“And?”
“He, ah, he said he’d be pleased to talk of it with me in an earnest way after the century turns.”
He could hear his mother chuckling. “Billy, Billy! Now didn’t that strike ye as a strange reply?”
“Maybe a bit. But it’s just another way o’ saying wait a year or so. Eighteen hundred is that close. We’ll be a-feelin’ the century turn, Ma, in a year and a week.”
“That’s so, isn’t it,” she said after a while. “But it’s true she’s young, this Judy?”
“Young.” They were all young. Enchantingly, virginally young. William’s intimate knowledge of womanflesh had been gained primarily among camp-followers and squaws and innwenches, and so to him a virgin was a rather mythical being.
“Have ye been moved to write poetry?”
“Poetry? Oh, no.”
“Good. Poor Johnny, rest his beloved soul, was the only one ever got in such a state. Don’t y’ ever make a fool of yourself … Or be made one of… You go down now … Join family … Sing with … Gladdens me y’re home … Listen, Billy. I know you’re rare good … Marked, as George was … I love ye dearly now. Would ye send your Pa up when you go down … I must scold ’im for singin’ that bawdry, huh … Don’t kiss me on the face or touch me … it hurts. But I’m hugging you, Billy, in my heart … just like always. A happy Christmas, dear son.”
“Ma, don’t make me bawl, now.” He was gulping. The sound of her voice in the dark was so sweet and terrible and far, as he could not see her or touch her. He had in a way misled her. And it was plain that she wasn’t going to be here long.
“O’ course y’ll not bawl. Go on down now.”
OH, I’M SO DISAPPOINTED IT’S GOT TO BE LIKE THIS, ANN Rogers Clark was thinking as William’s boots tromped away down the stairs.
A body thinks on how ’twill be and I always pictured it would be in a bright room with me and John looking at each other, him a-sitting close by the bed holding my hand
And me looking pale and pretty as ary old saint
Young’uns all roundabout the bed
Wonder if George can still do a whippoorwill song
Poor George
I’ve a feeling I’ll not see this Christmas
Not quite
Oh, what time is it I wonder
Midnight yet? I didn’t count the chimes last hour
I wonder can a body feel it when a new century comes around
Like something silent turning out among the stars
Mercy I don’t know
I never felt new years or birthdays
It’s all got to do with clocks and calendars
Years themselves just roll on like a millwheel without beginnings or ends
Reckon centuries do too
Eh well but I do wish I could linger a spell and watch things … cotton gins and steam engines and whatnot
But I reckon you can watch from over yonder too
Over across the River
Find things out over yonder too, surely so
Like whatever became o’ poor son Dickie
And I’ll see Johnny there too all healthy and handsome and rosy-cheeked like he was before the prison boat …
I’ll see Elizabeth
Ma
Pa
Rachel
I guess I’ll be going to see as many as I’m leaving
And the Almighty at last
Oh my what will old John do without me though
Fifty years he’s had o’ me and I can scarce remember a time before him
Sometimes I feel I was born married to that man
He’ll perish without me to look after him
What was the best time of all I wonder
Oh I’d have to say it was that morn in Albemarle John and I rode the ox cart up on the meadow o’ spring flowers and he bade me keep my eyes shut till he was ready for me to look and he showed me where our first house would be If there was one best time I’d say that was it
I wonder if the next place I see will be like that meadow that morning
It will be I’ll bet Oh I hope so
Come on John ol’ Darlin’
I know it takes you a long time to climb a stair
“JOHN? SIT IN THE WHITE CHAIR.
“John. I think the time to go has come. It’s really just sort o’ like fainting, is all.
“You aren’t cryin’ are you? Now listen what I ask: John dear, keep my coffin shut. Whoever speaks over me have ’im say I was a patriot too. It’s no inconsiderable a thing what a mother does.
“Did I ever tell ye, John, that the first time I laid eyes on you I knew. I knew it would be you and me right up to the end.”
But
This isn’t the end at all
It’s the beginning
Across the River I’ll see ye there
I see the far glory shine like sun on water
Come on when you’re ready
ANN ROGERS CLARK DIED CHRISTMAS EVE, 1798, OF erysipelas. She was buried at Mulberry Hill in a grave at the edge of the woods. They had to burn the frozen ground to dig a place for her. Much of Louisville’s population stood there in the cold when she was put down.
Her husband John Clark did not stay long after she was gone. He became bemused, would not bother to eat, and stood for hours at a time gazing out the window at her headstone out by the woods.
In July of 1799, with three witnesses, he dictated his will.
In the name of God Almighty, I, John Clark of Jefferson County and State of Kentucky Being at present in a weak and low state of health But at the same time perfectly in my senses, and considering the uncertainty of life,
I give:
He divided some 8000 acres of land among his sons Jonathan and Edmund, his three sons-in-law, and his grandsons John and Benjamin O’Fallon. To William, his youngest son, he gave Mulberry Hill and all its livestock and furnishings and servants, including William’s bodyservant, York.
To George he could give nothing but the old slaves Cupid and Venus, because anything else given to George would be subject to seizure by his creditors.
One night, a week after the will was completed, John Clark went quietly to his bed in the bedroom where he and Ann had slept since 1785. He lay looking at the far wall, and out the window at the stars over her grave, and he remembered one morning half a century ago when he had stood with her in a meadow in Albemarle County and shown her where their first house was going to be.
And then John Clark decided there was nothing else to get up for again.
A few days later, with most of Louisville’s people up on Mulberry Hill again so soon, this time in the heat of August, he was buried beside Ann, at the edge of the woods, a long way west of Virginia.
BOOK THREE
1803-1806
30
FALLS OF THE OHIO
July, 1803
GEORGE ROGERS CLARK LOOKED INTO THE AMBER RUM IN the bottom of his glass and smelled its fumes, and for a moment he was without any thought whatsoever. It was unusual: his mind was blank—without a plan, without a word, without a recollection. From inside his log house came the musical voices of Fanny and her children, but they were faint and remote, as if from another world.
It seemed there were two great emptinesses in his soul: one where there had always been a purpose, one where his mother and father had always been. Now those two places were vacuums.
It was surprising how much he missed his parents. He thought much about the embarrassments he had brought upon them in their last years.
I always intended they’d be happy in Kentucky, he would think. It’s my fault they weren’t. Oh, I guess they were, but not as happy as they might have been. But then, who is?
At least now I can drink without shaming them, he would think.
I mean unless they can see me from where they are.
But I guess if they can see me from there, they can understand me from there too.
He was sitting on the porch of his new log house
on the bluff above the Falls, shaded from a hot, late-afternoon sun, caressed by a breeze up from the river. This was his third glass this afternoon, and he was beginning to embrace the likelihood that he would not stop.
There was no reason to stop, really. Up here on Point o’ Rock, there was no one it could embarrass. He was away from the society of Louisville, away from Kentucky altogether. It was the Indiana Territory on this side of the river, and no one lived here but his own old veterans and his old French allies, and Indians. He was living in the first real house he had ever owned, except that little cabin on Grave Creek thirty years ago, and here he sat like an old eagle in its aerie, high above the Falls, looking far. It was no mansion, but it was his, and it was where he had long since dreamed he would have a house. It was a two-story structure of hewn poplar logs, sturdy as a fort, with a large stone fireplace at each end, a kitchen and pantry house attached at the back, and this front porch overlooking the most spectacular stretch of the Ohio. It had been built by brother-in-law Owen Gwathmey, lately arrived in Kentucky with Annie and their great brood of children. Owen had come over with his crew of skilled Negroes and built the place according to George’s plan and under his supervision. It was as well built a log house as any he had ever seen, and Uncle George Rogers would have been proud of it, if he had lived to come and see it. But he had died last year, he who had taught George everything he knew about engineering and building, and that too had left a great empty place in George.
Although it was not the pillared white house of his old dream, and although there was no beautiful wife to sit with him and watch the sun go down as in that old dream, it was where he had wanted it, and here he could sit and think, and drink when he damn pleased, and his old comrades and even his old enemies could come here and drink with him, and Louisville’s society and America’s government could think what they wanted to think of him, or forget him if they chose to forget him, which seemed to be the case. George had quit working on his memoir long ago; indeed, he didn’t even know where the manuscript was now.
Anyway, the ones who really counted back in the East had not forgotten him. President Jefferson, Madison, Monroe … They still wrote to him now and then. And he was not entirely alone, even out here in this wild place. He had the two old servants, Cupid and Venus, whom his father had willed to him, and who were so old and decrepit that the creditors wouldn’t bother to take them from him. And Fanny and her sons were here, to fill these vast hushing silences with their sweet voices.
Fanny was the proper sister to be here with him, because her fortunes had been hard and devastating like his, and she could commiserate and understand. Fanny was a widow again, widowed by a swift, violent tragedy, and this high, lonely place was a retreat for her, too. She was glad to be in hermitage, for a twice-widowed woman of thirty, with small sons by both marriages, was an anomaly at Louisville’s balls and fetes where the mating of well-born swains and maids was the paramount purpose, just as it always had been in old Virginia.
And so now, Fanny was the beautiful lady who sometimes sat with George and watched the sunsets in the valley. Not his wife, but his sister. It was always blood family, it seemed, that stayed alongside and helped one fend off the despair. Fanny and William now were his closest soulmates and helpmeets. And neither of them deplored his drinking. They did not encourage it; in fact, they tried to keep his spirits high enough that he would not fall into it. But they weren’t embarrassed by it and they understood when he took a slide, as he felt he was about to do now. Jonathan and Edmund, who had finally come West last year and were deeply involved in becoming pillars of Louisville society, were somewhat offended by his drinking—or, rather, his reputation for it—while Lucy and Annie, as matrons of the town, pretended that his problem did not exist. But the youngest ones, William and Fanny, lived with it and understood it and gently tried to loft him over it. William and Fanny.
And now William was coming stronger and stronger into George’s mind: good, sturdy, patient, cheerful, selfless William, as fine a Clark man as had ever trod the ground. With the thought of him, the emptinesses in George’s soul began to fill up again. He put down his glass on the bench beside his chair, and folded his hands on his lap instead of refilling the glass. He looked down toward the river road, and he had a notion, a notion that came upon him from some unexplainable somewhere, that William would be along any time now.
George straightened in his chair and began to concentrate his attention on Clarksville and the river road below: his old mill, the ferry, the jetty and ditch where his canal around the Falls was to have been, the old boatyard where his mechanical upstream boats would have been built, the half-abandoned town where his great city of Clarksville would have grown.
It was strange. He had not seen or heard anything to tell him William was coming. William was, as far as anyone knew, still away off east somewhere on his travels, advocating George’s causes, arguing with lawyers and creditors, perhaps stopping in Fincastle County to court his Miss Hancock. There was no reason to believe he would be coming along soon. Usually when he did come home from his travels, he would stop at his Mulberry Hill place first and send a messenger over to announce his return, and no such messenger had come. And yet, something told George:
Billy’s coming.
So he listened, and watched the river road, and didn’t touch his glass.
UPSTAIRS IN THE GUEST BEDROOM, FANNY SAT ROCKING, with her right elbow on the arm of the rocking chair and her chin in the palm of her right hand, her index finger laid along her cheek. There were fine little squint lines around her beautiful eyes now and vertical frown lines on her pale brow. She rocked and rocked. In the room across the hall her two sons Johnny and Ben O’Fallon were having a lively discussion about crossing the Alps, a subject planted in their imaginations by their Uncle George. Johnny believed that Hannibal’s crossing had been more remarkable, but Ben felt that it would have been easy, using elephants to carry everything, and he favored Napoleon as the greater Alps-crosser. Their discussion was as spirited as if they had been veterans of those respective armies, and their voices rose and fell, erupting sometimes with scornful snorts and jeering laughter.
Standing here by the sunny window in front of Fanny’s rocking chair was her son Charles William Thruston, aged five, who somehow seemed a being apart from his older half-brothers, though they were careful never to exclude him. He was a quieter boy than they, and was more interested in dogs and horses than in martial history, and the few times he had been drawn into their arguments about great soldiers he had always brought up his trump card, the only military fact he cared to know: that his father had been a Revolutionary soldier before he was twelve. This would always silence Johnny O’Fallon, who was just now going on twelve and still played with toy Redcoats.
Charles William Thruston in fact seemed to remember his father as a boy soldier instead of a man. It was as if the shock of his father’s murder had erased the man, the Westport merchant, from little Charles’ mind, leaving only the boy soldier. Fanny sat rocking and looked at Charles and all at once the horrible images came up whole from her memory. Little Charles’ third birthday party. The father holding the boy’s hand while berating a surly slave man. The Negro beginning to tremble with anger. And then, suddenly, unbelievably, lunging forward with a kitchen knife in his hand. And Captain Thruston, bewildered, gushing blood, sinking to the floor, still grasping the hand of his screaming son.
Fanny groaned now as she always did at the memory of that moment. She tried never to think of it, but it surfaced so often from her memory, suddenly and unexpectedly, as now, making these awful upwellings of grief.
She had gone later to see the Negro hanged, but that had not helped. It had only made it worse somehow, had only given her another horrid set of images: the sudden yank on rope, the thump of the sudden weight on the gallows, the Negro’s contorted face and grotesquely tilted head, the feces dropping from his pantleg. It had not compensated for the other death, nor had it even seemed to ha
ve anything to do with it. Her brother William had taken her arms and guided her away from the spectacle, the body slowly turning, turning, the bulging eyes and craning necks of the crowd of white people.
“I hear a horse,” said little Charles, turning from the sunny window to look at his mother.
“You sure, darlin’?” she said after a moment. He was so crazy about horses he was always hearing them. “I don’t hear it.”
“I do,” he said.
Maybe he does, she thought. She got up and went to the window and stood behind him with her hands on his shoulders, looking down over the summery meadow that sloped away from the house to the distant trees by the river road. She saw and heard nothing but the rapids of the river. But there might be a horseman coming along down there. And she thought:
Might be Billy’s coming home. Lordy, that would be nice.
And then, having thought it, she somehow felt sure of it. This did after all seem like the kind of a day when William would show up.
“CUPID,” GEORGE CALLED INTO THE HOUSE, “FETCH glasses, and that bottle with the red wax on the cork! Here comes Billy!” And at that moment the interior of the house came alive with quick footsteps and excited voices.
He knew the horseman was William even before he saw him, because he had heard the horse jump the rail fence down by the sycamores—William’s own shortcut. And now here he came out of the trees onto the meadow at a full gallop, on a big gray George had never seen before, standing in the stirrups and waving his hat. George was standing on the porch laughing already, feeling better a thousandfold. Fanny and her sons poured out of the house, all smiles and cries of welcome. Cupid followed them out with a tray and set it down, beaming all yellow-toothed, then shambled down the porch steps with his hand up, ready to take the bridle.
“By the saints! I knew it was you!” George bellowed as William swung off with a wink and a nod at Cupid.
“Ha, ha! Just can’t sneak up on ye, can I?” William dumped his dusty saddlebags on the porch and began catching leaping youngsters in his arms, hugging and patting them. Then he squeezed Fanny almost breathless, she hanging on him and kicking up her heels like a ten-year-old. Then William and George pounded each other on the back, and the red seal on the special brandy was broken. Homecomings in the Clark family were just as good as they had always been.
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