Snowbound and Eclipse (37 page)

“In short, sir, we are suffering from various venereal infections gotten from the savage women, and I wish to have you consult with my men. I will write the president and ask him to appoint you as an army surgeon, thus securing your pay and achieving a desirable privacy for the corps.”

Saugrain eyed me sardonically, his pointed black beard bobbing as he weighed the matter.

“My capitaine, step behind that screen and disrobe. Everything. Even the stockings. The bottoms of your feet will tell me much,” he said. “And your hands,
oui,
the palms.”

“Ah, I'm talking about the men. Not the officers.”

His response was a small ivory finger pointed at the screen.

I surrendered. I had dreaded this moment, the shame of it, the revelation in it that I had lain with a savage woman long before. All the way up the Missouri I had ruthlessly resisted the opportunities thrown my way by eager chiefs and their eager women; but I imagined one lonely night when I was ahead of the corps, there in the Bitterroot Mountains, isolated from the world, that the Shoshones would be well insulated from this New World disease and that the chances of catching what Columbus's crew brought to Europe would escape me. I would avoid the mortification and pain that attends the discovery of such congress by friends and family and even strangers. Was I not the explorer who had been the first to reach the Pacific? I could not endure the thought that a secret vice might sicken me and ultimately expose my folly to the world.

How I rue that single night with the Shoshone woman, when I and three of my men had found Cameahwaite and his people, far in advance of Clark and the rest, who were toiling up the headwater streams east of the divide. The chief had given me a good buffalo-skin lodge and I had surrendered to my voluptuary passion, thinking myself safe
enough. I was not. If I could but live my life over, I would excise that night from it. I have reproached myself a thousand times, aching with remorse and shame, but I cannot undo the bitter truth of that bitter night in the Bitterroot Mountains.

I had treated numerous of our corps with the purgative calomel, mercurous chloride mixed into a salve, directing them to apply it to any chancres on their private parts or elsewhere, and directing them to ingest my pills in considerable quantities to alleviate the burning when they passed water, and to quell the outbreaks of chancres and rashes and infections on their flesh. And I had quietly taken the same courses myself, though I made no note of it in the journal, and for some while not even Will was aware of it, though he soon figured it out.

What interested Saugrain at first was the fresh wound through my buttocks, wrought by Cruzatte's ball, which had been slow to heal and troubled me greatly, suppurating for weeks and healing improperly, so even now I could barely sit.

“Now, sit yourself on the table there, and let me see the bottoms of your feet, Capitaine.”

I raised a foot, then the other.

“
Bien.
Were they sore?”

“Yes. Blisters, about the time I was so sick in the fall of eighteen and five. I had to ride a horse. I couldn't walk.”

“
Bien.
Show me your hands, palms up. Those too?”

“Yes, hard liverish lumps. They went away.”

“I see. That is to be expected.”

From within his gloomy office, stuffed with steel instruments of torture and morocco-bound books, I could see no part of the world; his examinations were well screened from prying eyes. And yet I felt a thousand eyes upon me as he studied the evidence of my folly, the healed-over chancre
on my member; the scarce-healed pus holes of a ruined flesh. He hummed, sucked breath, touched no part of me, but bade me turn this way or that, and thus he took my entire measure, his small, delicate face creasing into frowns, his small lips pursed. He spent an amazing amount of time examining my skin, the inside of my mouth, my nostrils, and the rest of me as well, often with a magnifying lens.

“Bien,”
he said, which I took as a sign that I might restore my clothing.

“The rest, they are like this?”

“A few: I could not help Gibson; I fear for him.”

“And yourself,
mon ami.
”

The way he said it shot a chill through me.

“It is far advanced, the stage
deuxième
,” he said. “You are perhaps entering the benign stage when it lurks out of sight, but the disease does not sleep, it crouches and waits. When did you, ah, acquire this badge of honor?”

I thought back to that joyous moment when we had finally found the Shoshones in the folds of the Bitterroots, and the relief I felt when I learned we might obtain horses from them; and the joy they expressed when we gave them meat that Drewyer (as I've always spelled Drouillard's name) had shot, for they were starved and intent upon going on a buffalo hunt. Oh, I remember those days and that sole night, when Will wasn't around and the main body of the corps was far below, dragging the canoes over endless shallows, and I felt free and my secret would be safe.

“Over a year past,” I said. “It was the middle of August of eighteen and five.”

My diminutive physician paced about, his hands decorously clasped behind his back, his black beard thrust forward like a bayonet. “You soon will enter the third and final stage, which does widespread damage to your organs. The
heart and arteries especially, the brain, the system of the nerves that carry the messages of the mind to muscles.”

I blanched.

“But we will try to arrest it. Monsieur le capitaine, the salt of mercury slows and arrests, but only for a while, and then the disorder gains ground again, becomes puissant, dangerous. Ah, how a man regrets his impulses then! Ah, Capitaine, what this infirmity does to the soul!”

A cold fear crawled through me.

“But there is much hope,” he continued. “Many times, the disease diminishes, disappears, and it is as if nothing had ever afflicted the sufferer. I have found that perhaps a third of those who suffer it escape its effects entirely and many more are only mildly afflicted. And oftentimes years, decades, go by and nothing at all happens, as if the pox lies dead within you. I believe half of those who suffer this disorder survive it.”

That heartened me. There was ample reason to hope. “Well, what shall I do?”

“We will begin a course of treatment, Capitaine. It will take some little while.”

“But I
must
go to Washington! The president is expecting me. The whole world is expecting me. It's not possible.”

Saugrain shrugged, a Gallic gesture that contained within it an entire argument. “Your condition prevents it. In a few weeks you will be sufficiently improved to go. You must avoid all spirits whatsoever; they accelerate the affliction. Here now, I shall mix the first batch of pills,
oui
?”

And so I knew I must tarry in St. Louis, even though I itched to head up the rivers to Philadelphia where a great reception would await me, for I had learned that I had been elected to the membership of the American Philosophical Society; to Washington and Monticello; to Locust Hill, and my family.

I paid Dr. Saugrain with a chit, for I hadn't a shilling, and arranged for him to examine my corps discreetly. I would put out the word for those suffering from the venereal, and I would charge my men with secrecy. We were heroes, and there would be no public sign of pestilence.

“I will do what I can, which is much,” Saugrain said, as we parted. “Send them to me.”

I stepped into the afternoon, looking both ways to see if anyone might see me emerge from the French doctor's chambers. I saw a few people down the street and a cart hitched to a mule, but no one was looking, so I slipped into the middle of the street. Not a soul in St. Louis knew where I had been, not even Will. There were things a man needed to keep entirely to himself.

Will and I would be the honored guests at a banquet at Christie's Tavern given by the leading men of St. Louis the next evening, and our great journey would be toasted and celebrated the entire night. And even before Doctor Saugrain's courses began their work, I would be violating his advice. But a man being toasted would have no choice. I would raise a glass, too.

I have taken my leisure this late October Sabbath, enjoying the fine autumnal weather. I don't have much else to do. I thought we would be off for Washington City long since, but Meriwether tarries, I know not why. The president awaits us, and so does the whole republic, eager to give us the approbation that we have no doubt earned.

When I broached the matter to Meriwether, reminding him that winter is closing in swiftly, he grew short with me.

“I'm not ready. Don't press so hard, Will. I'm outfitting the whole entourage, you know. We're taking Big White and his family, and several of our men, too. The merchants don't have half of what we need. Just getting the men some money took me days. I've not gotten them a quarter of what they're owed. And not just my party, either. I've agreed to outfit Pierre Chouteau, so he can get his Osages to Washington. I'm going to auction off some of the rifles and gear, and raise something that way for the men.”

It wasn't what he said that seemed testy to me but the way he said it, impatiently and shrill. I couldn't remember that metallic tone during our days on the trail.

He has been in a peculiar humor for weeks, at once drinking in draughts of acclaim along with the endless draughts of wine, but melancholic.

And so he tarries here in St. Louis. I wondered whether he wanted the word of our safe return to spread before us, thus making our passage east a sort of triumphal progress. But Meriwether is not so vain as all that. He is simply in a peculiar mood that I have not ever seen in him.

A few days ago an elderly butcher in a soiled bib approached us and shook Meriwether's hand. “I want to touch the hand of the man who walked to the Pacific,” he said. “Walked to the western sea, tasted the brine, and walked back again. Now, sir, having taken that very hand in mine, I am content.”

Meriwether smiled, and then reminded the old man that over twenty more had done the same thing. He is eager to share his accomplishments, and I count it a virtue in him.

But I never doubted that the command was really his, not mine, and in those cases in which I disagreed, especially about the Indians, I held my peace and found ways to be
agreeable, preferring to modify his thoughts by degrees. He consulted with me frequently, usually in the confines of our tent when we still had one, or at least apart from the men, and always heard me out. But tacitly, we both knew the decisions were his to make, and he made them, and still makes them. He really gives me more credit than is due me.

He has written generous letters to the president, urging a reward for me equal to his own, including a captain's pay, and likewise he has written a commendation for almost every man in the corps, and has singled out a few for special compensation; he always was good with his men; reserved and distant, but a man to follow without question. I did follow his lead and still do, marveling in so grand a vision and keen a mind and withal, an eager quest for every scrap of knowledge that might advance science.

Time drags. I proposed a fortnight ago that I leave at once, visiting my brothers and family at Mulberry Hill until he might arrive, but he forbade it. I know exactly what I wish to do: hasten to Fincastle, Virginia, just as swiftly as foot and horse and sail can transport me, and lay siege to the castle of my dreams.

She for whom I named a crystal virgin stream.

Judy is much on my mind. She is of marriageable age now; if she will have me I intend to wed her. The vision of her sustained me during our long progress, and stayed me in moments when I might have plucked the ripe fruits being offered by tribal women. And now I am prepared to win her. My battery will consist of telling her that I named a beautiful stream for her, one that pours out of mountains and is as clear as pond ice. What woman can resist so tender an assault as that?

I think of little else. I will not be an impoverished suitor, not with three years of double back pay owing and land warrants promised me. I have already resigned my commission,
having served my country well, and will begin a family, fashion a comfortable plantation in Kentucky not far from my brothers at Mulberry Hill across the Ohio, and prosper for as long as health permits. Assuming, of course, that Mr. Jefferson and the Congress keep their commitments.

Not that one can trust any government to honor its commitments. My brother is painfully aware of it. It mattered to no one, apparently, that George Rogers Clark secured the whole northwestern territory clear to the Mississippi for the republic, beating the British regulars and their savages out of it with little more than an undisciplined militia. When it came time for the commonwealth of Virginia to make good the warrants by which he equipped and provisioned his ragtag militia, the commonwealth's clerks reneged, found excuses, reproached him for the loss of receipts, and tossed him to the creditors, and so my brother was ruined save for a small amount of almost worthless land. I wonder whether that will be my fate as well. Let it be a Clark motto: put no trust in the government!

And that is why I found myself, this warm and sunny October 26, strolling the riverbank, my eyes peering across the rolling river to the east, where my heart is tugged. I am a prisoner here. I am weary of the banquets. We have been to several at Christie's Tavern where I now abide; the businessmen toast us, celebrate us—but I do not delude myself. They pump us for every scrap of knowledge about the high Missouri they can glean, knowing that their fortunes swell with such information.

The wily Spaniard Manuel Lisa makes it his business to learn everything we have to teach, and I am wary of him. Meriwether, who was almost abstemious during the expedition, has taken much to drink and at the end of such evenings needs a steadying friend to get him safely to his
bed, which consists of a buffalo robe he spreads on the floor, for he cannot find sleep lying upon straw or feathers or stuffed cotton.