I got a whole box of guide books about the new country—”
He jerked a thumb at his wagon. Over the end-board, a redheaded young man and a little rose-cheeked girl were watching.
“Where you’re goin’ sounds all right to me, Mr. Kent. Maybe I’ll head on west, maybe I won’t. Miz Edna won’t much care. She sighs a lot when we move, but she rollers wherever I’ve a notion to go.”
“You mean it really doesn’t matter to you where you end up?”
“No, sir. I always like a place for a spell while I’m there. But then the itch sets in—can’t explain it any better’n that. It’s the goin’, not the stoppin’, I enjoy the most. Suppose that sounds crazy, huh?”
It did, but Abraham was too polite to admit it. “I understand perfectly.”
“Will you have a talk with Miz Edna sometime? She sure as hell don’t.”
“How about this evening? I’d like to bring my wife over to get acquainted—”
“Bring her to supper! Miz Edna don’t mind fixin’ for one more.”
“Shouldn’t you ask her?”
“Never ask a woman anything, Mr. Kent. She might tell you what she wants. Then wouldn’t you be in a fix? Listen, you get a move on! The sooner we lay our plans, the sooner we’ll be shed o’ these damn mobs of people!”
Abraham vanished in the blue wood smoke of the cook fires Daniel Clapper continued to eye with disgust.
iii
April came, bringing longer days, warmer air, the first warbling birds, the first shoots of green on the coal-veined hills around Pittsburgh. To Abraham and Elizabeth, it seemed that the new season marked an end to their own long night of frustration and hardship as well.
To those with enough money, obtaining one of the huge flatboats known as arks was no problem. Any of several yards along the two rivers could hammer one together in the space of about two weeks. Morning after morning, Abraham and Daniel Clapper watched theirs being constructed: a rectangular scow sixty-two feet long, twenty-two feet wide.
The ark hull was built of timbers ten inches square, carefully caulked to minimize leakage. The entire deck was enclosed with four-inch planks that rose flush with the vessel’s four sides.
A door in the larboard side near the stern was large enough to admit Clapper’s horses to their appointed space. Forward of this, canvas hanging from the slightly pitched plank roof created temporary walls. One large area was set aside at the bow for communal dining and socializing. The partners agreed to pay extra to have a mud-brick hearth and chimney installed. The ark was quite literally a floating house and stable in one.
A ladder from below gave access to the roof through a trapdoor. From the roof’s stern, a great steering-oar nearly as long as the ark itself trailed into the water. She was a clumsy-looking craft, Abraham thought. He already felt confined just glancing into the canvas-partitioned sleeping cubicle he and Elizabeth would share. The ark had no windows, only small loopholes through which muskets could be poked in the event of an Indian attack from shore. But that danger was minimal, everyone said, at least above the falls.
The real hazards, according to Clapper’s pamphlets, were sunken obstructions. Limbs and occasionally entire trees were swept away from the banks into the current. A few of the largest planters—trees whose upper ends protruded above the surface—and sleepers—trees with their upper ends submerged—were marked on Clapper’s map, along with islands and sandbars. The map also noted a few well-known sawyers, submerged logs whose upper ends rose and fell in cycles as long as twenty minutes to half an hour. These were the most dangerous obstructions of all. Unfortunately, the map located only a fraction of them.
But that didn’t intimidate the Clappers or the Kents. They watched families with just as little river experience confidently board their arks and set off around the bend of the Ohio in high spirits. One or two vessels a day departed from the Pittsburgh landings.
Finally, one brilliant morning in late April, so did theirs.
Abraham and Daniel Clapper leaned on the end of the great sweep. Daniel Junior cursed down below, struggling to calm the panicky horses. Edna Clapper, Danetta and Elizabeth were at the hearth, forward, preparing breakfast.
It was a smooth and auspicious beginning.
iv
The Ohio was more beautiful than Abraham remembered it. Their journey, while requiring long, tiring hours at the sweep, was almost like a holiday in some respects. Every sundown, they anchored in midstream, as did all boats traveling up and down the river. The Kents—Elizabeth growing noticeably around the middle—shared the physical warmth of the hearth at the bow, as well as the less tangible but very real human warmth generated by the Clappers. Indeed, the younger couple already felt themselves almost part of the family.
Elizabeth was unstinting when it came to helping Mrs. Clapper with the cooking. And she did her share of the washing that hung on a line strung across the roof. All of them took pleasure in innocuous chatter about the sights of the day, or in the lusty singing of a few hymns—Daniel Clapper enjoyed hymns—after the spring sun went down. Chief grew fatter on the scraps Rachel Clapper fed him.
At night, lying close together in their cubicle while Daniel Clapper snored noisily beyond the canvas partition, Abraham usually asked Elizabeth for reassurances that she was feeling well. Her spirits seemed remarkably improved but her color didn’t.
She gave him the reassurances—truthful or not, he was unable to tell. He still felt occasional stabs of guilt over not being more sensitive to his father’s warnings about the hardships they’d face in the west. He now saw clearly that he’d permitted his passion for Elizabeth, as well as their shared defiance of Philip, to lure him into the false certainty that love would sustain them in the face of all difficulties. Elizabeth’s extreme fatigue every evening, and her parchment-white cheeks, were constant reminders that it just wasn’t so.
Despite his concerns, the unvarying routine of the days and the continual pageant of towering forests and tiny settlements slipping behind them began to lull Abraham into a sense of security he enjoyed. A week passed without a mishap of any kind. He looked forward to one or two more such idyllic weeks before they reached the little frontier settlement of Cincinnati.
On a Friday evening, just at dusk, Abraham came up from below with two mugs of coffee freshly brewed by Mrs. Clapper. Her big, red-bearded husband was seated near the chimney. His legs hung down over the bow wall. Daniel Junior was taking his turn manning the sweep.
The river here ran straight and smooth. Some two or three miles ahead, Abraham glimpsed another ark preceding them. Half a mile behind, a two-way boat was being cordel
led upstream against the four-mile-an-hour current. Its crew plodded along a clear stretch on the south bank, the long tow rope strung across their shoulders.
“Thankee,” Clapper said, accepting the coffee. He squinted into the sunlight falling through the cathedrallike trees and burnishing the river. “Be dark soon. Time to drop anchor.” He sipped from the mug. “Your wife seems to be weathering the Ohio mighty fine.”
Abraham sat down, drank some coffee. “Did you think she might not?”
“She’s a lovely lass, but she is a mite frail.” Clapper stared at the younger man with disarming directness. “Surely you had doubts of your own.”
“Yes. I did.”
That seemed to conclude the subject. Abraham turned to another that had kept him curious for days. “Have you come to any decision about your final destination?”
“No, sir, I feel the same as I did in Pittsburgh. We agreed to split up the ark an’ sell off her timbers in Cincinnati. I’ll decide where we’re goin’ after that. Told you before—it don’t make a hell of a lot of difference. I know a little about plenty o’ things, but not enough to be a success at any one. In a way, that’s mighty fortunate—”
When he grinned, his teeth literally materialized in the midst of the red hair covering the lower part of his face.
“I can relax some. Don’t have to feel the least bit ambitious.”
Abraham smiled, nodded. Clapper had a way of putting an immutable period at the end of certain conversations. Though he would have liked to question the older man about the origins of his odd attitudes, he didn’t. Instead, he contented himself with savoring the coffee and the sunlight scattering golden sparks on the river.
The sweep creaked in its mounting as Daniel Junior changed course slightly. Ahead, the other ark was coasting out of sight around a bend.
Clapper surprised him by saying, “What do you want out here, Mr. Kent? You don’t exactly fit.”
“Why not?”
“Fer one thing, it’s plain you’re more of an educated man than I’ll ever be.”
“I’m not sure about that, Mr. Clapper. There’s all sorts of education—”
“You know what I mean. Miz Edna, she keeps say-in’, Daniel, that young Mr. Kent’s got all the marks of a real gentleman.”
Abraham chuckled. “I suppose that means I’ll be a bad farmer?”
Clapper sugared the truth with a smile: “Probably won’t make it any easier.”
“To answer your question, I first came out here with the army. I served in the campaign of ’94.”
“Under Mad Anthony?”
“Yes. I liked the look of the country. And when I got home to Boston, I decided I didn’t care to stay in the east. Right now my wants are simple.”
“Frinstance?”
Abraham shrugged. “The obvious things. To see Elizabeth content. To raise a family. To be happy myself—”
“As a dirt farmer?”
“I’m not sure. We’ll find out.”
“Least you’re honest.”
“Mostly I guess you could say I came west because I knew what I didn’t want.”
“Life in a big city—”
“That’s right.”
He thought of Philip, but he let the reply stand without amplification. The river burbled around the ark’s hull. A hawk swooped through the green gloom of the woods to starboard. Abraham took another sip of the potent coffee, said, “I didn’t give you much of an answer, did I, Mr. Clapper? Knowing what you don’t want—having to search for something else you can’t even name—that’s a pretty poor excuse for taking up a new life. The only trouble is, in my case it’s true.”
“You needn’t look so glum about it. You think any of the other young people pilin’ down this river are any smarter ’n you in that respect? No, sir.” Clapper shook his head. “All they know is the same thing both of us know—what they don’t want. They hope to heaven there’s somethin’ different out here—”
He waved the mug at the bend where the ark ahead had disappeared.
“—but don’t ask ’em to name it!”
“Puts them on a spot, does it?”
“Right smart! They can’t answer. Not so’s a feller who’s been around can believe ’em, that is. Oh, you’ll hear plenty of gab about how everybody’s free an’ equal in the western lands—free an’ equal, yes; sir! The west is demo-cratic, ain’t that what that Mr. Jefferson says? No rich nabobs to crowd a young man, or make him feel second best. Maybe a mite of that’s true—”
He held index finger and thumb close together.
“ ’Bout this much. I’ll tell you something. If a man could be happy in the east, do you imagine he’d up and leave? Lord no! They can be loads o’ reasons why he ain’t happy. Money. Women. Mebbe he’s ugly as that bulldog of yours—”
“I wouldn’t wish that on another human being, Mr. Clapper.”
The other man still refused to smile. “Lots of times, a man can’t be happy and just plain don’t know why. He might have a bit of cash put by, even some regular schooling—”
“But he leaves anyway?”
“Yes, sir, ’cause, he’s so blamed unhappy. Mr. Kent, believe me, that’s the whole reason. A man don’t never cut the roots if everything’s right with his world—or his head. Folks can turn it other side backwards all they want. They can shout ‘Free an’ equal!’ till they’re blue. But just like your case—it really ain’t a matter of goin’ toward, it’s a matter of runnin’ from—”
Clapper encompassed the western horizon with a sweep of the cup. “And once you catch the urge to run away, you never lose it. You just keep movin’—miserable as ever.”
Abraham shivered. “That’s a grim view.”
“True, though.”
“Well, if all you say about people being unhappy is correct—”
“It is!”
“Then we’re fortunate we have room to run, aren’t we? If we had to stay bottled up back east with all the grief you describe, I suspect we’d soon go crazy. So that makes the western country a blessing. And people moving into it—that’s a good, healthy thing when you consider the alternative.”
“Got to think that through a minute,” Clapper informed him, dubious.
“In my case it’s a blessing. I had to have somewhere to escape to, and that’s a fact.”
“Yeah, but you can’t pin down what you’re huntin’—you said so.”
“I know. Still, I’m hoping I’ll find something good—and be smart enough to recognize it for what it is.”
“Something, something,” Clapper parroted. Then, a snort: “You feel that way ’cause you’re young.”
“You don’t feel that way?”
“Not no more. You want to keep hopin’, Mr. Kent, don’t ask questions of folks my age.”
“Why not?”
“ ’Cause you’ll find that a mighty lot of the settlers swarmin’ out here have stopped other places before. Lookin’, always lookin’—for something. The ones that got ten or fifteen years on you—they already found out.”
“Found out what?”
“Something don’t exist. No place.”
“But surely—”
“No. It don’t.” Without self-pity, Clapper added, “I found out. Now you understand why it don’t make any difference to me where this boat’s headed, or where it stops?”
“Yes, I do.”
Clapper bobbed his head once, and drained his cup.
God in heaven, Abraham hoped Clapper wasn’t right. He prayed he and Elizabeth wouldn’t reach their tract of land only to come face to face with the futility of their flight—
No, surely the big man was in error, embittered by personal failures barely hinted at. To believe what Clapper said was too disillusioning—
The sudden, violent impact shattered his dour reverie. With a great crunch, then a prolonged grinding, the ark wrenched broadside to the current. Clapper almost pitched into the water.
Abraham’s grab saved him. He dragged
Clapper back as the bow of the ark came around, then lifted sharply on the larboard side.
Both men were nearly hurled off the roof as the ark rode up on some underwater obstacle, slid off and slammed down.
Below, the terrified horses neighed and kicked against the plank walls. The kicks were loud as gunshots.
“Sweep broke clean off, Pa!” Daniel Junior yelled from the stern. “We musta hit a sawyer—”
“Damn! The log was probably way down when that boat ahead of us went by. Then she bobbed up—go see how bad we’re busted up, Daniel.”
Abraham studied the tilt of the roof. “We’re taking water. She’s listing.”
Daniel Junior vanished below. Clapper began, “We better—”
“Danetta!”
Clapper and Abraham exchanged terrified looks. The cry came from Edna Clapper—and she wasn’t given to excesses of emotion.
All Abraham could think of was the ark’s brief but jolting rise and fall. Where was Elizabeth when they hit—?
He ran to the roof trap and scrambled down the ladder, hardly aware of Daniel Junior’s urgent cries from the stern. Clapper came down the ladder after him. Chief was yapping. The horses kept kicking the ark walls, bang, bang—
Mrs. Clapper screamed for her daughter a second time.
Abraham batted canvas hangings aside, dashed forward through sloshing water and burst into the communal room at the bow.
“Elizabeth!”
Tumbled into an awkward position against the bricks at one side of the hearth, his wife didn’t respond, or see him. Her eyes were nearly closed. One of her white hands constricted on the small mound of her belly.
Mrs. Clapper was kneeling beside her, partially concealing Elizabeth’s legs. Abraham felt sick to his stomach as he watched Edna Clapper withdraw her hands from beneath Elizabeth’s twisted skirt.
The hands were bloody.
“She fell,” Mrs. Clapper said in a faint voice, as though holding great emotion in check. “When we hit, she fell against the fireplace—”
Suddenly her eyes smoldered. “This is no place for men! Find Danetta.”
Anguish held Abraham rooted. He realized Clapper had come up behind him—and even the big red-bearded man seemed horrified into helplessness.
