My body swung like a pendulum above the churning water. On the uptake, I wedged one foot over the edge and hung there until Jim’s hands steadied my foot. With traction, I was able to hoist up my other leg. When the boat leaned the other way, I fell into the cockpit beside him and Em.
I held Em to me while the boat continued to thrash. Glass rattled, and my teeth gnashed in my head. After a minute, the boat calmed down, and everything quieted. The water fell still. My breathing matched both Em and Jim, fast and spooked.
She pulled her head away from my stomach and looked up at me. “Are we okay, Merry? Did we make it?”
“Yep. We sure did. This time. That was some boat work, Jim.”
He nodded and blew out air. “A miracle is what it was.”
I watched as the fog swirled and parted to reveal a glimpse of water. Within the hour, it would be clear enough to use a compass and head upstream. Jim took his place behind the wheel. “Fog’s lifting a little. Let me check things out before we move along.”
“Do you think that boat was looking for me, Mister Jim?”
“Can’t say, Em. Whether it was or no, I got to get you off this river before sunup tomorrow.”
“Where will we be when we get there, Merry?”
“Natchez, Mississippi.”
I shuddered, an involuntary reaction. I wasn’t ready to walk through its gateway. To cover the miles that would carry me across my grave.
Not yet.
Perhaps not ever.
EIGHTEEN
I tried to kill Lewis. He never knew.
Maybe that’s because I always led others to carry out my desires. My evil deeds. Life was for preserving my name. For getting ahead. My reputation was on the line.
A double agent had to be cognizant of the stakes. Head of the United States Army. A spy for Spain as Agent Thirteen. Sometimes, I forgot the rules in my zeal to stroke every master.
When the Spanish army rode into the plains, they reminded me. I told them to intercept Lewis and Clark. Arrest them. Not kill them. But, the Spanish, they made my instructions the same thing. Sent three separate search parties into the Missouri watershed, trying to find Jefferson’s great Corps of Discovery. All because I told them to.
Even as I sent bird claws and rocks to the President—stupid gee-gaws for an idiot man—I instructed the Spanish to annihilate his dream.
I wrote Meriwether Lewis’s death sentence. In Spanish maps and cipher letters.
If the Spanish army had christened me head of a search party, I would’ve found him. Oh yes. And, I would’ve stood on the sidelines while they slaughtered my nemesis.
I would’ve kept my job as governor of Upper Louisiana.
And my Ann wouldn’t have died.
Nowhere gave me another chance to murder. At least, this time. I couldn’t remember what came before.
Different, killing someone when they’re already dead. I could give Lewis an unwanted immortality. My nerves pulsed with the chance to claim it.
For Ann and for me.
NINETEEN
Thursday. October 6, 1977. Outside Natchez, Mississippi.
A ragged, chalky cliff jutted out of the river on our starboard side. Dust to match my rotting memories. I knew where Natchez led: to the place that destroyed my life. A cabin in the middle of nowhere. An act that led me Nowhere.
I couldn’t remember my time in Nowhere. It was all just random words and phrases, scribbled on the worn pages of a journal. Images I couldn’t piece together. I never knew what I did. Who I’d been. Where I tried to make a difference. Every Nowhere outing was completely new. Things and places seemed familiar sometimes. I didn’t even know why I bothered to record what happened. It was always stripped clean in the end. A blank journal and an inept man.
Journaling was a compulsion from life. I couldn’t shake it. When I buried my journal under my mattress or pushed it over the edge of the boat and watched it bubble to the bottom of the river, I still woke up with it underneath my palm the next morning.
The engine coughed, and Jim stuck his head out of the cockpit. He pointed to the bluff. Natchez. Dead ahead.
This was one way to greet a sunrise. Light streaked over the bluffs. Burned my eyes. Hours of no sleep, leaning off the bow of the boat to help Jim navigate in the dark: the night did a job on me.
Emmaline watched a white gull fish off the front of the boat. When she wasn’t scratching an angry sunburn, she giggled and waved with the freedom of a true child. I made a mental note to keep her sensitive skin covered for the rest of the trip. A serious case of sun poisoning could slow our progress a precious day or two. I called her to me, and she scurried to my side, her fingers scratching at her seared shoulder.
Her skin radiated heat against a white t-shirt, something Jim had in a corner of the boat, and her hair was a snarl down her back. She looked a sight, but it would have to do until I could get her something else. Jim turned the wheel toward shore, and I kneeled beside her. “See that spot? Jutting out in the river, just beyond the bridge?”
Her eyes followed my finger. “I see it.”
“There’s a ramp. Jim is going to drop us there, and we can head into town.”
“Can we get something to eat first? At McDonald’s? They must have one. Every place does.”
“First things, Em. We’ve got to get you some decent clothes and find some scissors to cut all that hair.”
She balled up her fists and wrapped her arms around her head. Fiery eyes poked through the crack betwixt her arms. Jim’s laugh vibrated in his throat.
“You’re NOT cutting my hair, Merry. No way.” Emmaline grabbed up her tangled hair and stuffed it under her arms and down her shirt collar.
“Believe me. You don’t want to be running a trail in the woods with all that mess.”
Her red face grew even redder. “It’s not a mess. It’s NOT.”
“Sorry. Sorry. Didn’t mean to offend, Em.”
“I’ll find some rubber bands and keep it up. Pink. Or lavender.” She grabbed at her hair and demonstrated a fat ponytail, but her hands were too small to hold it all. The longer she tried to keep it back, the more it blew around her face. In frustration, she spit a wad of it out of her mouth and stared at me, defiant.
Jim rolled his eyes and turned the wheel toward shore. Glad to have the easier task.
I sat beside her, Indian-style. Put myself in line with the stubborn set of her jaw. It wasn’t just about hiking in the woods. She needed to look different. Putting her hair up wouldn’t be enough. Somebody could see her. Call her mother and tell her where we were. And we always had to be careful of Wilkinson. The Judge.
She jumped in before I could finish. “How do you know the Judge, Merry?”
It was the question she couldn’t forget. I knew it. Still, it caught me unawares.
White caps churned off the side of the boat as I remembered the first time I met James Wilkinson. His ready smile. The puff of his cigar when I shook his hand. Connection. He was Clark’s superior in the Army. An example. I looked up to him.
It wasn’t easy to accept how much I liked the man. At first, anyway. Until he undermined me in my job and revealed his duplicitous nature. That was his way: gain the trust of his target, and obliterate him. He did it, time and again, to become commander of the United States Army. Plowed through soldiers who were better than he was and took positions that should’ve belonged to greater men.
Why did my final assignment in Nowhere have to be mixed up with him?
I avoided her eyes when I answered. “I used to know him. A long time ago.”
“How did you meet?”
“In the army, the first time.”
Her eyes grew wide. “Did you kill people in Vietnam? I saw things about it on TV when I was little.”
“I did my time before that war, so no. But I lost track of him for
a while after I got out. I had a big job out west, and I was gone for over two years.”
“What were you doing?”
“Exploring. Scientific research. When I got back, somebody gave me the Judge’s job, because he wasn’t suited for it.”
“You were a judge, too?” She wrinkled her nose and took a step back, like being a judge was a disease. The way Wilkinson did it, I suppose it was.
“No. I was—I had a different position in government.”
“And you got him fired?”
“Not on purpose, no. But, he always blamed me. Hated me, in fact.”
“Does he hate you because you killed his wife?”
I flicked my eyes to Jim, but his hands were steady on the controls.
“I didn’t kill his wife, Em.”
“Why did he say you did?”
“I don’t know. I met her a couple of times. Unforgettable woman. Even in straitened circumstances, she had a regal demeanor that forced every eye to follow her around a room. Not beauty, but……..what’s the word I’m looking for? Magnetism. She drew people in.”
I looked out over the whipped-up river, and I saw her again. The last time. Wilkinson helped her onto a ship bound for Natchez. He had been reassigned to a different position. I only heard later that she had tuberculosis. She died on a plantation in Mississippi.
How was her death my fault?
Emmaline’s touch feathered the back of my hand. “Merry, what’s the matter?”
“What? Oh, it’s nothing. I was just trying to work out why Wilkinson would believe I killed his wife. The truth is a convenient thing for a man like him. He twists it to justify everything he does. And now that I have you with me, he will use his every connection to find you.”
“But we’re, like, thousands of miles away from home. How can the Judge know people all the way up here?”
My knees popped when I pushed to my feet. I had little experience with children, almost none with girls. I ran my fingers along my scalp and sighed before turning around to face her. “New Orleans is probably two hours by car, Em. That’s not very far for a powerful man who’s been around a long time. Wilkinson has connections.”
“How do you know that?”
“I know because I know, all right?”
“But—”
I clung to her hand. Forced her wandering attention back to the threat of Wilkinson. “Look. People are funny, especially where lost little girls are concerned. We already know one man is looking for you, and we don’t know how many people he’s talked to. There’s no telling what somebody might do if they recognized you. All I know is I don’t want you to see the Judge again. He would take you away. And that would be the end of your seeing your father. Don’t jeopardize everything over a haircut.”
She put one hand on her hip and gave me a skeptical squint. “Do you really think somebody in Natchez would know me by my hair?”
Jim swiveled around to look at her. “People remember pretty, Emmaline.”
Underneath the sunburn, I could see her blush, and I used the opportunity to strike. “See? We’ve had no news for two nights and a day. We’ve been listening off-and-on to the radio. So far, there’s been nothing about you, about us. We can’t know about pictures in the newspaper or stories on the local news, not to mention the whereabouts of the man in the boat yesterday. Do you want to take the chance that somebody might recognize you? Turn us in?”
The motor sputtered. When I looked over Jim’s shoulder, the needle on the gauge bounced below E. We had fumes to get us to the ramp. It was still a stretch to swim, but we were almost under the bridge. Jim kept his hands steady on the wheel. I wished I knew how to drive. I preferred negotiating with a dying boat to a nine-year-old girl.
She held a frayed chunk of hair. “If we cut it to my shoulders—like this much—would I look the same? Not like a boy? I could still pull it up when I had to, but it wouldn’t be so ratty.” She fought with the whole shambles and eyed her reflection in the window, to see what she might look like with shorter hair.
I paced to the front of the boat and back. Was the whole trek to Nashville going to be like this?
“Okay. I won’t make you look like a boy. But, I’m going to buy you a couple of sturdy pairs of boy’s blue jeans, the ones with reinforced knees, along with two or three long-sleeved shirts and a pair of sensible shoes for hiking.”
“And pink rubber bands.”
“Goddammit, Em.” I took a deep breath and massaged my temples, while her jaw resumed its belligerent mask. We stared each other down while I gritted my teeth. In the end, she wore me out. “Fine. Yes. Pink rubber bands. If we can find some. Don’t get carried away. You’ve got to tote your own gear.”
She threw her arms up over her head and jumped around the deck. The thrill of victory.
Before her mood shifted, I went below and found some scissors in a drawer in the galley. They were dull, but they would have to do.
I worked the shears through the air while she danced down the ladder. She wiggled and scratched her sunburn the whole time I cut off hunks of her hair. When I was done, she sported an uneven bob, just above her shoulders, and it was curlier than ever. She closed her hands around it. “See? I can still make a ponytail, Merry. Just barely. I can’t wait to have pink rubber bands.”
I sighed and followed her back into the early morning sunshine. Together we threw her shorn hair over the side and watched it splay over the water, a mermaid princess swimming with the current. “Goodbye, hair.” Emmaline laughed. She’d borne it with good spirit. I watched it float downstream, praying the loss of her hair would not equal the end of a little girl’s magical, child-like wonder.
Not yet.
The water was still as Jim steered the boat close to the ramp. A row of abandoned buildings appeared above the incline. Jim jerked his head toward land. To our spot.
The boat sputtered again, but Jim got us close enough to lasso a wet line around a pile and tie a good knot. I grabbed a fishing pole and lowered it into the water, a crude depth gauge. It hit bottom after half its length went under. “Go grab your Sunday shoes and put them on, Em. They’ll do until we can get to town. You can’t go barefoot.”
“But they’re squishy. They make my feet feel weird.”
“It’s only until we can buy you something else. Now go.”
She took her time going below. When she came back, she carried the shoes in one hand, her arm straight out from her body like they disgusted her. With a grunt, she sat on the floor and pulled them on, one at a time, without unbuckling them. When Jim cut the motor, the deep rumble of river life filled the silence. Toads. Tree frogs. Crickets.
Done with her shoes, Emmaline looped her arm through mine. I walked over to Jim and shook his hand. “Thanks for bringing us here.”
Jim squatted in front of Em. In a beefy hand, he held a faded cap. He adjusted the plastic tabs in back and put it on her head.
Emmaline threw her arms around his thick waist and squeezed. “Thank you, Mister Jim. I’ll never forget you.”
“I won’t forget you, Miss Emmaline. Not in the whole of my life.”
When she broke free, I held my arms out, ignoring the fear on her face. “Climb into my arms. I’m going to carry you to shore. We’ll wade a few yards, and I want you to hold on tight.”
Cold water dragged my jeans when we splashed into the river. I gripped Em close and we quick-stepped toward the slick hump of concrete twenty yards ahead, slipping through muck on the river bottom. My boots squished onto the ramp, and I put Em down beside me.
Jim waved from the deck of the boat. “You be lucky.”
“You be lucky, too, Mister Jim.” Emmaline wagged her hand in the air.
I took her palm in mine. “Let’s go find some pink rubber bands, Emmaline Cagney.”
TWENTY
Main Street. Natchez, Mississi
ppi. A forgotten place in 1977. Just what I was hoping for. Dingy and empty, it was occupied by people too worn down by life to notice folks like me.
The few people we passed on the sidewalk stopped and stared at Emmaline, though. Who wouldn’t take note of a child in a t-shirt and Sunday shoes, a baseball cap swallowing her head? I put my arm around her shoulders and scoped the street for any place that might sell what we needed.
In the next block, I pushed through a glass door.
“Gladstone’s Department Store.” Emmaline sounded out the words. “My mother used to buy my dresses at a place like this, Merry.”
“Ssh, Em. Don’t talk about that right now.”
“Can I help you?”
An old man reclined on a glass case and gawked at Emmaline. Fine threads of hair swirled under the edges of Jim’s cap. It was twice the size of her head. “Can I help you, Son?”
Son. He said it with a knowing emphasis that unnerved me.
When he said it again, I realized he was talking to me.
I opened my mouth. Told him we needed a few things. Some denims with reinforced knees, along with sturdy shoes and socks. A couple of long sleeved shirts. And the last thing on my list. “You got any camping equipment?”
He jerked his thumb. “In back. Know what size the boy needs? Looks like he’s an eight to me.”
“That’s right. An eight.”
While he went to find the clothes, I guided Em toward the camping supplies. “Don’t say anything, and I mean anything, to that man, Em. You let me do the talking.”
“But—”
“No buts. You stand right there while I grab what we need.”
She whirled her arms from side to side. “Can we get the purple tent?”
“What?”
“The purple one. Right here.” She picked up a box with the word ‘Barbie’ splattered across the front.
“No, Em. That’s nothing but a toy. Now, this is a tent we can use in the woods.” I shouldered a mud brown one that would blend in with the landscape. “Here. You carry these two sleeping bags, and I’ll get the other stuff.”
To Live Forever: An Afterlife Journey of Meriwether Lewis Page 9
