Centennial

by James A. Michener

  “Oregon!” one of the ladies repeated. Fingering Elly’s dress, she said, “That’s a practical cloth for such an excursion. Are you his daughter?”

  “His wife.”

  This seemed incredible, and a woman asked. “How old could you be?” Levi noticed that Elly fumbled for an answer and assumed that she did not wish to confess her youth, so he said boldly, “She’s sixteen.” The listeners were aghast. One extremely inquisitive woman discovered that Elly had run away from an orphanage, and she arranged for a collection to be taken—more than seven dollars—and this was given to Elly as a wedding present. “It’s for you, my dear,” the woman announced loudly. “Not for him.”

  The men purchased bottles of champagne to toast the Oregon adventure, and as the glasses passed, there came a moment of solemnity, for not one person in the group had been farther west than Cincinnati, and all they knew of Oregon was that it lay at a great distance.

  When talk resumed, the men asked Levi what brought him to the waterfront, and he said, “I planned to take my wagon to St. Louis... on this boat.” The men laughed and pointed to the lower decks of the floating palace, where bales and trunks were stowed in delicate precision. “You’d have a hard time finding space for a Conestoga down there,” one of the men joked.

  “Where shall I go?” Levi asked.

  “There’s a fellow named Finnerty who’ll build you a flatboat. Very good, I’m told. He floats it downstream for you, then sells it at Cairo.” Like everyone in the west, he called it Kay-roe.

  “I don’t want to stop at Cairo,” Levi protested, for he had been warned against this rowdy town.

  “You have to. Because at Cairo your flatboat’s useless. To get to St. Louis, you move up the Mississippi. Against the current.” Going to the rail, the gentleman tossed a second nickel to the boy guarding the horses: “When this young man comes down, lead him to Finnerty, the boat-builder.”

  At this point the captain came on deck and said in a strong voice, “I hear there’s a Pennsylvanian on board who wants to ship his Conestoga with us.” When Levi was presented, the captain said gravely, “Freight steamers will offer to haul you down to Cairo, but they’re sad affairs and usually blow up downstream of Cincinnati. Buy yourself a flatboat, but beware of the rascals who run them. If an August sun is shining and they say it’s snowing, brush the flakes from your shoulder.” He did agree that Finnerty was the most trustworthy of a bad lot, and with that he bowed, saying, “I’d be pleased if the newlyweds took lunch with us.”

  Elly was eager to accept, for she had never seen luxury of this sort, and as always, she was extremely hungry, but Levi felt obligated to tend his horses, so they descended the stairs. As they approached the dining room, one of the women stood Elly in the doorway to point out the expanse of white linen, the glistening knives and forks, the three glasses for each diner, and best of all, the menu, a folded cardboard decorated with blue curlicues, pink cupids and yellow flowers. It listed a staggering three hundred dishes.

  “They have all this food on board?” Elly asked, and the woman said, “Waiting for you.”

  “Oh, Levi!” Elly cried. “I do wish we could stay.” He started to remind her of their obligations, but she drew close to him and whispered, “It’s my birthday.”

  One of the women overheard and soon the stairway was buzzing with the news: “It’s her birthday. We must have a party!” And before Levi comprehended what was happening, he was swept into the crystal room, where waiters fussed about, arranging a birthday table. When the chief steward, a stately black with white hair, bent over Elly’s shoulder to ask, “And what would Madame desire?” she was powerless to choose from that stupendous menu and could only look up at him in bewilderment.

  He hesitated just long enough to be polite, then said quietly, “May I suggest the terrine of duck? It’s superb ... the way our chef does it.”

  “Oh, I’d love duck,” Elly cried, and she allowed the steward to fill in the vegetables and oddments that would complete her order.

  When the meal was ready to be served, a banker from Baltimore sought permission to ask grace, and since no minister was present, he was encouraged: “Dear God, when I left home last week I visualized myself as starting a considerable journey. All the way to Cincinnati. Imagine this girl of seventeen on her way to Oregon. Beloved Father, look after these children, for they are the sinews of our nation.”

  Elly opened her eyes and saw the duck resting in its casserole, the lima beans, the candied sweets, the preserved crab apples, the breads, the jellies, and at the finish of the feast, the white birthday cake festooned with silver ornaments and seventeen flickering candles. When the meal ended, the banker who had offered the prayer whispered to his neighbor, “Would you believe it, she ate the whole duck!” And his friend replied, “Most of the cake, too.”

  That afternoon when they found Finnerty he asked only one question: “Could you get hold of forty dollars?” and when Levi nodded, he adjusted his tobacco to a mouth consisting mostly of gaps and said, “It works this way. I use only dried timber. I build you the best flatboat on the river. We drift her down to Cairo and sell her for thirty dollars. Net cost to you, ten dollars.”

  “How long to build it?”

  “Two weeks. Can’t take more, because we have to catch the spring floods.”

  “And the boat’ll be big enough for my Conestoga and the six horses.”

  “Big enough for three other wagons. And we’ll take ’em if they come along. That way we can earn some money—you and I—fifty-fifty.”

  So it was agreed, and as soon as Finnerty got his hands on the money he went to work at a speed that surprised Levi. He had one white helper and two blacks, and they shoved great logs about and borrowed the Conestoga to haul in a load of freshly sawn timber, and there was much hammering and fitting together of boards, and well ahead of schedule a boat forty-four feet long and twelve feet wide took shape.

  “I’ve seen men work,” Levi told Elly, “but these take the prize.”

  The Zendts left their filthy rooming house to watch the three final embellishments to their craft. When it seemed ready to go, Finnerty and his helpers built around the edge a combing eight inches high; it was not sturdy, and in a storm would not prevent articles from falling over, but it did define the space and make the huge craft resemble a boat. When this was done, they covered about half its length with a rude house on whose roof the Conestoga would be securely lashed. And at each end of the boat Finnerty rigged a very long pole atop a triangle; the one at the rear was fitted as a rudder, the one in front was for fending off snags, which could be so fatal to shipping.

  “We’re ready,” Finnerty announced, but when Levi drove his Conestoga down to the pier he found the roof already taken by two smaller wagons whose drivers had bought passage to Cairo.

  “I want to put mine there,” Levi argued, but Finnerty explained in a low voice, “Levi, they’re payin’ us for the passage. Naturally they get first choice.”

  So the Conestoga was fitted crosswise and forward of the cabin. Elly saw that the other passengers had preempted the good sleeping area, and now she grew angry. Levi had been unwilling to shift the wagons, but she had no compunction about shifting the beds, Finnerty or no Finnerty.

  Thrusting her girlish face into the grizzled countenances of men and women three times her age, she announced, “Mr. Zendt and I will put our bed here, and you can fit yours in as you may.” And down went her bed, smack in the middle.

  Finnerty was as capable a boat handler as he was a builder, and early on the morning of April 1 he shoved into the center of the Ohio River, catching the lively current, and started the eleven-hundred-mile journey to the Mississippi. Keeping his position at the rear of the boat, he guided it past the docked steamers and beyond the limits of the city.

  Now began the finest portion of the trip to Oregon—the silent, leisurely drift down the Ohio, with its vivid contrasting scenery. To the left lay Virginia, to the right Ohio, and whereas the fir
st was a wilderness with trees coming to the shoreline, except where some adventurous family had chopped out a footing, the Ohio shoreline was a vista of green lawns and meadows, with fine houses showing in the distance.

  “I read in a book that Virginia was a rich state,” Elly said, and Finnerty explained, “It is, but only in the east. Out here, one Ohio’s worth ten Virginnys.”

  Levi wondered that his wife knew about the comparative riches of states she had never seen, but when they came to Blennerhassett Island she really astonished him, for she asked, “Isn’t this where Aaron Burr committed treason?” and Finnerty replied, “The same,” and she said, “It was cruel to place all the blame on Burr when most of it was General Wilkinson’s, and the army let him off scot-free,” and Finnerty said, from his deep well of observation, “The army rarely blames a general.”

  “How did you know about Aaron Burr?” Levi asked as the flatboat drifted silently past the scene of infamy, and Elly replied, “I studied.” Each day he discovered new and pleasing things about his wife.

  It was customary for flatboats drifting down the river to lay over a couple of days at Cincinnati to give the passengers a chance to see the German city, where hundreds of hogs and cattle were slaughtered each day to feed the west, and it was here, on a bulletin board, that Levi Zendt caught his first understanding of the schedule that faced him, for a printed poster stated:

  ONLY STEAMER TO BLACKSNAKE HILLS AND GREAT FALLS

  Robert Q. Fell

  CAPTAIN FRAKE

  Sailing twelve noon, May 1, 1844

  Travelers to Oregon accommodated

  Post Seven, St. Louis, Mo.

  Levi called Finnerty, showed him the sign and asked, “Can we get to St. Louis by the first of May?”

  “We?” Finnerty asked. “You can, easy. When we reach Cairo, I head back to Pittsburgh.”

  “Will there be steamers at Cairo ... waiting?” Levi asked.

  “Well, let’s see. This is April 10. We ought to reach Cairo about April 23. Let’s see what shows.” He studied the shipping notices and found that on April 26 the steamer Ozark Maid, Captain Shaw, was leaving Cairo for St. Louis with arrival planned for the early morning of May 1. “Just what you need,” Finnerty said, but since this allowed for little error, Levi wondered if the flatboat couldn’t shove off immediately and skip Cincinnati.

  When this proposal was made to the other passengers, they balked. As the women said, “We been plannin’ a long time to see this city,” so the boat was tied up, with Finnerty heading for a saloon he frequented and the other families for the imposing stores that lined the main streets.

  Elly went off on her own, leaving her husband on the wharf to guard their Conestoga. He was there when a small steamboat set out from the Kentucky shore, picked its way among the larger craft filling the river and tied up not far from where he sat on a bale of cotton. He watched idly as a double gangplank was lowered and men began hammering timbers onto its sides to build a protected runway. “Must be plannin’ to bring down somethin’ pretty valuable,” Levi said to a fellow watcher.

  “Horses, probably,” the man grunted, but it wasn’t horses at all. It was a group of seven large and handsome steers of a kind Levi had not seen before. They were reddish in color, very broad in the chest, and each had a white face. “What kind of cattle are they?” Levi asked one of the handlers. “Seventeens,” the man replied, and Levi asked, “What’s a Seventeen?” and the man explained, “They belong to Senator Clay. He brought them over from England in 18 and 17.”

  “What’s their real name?” Levi asked, and the handler said, “Don’t know.” He worked for the senator at Ashland, over in Kentucky a ways, and he approved of the English cattle. “They give a lot of eatin’ beef,” he told Levi, who said, “I can see that. I’m a butcher. Hogs mainly,” and the man said, “In this town they slaughter a mighty lot of hogs. That’s why the big hotels appreciate our beef.”

  The heavy steers waddled off, and for a long time Levi sat staring at the water, remembering those strange white faces that looked so different from the Jerseys and Holsteins to which he was accustomed.

  Two days out of Cincinnati a beautiful thing happened. Elly saw it first. She was standing aft with Finnerty, looking idly at the wake left by his rudder, when she saw far to the rear, coming around a bend in the river, two stately luxury steamers moving side by side, and after watching them for a few minutes and noting their rapid approach, she said, “I declare, Mr. Finnerty, I think they’re racing.”

  “Race!” he shouted, leaving his tiller to tend itself.. He ran back and forth along the flatboat, urging his six passengers to watch the exciting scene that was developing to the rear. They watched captivated as the two large steamers, filigreed like jewels, bore down upon them, and one of the women standing with Elly cried, “They’ll pass us very close!”

  They would have to. Finnerty had his flatboat fairly well in the middle of the river, and whereas the two racing steamers could conceivably stay together and pass on one side, it was more likely that they would separate, each keeping as close to the middle of the river as possible.

  “One on the left’s the River Belle out of Cincinnati,” Finnerty shouted. “Other one’s the Duquesne, a Pittsburgh boat. Anyone care to bet on the River Belle?” There was no response, so he made another proposal: “Anyone care to bet on the Duquesne?” Again there was no response, so he shouted in frustration, “For Christ’s sake, somebody bet. This is a race,” and Elly said, “I’ll bet a nickel on the River Belle,” but when she saw his face fall she quickly said, “All right. I’ll make it half a dollar,” and Levi winced at her carelessness with money.

  An imaginary line was drawn between the flatboat and a tree on shore, and the other two men were to hold the wagers and serve as judges. Finnerty grew quite agitated as the splendid vessels approached, their decks quivering from the pounding of the engines, their tall smokestacks belching smoke. They seemed about equal, with each straining to the utmost, and as they neared, Finnerty shouted, “The best part is, sometimes they explode and you can make a lot of money picking up the bodies ... rescuing people, that is.”

  It looked to Levi as if one or the other of these two beauties might explode before his eyes, so furious were the hammerings of the pistons, but with great speed they overtook the flatboat and expertly passed as close to it as possible, each seeking maximum advantage. None of the passengers aboard the graceful steamers could have been more excited than the seven people looking up from the flatboat, and the most delighted was Elly Zendt, for her River Belle crossed the imaginary finish line a good six feet ahead of the Duquesne. She expected Finnerty to be downcast at his loss, but he remained as delighted as he had been when she first called his attention to the race.

  Levi’s indifference to the race turned to real concern when the two vessels passed, for the tumbling wakes of the two steamers converged right under the flatboat, tossing it like a cork and straining every timber and rope. For the first time he felt that his investment with a boat-builder as good as Finnerty had been justified.

  Finnerty was undismayed by the danger. Balancing himself against the wildly tossing flatboat, he shouted, “Look at ’em go!” as the boats approached the bend that would carry them out of sight. Each of the flatboat passengers looked with longing and a sense of exaltation as the great white steamers, more graceful than swans, swept out of view.

  Cairo was a miserable site, a small mud flat perched on a large mud flat, which reached out to rest upon a really stupendous mud flat. Here the Ohio emptied into the Mississippi, and someone had decided that this point of land would be ideal as a river port, and it was, except that each spring either the Ohio or the Mississippi came into flood, almost wiping Cairo out. Six years out of seven the little town faced inundation, and this year it looked as if it would be the Mississippi, which was rising ominously.

  The residents of Cairo were preoccupied with the building of dikes to hold back the rivers, and the town resembled a fortr
ess sunk below walls, with little attention paid to travelers. It was difficult even to find where the Ozark Maid, Captain Shaw, would be loading for the run to St. Louis, and at the height of the confusion Elly ran up to inform Levi that the two families who had shared the flatboat from Pittsburgh had run off without paying ... anyway, that’s what Finnerty claimed.

  “Well,” Levi said philosophically, “at least we can sell the boat and get something back,” but when the time came to do so, the timber men of Cairo pointed to a score of rafts tied up along the muddy waterfront.

  “We got more’n we can use in a year,” they grumbled, and they offered Levi ten dollars for his. He was not disposed to accept, and the men showed no disappointment. “We’re doin’ you a favor, takin’ it off’n your hands,” one of the men said. “Course, you could fit a keel onto it for another thirty and hire ten strong men to pole you upriver to St. Louis. Take about three months.”

  Levi laughed and said, “Sold for ten dollars,” and when the deal was consummated, the men confided, “Finnerty does this all the time. He knows the most we ever pay is ten dollars.” When Levi shook his head in consternation, one of the men added, “Wager you the ten that Finnerty told you the other passengers skipped without payin’. He always does that, too.”