Guardian

by Joe Haldeman

  She cocked her head. “After the war.”

  “No, I’m a little older than that. My parents sent me north just before it began.”

  She squeezed my hand. “I’m sorry.” She shook her head. “You lost them.”

  “A long time ago.”

  “Long.” She toyed with a piece of fish. “My father died at Shiloh. I barely remember him; I was only two.”

  “I was three when I left them. They lived a few years, until Sherman took Atlanta.”

  “Have you forgiven them? The Northerners?”

  “I am a Northerner.” An odd conversation, the first one I’d had with an adult in a week. “The ones who killed my parents …”

  “What of them?” she said quietly.

  There was something in her nature that compelled truthfulness. “I take comfort in knowing that they burn in hell, or will soon.”

  “Do I know … I do know how you feel.” She sprinkled salt on her fish. “I’m Toba Bacharach. I’m a minister here.”

  “Truly!” That was not common in the nineties.

  “A missionary, actually, to the Indians. So I’m an expert when it comes to bitterness.”

  I took a pinch of salt and rubbed it over my plate. “So how do you feel about the Rebels? The ones at Shiloh?”

  “Sometimes I hope they found Jesus, and their sins were washed clean.

  “Other times?”

  She smiled. “I’m a terrible sinner, too. In fact, I sometimes hope they drank and gambled”—she covered her mouth—”and took pleasure where they might. And then were surprised to wake up in hellfire.”

  I had to laugh. “I never thought it through so elaborately.”

  “Then you must not be a minister. We’re thorough.”

  “No, schoolteacher.” I took a deep breath: God forgive me, the first person I was to tell the whole lie to had to be a minister! “My husband passed away last year—”

  “Oh—I’m so sorry!”

  “He was … never well. I couldn’t stay in Philadelphia; there are too many memories there. So I decided to come out west, to Kansas, where teachers are in demand. My fourteen-year-old son was very much in favor of the idea.”

  She nodded, smiling. “Boys. He talked you into letting him do the rapids.”

  “He’s persuasive. Should I have said no?”

  “No, it’s perfectly safe. I know both the boys who act as guides. They’ve done it so often it bores them to distraction.”

  “Not too distracted, I hope.”

  “No.” She smiled. “But they do have a strange way about them. It’s as if they were dreaming, though they steer the boats quickly, with precision. They say the river talks to them.”

  “That makes sense,” I said. “As metaphor, at least.”

  Her eyebrows went up, then down. I’d revealed more education than a schoolmarm needed. “No, not at all; not to them. The river is as real a person as you or me. It talks and they listen.” In a drawing room in Philadelphia, this would have been an opportunity to bring up Ruskin and his pathetic fallacy. Instead, I nodded.

  “Everything has a spirit to them. The river, the rocks, the trees.” She carefully extracted the backbone and ribs from her fish. “The fish, the deer, the sun and stars. It makes preaching to them difficult.” She shook her head, smiling. “Last Sunday we wrestled with the idea of the Trinity. One God with three aspects. They thought that was funny—only three?”

  I followed her example with the bones. “They have a point.”

  “But really. They’re so simple. Drives me mad.” She was hungry for an audience—her husband, also a preacher, refused to talk about her work with the Indians, thinking it a total waste of time. After an hour, I had some sympathy with him. They were an obstinate bunch, who apparently saw Sunday school as a source of amusement and pastry.

  But she planted a seed in my mind, which would germinate in Kansas, and later, in Alaska, grow and flower. And one terrible night, it would save my life, and give me new worlds.

  The first threat.

  Daniel emerged from the canoe ride drenched and excited. He would have gone back and done it again if I’d let him. I was concerned with money and time and getting him into some dry clothes. I didn’t find out until the next day that the canoe had overturned, and he and the Indian, Sam, had swum to shore and then raced down the riverbank to retrieve it! He’d wanted to repeat the adventure to see whether they could make it around that particular bend without capsizing again. Boys!

  Our steamer for the two-day trip to Duluth was small and shabby, but Daniel was happy because we were compelled to take separate berths, he in a males-only section, where he had plenty of boisterous company. None of the other boys had “done” the rapids.

  I actually had a fine time myself. There had been a pretty good bookstore in Soo, and I’d gotten two used Sherlock Holmes books and Stevenson’s novel The Master of Ballantrae (plus another Stevenson for Daniel’s birthday). It was not only my reading that was fantastic—the first afternoon we passed a long geological formation called Pictured Rocks, sandstone in every color of the rainbow, carved by the elements into impossible shapes. I did a watercolor sketch which, although reasonably accurate, looked like a work of purest imagination. A few years after the War, I saw an exhibition of Salvador Dali, and his tortured landscapes took me back there to the shores off Lake Superior.

  (That means World War II, for the benefit of readers at the other end of this ink-driven time machine. For the first half of my life, “the War” meant the War Between the States, but the phrase’s meaning has changed three times since. I can hope that Korea doesn’t become World War III, and thence “the War” for its own tenure, but hope is in short supply right now.)

  Lake Superior was as placid as Huron had been rough, the nights cold for late June, but we had quilts and entertainment in the small lounge, from some of the passengers—a family of gospel singers and a man who was rather their opposite, a ragtime piano player who reeked of whiskey. He played with precision but could hardly walk without assistance.

  We weren’t following the news, but as it turned out, we were fortunate to have bypassed Chicago. The Pullman strikers and their sympathizers started to set fires and battle with the police and the Illinois National Guard. President Cleveland eventually sent in half the U.S. Army; pictures of downtown looked like an armed camp.

  The harbor at Duluth was clogged with waiting barges, stalled by the strike. A sign proclaimed it “The Zenith City of the Unsalted Seas,” and on normal days it was probably full of industry and bustle. Our steamer had to maneuver back and forth, bumping against the closely anchored barges, to find its way to the passenger wharf.

  I was afraid we also might be stuck in Duluth for the duration of the strike, but there was no problem: the Minneapolis–St. Paul & Duluth Railroad didn’t have any Pullman equipment. In fact, there was a train leaving in less than an hour from when we arrived at the station.

  No time for supper, so I bought two “box meals” from a merchant at the station, along with bottles of chilled root beer, wrapped up in sheets of old newspapers to stay cool for the trip.

  I didn’t have too much appetite, as it turned out. The car was crowded and Daniel had to stand most of the way. My sex earned me a hard padded seat, covered with straw weaving that had decayed beyond function. Breathing was difficult, the air blue with cigar and pipe smoke. Even less appetizing were the men who took their tobacco in oral form, spitting wherever they pleased.

  It was faster than the boat, something we had been looking forward to, but there was little else to recommend it for five hours. A blur of dense forest became a blur of cornfields. Just before St. Paul, we stopped at two beautiful lakes, resort areas, and enough people got off so that Daniel could find a seat. He was worn out and immediately fell asleep with his head on my shoulder.

  There was an unpleasant surprise waiting at the St. Paul station. Leaving Daniel with the bags, I went toward the information desk, and stopped dead at a cor
kboard that said MESSAGES FOR TRANSIENTS. There were columns of envelopes in alphabetical order, and one of them had my name on it.

  I was paralyzed by a whirlwind of conflicting emotions. He couldn’t know where we were—or could he? Most likely, he had sent messages to be posted at every major railway station.

  Would he be notified if I took the envelope? Even if he were, how could he know it was me, rather than some idler intent on other people’s business? No one was overseeing the message board.

  Nothing he could say would make any difference. I should have just left it there—but then I would have been obsessed by it for weeks or months. Finally, I strode over and snatched it. It might reveal whether he knew anything about our progress.

  The envelope was sealed, unfortunately; otherwise I might have taken a peek and returned it. I slit the top of the envelope with a penknife, and found a short note in a stranger’s hand:

  Rec’d by telegraph 8:05 P.M. June 24th: You must know by now that what you have done is both irrational and illegal. Return at once, and nothing will be said about it. If you force me to take action, it will be hard on both you and the boy.

  There is no place you can go where I won’t find you. Do not delude yourself about that. The longer you try to hide, the harder it will be on you. Edward.

  I glanced over at Daniel and saw he was fast asleep, draped protectively over our luggage. Nobody seemed to be looking at me. I slipped the note into my purse and returned the envelope to its place. You couldn’t tell from the front that it had been opened.

  We found a comfortable room in the Ryan, not far from the station, which I took under yet another assumed name. Daniel accepted the change without question. I didn’t tell him about the note from his father. I copied it into my diary while he slept, and then threw it away, which was improvident. It would have been interesting evidence if we came to legal proceedings.

  The next sailing for St. Louis was two days away, which was all right for me. I didn’t want to immediately board the boat that we’d be stuck on for seven hundred miles. We spent the next day wandering around St. Paul, which was more pleasant than I’d expected. The city had an all-electric tramway that only cost a nickel (a tenth the cost of the short cab ride to the hotel). We climbed to the top of the capitol dome, which was arduous but resulted in a splendid view. Having seen Minneapolis in the distance, we resolved to have lunch there, so we took the interurban tram, also electric, over the Mississippi.

  (That was an hour each way, but it was pleasant—especially compared to the railroad—bright and well ventilated, the gentlemen using spittoons or the open window. I read much of the time, having brought the Stevenson and a new copy of Life on the Mississippi, its garish board covers and cheap saffron paper a stark contrast to the leather-and-vellum edition I’d read from Edward’s library.)

  We spent the afternoon out at the Indian Mounds, where Daniel went off on a fruitless search for arrowheads, while I sat at Carver’s Cave and attempted a drawing that was no more successful. Dinner at the hotel cafe, and early to bed.

  The age of the steamboat, as I’ve said, was long past. This is how Mark Twain put it in 1883, eleven years before our voyage:

  Mississippi steam boating was born about 1812; at the end of thirty years it had grown to mighty proportions, and in less than thirty years, it was dead! A strangely short life for so majestic a creature. Of course it is not absolutely dead; neither is a crippled octogenarian who could once jump twenty-two feet on level ground; but as contrasted with what it was in its prime vigor, Mississippi steam boating may be called dead.

  We boarded the Davenport after breakfast, and I was relieved to find it a clean and apparently well maintained vessel. The captain and several others wore blue uniforms with sharp creases and lots of shiny brass.

  Two boys younger than Daniel were engaged in tacking up bunting of red, white, and blue, as it was July 4th. We asked if there would be fireworks, and got the obvious answer: “Aboard a boat? I should hope not!”

  Our room was small and close but clean, and had a window that could be opened partway. At precisely nine, the whistle shrieked, and we departed with surprising speed. Daniel ran off to explore the boat. I looked in the lounge, but it was full of loud men smoking and drinking coffee, so I went on up to the very top, the “hurricane” deck. It was quite fresh; I had to go back to the cabin for a wrap.

  Coming back up, I glimpsed Daniel in the lounge, puffing on a cigarillo. I resolved not to be so much of an old hen about it. The effect on his body probably bothered me less than the resemblance to his father it gave him.

  We passed under four or five bridges on the way out of St. Paul. The scenery was engaging, but soon I was totally absorbed in rereading the Mark Twain book, in this most appropriate of settings.

  One of the boys brought me a pot of tea, and I was comfortable on a fabric folding chair, tea and book on a table in front of me. After a while, a handsome man sat down across from me and attempted to start up a conversation. He was about my age, but wore old-fashioned muttonchops and a big flowing moustache. Rather like Mark Twain, actually.

  He was probably an interesting man, but of course that was not a complication I needed at the time. I rebuffed him, less gently than I should have. In the safety of my own parlor, I would have enjoyed chatting and even flirting with him. But the Davenport was a small space to share with a few dozen men for four days. I would be a virtuous married woman, avoiding even the appearance of sin, and that was how I presented myself to the old-fashioned man. He left with a perplexed expression, and a few minutes later I realized he might have been talking to Daniel downstairs, who would have been faithful to our cover story of widowhood.

  Toward noon, two men in white set up a large folding table and covered it with a starched white cloth. They brought up a large sliced ham and a dark brown smoked turkey, and then platters of bread and cakes and bowls of fruit. Finally, a huge punch bowl with a block of ice, into which they poured several pitchers of cider, some sliced-up lemons and oranges, and two jugs of what smelled like pure alcohol. Meanwhile, someone below rang a loud tinkling bell, like a triangle, and shouted “Come and get it!”

  I guess the stairway had been closed off during the preparations, which was why I’d had the hurricane deck to myself for an hour. Now a whole crowd surged up, laughing and chattering. The two young boys struggled up behind them, lugging a washtub full of iced-down bottled drinks. I was glad to see Daniel was helping them; not so glad to see him take a beer from the tub when they set it down. He looked at me warily, and I said one was all right, for the Fourth. Just don’t go near that punch.

  The pilot came up to carve the turkey and tell a few stories: progressively less believable tall tales. The only other unescorted ladies, two German girls and a pinch-faced old maid, sat down at my table. The old woman introduced herself as Miss Stroff, and then began to knit with furious concentration. I speak no German, but the girls and I were able to hold a simple conversation in French.

  They had gone more than halfway around the world! Sisters, they had left Munich with their father after their mother’s death a few years before. He had gone to Kowloon, China, working with a tea export concern, and then moved on to California after that enterprise failed. They lived in a German enclave, Sutter’s Mill, while their father worked at a small gold mine. It was hard work and more dangerous than they knew; he apparently died of progressive arsenic poisoning.

  For most of a year they’d worked as domestics for a wealthy German family, eking out their income with “gifts from gentlemen,” until they had saved enough to return to Germany. Prostitutes! They blushed and looked at the floor upon admitting this. I was truly at a loss for words. (The old woman, who before had given no sign of being able to speak French, gasped and left the table.)

  They were headed for New York to take a steamer across, but the Pullman strike stranded them. Then they found it would be less expensive to go down the Mississippi and proceed directly from New Orleans to Europe
. I was sure they were misinformed about that, but kept my own counsel. They were committed to this course, and it was obvious in their voices that they had to leave this horrible place, America, and seek a normal life in Germany.

  A gunshot frightened all of us, but it was followed immediately by laughter, and then a fusillade. Some men in the bow, below, were shooting at a floating bottle. That became the main entertainment for the afternoon. Someone brought out a fowling piece, even louder than the revolvers, to shoot at bottles in midair. If anybody else was bothered by increasingly pixilated men firing weapons every which way, they didn’t show it. I spent a lot of time in my cabin, reading what would be one of the most important books of my life.

  The German girls had read a lot of French literature, and I had read a bit. The elder one had just finished a novel by Camille Flammarion, whom I knew not as a novelist but as a science writer. Just a few months before, I had read his new Popular Astronomy, from the Philadelphia library, in English translation.

  She loaned me the novel, Lumen, which I took downstairs (tolerating the heat better than the noise and danger) and read with some difficulty but with increasing fascination. It was about a man on Earth who is able to talk with a spirit creature who roams from world to world, in space.

  It’s worth noting for modern readers that in those days, before it had been proven that the moon and Mars were lifeless, the idea of life on other worlds was not at all fantastic. The astronomy books that I read at Wellesley generally assumed that most or even all of the planets were inhabited. But this French novel made it seem quite real.

  I went back up to the hurricane deck for some supper and found Daniel quite woozy and giggly. He had obviously gotten into the punch or some such libation. I couldn’t be too stern with him, since after all I should have been keeping an eye on him rather than reading. But I sent him down to the cabin to nap, saying I would come get him if there were fireworks.

  The shooting had stopped, so I sat out on the foredeck to read, while the sour old lady knitted away silently. Perhaps influenced by the book, I noted in my diary that the sunset had an unearthly beauty, the cloudless sky going from lemon-yellow to crimson, the moon a barely visible fingernail paring, diving after the sun. I wondered what sunsets would be like on worlds like Jupiter, which, I knew from the telescope at school, had skies already full of color, and many large moons.