by Win Blevins
He spent the afternoon on the bluff above the river, at the far end from the levee. He could see the keelboat and the workers far down, loading and unloading, out of hearing range. He looked at the water for a long time, thinking of nothing, just watching the brown water move slowly down the river and sometimes curl into a long eddy and straighten out again and flow down. The river was quiet except for the faintest lapping sound on the sand. A hawk came over his head, soaring high. Baptiste wondered whether it was looking down for something. It seemed just to hover there, high above the earth, unconcerned. It flapped its wings once, abruptly and briefly, and floated on toward the Illinois side.
Most of the time he just sat and looked. He did not think of his mother. After a long time he slipped his mouth organ out of his pocket and began to play softly. It didn’t matter what he played. He sounded out every tune he knew. Sometimes memories of his mother rose in his mind as he played, not thoughts, just sense memories—the warmth of her hand on his back, the smooth feel of her cheek, and the vibration in her throat when she held him there and talked to him. He would have played one of the songs she sang to him, but he could not remember the sounds clearly, and the ones he remembered didn’t fit the mouth organ. He played hymns, soft and plaintive, and liked them:
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer to Thee.
E’en though a cross it be
That raiseth me,
Still all my song shall be,
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer to Thee!
Though like a wanderer,
The sun gone down.
Darkness be over me,
My rest a stone;
Yet in my dreams I’d be
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer, my God, to Thee.
Nearer to Thee!
Late in the afternoon thin clouds covered the sky, the river turned gray, and a slight, chill wind freshened. He got up—his legs were stiff—and started walking home.
He went straight to bed, without seeing Welch. In the middle of the night he woke up, touched his cheeks, and realized he had been crying.
Mrs. Welch had nothing to say about Sacajawea’s death—just a hand on the cheek and “I’m sorry”—but she started using Baptiste every day to go to the market with her and tote things back. The market was a building and the plaza in front of it, on the south end of the levee. Carts rumbling and peddlers crying and chickens squawking turned it into bedlam every day. Baptiste got to know some of the peddlers: There was a German Baptiste liked to tease who sold milk. When Mrs. Welch would ask how much, he would answer, “It ish a bit” or “It ish a picayune.” Missouri, and the Louisiana Territory generally, had almost no U.S. coins or currency, so everyone used the old Spanish coins. A picayune was a half real, worth about six and a half cents; a bit was a section of a coin that had been primitively quartered, and it was worth twelve and a half cents. Baptiste discovered that the poor German, a worn, suspicious, middle-aged man, knew no other English. So if he asked the fellow, “Are your children yours?” or “Is your wife a witch?” and pointed to the milk, the German would answer uncertainly, “It ish a bit.”
An Irishman was sometimes there selling butter. Baptiste loved his blarney, and wouldn’t let Mrs. Welch pay until they had heard it. “I’d like to see anny butther in the whole market like that, I would, faith. Tis illegant i’ ’tis. That butter ull be making ye rise in the mornin’ now, it will.”
An Illinoisan came to peddle chickens. He was a tall, strong-looking, slouchy fellow with an air of obstreperous independence, sullenly proud to be an American and a free man. His hair signaled his independence by waving through the ripped crown of his straw hat. He stood with his hands in his pockets and looked about dourly, as though ashamed to be a mere chicken-peddler. Mrs. Welch asked, pointing at the sign on the homemade, two-story, cart-mounted chicken coop, “Is that the lowest you’ll take?”
“Well, yes, ma’am, it’s thar at that price.” He shrugged. “I couldn’t take a mite less—the old ’oman says they’re futh it, and she knows, she does.” He always took less of course, looking mightily offended as he took the change.
Sometimes Baptiste would stay with the Irish butterman while Mrs. Welch shopped and haggled. Baptiste would play his repertory of songs on the mouth organ—avoiding the hymns, which once made the Irishman curse at him—and if the fellow had been supping the profits from the butter, he would join in. Then he’d switch to old Irish songs in a vigorous, scraggly, wretched tenor, and Baptiste would follow along, learning whatever was new. Hearing Baptiste fumble, the Irishman would curse. “Mither of God, don’t ye know anythin’?” He’d look fiercely at the boy. “Heathen, a damnable heathen.”
Mrs. Welch gave him a final sprucing. Baptiste turned his head around to look at the tails of the new coat Governor Clark had bought him. It was a miniature imitation, in dark brown, of just the sort of frock coat that gentlemen wore. He also had light brown pants and a fine-bosomed shirt decorated with a paste roseate stud. Baptiste thought he had never seen any clothes quite so elegant.
The black man was waiting in Welch’s parlor to escort him to Clark’s house, for it was almost dark out. Baptiste couldn’t remember when Welch had allowed him out after dark, but this was an occasion. Baptiste walked fast enough to make sure he didn’t slow the black man down. The man admitted that his name was Isaiah, but had nothing else to say.
The company dazzled Baptiste. Here was some of St. Louis’s first society: Clark and his wife Julia, the “Judith” he had longed for on the expedition and named a river after, Manuel Lisa and his wife Polly, Auguste Chouteau and his wife Therese. Lisa was a native Spaniard, a dark impulsive man, and spoke French with a thick accent. Chouteau, dressed quaintly in knee breeches with silver buckles on his shoes and his hair en queue, was the wealthy patriarch of one of St. Louis’s most distinguished French families. Baptiste had heard of both men. They had been involved in getting St. Louis’s fur trade started, and Clark had been one of their partners. There were also Bernard Pratte, the fur-trader, and his wife Emilie; Pierre Chouteau, Jr., and Bartholomew Berthold, partners in a store, and Berthold’s wife Pélagie, who was Pierre’s sister. Baptiste never got the other four children connected with the right parents.
Clark introduced Baptiste to M. and Mme. Lisa. “He has been to the mountains many times, Paump,” Clark said, “and has stayed at the Mandan and Minataree villages.”
“And I know your father—a fine man—and was acquainted with your mother, God rest her soul,” Lisa said in French. Lisa gave Paump the recent news of Chief Shehaka and Paump’s childhood friends. Charbonneau and Otter Woman and Toussaint and Lissette, he said, were doing splendidly. He thought they would be down to St. Louis before the river froze.
Clark insisted that the children sit at the main dining table during dinner. It was a sumptuous meal, full of fishes and meats and rich sauces. Chouteau pronounced it exceptional, but Baptiste found it too strange to eat. He was not permitted to talk to Bernard, the boy next to him.
After dinner they adjourned to the parlor. The ladies talked in one corner—Baptiste caught snatches about the Labbadie boy, who was gone east to school, and about the brazen behavior of the Cousteau girl, and something about extraordinary gowns brought up the river for Victoire Gratiot. The men assembled in another corner and talked about the prospects for reopening the fur trade, the new Bank of St. Louis, currency problems, and the advantages and disadvantages of statehood for Missouri. (Clark, hoping to become state governor, was avidly for statehood.)
Baptiste fidgeted. He was self-conscious in his new clothes, and aware that his French didn’t sound just like the other children’s. Jefferson Clark, the youngest, was sitting with his hands pinned between his knees. Bernard was boasting to the little Pélagie: “My pa,” he said in French, “says I can go to the States for school if I want to—to Virginia. He’ll take me on his next trip if I want to go.”
“Yes,” said Bernard, striking the pose of a young man, “but it’s important for us to get an education. St. Louis will need leadership.”
“Yes,” said Pélagie softly.
“My pa wants me to take over his business. But we have a lot of money already. I think, I’d like to be a lawyer.”
“What’s a lawyer?” Baptiste put in.
“Lawyers memorize the law,” Bernard answered decorously. “They represent clients in court cases. Sometimes they become judges. Or they represent the people in government.” He stopped, needing to say nothing more.
Baptiste had been wondering whether the girls of prominent families went to school: “Will you be going east, too?”
“Such an idea,” Pélagie giggled.
“I’d like to go,” Baptiste said. Bernard and Pélagie looked at him strangely. “But I don’t think I can,” he backed up. “I have to do what Governor Clark says.” He hesitated and then jumped in headlong. “I’d like to be a soldier, like Governor Clark, or a governor. Or maybe a lawyer.”
“A governor? A lawyer? But.…Papa,” he laughed across the room to Pratte, “this boy wants to be a governor or a lawyer.” Pélagie tinkled with laughter.
Baptiste roared with hatred for Bernard. “I can—”
“Bernard,” Clark interrupted, “Baptiste is an extraordinary young man.” He stepped over, put a hand on Baptiste’s shoulder, and turned to the group. “You know his background,” Clark began, “and you can hear that he speaks French and English well. He also speaks Mandan, Minataree, and some Shoshone. Paump is the most accomplished linguist among us. And he reads and writes well.
“I think you will be of service one day, Paump,” he said turning back to the boy. “To commerce. To the government. Being Indian, you see,” Clark said at large, “he understands Indians. Being white, he understands whites. Our country and our businessmen need youngsters like him.”
Baptiste was catching on. He rattled off several strange phrases. “That’s how the Minatarees say ‘I give you my deepest respects and pledge my everlasting sincerity,'” he said with a smile and a slight bow. He sat back down and glared haughtily at Bernard.
When Baptiste was leaving with Isaiah, Clark saw him to the door. “Governor Clark,” Baptiste asked looking up, “can’t I be a lawyer if I want to?”
Clark looked at him seriously for a long moment. “I hope so, Paump, if you want to. Remember, though, some whites are not as Christian as they ought to be to balfbreeds. But don’t fret,” he said with a clap on the back. “We’ll find something suitable.”
Clark did wonder, as Baptiste stepped out, what would prove to be suitable. He was a little afraid for the boy—afraid that Paump might not be satisifed with his lot, that education and exposure to the way of the white world might raise yearnings in him the boy would never be allowed to fulfill. But that was far in the future, and Clark did not trouble himself unduly about it. For William Clark was above all a practical man, a man who worked within realities as they were given to him, never one to dally with fantasies, speculations, might-have-beens. He had a will, within that context, to work good, and he did. He was a responsible husband, father and civic leader, an appropriately ambitious politician, a well-wisher for his adolescent country. He was also a man concerned for the welfare of the Indians, whom he understood better and cared about far more than did most white men of his time. He loved Paump as a kind of godfather, and intended to do as well for him as was possible. Further than that the matter was out of his hands.
Reverend Welch’s Bible lessons ran to four subjects—the amazing sacrifice of Jesus, the terrors of the Last Judgement and hell, the insidiousness of sin (which he saw creeping and clinging everywhere around him, like poison oak around a tree), and the long-suffering virtue of Job. Welch had a colorful, even lurid, imagination, so he was able to make his stories vivid. Baptiste didn’t know what to make of Jesus, he delighted in the terrors of hell just as he delighted in ghost stories, and he was uneasy about the insidiousness of sin. The one that made no sense to him was the story of Job: He thought Job shouldn’t just have stood there and taken what was dished out. He should have fought back.
Welch never talked about Sacajawea’s death to Baptiste, but the boy noticed that his evening teaching ran considerably more toward death in the days after.
He took as his text one evening, for their devotional time, Isaiah XXXIII, 12-13-14: “And the people shall be as the burning of lime, as thorns cut up shall they be burnt in the fire. Hear ye that are far off what I have done; and ye that are near acknowledge my might.”
“‘It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God,’ Hebrews X, 31,” he expounded, “yet when we die, we all must fall into his hands and stand before his terrible judgment.
“Death is God’s curse upon man for his disobedience, for the sin that through Adam is born unto all men. And for that Original Sin must we all answer. No man may think to escape it. For him who does, lo, there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Nothing on earth is to be feared as the day when all sinners shall find themselves in the hands of an angry God.
“On that day all men are equal in the sight of God, the mighty and the low alike, and all who are not washed in the blood of Jesus, cleansed by the blood of Jesus of their sins, shall tremble before His awful and inevitable judgment. ‘As thorns cut up shall they be burnt in the fire.’
“For the Lord sees all, the sins committed in the shadow of the night, the sins committed in the darkness of the closet, the sins committed in the closeness of our very beds”—Welch looked at his sons to see if they were squirming—“and the sins committed in secret thought. At Judgment Day some of us, the few, shall be white as snow, and others, the many, black as tar. Some shall be saved unto life eternal, and the others shall hear the dread words ‘Depart from me, I know ye not.’ And they shall be plunged into everlasting torment. ‘For behold, the Lord will come with fire, and with chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebukes with flames of fire,’ Isaiah LXVI, 15.”
Yves was asleep now. Baptiste was still, looking at his hands. They kept jumping oddly.
“For the body is but the shabby house of the soul,” Welch went on. “The body carries, even in life, the insidious disease of mortality. In time the putrescence which is native to the body shall overthrow it. In time, it shall creep like a fog through the limbs and render them still, it shall creep through the blood and make it black, it shall cloud the brain and still the tongue. And in time the body, surrendering the soul, shall pass unto the earth whence it came. It shall be placed in the grave, and dirt shoveled onto its face—dirt that is the same as the face, which shall become dirt.” Welch paused a moment and considered. His silence made Baptiste even more jittery than his talking. “Dirt to dirt, ashes to ashes—such is the fate of all mankind, the curse of Adam.
“And the earth itself shall dishonor the body. The flies shall feed on its blood. The worms shall crawl into the flesh and eat thereof. As the flesh rots, it shall reveal itself by its very smell as the excrement it is. At last it shall become nought but mud and slime.
“I pray,” Welch perorated, “that Christ may come again in my lifetime to take the saints to be with Him in glorious light in heaven. I pray that we may not pass through the decay of the grave. I pray it fervently.” Welch stared into space, his right eye divergent from his left. “But the time of the second coming is known only to almighty God, and it shall be as the twinkling of an eye. Let us therefore be prepared to meet Him. Let us now call on His holy name, knowing that all ye who know Him not must surely perish. Let us be prepared for the destruction of the body and the judgment of the soul.”
He closed his eyes for a moment of silent meditation.
“Reverend Welch,” Baptiste burst in when
Welch opened his eyes, “what about those who don’t know about Jesus and can’t call on his name?”
Welch looked at him solemnly. “They must surely perish.”
“It isn’t fair,” Baptiste said.
“It is not for us to question the Lord’s infinite mercy,” Welch reprimanded him.
“I don’t see how it’s fair,” Baptiste repeated.
“You are arrogant to think to judge God.”
He marked that evening down, years later, as the beginning of his unconversion.
NOVEMBER, 1815: Isaiah came unexpectedly to Welch’s house to take Baptiste to Clark. And sitting beside Clark’s big walnut desk was Charbonneau. Baptiste dashed up and hugged him. “What happened to Mama?” he asked in French.
“She was lost on the plains. No one knows what happened to her.” Charbonneau had told Clark a fuller story—that Sacajawea had been jealous of his new wife, that he had lodgepoled her and that she snuck away onto the plains and disappeared. Clark knew that no woman could survive alone on the plains of the Dakotas.
The boy looked at his father a long moment, bit his lower lip, and then looked down.
“Baptiste,” Charbonneau called him back. He was holding something out to the boy, a necklace of some sort. Baptiste examined it. “Your mother made it for you, and I thought to bring it as a gift now.”
It was a rather large hoop, probably made of stripped willow twigs shaven very thin and bound alternately with strong grasses and hair—it would be Sacajawea’s own hair, Baptiste knew. It dangled from a hide thong. In the center of the hoop, suspended tautly with strips of hide, was the strangest stone he had ever seen. It was a single stone, peculiarly heavy, yet it seemed to be a stone made from many stones. From a distance it would have looked gray, but up close he could see that it had sworls of strong color—streaks of gray with streaks of crimson, bright green, black, white of a blue cast, and pure alabaster. A very strange stone. He rubbed it with a forefinger. She had polished it as smooth as marble.
