From Sea to Shining Sea

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  Under the voices there was a strange, deep, shuddering, grinding sound, so faint at first that only gradually did she become aware of it.

  “I’m scared, Ma. What is it?”

  “Maybe just a little earthquake, Fanny girl. Nothing to be scared by.” She hugged Fanny and patted her shoulder. If it was an earthquake, it was doing little quaking.

  She saw a line of lamplight under the door and heard the board floor creak somewhere. The people of the house were getting up. Good. “Stay here, darlin’. I’ll go see.”

  She slipped out from under the quilts into the icy air and, shivering, groped with her feet to find her slippers. She drew a woolen robe on over her nightdress, patted her cheeks to give them color, and made her way to the door of the bedchamber and opened it. Mr. and Mrs. Howell, her hosts, were up. He was pulling on a cloak in the lamplight and she was laying new wood in the fireplace. Mr. Howell smiled.

  “Good news for ye, Ma’m. Th’ ice is a-breakin’ up.”

  THE THAW WAS NOT ALL GOOD NEWS TO GREATHOUSE AND the other boatmen. Slabs of drifting ice during the night had jammed against pilings and moored boats. Dawn’s light revealed a jagged, shifting mass of pan ice stacking itself three and four feet high among the vessels, grinding and shuddering in the river current. Some of the big flatboats were being tilted up as the ice shoved heavily under them; others lay hull-down in the ice, being slowly squeezed until their seams gaped and popped. Two large freight boats, one of them belonging to Greathouse, were becoming keel-hogged as the ice jam wedged under them and lifted their bows.

  Through the morning of a gray-warm November day, scores of boatmen swarmed over the boats and the dangerously slippery ice, wielding axes and pikes, prying and hacking at the blue-green ice, rigging tackle and windlasses with desperate ingenuity to pull boats this way and that, shouting curses and warnings with the same ferocity they had given to their drunken binges in the past week. As if this were but another kind of brawl, the rivermen kept themselves fired up on jugged fuel while they worked, and a few who overvalued their sense of balance had to be fished, blue and gasping and suddenly sobered, out of the icy water.

  By twilight the crisis was past. Three large vessels had sunk in the shallows and would have to be raised. Several others would require extensive caulking before they would be serviceable.

  “Ask the Lord,” Greathouse said to John Clark, “not to freeze up the river again until that’s done. I doubt ye want to winter here or at Fort Pitt when y’ got a new home a-waitin’ in Kentucky.”

  The Clark family’s belongings were loaded onto a repaired flatboat at daybreak two days later. John Clark sold his three wagons on the spot, to a teamster who was hauling hides and furs west. The Spanish squeeze of the lower Mississippi had increased the freight traffic up through Redstone, and wagons were at a premium.

  Much of Red Stone’s population was down on the riverfront to see off the family and the first flotilla of boats to leave since the freeze. The girls picked their way through the mud of the riverbank and tottered cautiously up the gangplank while the villagers called their names and bade them farewell. Mrs. Clark then marched slowly up the plank, steadied by the noseless man, who reached a long arm to her. “Thankee, Mister Manifee,” she said, stepping onto the plank deck.

  She stood there blinking in the chill of morning, now and then waving vaguely to the waving figures on the shore. Ropes and pulleys creaked, booms swung overhead, bundles and kegs, crates of chickens, bags of seed, slung in rope nets, were raised from shore and lowered into barges, as boatmen sang out loud, firm directions: “Hold, hold, hold. Easy now, easy now. Off left, off… there she be! Lower awayyy.”

  The boat smelled of fresh pitch, oakum, woodrot, stagnant bilgewater, animal dung, smoke, hemp, tobacco, tannin, and fish, and that singular dank pungency that is simply and unmistakeably old riverboat.

  The Clark men came aboard then, and finally, Greathouse, whooping orders to cast off. Thick ropes were thrown through the air and thumped against wood. Goats bleated, chickens squawked, horses whickered, people yelled. Men on shore leaned on long poles thrust against the boat hulls, and slowly, slowly, shoved them out into the current. The boats began to move silently on the green water, at the river’s own pace, and the little fort and town grew smaller, smaller, at the foot of the long gray hill.

  John Clark stood close to his wife and they watched the people move on the distant shore, watched the plank rudder at the end of the twenty-foot hickory sweep adjust ponderously left and right in the burbling water to guide the vessel toward midstream. Two barges and a smaller flatboat of Greathouse’s fleet lined themselves up astern. A whiff of wood smoke from the chimney of the flatboat shanty whirled down. The girls were leaning with their arms on the gunwales, studying the water below thoughtfully. William was already on the roof of the shanty with the noseless Mr. Manifee, who was manning the sweep, talking with him about the river and learning about steering. The Clarks had not seen much of William at Red Stone; he had been schooling himself all day, every day, on boat building, ropes, knots, river navigation, loading cargo, manifests, caulking, and the terminology of river shipping.

  Greathouse came out of the shanty looking anxiously at the sky, which was bright with a thin, shimmering overcast. The air was bitter cold, full of the hint of snow and more freezing. “When ye so desire,” he said, “there’s hot water for tea or toddy.”

  “Thankee,” said Mrs. Clark. “Again, Mr. Greathouse, how far to Pittsburgh?”

  “Not twenty leagues,” said Greathouse. “We’ll put in there tomorrow midday, I reckon, barring anything unforeseeable.”

  “Eh, well,” John sighed, gazing back. “Fare thee well, Virginny.” He turned to her. “What would’ee have, Annie? Tea, I’d reckon?”

  “Nay, John.” Her eyes were misty. “Meseems this is the time for a toddy.”

  “Well said. Two toddies, then, Mister Greathouse.”

  “Make that three, sir,” said William’s voice from above.

  THE MONONGAHELA WOUND IN GREAT LOOPS THROUGH the grim mountains. At each turn another silvery curve would come into view, smooth as glass, or sometimes boiling over shallows and shoals. Manifee’s tutelage of young William went on like an apprenticeship. “Y’ can misgauge an outside bend like this all too easy,” he would say, “and swing too wide. Be under that bluff afore y’ knowed it. Watch this now.” He put his chest against the sweep and lunged toward the starboard side, forcing the rudder hard to port. William gasped; there was a rocky shoal just alongside and, thinking Manifee hadn’t seen it, he expected them to be aground at once.

  But the vessel responded so sluggishly that it was past the shoal before the bow began to come around. And William saw that if Manifee had waited a moment longer to jam the sweep, they would indeed have run under the bluff on the outside curve of the bend.

  Manifee handed the sweep over to William that afternoon, telling him to steer according to what he thought he’d learned, but to look lively and be ready to do anything he was told to do whether it looked right or wrong.

  As the afternoon wore on, William made no mistakes, and Manifee did not have to shout at him once.

  “I do b’lieve y’re born to it, lad,” said the noseless man.

  MOST OF THE MONONGAHELA SHORELINE WAS STEEP WILderness. But on the bottomlands and low bluffs they would see a cabin now and then, a faint pennant of chimney smoke, the yellow-brown stubble of a harvested corn patch dotted with dark tree stumps, a skiff or pirogue drawn up on the shingle, a horse or cow, a man carrying a hunting rifle, a woman carrying a pail. In some of these clearings there stood only chimneys. John Clark now stood at the starboard gunwale with a mug of steaming toddy, watching the landscape slide past and the afternoon deepen. One of the slaves scooped a shovelful of horse dung from the foredeck and pitched it over the side into the river, then another, and another. Its smell was dense and rich in the chilling evening air. The horses stamped hollowly on the thick deck planks as the slave moved among
them. Then John Clark felt the sting of snowflakes on the side of his face.

  “Damnation!” Greathouse had appeared beside him and was squinting into the snowfall. It was not a blizzard, of the sort that had struck the Clarks in the mountain pass, but it was a nearly opaque cloud of drifting whiteness which obviously was going to make further progress this afternoon impossible. The small, hard snowflakes hissed into the dark water and vanished. “Steersman,” he growled, “put us in at the Willow Island.”

  “I’ll take ’er,” Manifee said to William. “This next is a bit tricky.”

  “I’m a-willin’ to try,” William said.

  “Give me it,” Manifee said, snatching the sweep and scowling, so suddenly in a changed mood that William was startled, speechless, afraid he had somehow annoyed his new friend and teacher.

  John Clark had seen and overheard this and, when William came morosely down from the roof, took him aside.

  “It’s just something y’ll have to learn, Son,” John said, putting an arm over his shoulders. “Takin’ charge o’ things is a delicate business. Sometimes y’ve just got to stay in the second place.”

  THEY WERE TIED UP IN THE NARROW BACKWATER BEHIND A long, sandy island that night, all sleeping or sitting in the fetid confines of the overheated deck shanty. What affability Greathouse had exhibited earlier was gone. Now he was unhappy and was making no effort to hide it; here they were halfway between Red Stone and Pittsburgh, blinded by snow and darkness while the river froze around them. The boats might or might not be damaged by this new freeze, but it was a distinct possibility that they would.

  The family lay awake a good part of that night, uneasy in this unfamiliar circumstance, hearing water gurgling under them, hearing seams creak, thinking they could hear water trickling in the hull. Greathouse was up at all hours, sighing loud, exasperated sighs, stepping over and on sleepers, clinking a rum bottle every hour or so as he refilled his cup, letting in blasts of icy air every time he opened the shanty door to go out and check the freezing. It was a bad night, which ended just before first light when Greathouse stumbled in, issued a stream of riverman’s profanity and announced that they were “froze God-damned fast,” heaved himself onto his cot, broke wind loudly three or four times to the embarrassment of the womenfolk, and then passed out.

  They made a brief effort to chop the boats out of the ice that morning. The boatmen stood along the gunwales with long, steel-tipped pikes and jabbed at the ice, piercing it and chipping away chunks all around the hulls. But by the time the hulls were floating free, the men were too exhausted to break channels ahead. The Clark men spelled them on the pikes then. But eventually the whole process became too obviously futile. An hour’s ice-breaking would move a boat only twenty-five feet. Even in the main channel, the ice was thick enough to support a man’s weight. The temperature, in the meantime, was dropping fast. The sky had cleared to a hard, bright blue, and the dry snow blew across the river ice in streamers.

  “It’s the kind o’ cold that stays,” said John Clark. “I reckon these boats are here for quite a spell.”

  “Then that means we are too, Pa,” said Edmund.

  “Well, it could mean just that. But it needn’t.”

  “What say ye, Pa?”

  “Well, I don’t intend to make a permanent residence for my wife and daughters on a marooned shantyboat with a drunken fartbag for its admiral, that’s what I mean to say. We’ve got horses enough aboard here to carry the womenfolk. You boys and me, we could walk and lead ’em, and carry our necessaries on our backs. Pittsburgh’s only twenty-five miles.” He scratched his jaw and gazed down along the right bank. “Put two girls on a horse, that’ll free up a beast or two to carry valuables, victuals, some tools. Furniture and the like, why, we won’t need that. Greathouse can float it down to Pittsburgh when he gets his old scows freed up.” He sighed and stared downriver, looking resolute. “Maybe I was a fool t’ sell the wagons when I done. We were a-doin’ just fine till we hitched up with boats and river rats.”

  Edmund smiled at his father’s resolve. “That’s true, but we’d no way o’ knowin’ she’d ice up so early in th’ season.”

  “Well, this boat’s no fit place for a family to live. Yep, two ladies to a horse. Old Rose and Venus ought to ride. Rest o’ th’ Negroes can walk, like us.”

  “So be it, Pa. Y’re the boss.”

  John Clark chuckled. “Tell that t’ your ma,” he said. “Twas her idea we abandon ship.”

  Greathouse grumbled a bit when John Clark announced his intent. But he agreed to deliver their bulk goods to them at Pittsburgh when the river thawed.

  “If we find the Ohio open,” John Clark said, “we just may hire small boats to take us on down to Louisville. In that event, ye’d float our baggage on down there when you can come. How sayee?”

  “So be it, Mr. Clark. I am sorry to see you set off, but I can’t say I blame ye. If I could leave all this and go to Pitt, why, that I would.”

  “Mind, now, Mister Greathouse, take every care of our belongings. They might not be fancy, but they’re family things, most dear.”

  “My word on’t. If my boats get down th’ river, so shall y’r household.”

  THE ICE AROUND THE BOATS WAS STRONG ENOUGH NOW TO support horses. Wide gangplanks were laid over the boat’s sides and secured so that they wouldn’t slip. William led and coaxed Flag over the precarious walk first, then the other horses followed over willingly. Soon all the Clark horses had been led across the ice to shore, and light baggage, selected carefully, was bundled and strapped onto the backs of two of the beasts. Lucy rode one of the saddle horses, with old Rose—who had never been on horseback in her long life—locked onto her with desperately hugging arms. Elizabeth rode the second saddle horse, with the Negro woman Venus sitting behind her. Mrs. Clark rode the third, mounted saddleless and astride like an Indian, with Fanny behind her. One of the Clark men led each saddle horse and carried his rifle in his free hand. York led the pack horses. The boatmen came down on shore and shook hands, and with the slaves following on foot, the procession started down the east bank of the Monongahela. It was midmorning. The snow was striped light blue with tree-trunk shadows. But the air was snapping cold and the sunlight so weak it could hardly be felt. Edmund led the way. The snow was to his knees. They found fairly level bottomlands for the first five miles.

  Within two hours, each of the girls had remembered at least one item she had forgotten to bring with her from the boats. Each of these was an allegedly essential implement or priceless keepsake, without which the young women were certain they could not live out the day. But there was no turning back, and so their laments soon died down. The entourage struggled quietly on through the snow. There was no talk now, as if the frozen grandeur of the rugged valley had intimidated them to silence. There was only the heavy breathing and grunting of the men as they high-stepped through the snow and flung one leg, then another, over some fallen log, the steamy snorting of the horses, the creak of baggage and loaded tack, a cough, now and then a whine of complaint or a sigh from a weary slave in the rear of the column, the occasional crack of a dead branch, sometimes a few notes of a hummed tune.

  They came in early afternoon to a place where the river swung westward, cutting into a sheer bluff that rose in their path. Edmund stopped and studied the height, and the rest of the column came to a halt behind him. The rise was steep and thickly overgrown and doubtless was slick with snow and ice. The only passage appeared to be under it, on the river ice. He waved toward the river and led the animal that way. At the river’s edge, he handed up the reins and went out to check the ice. He stepped onto it, stamped, walked out farther, and sprang up and down on flexed knees. He brushed aside some snow, knelt, and poked at the ice with the point of his hunting knife. Finally he was satisfied. “It’ll hold, I reckon,” he said. “I ’spect we could go all the way down to Fort Pitt on this river, just like a highway. But,” he paused, “just to be prudent, you get down. While we’re on ice, we
’ll walk the horses without your weight on ’em. Just to be safe and sure, eh, ladies?”

  And so the womenfolk all dismounted and the horses were led down the river ice a few feet offshore from the bluff. The pack horses, heavier with their loads, were led over next, and when they had proven the strength of the ice, the women and slaves followed on foot, straggling singly or in pairs, picking their footing gingerly on the slick surface.

  They passed three or four miles thus on the ice over the deep water, becoming more familiar and at ease until someone would slip and fall, then would get up and proceed again as if walking on eggs. The river began curving off to the right then, and there was a stretch of bottomland for some distance ahead, so the women mounted to ride again, their legs weary and shaky with the tension of ice-walking. Four miles farther on, the river looped again, under the steep shoulder of a mountain, and the party dismounted to walk for the next two miles. The cold intensified; the air seemed to sear their nostrils as they went along. The mountains on the west side of the river were high and steep, and by midafternoon, the sky still crystalline blue, the sun disappeared behind a ridge, taking its hint of warmth with it.

  But as the day grew colder, their faith in the thickness of the ice increased.

  “Oh, thunder,” Elizabeth exclaimed later in the afternoon, breaking a long period of silent concentration, “I know what I left on the boat: my skates!”

  There was a chorus of laughter and wails.

  “Me too!”

  “Oh, of all things!”

  It was true. Every child in the Clark family had been given a pair of ice skates on his or her sixth birthday, skates John Clark had made for them in spare time at his small forge, and everybody in the family was a skillful skater.