From Sea to Shining Sea

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  George slumped in his chair.

  Well, he thought. There goes my last dream o’ glory.

  He slapped a gold coin down on the table. “Hey, take that over and buy us a jerry-boam o’ French brandy. Be sure it’s French. I intend for the Legion to go out with a roar.”

  SO THAT LAST GRAND SCHEME HAD FAILED, TOO. BUT NOT entirely. The Spaniards in New Orleans, learning how close they had come to being invaded by an army of angry frontiersmen, decided to lift their restrictions on American shipping. General Clark’s army, without even marching, had at last opened up the mouth of the Mississippi. Now all Kentuckians could prosper from the trading down the river.

  All, that is, except General Clark.

  FOR THE FIRST FEW HOURS THERE HAD BEEN INTERVALS WHEN the pain would ease for a while and Elizabeth had been able to breathe and think a little, and the midwife had cooled her face and neck and shoulders with damp linen, but now there were no intervals, and the enormous pain was not only always there, it was growing worse. She felt as if a hand as big and strong as God’s own hand had closed around her waist, trying to pull the lower half of her body off. For a while in the beginning she had felt that the baby inside her was alive, and for a while she had been able to hear Richard’s voice out in the hall talking with the doctor. But now she was sure that the mass inside her was not alive, but was a mass of death, like a tombstone or something, and that the death in it was trying to spread out and invade her heart; and as for her beloved Richard, she could not hear him anymore; she could not hear anything except a terrible harsh sound like furniture being scooted across the floor in an empty house, and the room kept getting darker and darker. She wanted her mother to come, bearing a lamp.

  Then there seemed to be a cooling wind, a wind the color of silver, and there was no pain anymore. The silver wind seemed to be blowing over the roof of the house, above her bedroom, but yet at the same time she was in the silver wind, or was the silver wind itself. Gray wings caressed the silver wind, and there was a familiar, lovely sound.

  Oh-a! Ooo, ooo, ooo.

  THE QUESTION BEFORE THE CLARK FAMILY NOW WAS whether they ought to go up and tell Fanny that her sister had died. John and Ann Rogers Clark were still so benumbed by the news from Soldier’s Retreat that they could not judge whether she should be told or not. They seemed to want to ponder on that question rather than on Elizabeth’s death itself, and discuss softly and politely whether or not she should be told, but they could not really decide; they could only stand there looking gray and confused and saying, “What do you think, my dear?” George was of the opinion that she should be told, but he did not want to be the one to go up and tell her because he had been drinking when the message came from Soldier’s Retreat and he knew he was slurring his speech and needed to shave, and he did not want to go up to Fanny in that condition and say, “Fanny, your sister and her baby died.”

  And so it was left for William to handle the matter, and he knew he could tell her as well as anyone because he was closer to her than anyone, except, perhaps, her mother. So he said, “You all just rest a spell and I’ll go up and take care of it.” They all seemed very relieved.

  So he started up the stairs toward Fanny’s room, and he went slowly and reluctantly, choosing his words as he went.

  It was going to be a hard thing to tell Fanny this forlorn news, because her husband Dr. Jim O’Fallon had taken sick on his eternal travels and just lately come home to die, leaving Fanny a young widow with two small sons.

  “NO LASS O’ SUCH BEAUTY’LL STAY ALONE LONG,” ANN Rogers Clark said of her widowed young daughter. And she was right. Fanny was scarcely out of mourning black before the amazing Captain Thruston came to Kentucky and found her, and fell helplessly in love with her.

  Charles Minn Thruston was a compelling young man with a golden tongue and a sense of his own worth, scarcely older than Fanny herself but well on his way already to becoming a man of real substance. He had entered manhood early; before he was quite twelve years old he had gone with his father to fight in the Revolution, and had not let loose of the reins of his own destiny for a moment since.

  It was Charles Thruston’s opinion that the town of Louisville had become about all it ever would be, and that the new town of Westport, twenty-five miles upstream from the Falls, showed more promise of becoming a great city. And so there, with a working party of Negroes he had brought from Virginia, he built a handsome house and established a store, and in a short while persuaded Dr. O’Fallon’s young widow to marry him and share these bold new beginnings with him. Her two sons by James O’Fallon, he said, he would love as if they were his own, because they were of her flesh and he adored her so. If nothing else about the remarkable young gallant had won her, that would have.

  And so, in January of 1796, Fanny was married again, and she moved to Westport with a purposeful and vigorous young man who, her mother believed, would provide her the lifetime of domestic bliss and security that Jim O’Fallon had only promised.

  “I could be wrong,” Ann Rogers Clark said to John Clark, “but meseems Charles Thruston is the fellow she should have waited for at the first.”

  “He’s some’at harsh on his slaves,” John Clark mused, “but young men in a haste sometimes are, and likely he’ll outgrow it. Outside o’ that, there’s nowt I can see to fault ’im for, and I reckon we’ll all be glad he came to Fanny when he did.”

  And in the spring of that year a letter came from Westport down to Mulberry Hill with the happy news that Fanny was again with child. If it was a boy, she said, it would be named Charles. But its middle name would be William, in honor of her closest brother.

  IN SUMMER OF 1796, THE BRITISH FORMALLY YIELDED UP TO General Mad Anthony Wayne their stronghold of Detroit, where they had remained for thirteen years since the end of the war despite the fact that it was in American territory. Wayne was too sick to participate in the ceremonies himself, but his old enemy, Chief Little Turtle of the Miamis, was there. British troops and Loyalist citizens then left the city and moved across to Canada.

  When the news came to Kentucky, George Rogers Clark read of it and then sat with a gaze that went far beyond the walls of the public house. He shook his head slowly, muttering. “All the mischief that’s come out o’ that bedamned place, just because I never got the men I needed to take it! God damn them all to Hell, and now it’s given up without a battle. All that useless mischief. Bejesus!” Somebody else, another general the Indians now called Long Knife, had finished the game of chess he had never been allowed to win. “All that mischief,” he muttered again, his lips drawn in a narrow sneer.

  In the basement of the British Government House there, the newspaper had reported, 2,000 moldy, dusty, rat-gnawed scalps had been found.

  That was the mischief he meant.

  A SMALL BUT NOISY CROWD HAD GATHERED ON THE STREET in front of a cobbler shop. It was a cool evening after a heavy summer rain, and the streets of Louisville were ankle-deep in mud. Victor Collot, a retired French general on a tour of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, had just dined at one of the city’s new inns and was walking off the heaviness of the meal when he saw the crowd and heard their laughter and jeers. One voice was shouting angrily amid the merriment. Tucking his sword-cane under his arm, Collot ambled up the street toward the disturbance.

  A big man was lying face-down in the mud. He wore good boots and an old-style army coat. “Aye, by God, sure and it’s him again,” someone was saying. “Ha, ha!” someone else was laughing, “it’s the old traitor hisself!”

  At this, the man who had been shouting at the crowd roared a furious oath and swung his fist at the man who had said it, but missed. This enraged fellow was middle-aged and gray-haired and his face was contorted. He wore a heavy leather cobbler’s apron. Now he was grabbing people by the arms and shoving them away. “Git, damn your eyes! Go on! Move away, ye scumgut buzzards! GIT!” He shoved someone, was shoved back and taunted. “GIT AWAY!” he screamed, “or I’ll drive nails in y’r hea
d!” His voice broke. Now he turned and limped, arms swinging, into the cobbler shop where a lantern burned low over a work bench. He emerged carrying a blanket, forced his way through the crowd, knelt, and spread the blanket over the prostrate figure, muttering and growling like some swarthy troll. Then he stood up, and with upraised fists and curses again tried to drive the onlookers away.

  “Come,” the Frenchman broke in gently now, gripping someone by the arm. “Enough, no?” He pulled people away. They looked at his large stature and respectable dress, shrugged, and by ones and twos began moving on up the street, laughing and talking, out of the light from the cobbler’s window.

  “Thank’ee, Gov’nor,” said the cobbler. “Now would ye gi’ me a hand here?”

  They rolled the big man over in the blanket. The cobbler grasped him under the arms; the Frenchman leaned his cane against the building, knelt, and lifted him by the knees. They stumbled into the shop and past the bench and laid him down on a cot near the back. The cobbler’s eyes were wet with tears. He was muttering and snuffing as he stooped and wiped mud off the man’s face with a corner of the blanket. “There, now,” he was saying. “I’ll send for Cap’m William. Y’r brother takes good care o’ ye, don’t ’e, Gen’l.” And suddenly the Frenchman guessed.

  “Mon Dieu! Is this General Clark?”

  “Eh, ’tis,” muttered the cobbler, now smoothing the blanket upon the broad, muddy chest. “Aw, God. He’s forgot for now, what ’e done fer us. But we’re obliged not t’ fergit. I cover ’im from th’ contempt o’ people like them scum-guts out ’air, people who never follered ’im to Vincennes, th’ way I done. Awwww, God!”

  When Collot backed out of the shop and picked up his cane, the cobbler was kneeling beside the cot in the lamplight, soothing with his palm the massive brow of the unconscious man.

  29

  MULBERRY HILL

  Christmas Eve, 1798

  “A HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO YE, BILLY. IT GLADDENS ME YOU’RE home.”

  “A happy Christmas to you, Ma. Uhm, I could light us a candle.”

  “No! No, don’t. I don’t want you to look at me. I don’t want anybody to see me thisaway. That’s why I, I made ’em put up the black drapes. I want everybody to remember me the way I used to look—which some said was uncommon fair.”

  “By heaven, that’s so.” William felt awkward saying that, and even more so in saying, “Nobody ever had a more beauteous Mama than us.”

  “It’s not that I’m vain, you know that, son. But I’ll be gone from here before long.”

  He tried to joke. “Oh? Where ye headin’? West?”

  “I can tell it, I can. Heh … It’s about time, I suppose. But I don’t want one person, no son or daughter or grandson o’ mine—and sure not your father—to think back and recollect me how I look with this accurst, this STUFF all over me. That’s why I have it dark in here.”

  William swallowed hard. Oh, this is bad, he thought. She doesn’t deserve it to be like this. Not her.

  “Y’see the chair there,” she said. “I had Venus sew a white slip on’t so’s a body can find it in the dark. Y’ set yourself down there. We don’t need light to talk by, do we? Remember how I’d tell ye stories, all o’ you, in the dark o’ your room? Don’t need light to talk by. Can you understand me all right? Can you?”

  “Surely I can, Ma.”

  “I can think clear as crystal. And I do my tongue and … voice just like I always have done. But … but my lips are so swole and tender I reckon it makes me mumble … like if I was talkin’ with a mouthful o’ week-old cornbread. Hm, hm! Tell me if I’m not clear.”

  “You’re clear, Ma.”

  “So, son, set ye there, and let’s us talk. Tell me all where you went and all what you did. If y’ve got anything to read to me, why, just pull my bed curtains to, and light a lamp. Now, talk.”

  “Well, first off, I got a lot done for George. I finally got that dang suit that Spaniard Bazadone’s held over ’im so long, I got that dismissed. Best thing I’ve ever done! I sold off some o’ George’s lands, paid off some debts, so much on th’ dollar. Put off a few other greedy folk for a while, without havin’ to hit anybody. Ha! I feel like a real circuit-ridin’ lawyer! Y’ know, Ma, I’ve reckoned up how many miles I’ve done in the saddle since I took up this business o’ his, and I’d ha’ been to the Western Sea and back if I’d gone straight, ’stead o’ zigzagging all over Kentucky and Virginia. That’s no exaggeration. These last few years, I’ve ridden onto nine, ten thousand miles. I, uhm, I doubt I’ll ever get it all done, but I’ve trimmed a bit off here, stalled a bit there.”

  “Your Pa says if you’d put all that effort toward yourself, you could ha’ built yourself a fortune in all this time.”

  “Well, I rather do this. Doesn’t seem to me there’s much justice in this world, so whenever I manage to squeeze a drop out of it for George, well, I feel good.”

  “Poor George.” She worked her tongue around in her mouth and moaned a little as if it hurt. “He’s been bad off while you were gone … How is he tonight …” Her voice was whispery, gurgly.

  “Just his old self. Hear ’im singin’ down there?”

  “What’s that… they’re singing? That’s no carol.”

  “Why, no, that’s ‘The Spoiling o’ Katy Morah.’ Ha, ha!”

  “O! That bawdry! They should … be singing carols.”

  “Ye tired, Ma?”

  “Oh, keep on. Ye saw Jonathan? Edmund?”

  “Aye, they’re rich and sleek, both of ’em. I saw lots o’ your grandsons you’ve yet to see. That—”

  “I’ll not see ’em.”

  “Sure you will. Little Billy told me he’s named after me. Seems he’s gettin’ the idea how things are done in this family. The baby, George Washington Clark. Well, talk about a little lard-tub! Roly-round as York is! Ha!” William leaned forward toward the indistinct shape on the high pillows, trying to hear her breathing.

  “Talk. I’m still here.”

  “Jonathan ’spects to be migratin’ out here in two more years. Him and Edmund. He’s got a joke. Says he and Edmund are just like they were in the war, always a rear guard.”

  His mother made a noise that sounded something like a laugh. “Oh, what a knee-slapper that is.”

  “Yay. Heh, heh. But ol’ Jonathan, he gets enough chorkles out of his own jokes for everybody.”

  After a while her voice asked, “Has Edmund got himself a lady yet?”

  “Not the right one, I guess. He escorts some dandy ones, but… well, don’t jump in the air and expect any grandchildren from him b’fore you land.”

  “What o’ you, Billy?’”

  This question had almost the tone of a plea, and he realized she wanted him to answer yes. So he said, “Me? Well, fancy you askin’, because it just happens …”

  She stirred, rustling bedding. “Don’t tell me it’s so!” For the first time there was a lilt of her old happiness in her voice, or so it sounded to him. “No. Do tell me. Who?”

  Now he had got himself into a corner. She wanted to know something he himself didn’t know yet, but only anticipated.

  “Well, Ma, I laid over a while in Fincastle, at the Hancocks’—”

  “Ah … Fincastle? George and Peggy Hancock, that would be?”

  “Right you are. Well …” William was flushing at the memory of his stay there, and not sure what to say. There had been a houseful of golden daughters there, all fair as sunshine on wheat and periwinkle, and in a couple of whirlwind days, he had actually fallen in love with all of them, and had got the wild notion that he was destined to marry at least one of those Hancock girls. But they had confused him thoroughly. He was plainly not much of a swain. The ones old enough for courtship had toyed with him and left him wondering whether they took him seriously. Only the little one, Judy, had seemed really to adore him. She had told her sisters not to tease him. She had told them that she thought he was handsome, even if they didn’t, and she had told him she would ma
rry him when she was old enough. The trouble with Judy was that she was only eight or nine.

  And now his mother was asking: “A Hancock girl, then? Which girl, Billy?”

  “Uh, Judy,” he said weakly, making a fool’s-face in the dark.

  And she said:

  “A mere babe she must be. There was no Judy when we knew ’em.”

  “Well, but… It’s been fourteen years since we left Virginia, Ma.”

  “Is she fourteen, then?”

  William squirmed. “Well, would I ask her age of a miss? Well, she’s young, o’ course. But won’t always be.” Behind his eyes he was seeing peach-colored flesh and an aura of heavenly golden light that had begun to suffuse over the memory of those sisters, so that they were all starting to blur together. All except little Judy. William had not meant to tell his mother that he was going to marry Judy Hancock in particular. But it would have sounded silly to say, “One of the Hancock girls, at least.”

  The air in the dark sickroom was redolent of the powerful ointments that had been used against his mother’s affliction, which was called St. Anthony’s Fire, but for a moment William remembered a warm lilac scent that had surrounded all those fetching nymphs, and he was stirred by a vague longing and a deep, miserable confusion.

  “Son,” came the weak voice from the bed, “how far did ye press on this Miss Hancock?”

  He wished the subject had never been mentioned. He was talking of daydream butterflies, but she was demanding that he pin one down.

  “Uh,” he mumbled, “I talked with her father.” That was not exactly a fib. He had chatted generally and awkwardly with Colonel Hancock about wanting to come back and acquaint himself better with the girls. The colonel was a staunch admirer of the Clark name and had seemed to take this as a proper overture to some very acceptable formal proposal yet to come.