"Don’t dissect me—I don’t know what I meant," said Alexander, looking toward the bedside table. "It’s between the lines."
"I wouldn’t read there if I were you," said his cousin.
"Hmpf," grunted Alexander, placing two small leather-bound volumes in one corner of his satchel. "I read wherever I go."
His cousin laughed and reached for his jacket where it lay folded on a chair. "I meant between the lines, not Selinsgrove-hard-by-Susquehanna."
"I will be near there," said Alexander.
"It should be an education," came the answer.
The river in late February was moving. A brown bird stood briefly on a miniature raft of ice. The town nearby was for a few tranquil hours a future that could not be rushed. He vowed that whatever happened he would come back to this point on the riverbank. He had a stone in his shoe.
In the wrong town you can still pick up news. Jacob Coxey dealt in scrap iron before he went into the business of quarrying sand for steel and glass manufacture. Now raised race horses in Kentucky, though didn’t live there. But didn’t live here in Selinsgrove either. Selinsgrove—more woods than New Jersey, but much like. But Coxey was only born here. Moved, at five or six: picture of small boy directing adults which bed to load into which wagon, the wide wagon, the narrow wagon. Settee and wash tub. Fire-irons and spade. Caned chairs sitting on top of crates. Somewhere a German accent. To Danville, downaways. But not far. And furthermore not where Coxey, with a growing name among Greenbackers and Populists, lived now. The farmer he asked, the storekeeper he asked, the man with the unconscionably high forehead he asked in front of the church did not ask him the question he asked himself, a young fellow with a black leather satchel and an already somewhat distinguished scalp: What was he doing in Selinsgrove if he was looking for Coxey? The question took him some miles back to the riverbank he had come from, but not to Danville—but not because Jacob Coxey was no longer there either but in Ohio, if Alexander had only asked, to begin with.
He had mailed an exemplary dispatch from Philadelphia. He had mailed another the next day to Margaret’s father from a place called Laurel Summit.
Some said armies of unemployed would take over the railroads. Constantly, it was only Margaret he had seen—Margaret on her way long since to interview—but who knew?—a man "of Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania," as her written words put it. Alexander had waited for months for her, and now in motion himself had "waited" for word to come to him somehow as he had made his way into north-central Pennsylvania as if her word in print meant she must be there where Coxey was "of." But a most irresponsible way to seek her—as if he had bent his will or had needed for months to cut adrift in his own small way westward—to be not home if she arrived—his absence noted: while now he had uncharacteristically built himself a lean-to and produced from his bag shadowy food to eat beside the current of the shadowy river, arrived there for no good reason, but watched—by his children, it suddenly came to him, of which he had not yet any—for he had not yet his bride.
He understood only brief, separate things, like beginning nowhere. He was tired. No good cause explained his being here. The wistaria that he could smell but weeks away outside his bedroom window at home was named for the man who wrote the first American anatomy (two volumes, Caspar Wistar, honored hardly more than a year ago at the opening of the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology housing the collection of anatomy he left at the University in Philadelphia). The night came around so mossy-cold and so blank that it was no different from the river at first, even the dubious head of the night’s body through the maps of tree branches, that moon tilted away far where things of true importance were going on while Alexander, instead, pursued some alien education, as his cousin the medical student predicted. Some new history, was it? A voice nearby, a woman’s voice, for a second seemed caused by the darkness but (no) came with it: "I camped last week by a river under a long shining cloud and a man there breathed in a dollop of that cloud, I saw him, it was a long spill of light and he breathed in a whole dollop of that cloud, I saw him, it was a long spill of light and he breathed it in and coughed and talked, and he was well-informed."
Alexander saw that he had already seen the blonde woman when she spoke and had trusted the human figure in the corner of his eye. He had predicted her appearance through some study of history; that was it.
Eyes closed, resting, he’s a very old man, his hat in his lap, the straw upon the heel of his palm, fingers resting in the crumpled crown, air sliding and curling like water over his skull; and he foresaw what is happening in the sun of a backyard the ownership of which hardly matters any more, only the people small and tall who use it, the little girl with long light hair throwing a ball up and up and up again and catching it in one hand nearer and nearer her grandfather in his chair; and he is not dopy, and knows his grandson whose daughter this little girl is knows he is not dopy and would not make anything of his not at once replying to the question his grandson asked; and when, with his eyes closed, he had an answer, he heard a powerful whoosh and did not open his eyes, it might be an exciting death coming his way and he heard a young gasp and knew his great-granddaughter had caught her ball practically in his lap, but he had the words in his throat answering Jim’s question: "In his letter that he wrote me when I was all of six years old, his last letter and he was up in New York visiting the Indians and the envelope had a bright red scarab seal on it, and he said he had dreamt of swallowing something, I know what it was, it was a storm he swallowed, complete with rain, thunder, lightning, what’s that other?, hail—the works—and then singing out his name in the dream which was Morgan of all things, but something else, Jim, I really forget but it had to do with the spelling."
"Oh Poppy, I’m not Jim; I almost hit you. What are you talking about, Poppy? I almost hit you. I stepped on your beautiful shoes, Poppy, did I hurt you? You have silver on your red socks, Poppy."
He opened his eyes and his mouth in the sun, and remembered how mad he’d been, how mad he’d been, how mad he’d been.
Their smoky fire held their faces close to it and kept the Moon’s clearer light far down the course of the tree-shrouded sky. The blonde woman gave Alexander an apple and wrapped herself again in her blanket.
"This Indian said he did not need to eat much. He had been followed by this cloud. I did not believe him at first. I know what work pays and what it costs to buy a blanket, I don’t believe in magic. But then neither did he. He said he knew the cloud contained an old friend. He said he himself contained spirits of ice stones that had come from the sky, and they were spiral—and he made the motion with his hands, and then he went to sleep. But later he woke up."
"He did not dishonor you," said Alexander.
The woman shook her head pensively. "Some mad Indian you mean?" she said. Alexander smiled into the blazing, smoking fire. He felt compelled. " ‘What work pays’?" he asked. "I don’t understand."
The woman ignored his query. "Your clothes, your shoes," she said. "Do you travel like this?"
"Almost never, but my cousin who is a medical student says I am part porcupine."
"He had a horse over by a tree. It looked blue in the river darkness."
"Near here?"
"Not the same river. A different river. The Juniata, south and west from here. He was on his way to consult with the Iroquois. He had come all the way from New Mexico territory."
"To do that?"
"He was on his way east. He said he was going to meet a woman."
"Going?"
"He asked me if I had seen storms rise up out of eastern mountains. He asked me if I could smell seared metal coming from the night-glowing cloud above us. He asked me if there were tall houses that cast a wind shadow."
"What did you say?"
"To all these questions I said I did not know."
"How did he swallow the dollop of night-glowing cloud?"
"He said the friend up there was hundreds of years old."
"Perhaps he meant that
through his people he carried a long history in him."
"He was more of a scientist. But I liked him because he said he was studying secrets that would give his people more food to live and more water to grow their crops and he was looking for material to build with that would last. I told him that white workers did not have enough to eat either."
"Old Marion Hugo, your" (Yes) "in those journals, Granddad" (Yes) "Was he the one who mentioned a Morgan" (Yes) "a mathematician from" (Yes) "from Europe, an Alsatian, I think, who played the pickel flute" (Yes, yes, the pickelflote) "and did he know—did he know that zoologist gal who had the mother back in South America who wrote music? what about that, Alexander?"
Later he woke, and he reached at once into his pocket as if to see if something was still there. She herself never slept except when a dream was coming on and then she would find a place to sleep for the length of the dream. He told her he was going to the Iroquois to find the meaning of two dreams. This was a turning from where he was going but he had faith he would meet his beloved. She was carrying his child, he was certain, but she had left without telling him. There was a great emptiness between them and they were in touch with each other because there was a river like an underground river in their bodies, a river of blood and milk with a thousand invisibly small beings flowing in it and each was a thought of theirs in common.
Alexander felt like he was asleep and the campfire was losing itself in him. He asked why the Indian’s woman had left. The blonde woman said she had to go back and see her people, he said. The Indian loved her very much and he loved his studies. Alexander could understand that.
Yes, said the blonde woman. And she had in common with the Indian that she had a beloved who was apart from her.
How so? asked the young man with the black satchel and red socks and muddy shoes.
Her beloved was married and lived in Ohio, and she had known him once in Pennsylvania when he was only a boy working a stationary engine in a rolling mill. She knew what he knew. She knew how the ingot is rolled and rolled to become the right-shape sheet of steel. How the mills use sand from quarries. How much the owner sells the steel for. Her beloved knew the workers. He knew the farmers, too. He had General Grant’s love of horseflesh. He became a rich man but cared for the workers. He was leading a march on Washington at Eastertime. She was a fallen woman, but she did not care now. Her lot was cast with the real people who made the industrial clockworks run and who made the corn grow and who walked long roads to get to their work and to look for work as well. Her lot was not with the hundreds of Pinkerton detectives ferried by night up the Monongahela (Alexander nodded), but with the men who needed greenbacks to seed their fields (Alexander nodded, thinking that Monongahela was both an Algonquian name and the name of a whiskey). A river has two coasts, she mused.
He said, You are talking about Jacob Coxey. He is the reason I came to Selinsgrove.
The woman frowned. She told him that that was what she had heard in town and why she had followed him here to the river.
"No, of course you’re not your daddy Jim, sweetheart; I was replying to him ... but I took so long that . . ."
"Oh Poppy."
"Dumb old Poppy."
"Yes, you’re very old."
"I’m almost ninety."
"Sweetheart old Poppy. See how high I can throw the ball."
Two rivers, the Juniata where things were heard and the Susquehanna where those things were told.
"That’s very high, Flicky, very very high. Who taught you to throw that high?"
"Nobody."
"Where did your father go?"
"In the house. What’s the matter with him?"
"Nothing. I think a friend of his died."
"Is he going to the funeral?"
"I think she died far away in South America."
"Look at Andrew. He can ride his bike."
He said air came in vast sheets that water might ride on or ice or poisons, or bad spirits or mixtures. He said these planes controlled the wind and might raise water like a hundred buckets so it ran nearly upward into the great bush of a cloud and might well pass back above the river guided aloft by the river’s course and empty down into it so you could wash in the same water seven days later. He said he and his woman talked all night and each learned to hear new things that only the other had been able to before. Each bent the heart and will to the other. She told him of a Statue that was the highest in the world guarding an ocean harbor with light and she had seen it when its head and limbs were scattered over an island. When she went home she would go inside it. He must have been talking about the Statue of Liberty.
Yes, said Alexander.
He said his woman had a friend among her people whom she respected very much, and he had very big feet and was wise and went fishing in a lake where there were pine trees only smaller than the ones in the West, which was of interest because, as this man told me, they might be smaller because they were weaker or smaller because they grew for a different purpose. His woman’s friend back among her people went fishing because there were many lakes there. She must go back and see him someday, she would say. She called this cousin an angel.
Alexander was wide awake and got up to find more wood. He offered the blonde woman the apple she had given him but she shook her head and he bit into it. He brought a great branch and left it beside the fire and sat down.
He began to fear the blonde woman like sleep you don’t understand. She asked what was in his satchel. He showed her two books bound in calf; she shrugged, and said her beloved was now under the influence of a man who believed in reincarnation and was a dime-museum speechmaker and called himself the cerebellum of Christ but could not spell Calvary. A passel of rogues will try to make use of that good man Coxey.
Alexander asked where the Indian had gone. She said she had told Alexander this already.
He said, Two Indian wanderers, perhaps a child between them.
No, said the blonde woman. The woman was a white woman.
Alexander felt a long chill across his face. He threw the apple into the fire.
You throw away food? said the blonde woman.
Will Coxey’s marchers all come from Ohio? Alexander asked as if to say, Don’t talk to me about an apple—and felt terribly watched and cold and inflamed as well and felt the sweat in his smooth palms.
No, said the woman. They say marchers will come from all over the United States. Why do you ask?
Because I was thinking of something else, said the young man.
They say he is worth two hundred thousand dollars. One marcher for every dollar by the time they reach Washington. They will force Congress to help the unemployed.
Was the Indian armed? Alexander asked.
Well, she had thought he had a pistol in his pocket but it was a hunk of dried meat. Alexander contemplated the large, damp branch and the lowering fire. But he did have a pistol in his saddlebag, said the woman.
In his saddlebag, said Alexander.
We had been asleep, we already remember, but this might prove our patented way of being awake. As when a thing is done to us, and instead we are brought closer together and see some bend of will by which so far from our being acted upon, the responsibility belonged to us, and no hassle at that.
Big Foot Porcupine; or anyway, Big Shoe. The woman asked to sleep against him in the late February stillness. He said it was against his religion and at once corrected himself—those were not his words, surely. His thighs were resigned with cold, his mackinaw bulky. He felt behind him the tuck of her hard arms in the taut winding of her blanket, and after a mysterious time which was motion both absent and present she reached one slow arm around his ribs and he found that he took her hand between the thumb and palm of his woolen glove and she seemed to press a ring on his finger. They murmured with the soft, bed clarity of wife and husband. Where, then, was Jacob Coxey? Why with his family in Massillon, Ohio, three hundred miles from here, two hundred and eighty to be exact.
Ang
er, horror, pain, curiosity gathered him up into some darkling person and he knew he would sleep in the cold, despite Margaret, despite the Indian wherever his eastward frontier had gotten to. Alexander was thinking of geometry, of all things, and his loins felt better than he could have said. Have you borne a child? he asked the woman over his shoulder, the late winter and the undreamed solidity of near, dark trees cold against his eyeballs.
He asked me that, she told him. He said he had thought there was more time but he had been absorbed in his studies of secret force and of earth veins and mountain messages and mixtures and absorbed in this woman of his from the East, to the cost of his People, yet also forgetting this woman who was sometimes all he remembered from hour to hour. His studies are for his people, but his march is not revolutionary like Jacob Coxey’s which will be an army as great as any Union.
Your news overwhelms me, said Alexander. Your heart is with the workers, said the woman; trust it.
But Alexander had not meant Coxey’s march of the unemployed. But have you borne a child? he said. No, she said, I have not borne a child, though I would have done so for him, though I am a fallen person anyway.
Do you want to be married? asked Alexander.
He thought of what the future expected. New thoughts shifted this trip as if the land it was grounded on—a land of dreams, he had once read to Margaret—mattered no whit more than farmers clamoring for paper money or Idaho silver miners forcing recognition of their union or railway-car workers getting a company model-town to house their families at dubious rent. A curiously compelling map grew like land in Alexander’s mind containing it (but which containing which?) that moved—this diagram of distances moving if he chose but making him choose—and he could not tell the woman that Margaret over the magnetic slopes of this darkling state rested but was in motion restlessly toward home while talking to a Jacob Coxey whom this woman behind him loved and had brought to Alexander by converging lines from Massillon in the west and from some bank of the Juniata in the south or southwest, while Alexander’s various trek for news and for Margaret was west while hers, upon a parallel equally various, came east, pursued (no question) along another parallel by a man with a pistol who was ahead of her, and was between her and this Alexander who went out to meet her: yet what if even now, and east of here, she was fingering a Navajo silver buckle passing through Pennsylvania on a sleeping train whose parallels of track curved some collision course of war or the American continent atip toward unknown commerce (west or east, inertial calculi of ours could trick suns into dramatically dying in the direction of morning if our cost-benefit figures arrive at such results for the sake of World’s Fair or parallel answer to multiple question) —and when he said to this now silent woman, This Indian is not my enemy unless I choose . . . , and got no reply except a whole bodily pulse coming into his spine from possibly more than the woman ... in these coordinated parallels that could lean like a curve-fleshed parallelogram or converge into some terrific clusterhood, Alexander eased over to the quite exhausted woman he had not bothered to ask about her home and about what she, a "fallen person," did here in the vicinity of her at least former home of Selinsgrove where the beloved had been hardly more than born, according to Alexander’s information—and he tipped her dozing chin and smelt on her breathing raw potato’s moistly glimmering root, and kissed her lips, and turned back to, briefly, a diagram until sleep caught him up loins and all into that gathered voice that could include what the future expected, conferring with him as to whether (damn all this land of dreams that lacked light though not geometry which itself equaled or was in the way of geography and of seeing clear, so he wondered what Margaret looked like now and if she was big with child), conferring with that gathered voice as to whether he would go to Paris with his elegant cousin who wished to study epidemics—or, as an obvious possibility, would not go to Paris but live as he and the future tacitly had agreed he would.
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