River-Horse: A Voyage Across America (49 page)

Through long pool of cottonwood-seed fluff lying atop like summer snow. We’re reading chutes well now, backing down only one, although often successful ascent is but chance. Lunch on sandbar; too warm to enjoy. On again—
Onagen,
title of our voyage. Scoop up clot of foam from river: feels soapy but smells like mud, almost sensuous except for thought it’s probably agrichemical runoff. Long stretch of sweet air that seems to be melding of sage and cottonwood; soothes day.

Out of west comes thunderstorming, but it slants away to leave us dry and hot. To pass time I try to concoct games; one this afternoon—think of four simple words I’ve never used in my books: hutch, razzmatazz, stapler, porkpie. Task takes up twenty minutes. Near bend where steamboat
Big Horn
went down, we hit run of boils that thumps out tedium; ghost of
Big Horn
warning, “Vigilance, my jollies!” Passing time again:
Words that will never appear in my books: scaphoid, epigynous, decalescence, monophthong.

Arrive at Poplar; not visible, of course; some young Assiniboins swimming; they stand up in shallows to watch, their wet hair shining like obsidian. We’ve made twenty-seven miles. Cool showers at old motor court, then hoof down to Buckhorn Bar for R Relief and supper and conversation with Richard Von Burton Courchene, massively shouldered and handsome mixed-blood Assiniboin (also Blackfoot, Chippewa, French). I say, Your name is almost Richard the Lion-Hearted. He: “I’m Oak Heart. I had one wife who thought my heart was wood.” His grandmother played on the championship Fort Shaw Indian School basketball team at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis. Father was civil engineer, and Oak Heart grew up sharpening surveyor’s stakes; he’s now foreman for Montana highway department. P: “Are you a surveyor?” He: “More like a purveyor. I’ve had seven wives. One was barren. My first marriage was annulled when my wife’s mother learned I was a halfbreed.”

His speech has rhythm of Indians of Northwest; can recite Robert Service’s “Cremation of Sam McGee” and his vocabulary is broad and slightly eccentric; character waiting for his novelist. He’s read Koran and, “in three translations, the Bible.” I ask would he like another beer. “I would—I want to cuss some more.” And he does, an amusing billingsgate. P asks if Buckhorn takes credit cards. Oak Heart: “Only if you lay one out and turn your back.” Later I grow alarmed at leaving my notebook on bar, and he says, “You think we can read?” Dinner is egg sandwiches. He’s more curious about voyage than anyone we’ve met and wishes he could accompany us. Walks out to his truck and returns with large manila envelope and tells me, “Open this later. It’s for guidance.”

When we head back to our rooms, Prof announces he will leave ten days early, says, “I want to go home and see what’s growing.” Unable to dissuade him. Could his defection spread? Is weakness more contagious than will? Big trouble if it is. Later, on phone
, [my brother]
tells me
[our eighty-five-year-old]
mother each week seems to lose a little more of about everything. Should I come home? “No, no, keep going. There’s nothing you can do here.” Does she understand where I am, what I’m doing? “Not at all.” Adding, “She’s not near death—she’s just dying more visibly than the rest of us.” When I hang up I can hardly speak. Should I
have to return for funeral, I’ll never come back—I know that. Foundation of miles accomplished is crumbling. Before I sleep I open Oak Heart’s envelope; inside long tail feather of pheasant. “For guidance.” Have to love a man like that.

WEDNESDAY, DAY THREE

Rain in night, ending by dawn. Although thunderous sky still hangs in northwest, clear directly above, wind fifteen to twenty mph. River looks dangerously rough for canoe, so we pull on life vests and try water; little pisspot shoves us along, then wind abruptly ceases. Thank you. After more than an hour on a six-mile oxbow, we’re only half mile west of where we started, but above Spread Eagle Bar river straightens to fourteen-mile reach with only one broad bend. I like those reaches.

Numerous boils shimmy canoe, and I caution P not to throttle down but drive us hard across them. After one good rocking, P yells, “It’s like going through a rising cumulus in a small plane!” I’ve given names to various river surfaces to help us recognize how to handle differences: teepee water
(vibrations, no peril); mountain water
(shakes, thumps, rolls, mild threat); shark surf
(avoid going broadside); chaos whites
(time for lunch). And so we proceed.

This morning woman in grocery told me when her grandson is thirsty he opens can of sodapop; she asked him, “Whatever happened to going to the faucet for a drink?” He said, “Pop’s ninety-eight percent water.” She: “So I said, ‘And how many resources did it take to quench your thirst? Making the sugar and flavoring, carbonization, the aluminum container, cooling it, plastic ring straps, delivery trucks? Then where did you throw the can?’”

Pelicans frequently fly toward us, but geese and ducks go away—response to hunters? Temperature rises to ninety; at one
P.M.
pass Assiniboin sweat lodge; this canoe a sweat lodge; off with life vests. P speaks about historical layout of transport lines all along here: typically, between river and highway is a railroad track; “Turn the three ninety degrees and you have a stratified archaeological site—steamboats on the bottom, tractor-trailers on the top.”

Long day ends at Wolf Point, again near sewage lagoons. Assiniboin man fishing nearby has caught five species in an hour: goldeneye, white
bass, sturgeon, buffalo, and a walleye, keeping only the last. Later, when I rinse my face with cool water, in my mustache I can smell river like a sweetly scented woman from night before.

THURSDAY, DAY FOUR

Morning conversation with Ken Ryan, big Assiniboin who P thinks looks like me (mountain to molehill). Wm. Clark said tribe had “turbulent and faithless disposition.” President Andrew Jackson invited one of Ryan’s great-grandfathers to Washington; upon return he told tribe, “We must not fight the white people—there aren’t enough of us to kill all of them.” Ryan’s grandfather was Black Horse, name he refused to give to soldiers, believing knowledge of it would allow Army to keep him. Ken served in military (they got
his
name), has been tribal chairman, and talks much about great usurpations of Indian lands and former forced schooling of young Assiniboins: “The missionary idea was to save the children by killing the Indian in them.”

To my surprise I can understand Assiniboin name for the Missouri; it’s almost same as Osage use two thousand miles away. He says, “When our people come upon the Missouri, we always say, ‘Mini-sho-she, I’m glad to see you.’ When we leave it, we say, ‘Mini-sho-she, ake wachishna ginkt’—‘Muddy River, I’ll see you again.’ Because we respect Mini-sho-she, it hasn’t drowned one Assiniboin. We teach our children about it. An uncle taught me how to kick out of a whirlpool.” I ask him to explain the method, but he declines except to say we must not be afraid to ride funnel all the way down. You first, I say. Years ago, he tells us, Wa Wonga, a Missouri River creature, pushed relative out of whirlpool to save him.

When we head for river, Black Horse the younger says, “I wish I could go on your journey with you,” and I ask would he then tell us how to escape whirlpools? He only smiles. “If you’re strong and respectful, Wa Wonga will follow you.”

As we push canoe onto river, Indian children gather at shore to watch, scene out of early-nineteenth-century traveler’s account. I say loudly, Mini-sho-she, we are glad to see you! and children laugh and repeat it. None of them can speak Assiniboin. P: “Is it my imagination or do Indians show more interest in joining us than whites?” Prof: “To Black Horse the river is a living thing—to a lot of white Montanans it’s a sewage system.”

Prof has made extension for tiller to ease our otherwise wrenched arms;
crew doesn’t like my hands-free method of steering by leaning from side to side. Pools sleeping under coverlets of cottonwood fluff; river as legs of tree. Proceed, proceed. I have to admit, at last, our ascent here drudgery; each morning, without thought otherwise, I automatically head to water—Wm. the lemming. Yesterday I was almost envious of Prof going home. I’m not angry, rather I long for freedom he’ll soon have. Still, I disprize his weakness. When I feel like quitting, I reach for
anything
to buoy me. Yesterday I trotted out line from some Christopher Columbus movie where CC, after his last voyage, says to adversary, “The difference between us is that I went and you did not.” Message: remember how we must earn our differences. Look up that despair quotation from M. Lewis:

[The river for several days has been as wide as it is generally near its mouth, tho’ it is much shallower or I should begin to dispair of ever reaching its source; it has been crouded today with many sandbars; the water also appears to become clearer; it has changed its complexin very considerably. I begin to feel extreemly anxious to get in view of the rocky mountains.]

Slowly, slowly, miles. Engage your mind! Find a topic! Soda fountain recipes aren’t working anymore. Remember something. I once was smitten by auburn beauty called Cutches. Cease! No women stuff. Literary things are harmless. Words to use one day in book to annoy some reviewer from nitwit fringe: quadrate, xiphoid, epact, peplum. “The author, infatuated with arcane vocabulary, drags words from the underbrush of our language as a retriever does a dead duck.” Miles not going away—I’m just getting older. Mini-sho-she! Give me topics! Then it does when we reach Prairie Elk Rapids, first we’ve encountered. We grab paddles, motor still pushing, and pull hard against water and rocks, straining enough for P to shatter one; picks up spare; hickory against river. Struggle, grit teeth, then reach good pool, and P says, “Back to boredom,” words hardly spoken before western sky begins darkening fast, flashing, rumbling, blotting out hot sun; then the Missouri makes turn directly toward storm; obese, icy raindrops and small hail whacking us, rat-a-tat hard against canoe, and soon lightning on spiky legs comes walking down the river; head for shore, narrow mud ledge against steep twelve-foot-high bank that traps us; barely enough room to stand; pull canoe from beating water onto muck; we’re drenched and shivering even before we can pull on rain gear, and we huddle soggy and sorry and trying to decide whether to get into the mud and under canoe to escape hail, but electric river
reminds us to keep clear of aluminum. Waves break over legs as if we’re pilings. Storm turns to near whiteout, air almost solid with water and ice, and in fact it is hard to breathe. Stand helpless and stupid like cattle and just get beat. P’s lips blue, teeth achatter. Hypothermia here we come. After five hundred miles of cottonwoods blocking the view, there’s not a goddamn one in sight. Plains hailstorms can produce ice the size of oranges, deadly missiles. P: “If this gets worse—” Electrocuted or stoned to death?