Snowbound and Eclipse

by Richard S. Wheeler

  I awaited his verdict with rare humor.

  “Have you been irritable, my governor?” he asked.

  “Uncommonly.”

  “Impatient?”

  “Of course. If you had to deal with what I deal with—”

  “What is my baptismal name?”

  “Ah …” I paused, trying to dredge up a name I had not used in years.

  “It is Antoine François.”

  I was embarrassed. “Why do you ask?”

  “Medical reasons.”

  That seemed most peculiar. I grunted.

  “When you posted me as an army surgeon in 1806 to treat your men, you recollected it readily enough after three years in the West, without prompting, Your Excellency.”

  “I am sorry I am not measuring up to your expectations,” I said tartly. “It’s been a while. Send me your bill.”

  He raised a tiny alabaster hand. “It is not about your social aptitude that I am concerned.”

  “Well? I have the ague. A fevered mind doesn’t serve as well as a healthier one.”

  He paced sternly about the small bright room. “Are you living within your salary?”

  “That is not a matter I wish to discuss. I will pay you for your services as soon as possible. Now, if you are done—”

  He smiled brightly for the smallest moment.

  “Ah, non, mon ami. There is more. I have subscribed to your journals, thirty-five dollars to the publisher, Conrad. For this I apply myself to the English. How soon may I expect them?”

  “Ah … I’ve been busy.”

  He peered at me with those black marble eyes. “I am a great admirer of yours. To make that unspeakable journey into the unknown. Ah! What a grand feat! Your Excellency, I await with the great, ah, great eagerness to read of the voyage, and your gifts to science, the new species of the plants and the animals.”

  He was making me miserable. “It will be some while,” I said.

  He turned again, frowning. “Is it that the work seems formidable, ah, difficult?”

  I nodded.

  “Is it that the words don’t come?”

  “No, I’ve just been busy.”

  “Is it that you are, ah, uncertain? How shall I attack this beast and conquer it?”

  I smiled. “I suppose you want to help me. You have a background in science. But I alone am qualified. No one can help me.”

  “Ah, no, monsieur, it is all part of my diagnosis.”

  I was weary, feeling out of sorts and feverish. I didn’t have the energy for social banter. “I am tired, Doctor, and—”

  He perched on the edge of my bed, his miniature body birdlike above me.

  “It is the venereal,” he said.

  I smiled. “You have that on your mind. It is an intermittent fever, common to southern latitudes.”

  He shook his head. “Lues venerea lurks like a vampire in the body, silently eating the parts it attacks, invisible to all but the experienced eye, such as mine.”

  “No, my friend, it isn’t.” I knew medicine and I knew that I had an intermittent fever, not the venereal. I brightened, making a joke of it. “You Frenchmen, that is all you think of.”

  He allowed himself the slightest smile. “A little bit of mercury, not a lot. And avoid spirits. That is what I will prescribe. Too much mercury chloride ruins you faster than the venereal. It poisons the brain and ruins the bowels.”

  “Ah, so now you think I am mad.” I glared at him. “Too many of Doctor Rush’s Thunderclappers. That’s what you’re driving at.”

  He hesitated. “No, not now,” he said. I knew there was more he intended to say, even if he wasn’t saying it just then.

  He stood, his dignity towering much higher than his small frame, his mien grave and sad.

  “In some people the disease arrests naturally. In others it progresses, furtively, a secret enemy, an insidious mole tunneling through the body, fouling it. In some, it attacks the heart and arteries, and in others, it commits its sacrilege upon the brain—”

  “Doctor Saugrain, that’s a fine description of the venereal, but I haven’t a sign of it. You are inflicting pain upon me for no good reason.”

  “I am sorry. I do not wish to inflict pain upon anyone. My oath and dedication are to relieve pain, not inflict it, Your Excellency. A bleak diagnosis is painful. Perhaps some other time, when you are ready to talk to me, I will be found in my chambers.”

  He pulled his thick black cape about him, and lifted a shining beaver hat to his head, which increased his height dramatically.

  “I am sorry,” he said, and left. I heard some indistinct commotion as Pernia saw the doctor to the door.

  Fevered or not, I sprang up in my nightshirt and examined myself before the looking glass. Was I not Meriwether Lewis, conqueror of a continent, celebrated explorer and naturalist and soldier and governor? Was I not a man of intelligence and learning, a quick study, a man of many parts? Was I not a man of great repute, admired across the whole republic, friend and secretary of a president, and a man with high office in his own future?

  I saw all that in the mirror, and something else. I was fevered, and my face was drawn and flushed with heat.

  I had had many of these bouts. The ague strikes mostly in warm weather, when the miasmas rise from the swamps, but it recurs anytime, and that was my trouble.

  Venereal, indeed! Those French think of nothing else.

  I had a bottle of the quinine on my commode, and from this I poured a generous dose into a tumbler of water. I would dose myself more rigorously with the extract of the miraculous bark from South America until I was past this misery, and then return to my tasks.

  I gulped down the bitter stuff; nothing is quite so sharp on the tongue as quinine. Immediately I felt better. I would be up and about in a day or two. I regretted engaging Saugrain; I could afford neither his bill nor his misdiagnosis.

  I ached, so I uncorked the blue bottle of laudanum and poured a few drops into the tumbler. Actually, eight or ten drops, more than I had intended. But the tincture of opium always put me at peace; it was a stalwart friend in a shifting world, a remedy I could always count on. I drank it, and then crawled under the gray coverlet, waiting for its beneficial effects to steal through me.

  It was not always available in St. Louis, because every drop of it had to be shipped up from New Orleans, and I lived in constant dread of running out of it. I have often abjured the apothecaries to hold back some for me, the governor, no matter what the case, but sometimes they lacked a supply. If worse came to worse, there was always Dover’s powder. My injuries, especially the shot through the buttocks when we were near the confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone, pain me and require relief.

  Within a few minutes I began to feel just fine. Maybe this very hour I would rise and set to work on my journals. It was a simple task, transcribing and correcting them. All I had to do was dip the quill and begin. The sun seemed terribly bright, and I thought to ask Pernia to close the draperies, but instead I rolled away from the blinding light and closed my eyes.

  There was so much to do, but I didn’t feel like doing it. There would be a new president in a few days, and I intended to write James Madison, as well as the new secretary of war, and let them know what I am about. I intended to write Thomas Jefferson and explain why I had not been a good correspondent. But I decided not to do that; he would only inquire once again about the journals, and I wouldn’t want to stir up that line of thought.

  My indisposition slows me, and loosens my mind, so that it is hard to collect thoughts and send them to the new men. I am going to have to concentrate my mind. I have met Mr. Madison many times; he has been a part of the Jefferson administration. I never cared much for him. He is not a bright man; I fear I will have to explain things to him that Mr. Jefferson grasped instantly. Nor have I seen in the new man the slightest interest in science, and only a minimal interest in commerce. It will be up to me to school him, and his new war secretary, whoever that may be.

&
nbsp; I lay back on my pillow and thought of the little Frenchman, Saugrain, fussing about his governor and finding overly much wrong with him. I smiled. He is an eminent physician, and thus always on his mettle, looking for the unseen, spotting the disease that eludes all else. But he missed the obvious in me: malarial fever, and nothing worse.

  Tomorrow I would be up and about, and I would return to my tasks.

  27. CLARK

  The midwives banished me from my own bedroom a few days ago. I sat helplessly in the parlor while servants bustled in and out of there carrying towels and hot water. I didn’t like the sound of it, the groaning that pierced even closed doors, the low murmur of worry, the grim looks of the black women who filtered in and out on mysterious errands. But at last, after waiting through a day and half a night, I heard a new sound, a wail, coughing, outrage at being alive, and quiet sobbing. A half hour later they let me in.

  The tapers were all lit. It was much too hot even though a March wind howled outside, thundering against the sides of the house and driving tentacles of air through every crack. They had cleaned everything up. Julia lay abed, pale and sweaty in a fresh white nightdress, her hair matted, her features gaunt, her eyes huge. But she was aglow, and on her bosom lay a little boy wrapped in swaddling clothes, my firstborn, my son.

  “He is perfect,” she whispered, as if to answer one question.

  I stood beside the bed, my hands clumsy.

  “It was hard,” she said, answering the other question. This was her first child, pushing his way through untraveled country, little explorer that he was.

  I beheld a son, with downy blond hair glinting redly in the wavering light of the beeswax candles. The infant was asleep upon the damp cotton over her bosom.

  “I am glad,” I said. “For you, for the son. I am blessed.”

  She smiled wanly, and I knew she wanted only to fall into slumber, a sweet oblivion that would begin the healing.

  The midwife, Mrs. Perrigault, stood quietly nearby, candlelight glinting from a great silver crucifix upon her black dress. “Is Julia all right?” I asked.

  “She is torn.”

  “Badly?”

  “I will need to watch closely. And so will you.”

  I ran a hand through my coppery hair, and nodded.

  Julia opened her eyes again. “Meriwether Lewis Clark,” she said, and closed them.

  It had been a disappointment to her. She wanted Hancock in the boy’s name.

  Her hands fondled the child. I studied its tiny mouth and mottled pink face and thought it was the plainest son ever born, plainer even than I am. I shouldn’t have named it after handsome Meriwether.

  “Bien,” said the midwife, gesturing me out. I knew who was the real commander in that room. In that company, I was the private.

  But I would gladly leave all that to the women. I had supplied Julia with enough house servants to keep the baby in diapers, to take care of the infant, a wet nurse to suckle it if need be, to guard it and clean it and to ease every burden of motherhood. I was glad I had the household slaves to do it.

  A son! Like little Jean Baptiste, or Pomp as I called him, born of Charbonneau and the squaw Sacajewea way back in 1805. I had taken a shine to that little lad, and now I had one of my own, named Meriwether, too. Maybe Pomp and my boy would meet someday. Long ago I had invited Charbonneau and the squaw to settle here, and promised I would look after Pomp’s schooling. But I had not heard a word filtering down the river. Somewhere, Pomp would be growing into a fine boy. Like Meriwether Lewis Clark.

  I notified Meriwether and invited him to see his namesake, but for some reason he delayed, at least until this Wednesday, the Ides of March. He promised to be here for supper, and we would visit Julia together. My wife remains mostly abed, having exhausted herself in this hard labor.

  Meriwether is taut as a bowstring these days, and I ascribe it to the burdens of office. He walks catlike, as if afraid to put down a foot; a strange conduct after walking across a continent. He has often pleaded illness and no longer sups with us and I miss his lively company.

  This evening he arrived in his blue uniform, gold braid shining, boots freshly blacked. He has often worn it since resigning his commission. He looks dashing in it, though it hangs loosely around him.

  I greeted him in the parlor upon being notified of his arrival by my houseboy.

  “Ah! Meriwether!”

  “I’ve come to see the little gentleman,” he said.

  “High time,” I replied. “You are got up for the occasion.”

  He eyed me. “Let my namesake see a captain, not a governor. Let him follow the beat of drums, not the beat of politics.”

  That puzzled me, but so did a lot of things about Meriwether in recent months.

  I excused myself to see whether Julia was up and about.

  She greeted me in her pink wrapper, sitting in her oak rocking chair.

  “The governor’s here to see the boy,” I said.

  “Oh, pray wait until I make myself ready.”

  Some lengthy time later—I cannot fathom why women consume the better part of an hour to make themselves ready—I ushered Meriwether into our chamber, where Julia held the infant in her lap.

  “Ah, madame, it is so good to see you up and well!” he said.

  She nodded demurely. “The same might be said of you, Your Excellency.”

  “And here’s the tyke!”

  Meriwether circled about, as if he were examining an eaglet in its nest. “Like the sire, like the sire,” he said. “Yes, a Clark clear through.”

  “Would you like to hold him?” Julia asked.

  Meriwether fell back at once. “No, no, I would drop him,” he said, discovering that ten feet was safe enough distance from the ogre in Julia’s lap. “Babies and captains have different humors.”

  I laughed, but I didn’t fail to note Meriwether’s edginess.

  “You are a lucky man,” he said. “I am just a musty old bachelor, and will never have a child of my own.”

  “Why, of course you will, Meriwether. A woman is easier to conquer than the Bitterroot Mountains, and you conquered the snowy Bitterroots twice.”

  He didn’t laugh as I thought he might. He just shook his head and then smiled brightly, his lips crooked. Then he remembered the graces: “I’m honored to have this boy named for me. May he be blessed. May he grow up strong and true.”

  He bowed grandly before the boy and his mother.

  Julia’s face softened. She had not lost her reserve around the governor.

  We repaired to the parlor for a glass of amontillado, and Meriwether hastily downed three before he settled into the horsehair settee opposite.

  “A fine boy, a compliment to you and your mistress,” he said grandly.

  I had not heard of an infant described as a compliment before. But then, Meriwether was acting in a most peculiar manner. I poured him a fourth drink from the cut glass decanter, but this time he only sipped.

  “Will,” he said, “I’m pressed. Mostly medical bills. This ague, you know. Could you spare a few dollars again? It’ll all be returned with the next voucher from Washington.”

  “How much, Meriwether?”

  “Twenty? I need to apply ten to the doctor, and my manservant needs something …” His voice trailed off.

  I nodded, and dug into my purse for some national bank notes, Hamilton’s work. I was hurting badly myself, but I would refuse my colleague and captain nothing. He had borrowed other small sums, still unpaid, but no mortal was more honest and I knew it would all be settled eventually. I only hoped I could hang on, myself.

  He nodded and tucked it into his pocket. “It won’t be long; I promise,” he said.

  “I can wait. How is the editing coming?”

  I had asked the wrong question. He looked like a rat trapped on a sinking ship, and shook his head. “No time,” he said.

  There had been time aplenty. I remembered the balls and card parties and Masonic lodge meetings he had attended. Re
luctantly, I put aside all hope of seeing any immediate gain from the journals, or my investment in their preparation. I checked a tide of irritation that sloshed through me unbidden.

  He must have sensed my distress. “My investments are going well. Three farms, over four thousand arpents. I have them rented out. Some city lots, too. I’ve put the family estate at Ivy up for sale, and I’ll move my mother out here just as soon as I can. We’ll be together here. But it’s been a struggle, finding the means. I owe Chouteau another sixteen hundred in May, and a like sum in May of 1810. And then …” He left the rest unsaid, his mind elsewhere.

  He was leaving much unsaid these days. I had noticed it, the incomplete thoughts. He either supposed his auditors knew what he would say, or else he was groping for words. I never imagined I would see the day when Meriwether groped for words.

  I nodded, not wishing to express my true feelings. What was the governor doing, borrowing small sums from me, from the Chouteaus, and others, while engaging in grandiose land schemes to ride what might be merely a bubble?

  Was this the competent, prudent man who had governed his mother’s estate at Ivy for so many years?

  Would those farms really appreciate? We were on the brink of war with England. Mr. Jefferson’s embargo had bottled up the traffic in furs to Europe. The economy of St. Louis was faltering because peltries were heaping up in warehouses. He knew all that, and yet had plunged every shred of income into Missouri farmland.

  We were soon at supper. The servants brought Meriwether’s favorite dish, curried lamb, and he beamed brightly as they set the plate before him.

  “Ah!” he exclaimed, all starchy blue and gold braid, across from me. He dug into his tunic, extracted a small phial, and poured several drops of something into his tumbler of water. This he downed before corking the phial and returning it to its nest upon his bosom.

  His countenance changed dramatically in the next moments.

  “Now,” he said peacefully, “tell me about the fur company. Are you gentlemen going to get Big White home at long last?”