From Sea to Shining Sea (46 page)

T
HE
C
LARK FAMILY TABLE HAD THREE EMPTY PLACES THIS SECOND
Thanksgiving Day, but there was much cause for thanks: everyone was surely safe for a while.

Johnny was alive. Word had come that he was a prisoner of war, and that, as late as last summer, he was still living. He was
on a prison ship anchored off New York, which, to the family at home, seemed a fairly safe place during the war. Perhaps it was not a good and healthful place to be; Mister Freeman down the road had been informed that his son Mike had died on a prison ship, of putrid fever. But the Clarks could pray that Johnny was on a better-kept ship. Maybe he was well. Maybe.

Jonathan was absent again this Thanksgiving, but he and Bill Croghan were apparently in a state of relative security for the winter. Both armies were settled in for the season. Jonathan was now second in command of a regiment commanded by Colonel Light Horse Harry Lee, encamped somewhere in New Jersey near Washington’s headquarters. Bill Croghan had become a regimental adjutant.

As for George, he too probably was safe from harm. Judging by all the news about him that had trickled east over the mountains, he was very much in control of everything in that remote region, and had made treaties with most of the tribes that before would have threatened his garrison. And so, for the first time in many years, the family thought it did not have to worry so much about George.

Another blessing to be thankful for, in Ann Rogers Clark’s mind, was that daughter Annie for a change was not with child. Shortly after baby Samuel’s birth, Owen had gone away to serve in the Continental Army, and so Annie was having a respite. She was here at home with her family; her two toddlers and the baby were here with her, but at least she was not pregnant, and probably would not be for a while—unless Owen should manage somehow to get a winter furlough.

The fowl on the table this year was the yield of Billy’s rifle instead of Edmund’s. Edmund had shot four turkeys in the week before Thanksgiving, but they had been served in other ways on other days, and Billy’s first kill had the place of honor in the middle of the table. He was very proud of it, and referred to it several times during the meal as “my turkey,” and with a benevolent smile kept watching everybody eat. They all were aware of his eyes on them and had the tact to eat it with apparent relish, and say “yum,” and smile back at him, although it was in actuality rather a tough and scrawny old bird that probably would not have lived through the winter even if it had not caught Billy’s bullet.

Edmund knew his own turkeys had been fatter and more tender, but he was so proud of what he had taught Billy about hunting and shooting that he really was as pleased as Billy that this one was on the table, and he grinned as he chewed and chewed and chewed.

Billy Clark in his eighth year had been doing men’s work on the plantation, and now he had also begun to put game on the table, so he not only felt worthy, he also was happy in the knowledge that, for another year at least, he was not going to be sent to Parson Robertson’s school. This pleased him. His brother George, he knew now from all the family stories, had been a misfit in that school, and so Billy knew quite well that he would have been likewise if he had had to go there.

Thus the family was happy and content this Thanksgiving Day, and the only foreshadowing was Dickie’s enlistment. He had, with his father’s reluctant permission, signed to go with Lieutenant John Montgomery when and if Montgomery could raise a company of reinforcements to take back out West to George. Governor Henry had gotten the Assembly to authorize such a company after the news had come of George’s success in the Illinois. But recruitments had been slow because manpower was scarce, and so Dickie was here for one more holiday, waiting. One thing John Clark could be thankful for was that delay; with the rivers freezing now and the mountain passes filling with snow, it appeared that Montgomery would not be able to set out until spring thaws. And so son Dickie too was safe for a while to come.

They talked long after dinner about George in the West. Each member of the family had images of what his life must be like now that he was a conqueror.

“He lives in a palace,” said Fanny. “He sits on a throne, and servants bring him meat and bread to eat. And when he’s full, he gives the rest to the Conquered, who eat it all up greedily. And the Conquered love him because he doesn’t make them starve.”

The family always sat bewildered when this doll-like five-year-old was giving one of her perfectly enunciated recitations like this, not just because her speech was so precise and certain, but also because her imagination was so vivid. In her mind, the Conquered were a people who crawled on all fours and fawned at the feet of her brother.

“He doesn’t live in a palace,” Elizabeth now tried to correct her. “Out in the West all they have to make houses with are grass and animal skin and strings.” To Elizabeth, the main image of the West was the great prairie they had crossed in John Montgomery’s account.

“It is so a palace,” replied Fanny. “It’s made of gold the Spanish gave him so he would be kind to them. The Spanish are afraid he will conquer
them
if they aren’t polite. In his palace he has a waterfall with a statue in it. He also has a cage with a
whippoorwill bird in it to sing him to sleep at night, for he is quite homesick, you may be sure.”

“He doesn’t need a whippoorwill to sing to him,” Billy scoffed. “He can sing whippoorwill songs better than the whippoorwills can. Isn’t that right, Mama?”

“As well,” Mrs. Clark said. “I don’t know about better, but he sounds just like them.”

“You promised to tell us ever so long ago about Georgie and Grandmama Rogers and the whippoorwill song,” Elizabeth reminded her.

“So I did.” Ann Rogers Clark could see that her little ones’ images of George were becoming fantastical, so she decided to tell that story, in which George himself had been a child of the family. “All right, then. Now, you remember I told you all how your Grandpapa Rogers would come to call on your good Grandmama before they were married?”

“In a canoe,” said Elizabeth.

“And he’d whistle like a whippoorwill,” said Billy.

“And she went a thousand times to the willow tree when a real bird sang, because she was in love,” said Fanny.

“Aye. And she was in love all of her life, right up to the very last day,” said Mrs. Clark, “and he with her just as much so. Well, you know that your Grandpapa taught Georgie a great part of what he knows.”

“To survey,” Billy piped up. “Making lines on the land.”

“And he also taught him to make that whippoorwill call. That was one of the first things Georgie learned from his Grandpapa Rogers, and he did learn it well. I swear that Georgie would sit on the roof of the house outside his window at night, and carry on a conversation with the whippoorwills out beyond the fence. Jonathan used to complain—remember this, John?—that he couldn’t study for all the bird calls outside his window?”

Annie laughed. “Fancy Jonathan not able to study, even if the house had been on fire!”

“Hmhmhm! But. The happy life had to come to an end, as all happy things do, and so Mama, your Grandmama, took ill and began to pass away. But she said she wouldn’t go till she’d seen all her nine children one more time. And so we were all summoned to their house in King and Queen County, and it was a good while before we got there, as some of us had to come some distance, as far as Carolina, even. But by and by we were all there at Worcester farm, your uncles George and Giles and John and Byrd, and your aunts Rachel and Mary and Mildred and Lucy. Most all of us brought our mates and children, so we were
great in number, and the place was a-hum like a hive. Mama lay propped up on big pillows, and we’d go in one or two at a time and sit by her, with Papa, your Grandpapa, always by the far side o’ the bed watchin’ her. Oh, he was a constant old sentinel! He’d sit there by th’ bed, deep in rememberin’, I suppose.

“Well, after all, they were such lovebirds, and tho’ white-haired by then, why, I ’spect they were the same two in their bosoms as had courted on th’ sly with their whippoorwill calls, and she who’d given up her birthright for him. Not a soul came from the Byrds to see her.”

Ann Rogers Clark looked at her own family around the table, and had to clear her throat before going on.

“Well, once she’d counted us all, and knew we were all there, why, she decided I guess that she could go then. I … I suppose that’s th’ way I’ll want it when my time comes, too, t’ see you all. There in a big bright room, with your Papa beside me.”

“Ann,” said John Clark. “Come now.”

“Well, once she knew we were all there, why, Papa shooed the last of us downstairs, and then no one was called up for, oh, an hour or two. Then Papa came halfway down the staircase and asked me to go fetch my Georgie. I asked him why and he said, just do. So I went out, found Georgie under a big tree, a-tryin’ to teach that half-Indian language o’ his to a clutch o’ cousins, and I brought ’im inside and sent ’im up. And I stayed downstairs with brothers and sisters, all of us wonderin’ why he’d summoned this particular grandson at such a time—until we heard the saddest and loveliest sound:

“There in the upstairs hall of that big house, we heard so clear and loud, once and then twice and many times, th’ call of a whippoorwill!”

She looked around the table. All her children were absolutely still, watching her, seeming to understand. She cleared her throat again and blinked, because the points of candleflame were blurred and shimmering with rays.

“Papa couldn’t do th’ whippoorwill call anymore, for he’d lost his teeth, but Georgie could do it to perfection, and that’s why he’d sent for ’im, so your Grandmama could hear those notes once more and maybe remember their willow tree.

“Half an hour later a door opened and shut upstairs, and the whippoorwill stopped calling. Georgie came slow down the stairs with Papa’s arm across his shoulder. And we knew she was gone.”

*     *     *

W
INTER TIGHTENED ITS ICY RING AROUND THE
M
ISSISSIPPI
Valley towns. Snows fell and melted, then fell and stayed. George had finished his Indian councils at Cahokia and returned to his base in Kaskaskia. Here he kept bargaining for flour and meat, leather, cloth, and rum for the little regiment of men, and waited with dwindling hope for a messenger to come from Virginia before the rivers froze and the trails drifted shut.

It had been six months since he had sent Montgomery to Virginia with the prisoner Rocheblave and the report of the victories; it had been four months since he had sent Myers, his best courier, with more recent news of the occupation, the Indian councils, and the desperate problems of pay and supply. If those messengers had got there, surely some acknowledgement would have come back from Patrick Henry by now.

Of course, they might not have got there. They had gone as far as the Falls of Ohio, he knew that. Word had come from the little outpost on the island of their passing through.

But something could have happened to them beyond the Falls. The Shawnees, among other tribes along the upper Ohio, had not come to his councils, and were still active. News was that a large body of them had besieged Boonesboro for two weeks before Boone’s sharpshooters and bad weather had forced them off. And Simon Butler, George’s best scout, had failed to return from a reconnaissance in the Ohio country early in September. There were still hazards aplenty between here and Virginia, and maybe neither Montgomery nor Myers had made it through to Williamsburg. Or, if they had, maybe the returning messenger from Governor Henry had perished. That was just as likely. George and his invaders were too remote from their government to rely on the hope of messages getting through one way, let alone being answered.

And so the ice locked the rivers, and no more boats came from anywhere. Now and then some hardy courier would arrive from the Falls by way of the Buffalo Trace, or down from Bowman’s outpost at Canokia, or across the windswept prairie from Helm at Vincennes, but finally even these stopped traveling, and every settlement closed itself off from the frigid wilderness and began living close to the hearth, neither sending out anyone—except hunters—to other places nor expecting anyone to come.

Very well, George thought as Christmas came and went and the year turned. Here we’ll sit till spring, and that’s good enough, I reckon, as the Indians and the British likewise will sit where they be, as no bear gains ground from another when they’re all hibernating.

And come next spring we’ll get more troops from Virginia, and then we’ll cross to Vincennes and pick up Len Helm and the militia there, and then up the Wabash we’ll go and down the Maumee, and with most of the tribes in our way laying neutral, by heaven, we can own Detroit by June next, and that’s the end of Britain in the West.

I
T WAS A PLEASANT ENOUGH WINTER, HERE IN
K
ASKASKIA
. The French were vivacious and hospitable. They had snug houses, and imported wines and brandies and chocolates, and real silver and crystal glinting on their tables. They had fiddles and zithers and flutes, and Monsieur Cerré, the leading merchant, even had in his home a harpsichord, upon which his wife could play tolerably well, and a billiard table, upon which he himself could play tolerably well. The belles of Kaskaskia were flirtatious and charming, and on many a cold night George and his officers were kept warm with dancing. Some of the American soldiers had found wenches in the town to keep them company in their off-duty hours, and many a young Virginian found himself unofficially adopted by some warm-hearted family or other. Grandmères knitted woolen socks for them; grandpères played backgammon and chess with them and cracked walnuts and hickory nuts with them by the fire and taught them a little of the French language. All in all, it was a more luxurious winter season than most of them would have had in their own frontier settlements, and so the morale stayed high. The troops had little to worry about except living up to Colonel Clark’s expectations of them as soldiers, and that, for the most part, they were eager to do.