To Live Forever: An Afterlife Journey of Meriwether Lewis

by Watkins, Andra

  Mister Jack swallowed a mouthful of beans and laid a hand on Merry’s arm. “Do you think you can make it all the way, mon ami? To Nashville?”

  “I have to, Jack. It’s the only way.”

  Mister Jack shook his head and sighed. “I can take you as far as the bus station in Jackson tomorrow morning, if you’ll indulge me with one stop along the way. Sorry I can’t help you to the end.”

  “The end. I don’t know what comes at the end.”

  “I don’t know the answer, mon ami, but have hope. Hope is like the shy birds. They fly at a great distance, where they are seldom reached by the best of guns. They always make it home. I think, if we can only learn to fly the right way, then we will all find our way home.”

  I put my empty plate on the stubby grass and leaned over to fling my arms around Merry. I hugged him as hard as I could.

  “Thank you for helping me find my daddy,” I whispered. Before he said anything, I looked over his head at Mister Jack. “Don’t we have more marshmallows? Marshmallows make everything all right, don’t they?”

  The two men laughed with me, and it echoed under the stars and through the trees, all the way into my heart.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  It was my tummy that woke me. Too many of Mister Jack’s beans. I rolled away from my sleeping bag and slipped out of the tent. Both Merry and Mister Jack slept outside, close to the dying fire. When I looked up, the sky was black and sparkly, and the night bugs honked and croaked and cricketed, their sounds coming from everywhere at once.

  I had to go, but where? If Mister Jack or Merry woke up and saw me with my pants down, I would die. I didn’t want them to hear me, either.

  With my Wonder Twin powers, I tippy-toed past them. A few steps into the woods, and I would have enough privacy. Leaves crunched under my feet, and I blinked my eyes to see better in the dark. The ground was uneven, and I couldn’t remember what Merry said about going in the woods. Did he say rocks were good? Or was that where the snakes were?

  A branch broke off somewhere behind me, and I froze. In the dark, tracks thudded along the ground, close to me. A dirty smell came with a sudden breeze, and I pinched my nose together.

  Feet scraped at leaves and dirt, a bull getting ready to charge. To ram his horns into me. To trample me like I once saw happen to a cowboy on television. Every way I turned, I heard it, grunting, pawing at the ground, not like it was going to run over me, but like it was going to eat me.

  I shuddered.

  It was a monster, not a bull. A nighttime woods monster, and it could see me in the dark, and its squinty eyes locked onto me, and it licked its fangs and got ready for its dumb-little-girl-lost-in-the-woods dinner.

  When its shadow charged, I screamed and ran as fast as I could. Through the leaves. Over a dead tree. I fell in a ditch, and it kept coming. Stinking wetness ran down my cheek, but I ran again, up the other side of the ditch. Further into the woods. If I could just get far enough away, the monster couldn’t catch me.

  My chest hurt. A long ropey thing wrapped around one of my arms. I jerked to a stop. Monster jaws...or snakes. It was snakes. Merry said snakes were everywhere in the woods. One had its drippy fangs around me. I thrashed against it, but it was no use. I could feel its mouth stretching. It was going to put its icky lips all the way over my head and eat me, head first. If it ate me that way, I wouldn’t be able to scream, so I screamed and screamed and screamed until my throat hurt, and I hit and kicked and fell down on the ground and bit the snake’s scaly skin as hard as I could.

  “Emmaline! Where are you?”

  “Merry! Help me! A snake! It’s eating my head! Hurry!”

  My mouth tasted dirty, but I kept fighting that old snake. I scratched it with my fingernails, and I even pulled a piece of it apart in my hands. If I could just keep it from eating me until Merry got there, he would kill it and send it all the way to hell.

  A weird light shot through the trees. I screamed again. Strong tentacles went around me, with a light at one end. I kicked at the new creature and bit into the flesh that held the light.

  “Ow, Em.”

  Merry.

  He let go of the flashlight, and it dropped on the ground with a dull thud. “Why did you bite me?”

  Merry sat on the ground, rubbing his hand. Mister Jack ran up behind him, panting hard. “Chérie, there you are.”

  The flashlight beam lit up a clearing. Lots of vines hung from the trees, the same ones I saw during the day. Merry motioned to them. “Meet your snake, Em. What are you doing, tearing up the forest in the middle of the night?”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “Do you know how far away from camp you are?”

  “I’m sorry, Merry. I, um. I—” I couldn’t talk anymore, because I was crying. When Merry hugged me to him, I wiped my nose with the back of my filthy hand.

  “Em, the woods are dangerous at night. You can’t just go wandering off by yourself.”

  “But I—I. Um. This is s-s-so embarrassing.”

  “What is? That you got lost?”

  “N-n-n-n-no! I had to g-g-go a lot—it was the b-b-beans—and I d-d-didn’t want you to s-s-s-see.”

  Mister Jack’s mustache shook when he laughed, and Merry chuckled and ran his hand through my hair. “Aw, Em. I never thought about bathroom etiquette on the trail. When you went earlier today, you just walked off in the trees, so I figured you were okay with the whole thing.”

  “But that was d-different. It was only number one.”

  “Okay. Okay. I understand. Still, if you have to go at night, you need to wake me up and let me know, all right? I can go with you, help you find a spot, and wait a little ways away to give you some privacy.”

  “C-c-c-can you and M-Mister Jack do that n-now?”

  Merry stood up, still holding me. He rubbed my tears away and set me on the ground. “Sure, Em. We’ll be right over there, behind those bushes. Give a shout when you’re done, and we’ll come back.”

  When I couldn’t see them anymore, I pulled my pants down and did what I had to do. It wasn’t nearly as hard as I expected it to be. If I didn’t get ahold of myself, I might make Merry mad enough to stop helping me, and if he stopped helping me, I wouldn’t find Daddy, ever. I looked up at the stars, shining through the trees, and I decided, right then, that I had to grow up. To stop crying when I was scared. I needed to be brave.

  Like Merry. If I could be like him, I knew I’d find my daddy.

  I cleaned myself up and stood tall. My breath was misty when I spoke. I watched it shimmer and disappear into the night. Remnants of the old me.

  “Okay, Merry. Mister Jack. I’m ready.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Words remain behind. To glorify us. To betray us. I understood why George Washington wanted his papers burned after his death. Words betray weakness. They illumine the soul.

  Always, I tried to be careful with words. To write in cipher. My own private code.

  Like this:

  µ ∆ µ ¤ ∏

  It didn’t help me in the end. The Spanish saved a record of payments to me, money I earned for selling my government’s secrets. Plans for expansion. Military outposts. Even the famed trek to the Pacific by Lewis and Clark. After I died, I feared their carelessness would betray me and smear my name across the pages of history.

  In Nowhere, I was more circumspect. It’s how I managed to elude my assignment. To disappear into the ether. To recreate myself as the man I lived to be.

  A man of reckoning.

  Nadine, with all her cunning and trickery, she learned the manner of man I am.

  I shook my head to banish images of her. It was time to focus. To find Lewis and my darling little beauty.

  To delve into her and release my Ann. To make her mine again.

  I sat down at my roll top desk and pushed the mechanism for the hidden com
partment. My stash of parchment. I fingered its raw edges and picked up my fountain pen.

  Brevity lent weight to orders. And, I had only one directive to send.

  ∆ ╤ ▄ ∆

  (Wait for me.)

  TWENTY-SIX

  Mister Jack swung his car door shut and stepped onto the dirt path that led through the woods. If I walked behind him, he would smile and show new birds to me. A bald eagle perched at the top of a tree. The black-and-blue feathers of a blue jay.

  Merry followed us, his steps so quiet I almost forgot he was there. The sun got dark behind the leaves and ropey vines and Spanish moss, and the trail became a deep ditch with sides higher than my head. Tree roots clung to the dirt like claws. I could even swing from some of them if I tried, but I didn’t, because that would make noise. I had to start acting like a grown-up.

  I dug in my heels. I would do it. Somehow.

  “The Sunken Trace.” Mister Jack opened his arms like ladies did on television game shows. He tiptoed ahead of us. The ditch was deep enough to feel like we were being buried alive. I shuddered and took Merry’s hand.

  I remembered to whisper. “Why is it a ditch, Merry?”

  Mister Jack looked into the trees and held up his hand, moving it back and forth through the air like he wanted me to be quiet. Merry squeezed my shoulder. I leaned my head into his solid stomach and thought about how brave he was. He was never afraid of anything, while I thought vines in the trees were snakes and the animals were monsters. He would never be that stupid. I wanted to be as brave as Merry, because Daddy would be super-proud of me.

  I looked up the trail and saw Mister Jack freeze. He put his hand in a pocket on the side of his pants leg and pulled out a small camera. When he raised it to his face, the snap made me jump, and I let out a little yelp. Something moved through the branches and went further into the forest.

  “Merde!” Mister Jack hopped from foot to foot, like I did during one of my tantrums. I didn’t realize adults threw tantrums, too. Maybe I was more grown-up than I thought. “MerdeMerdeMerde! Did you see it?”

  “What?” Merry whispered.

  Mister Jack got even more excited in a mad way. He bent over, his hands on his knees, breathing really fast.

  “An ivory billed woodpecker. I’m sure of it. Rare-rare.”

  I started to ask another question, but when I opened my mouth, Mister Jack threw up his hand. He wanted no more talking. He put an elegant finger over his lips, and his mustache twitched. After he caught my eye, he turned and continued down the trail. His steps made no sound.

  I motioned for Merry to lean closer to my head. With my hand, I covered my mouth and asked my question close to his ear. “What is an ivory-whatever woodpecker?”

  “Silence!” Mister Jack roared, causing both Merry and me to jump. He put his camera back in his pants pocket, and he charged down the path to find the ivory-whatever bird.

  Merry just looked at me and smiled like he knew a secret. “Bird watchers are funny, Em. I’ve known a few. Wait here.”

  I asked him where he met other bird watchers, but he didn’t answer. He just mouthed the words wait here again to make sure I understood. I was a little scared, but I nodded anyhow. The dead quiet of the forest wasn’t spooky.

  It wasn’t.

  Merry tip-toed along the trail up ahead, making no sound. It was almost like he wasn’t even there. I had to keep looking to remember I wasn’t alone.

  Breath blew my hair, and I looked up to see faces in the tree trunks and snakes wrapped around the limbs, so long they almost reached the ground. In the bark, kinky grey hair blew around witches’ snarling, toothless mouths. I took a step back, but everything closed in on me. Taunting. When I closed my eyes, the witches and snakes crashed in my mind. They were all around me. On top of me. Suffocating me. One witch licked her lips and eyed my arm. Hungry for a piece of dead little girl.

  “It’s not real. It’s my hyperactive imagination. Wonder Twin powers. Activate.” I whispered it, over the heavy breathing and hissing and—

  I couldn’t help it. It was hard to be a grown-up. I screamed.

  “Merde!” Jack shouted from around a bend in the deep gouge. Feet pounded into the dirt, and Merry appeared around the curve of the trail.

  “What is it, Em? What did you see?”

  He pulled me to his chest, but I was so embarrassed. I buried my head and wouldn’t look at him. Stupid Wonder Twins. No matter how much I thought I wasn’t scared, their powers didn’t work to make me not scared for real. I was such a fraidy-cat girl. I couldn’t even be left alone in the woods. I was never going to find Daddy if I was afraid of everything.

  Merry held the back of my head and ran his fingers through my tangled hair. “Really, Em. It’s okay. The first time I encountered an unknown wilderness, I was mighty scared, too.”

  Merry? Scared? Like me? I looked up at him and spoke through shaky breath. “Where was that?”

  He smiled, but his eyes were sad. “In a lot of ways, it was a place just like this.”

  “This very place?”

  “Not exactly here, no. But it was close to a river not unlike the Mississippi. You know, the stuff that scares us is all the same in the end. It doesn’t matter where it is.”

  He gave me a squeeze and set me on my feet. I stood as tall as I could, to make him proud of me. “Cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die. I’m going to be more grown-up from now on.”

  “Aw, Em. It’s okay if you’re scared. This whole adventure is a lot for a kid, especially one who’s always lived in a city. Never been anywhere.”

  “Well, I’m going to be a brave. It will make Daddy proud when he sees me.”

  He patted my head. “I want you to crawl up on my back, all right? I think I can track with you there, and it will keep you close to me.”

  He turned, and I felt his muscles strain when I climbed onto his back. I crossed my legs around his waist and locked my fingers around the front of his neck. He stood, and everything in the forest got smaller: the trees were thinner, the vines not so snakey, the Trace even looked peaceful. Kind of pretty.

  I clung to Merry while he snuck around the bend to join Mister Jack, who sat along the side of the path. Merry made a hand signal to him, and Mister Jack shrugged, frowning. Merry shook me higher on his back and crouched on the ground. He moved ahead slow, the sound of his feet lost in the old dirt.

  Quick, he stood and studied a thick tree that rose up tall beside us. Rough bark became high branches with long green needles. Merry tapped two fingers to his eyes before he pointed up. I followed the line from the end of his fingers up the side of the tree.

  Plockplockplockplock.

  A black-and-white bird with a white blotch on the side of its head was pecking its beak into the bark. I bit my tongue to keep from shrieking with excitement. Merry found Jack’s bird. It drilled into the wood, its feathers moving with its head. It made a lot of noise for such a small thing.

  Mister Jack came up beside us, a sketch pad in his hand. His handlebar mustache twitched as he worked a pencil in graceful strokes across heavy cream paper and made the bird appear right before my eyes. In no time, he finished and held it out at arm’s length. His picture of the bird looked real enough to fly off the page. With big swirlies, he signed it, tore it from the pad, handed it to me and bowed.

  An ivory-billed woodpecker of my very own.

  I took it from his hand and showed it to Merry. He held it for me while I slid down from his back. When I took it from him, I fingered its edges, afraid I would tear it. The bird watched us from the tree for a second before flying into the woods.

  “A treat to see one these days, so I’m told.” Merry kneeled to admire Mister Jack’s artwork.

  “Oui. They are rarer than they used to be.”

  Merry sighed. “Many things are.”

  I looked up at Mister Jack. “
It’s so pretty. May I really keep it?”

  He touched my face with his long fingers. “But of course. It pleases me that she was present for you.” Looking at Merry, he continued. “Expert tracking. You’re sharp-sharp, mon ami. I know you’ll make it to Nashville. And, speaking of that city, we must return to the road. I can get you to Jackson by twilight, but only if we hurry.”

  I squinted at Mister Jack’s signature again and recognized the name. “Mister Jack, is your last name Audubon? Like the park in New Orleans?”

  But he was already halfway down the trail, his straight back weaving through the trees.

  He never answered me.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Friday. October 7, 1977. Evening. Jackson, Mississippi.

  Doughnuts. Em’s eyes lit up with red neon and sugar. She looked through the window of the Peoples Cafe in Jackson, next to the bus station, where Jack left us.

  Me, I watched Jack’s oblong tail lights fade down Main Street. I was sad to see him go. It was always hard to lose a friend. Connections were rare in Nowhere.

  Jack’s spirit reminded me of someone I met in life. He was a bird lover, too. A Frenchman. The drawing he gave Em was so like the style of the man I knew. I wished my expedition drawings rose to his level of artistry. Instead, they were just doodles in the margins, crude images captured in a hurry. I still didn’t get them right.

  Emmaline’s voice dragged me back to the present. “Can I have three cinnamon twists if they sell them, Merry? Please? I promise I can eat them all.”

  I looked over at the brick bus station. “We need to get our tickets and head on, Em. We don’t know who may be after us.”

  “We can get them to go, Merry. Like Aunt Bertie used to get her cocktails. Pretty please?”

  Before I could answer, Emmaline took my hand and barreled through the heavy glass door. Sweetness mingled with hot grease and brewing coffee. She climbed up on a stool in front of a counter, and I sat beside her. The metal seats were bolted to the floor, and Em started turning around and around. She used her feet to push off the base of the counter with every twirl, her head thrown back and her eyes glazed.