Charley Flandrau's Trip

Charley on the Way to St. Paul

            Setting forth too early, fog filling the narrow river valley where the stream runs fast and cold beneath tilted black branches, no tint to the fog, no color.  Fog bewilders your eyes and, because there is no horizon to measure the stream’s gradient, the water seems to pour downhill as if flowing to a lightless sea at the earth’s core.  All waters are one and the river is a part of all the oceans of the world and they are as limitless as the grave awaiting you. Early morning cowardice: it’s buried in the marrow of your bones which are stiff and sore.  This adventure makes a man of you or leaves you lost and forsaken.  Better to be in bed.  It’s a fool’s errand.  Dark running water carries the canoe.  Before dawn, every venture seems a fool’s errand – that much is indisputable but it’s a man’s duty to rise and labor in the vineyard and accept the wager of the day. 

            Ladling water down your throat: chill water against the rum-parched residue of last night.  The rangers, all of them good lads and true, gathered in the shanty to mutter their farewells, then, shout them, and then, sing all together adieu, adieu as if I were going to the ends of the earth and not just downriver to St. Paul and Special Term in the County Court.  A toast to a good fellow: the faces of the rangers sweaty in the firelight, rum working ooze out of their pores, sentimental in their cups and longing for girls left behind in the cities and towns beyond the border where the frontier is confined to woodlots and tangled underbrush in river bottoms and the occasional swamp where a coyote might howl and where an old bear hides.  There the rivers have riverboats and the turnpikes are corduroy or compacted sea-shell, at least in the low place prone to flood, and the courthouses are marble with columns of Corinthian order like the temples by the Mediterranean sea, not log cabins such as those in which we practice.  The rum rouses the rangers; they curse the night and recite poetry.  The Indian laundresses from lathe shacks half-dipped in the creek come trudging up the black dirt path, dark girls with French names and grimy bonnets, come to haul their sweethearts away from the smoky tavern and, then, I’m alone – at least, for now alone and, staggering, must pack my dress Brogans for court and my fresh cotton shirt, pleated about the front, sack coat, a yoke of paper and cotton collar for my cravat, some underthings, and the valise with pleadings under seal,  motion papers returnable in three days, my powers of attorney and notary stamp and a wallet with some coin and, for trade, a bundle of wolf-skins and beaver pelt pillow-sized and bound with leather straps, something against which I might recline and doze while the river kindly does me the favor of carrying me downstream to my destination.  And remember to haul along my fowling piece in order to provision myself with meat along the way.

            This morning’s slight fever, thirst, looseness of bowels, my cowardice – all of these are debts I owe to last night.  Best to be away, though, and suffer on the liquid road of the river, with morning pending now, and, perhaps, a faint trace of color in the upper reaches of the fog, although it may be that my eyes merely impute some stain to the colorless color in which I ride, scarcely paddling as the current carries me away from the ford where my house and office rest on the riverbank above the shanties and the lean-to’s and cabins swarming with mice and in the water-pasture, the Sioux encampment stinking of carrion and snarling with wild dogs, the campfires leaking a little smoke into the mist and the lonely sound of a baby crying – do I hear that now?  How is that possible since I must already have come a mile or more?  Or is it a loon cackling in the chilly fog?  The dawn is full of its own peculiar music and melodies: birds imagining the sun above the mist, deer trampling the brush to dip their white muzzles in the ponds, the bees buzzing up from blossoms sodden with dew. 

            You lean back against the trade bundle.  It would be easy enough to sleep for a moment or so, but there are bends to the river and it is not sufficiently broad to reliably keep to the middle way and snags and even fallen trees litter the shallows and so best to keep awake.  Dip your hand in the water: so ice-cold – somewhere up a coulee, winter’s last snowbank is protected by an overhanging bank of dirt and turf, seeping sweet water in freshets down the gulch to disgorge in the brown river and unfurl a pennant of January frost over the surface of the flowing river.  It keeps you awake. 

            And gradually what remains from the night’s revelry is passed from you, pissed-out on the sandbars or shit into bushes flaring with berries so you can sweeten your tongue as you move your bowels and, by mid-day, with the fog lifted so that it is not even a memory, you have made a good piece of your trip and the day is now bright and clear and the river shallows squirting blue and green frogs and the ribs of sand and pale alluvial dirt glitter as if with gold from the gold fields of Nevada, except, of course, you know it is only quartzite, rock-crystal, but still it blazes in the eyes and makes a ringing sound in your imagination and, then, you address the court of the assembled trees and the black flies and the bank undercut by the stream’s bend: this is your argument, if it please the court, your honor – or a version of your argument as you expect it to sound in St. Paul, practicing words and phrases against the midday stillness of the river.

            In brief:  the background of this dispute, may it please the court, Hackett here appellant, plaintiff below, my client – mind the snag carving ripples in the current – this is...an action at equity to declare rights and interests in redemption, that is the cause – redemption – the elements of the action – my brief is on file and all cases and authorities are cited therein, most particularly Gen. Stat. c. 81 at sections 13 (is that right?) to 16, rendering, I suppose, oral argument  redundant, I rest on my submissions, but, then, and if that is the case, why make this trek three days along the water-road?  It’s the easy way, of course, to avoid the risks of the encounter.  Of course, the entirety could be accomplished without rhetoric and without dissembling, merely on review of the papers submitted to this honorable – there! that fly has a dagger for mouth! – this honorable – and another and another, all equipped with daggers, surely those wounds, trenched as they are, must bleed, must weep ichor... so it is my client, Hackett who has conveyed blackacre to Watkins, on sixth day of February 1860, taking back a mortgage secured by not one (here’s the rub!) but two promissory notes, each executed same date as herein referenced, one-thousand dollars and fifteen-hundred dollars each in installments duly scheduled, bearing interest at a rate non-usurious and enforceable at law... bend of the stream and an old bruin crouched to sip from water already green-jellied in the still shallows, grey-bearded and shaggy and smelling of carrion, up now and stumbling like sleepwalker through the green thicket – ticks, ticks bell-shaped and bulbous danging from his fur, a swarm of gnats rotating in a column of pale yellow light... the interest payment, due and owing is in default, upon which default, Hackett, mortgagee and my client as heretofore identified, forecloses upon proper notice and, at public auction, the tract at issue, identified as a quarter of a quarter with various directions (here I must read from my notes – some judges want the legal description recited orally, old bears in black robes!  “It is set forth as required by law in my papers...” Then: “But counsel, as I read the statute, the parcel description is to be called-out with particularity?”  The law is an ass, an idiot child whispering to itself: redemption and equity...)  The sale, conducted with all due and appropriate good faith, yields $3167 and, at last, the question here presented: how are the proceeds, resting in escrow in my account within the vaults of the bank of Winona, how are those proceeds to be distributed?  Hackett, my client, contends that he is due the interest first, which is $600, together with fees, costs, and disbursements, the auctioneers garnish and miscellaneous of that same description, then, from the balance payment of all principal on both notes secured by the parcel in question, the residue, if any, to be distributed to Watkins as mortgagor, this seems clear enough and rational, and, of course, conforming to the law at c.81, Gen. Stat.  So why should there be any conflict at all?  A tree is fallen across half the stream so requiring cautious paddling since snares and traps, perhaps the residue and greater part of the tree itself, are hidden below the brown syrupy fluid of the river.  A spider is lazily spinning a web between branches forked a handsbreadth apart... Watkins, for his part, maintains – who cares what he maintains?  The wind doesn’t care, the trees glittering with the breeze, the clods of earth dropping from the frost-riven banks down into the shallows where mucousy tadpoles writhe (the tadpoles don’t care)...but Watkins for his part maintains that only the interest is due, plus, one must concede, fees, costs, disbursements, charges on the auction, but only that sum, not the remaining principal which has not yet come due on the installment payments as scheduled by the notes.  The agreements as set forth in the mortgage, of course, control: proceeds from auction on foreclosure to be applied to all sums due – but what is due?  Does this due mean owing – if so, owing on the whole transaction encompassed by mortgage and notes – or merely payable at the time of the default?  This is the controversy, Your Honor, a point of first impression and novel, neither decided by any territorial court within this jurisdiction preceding the authority of Your Honor, nor by the present courts of this federal union, and, further, not resolved in any reported decision within the cases of the old Northwest...now, a straight, broad stretch laddered with fast-running shallows where the river dashes over a bed of smooth stones and the clay banks are high as a barn and pitted with holes wherein nest the birds of the air, swallows and doves that bombard my canoe as soundlessly I slip past those sentinel bluffs... The sun is up and makes every man a conqueror.  Take courage, my lad, take courage!

            Another couple hours borne by current, shadows of the trees banked along the river steadily shrinking until the waterway is one continuous glare of hot light...then, time for noon refreshment: honey in the comb, a bee’s wing iridescent and adhered to the little ivory filigree of wax, licked out from the inside of a diminutive crockery pot of the kind the Indians call a “seed jar,” then, a wedge of cheese gone soft with the heat.  Victuals taken in trade from an old Dutchman from New Ulm, exchanged for notarizing an instrument, some deed or other, a transaction with a cousin or a son-in-law involving a milch cow: fee for services rendered. 

Deutschers:  Just another tribe gathered in their wooden lodges, amidst ramshackle granaries, on a grassy shelf only high enough above the river to keep their wooden clogs from rotting in the April floods – a strange language and stranger customs, I prefer the Sioux who, at least, transact their business in an intelligible way, riding after the bison in great caravans when the prairie grass reaches the bellies of their stocky little ponies, going on the warpath predictably enough when their larders are stuffed and the bellies of their women and children full – you could devise an almanac after their customs, and, one supposes, after the seasonal customs of the woodland beasts as well.  But the Dutch, angry, unpredictable, great topers, beating their wives and sons with dog whips when the rage moves them, miserly, wrathful, always praying when not drunk...

            The sand makes a nice cushion and the sun is pleasantly warm, a honey-sweet drowsy kind of warmth and with the breeze moving, the black flies are all resting as well in the shade, and so, time to take a nap and let sleep wash away the last remnants and residue of yesterday evening.  Oh, he’s a jolly good fellow, yes he’s a jolly good fellow, baying at the moon like wolves...

            Twisting on a knot of stone, rolling sideways a bit until a toe touches the chilly froth of the river running by.  The bite of an insect between thumb and forefinger. Whir of wings, a May-beetle, perhaps, big as a sparrow.  Time to be up and about.  But before embarking: take a glimpse, just for a moment, at the pleadings within the satchel: a sudden hollow feeling, panic, did I leave the file materials back in my cabin? after all, the packing was accomplished in darkness when I was – so to speak – largely indifferent to my surroundings.  Too far upriver now to paddle backward, too late, and against the tug of the current as well... No, I’m relieved, right here, the precious documents after all.  And how does it read: 

to sell the hereby-granted premises at public auction, and convey the same to the purchaser in fee simple, agreeably to the statute in such case made and provided, and out of the moneys arising from such sale to retain the principal and interest which shall then be due on the said notes, together with all costs and charges, and pay the overplus, if any, to the said parties of the first part...

This would be well to commit to memory.  No doubt but that a ready and facile memory impresses the judiciary, let alone jurors if the same are impaneled to hear some cause or other.  If your tongue is not apt and witty, then, at least, let your memory be proficient and let the authorities come dancing nimbly from your lips.  I can recite those words as I stroke at the water and let them be engraved in my memory with the exertion of my muscles...My father told me once: learn the names of each juror as soon as possible, impress them into your memory and, then, refer to each gentleman by his proper name – this makes a deep and irreversible impression.  Of course, there will be no jury at the appeals court in St. Paul – but recitation of the language in controversy should serve very much the same purpose.  Then, of course, the words must be spoken naturally and not, as if by conned by rote – as my father said, much wincing and cutting of grimaces in screwing forth from your memory the names of the jurors, why, that won’t do either.  All must come forth naturally and gracefully, as if without effort and in a manner most supple and easeful.  My father, the grey-beard, now there was the figure of an advocate! – and to consider, when watching him argue a case, that he had partnered with Aaron Burr, looked upon the great man’s noble countenance, shining, I suppose, with wisdom and sagacity, heard his silver tongue, and, I suppose, scented the sweet odor when he passed gas – an ornament to the bench and bar!  (The Dutchman’s cheese is, perhaps, not sitting well with me...)

            So – “to sell the hereby” (stroke)...”hereby-granted premises at public (stroke) auction, and convey the same (stroke) to”... how does it go?  “..purchaser in fee simple,” (stroke) “complying with” what is the statute?  Chapter 81 and thus and such... (stroke, stroke, stroke – floating log – stroke, stroke) “which shall then be due” – and “due” means “payable”, no, I have that reversed, Your Honor, due must mean “owing,” that is “owing on the entirety of the debt”, that is the gist of the argument based on nothing more than common, but indisputable parlance – stroke, stroke, stroke – but “due” is not “payable due” but “owing due” – where are the authorities?  My authority is common sense and natural law, the same law by virtue of which that stone embedded in turf, overhanging the bank, must one day plummet into the flood.  But see the bluebells in the moist woods, so beautiful!  Such swaths of pale blue!  Now, all the day is an arena for heroism, I can be nothing but victorious...

            ...until much later, where the channel has narrowed to a mere slot in the green furl of the woods and there, directly ahead of the canoe’s prow, not one but two or three trees are fallen, still leafy and green into the middle of the current.  A pretty puzzle: how to pass between or under or around them without swamping the vessel and dislodging my satchel and trade bundle and the garments for court, all to be drowned in the water.  Of course, a portage may be in order, but the river-bank is slimy, muddy where the roots of the upturned tree have opened the earth, a steep climb to a slope tangled with nettles and thorns.  Turning to look at the water, beneath the mirage-shimmer of the current, a braided vein of pale sand and pebbles, solid footing embraced by the dark arms of silt: no choice but to enter the water and wade the passage, pushing the canoe ahead.  Water so clear that it is deeper than it seems, cold and wet to the nipple, and the stream clutching a little against arms and ribs.  The canopy of the first tree, sky overhead fringed with green and little fingers of branches that stab at my eyes, then, under the next, and, at last, the puzzle of the third, sprawled on its side with spiders knitting webs between limbs, big spiders with black mottled bodies – duck to go under, swallowing a mouthful of water, and, then, push forward blindly: the current catches the canoe and drags it through an archway of branch and leaves invisible from my half-drowned vantage, and, then, it is free, but out of my hands, slipping swiftly down the stream into the open water – a pretty dilemma for me now, swimming to catch up, a fine thing that my canoe reach St. Paul on the bosom of the current without me, foot bruised by a sharp bough that I have tread upon with my soft moccasin, a spider falling like a hailstone into the water, I should have portaged, that’s certain, a awful mistake occasioned, I’m afraid, by my sheer laziness, always my undoing (my father said), then, the canoe lounges sideways and makes a languid turn and, splashing furiously I flounder toward the vessel so that it comes into my grasp again.

            A damp hour or more paddling.  Enough for today.  Grey clouds are closing off the heavens to the west, clouds barred like a prison-window, and the light has become a little uncertain.  Crooked as a dog’s leg, the stream turns and turns again on itself in a green prairie bulging in places with fox-colored rocks, birds darting about the clearing between steep wooded slopes climbing to bare prairie ridges where winds bend grass starred with purple and violet flowers.  A point of land, with twisted elderberry bushes, and a few loaf-sized stones for pillow and bench, a convenient wrack of dry wood lying in a tangle against the sod bank – the wood is greasy but makes a serviceable enough fire and the smoke smells sweet and the wind groping through the valley sweeps the smoke laterally so that it runs like a grey companion above the dull glint of the water.  A lonely place, but there’s no help for it.

            Hackett had come walking, three days along the bluff-tops from Yellow Medicine, a big, blustery fellow with a staff like a sapling. untrimmed and so bearing blossoms and leaves, a red, indefinite face like something seen in the sky at dawn or the setting of the sun, squinting when he laughed or smiled, a Chinaman’s face, although he was Irish, I think, or Welsh.  “I’ve come from debtor and the prospect, I’m afraid, is dismal,” so he said, shaking the autumn chill from his shoulders like a dog, filling up the whole of my little office, his blossoming branch set a-clatter against the threshold board.  “Now, you look like an industrious young man and I have heard excellent things of you whilst on my walk...” Hackett paused to assay how I would respond, but I said not a word, judiciously clearing my throat and scratching a word or two on some foolscap with my quill.  He nodded, approving, I suppose, the handsomeness of my modesty, and, then, set the case to me: a mortgage, the promissory notes duly executed, the debtor, “little better than a thief,” as he said, and the long walk to Indian agency where the villain was occupied in “defalcation and all sorts of scoundrel behavior,” the dinner on the prairie with a dram or two apiece, and, then, the knave’s failure to give any assurance at all, let alone any additional collateral.  Hackett gave me to understand that there were promises made, but without security, “empty wind” he said (and the wind is picking up even now, not merely distressing the smoke but swirling a little grey ash in the air).  Hackett assured me that he was a gentleman of substance and that my fees would not be in doubt and that, all along the westward way, from Ohio to Wisconsin and Iowa near Prairie du Chien and west to the Dakotah territories, he had acquired grants of land, was the proprietor of certain stores and lodgings, and that he was not about to be disappointed by this Indian Agent, Watkins, not the agent himself, mind you, but a mere subaltern of the agent, and so: “Such a fellow as you might readily imagine and disapprove of –“ so said Hackett glowering fiercely: “a man might boast of his forebears,” he said, “if they are of the cloth, or merchants, or schoolmasters, or, even, god forbid, gentlemen of the Bar, but to be an Indian Agent, and not merely an Indian Agent, but the subaltern of an Indian Agent.”  Hackett shuddered with the sheer thought of it.  He gave me a gold coin worth a good horse, or several of lesser pedigree, and told me to foreclose upon the mortgage and collect was due and owing to him on the notes, “both notes, mind you,” Hackett said angrily, as if I were about to debate the point with him.  We wrote the retainer and I told him that the foreclosure would require a journey to the Land Title office in Winona, where the deeds were recorded – “if so, then, that is what you must do,” he said.  “It is four days walk overland. There are no river-roads navigable from this place,” I said to him.  “Do what is necessary,” Hackett told me, advising that I would have additional payment of costs and expenses after the foreclosure sale, a sum that I could deduct from the auction proceeds, or, if I so desire, he would convey to my name and title some forty acres of wet bottomland near the Skunk Creek, called Mah-kato, by the Indians encamped near that place – “it is at your election,” Hackett told me.  So a memorandum was made of this understanding, subscribed by Mr. Hackett, and, then, he hurried away, hoping to make a waystation on the stage line by supper, a place several miles remote. 

            Several lawsuits detained me at the time, in particular, a matter involving a breach of warranty action involving a horse, and this business precluded my trek to Winona for a month or more.  Then, on the first night, after I had set forth, while camped with some fellow travelers – a soldier, a tinker, and two gypsy merchants – snow fell in a white blizzard and was too wet and deep for two days for travel.  I made Mantorville by noon of the first day sufficiently clement for travel and, then, snow fell again and I was detained with the patrons at the public house in that village for another two days, a very jolly company, as it happened, drummers and other traveling men all anxious to imbibe the spiritous content of the publican’s cellar, some soldiers, horse-traders, a leather goods merchant from Galena sullen when sober but a good and merry companion in his cups, and various and sundry others.  Again the weather relented a bit and I had traded for some snowshoes and so, on the first clear day, in a windless calm, I set forth once more aiming for the great river of the Mississippi – “there is,” I was told, “an Irishman’s cabin at the midpoint of your travel; the fellow lives there with his daughter and, although surly, will accomodate you for a handful of coins if necessity requires.”  On the afternoon of my first day’s hike from Mantorville, the storm descended upon me again and, perhaps, in the tempest I failed to see the Irishman’s cabin, or, perhaps, he have moved to some other place, for I walked until darkness intervened without encountering any sign of human habitation at all – thus, I was obliged to make my bivouac on the open prairie and a cold night I had of it.  Rousing my stiff bones, I marched another day and descended into a broad river valley where the wind, at least, couldn’t torment me so fiercely and seeing the ice-clogged watercourse felt that I had come near to my destination at Winona.  But no friendly light shone in the white darkness and I found neither track nor trail and the river banks were uninhabited and wild.  I wondered if I had entered the valley either too far to the south or to the north, and was now walking along the icy torrent but in the wrong direction.  Surely, some cartway should be visible, some mark of wagons and people afoot but I found nothing, only a trackless desert of blowing snow.  Again I made a cold camp and was without food for my supper and, of course, was much preyed-upon by despair and hopelessness, cursing the day that I had met Hackett and agreed to this fool’s errand which seemed to put me at risk of succumbing to the frigid wind and icy loneliness.  The next morning, more dead than alive, I trudged forward and, then, the bluffs on both sides where the snow was flowing like bright white pennants receded and I saw before me a much greater and more majestic river valley, ranges of bluffs beyond the mighty river like blue ridges of mountains – this was the valley of the Mississippi and the gorge that I had followed was merely that of a tributary river and ahead of me, I beheld smoke rising from the chimneys of Winona.  So the retainer was accomplished and the land auctioned in due course at a foreclosure sale conducted in agreeable to the statute.  But, then, as I asked that the purse of proceeds be paid me in trust for my client, the Judge put the question: “Counsellor, what do you claim due?  Only the interest is in default.  The auction has yielded proceeds in excess of $3000 dollars, but the present sum due and payable is but six-hundred dollars interest together with costs and disbursements taxed.”  The judge ordered that the interest due be disbursed to me with the auction costs and other taxable charges – it was about $640 complete, but that the remaining proceeds be committed to the Court to be retained until the doubtful and disputed issue of whether the residue was, then, payable to Hackett, or whether it should be refunded to the debtor Watkins be resolved as a novel issue and matter of first impression at the State Supreme Court in St. Paul. 

            A thaw rendered my passage across the country to my home none too difficult, although, I must confess that each darkening of the clouds impressed me most forcefully with dismal recollections of being lost and alone on the boundless prairie.  From my office, I corresponded with Hackett and asked his advice – the funds in the amount of $600, less some additional fees for my recompense, are herewith remitted, as to the balance: what difference does it make?  The court holds the proceeds in its trust – as the principal comes due, authorize me to sue on the note and, thereby, achieve your recovery.  Such was my recommendation.  With springtime, Hackett came as well and we met to discuss the case.  As a general matter, creditors and debtors are often more intimately engaged with one another than they might otherwise admit to their counselors at law and this, indeed, seemed to be the situation with Hackett and Watkins – perhaps, they were business partners of a sort, or, perhaps, bound by some relationship of marriage or kin: whatever the case, Watkins had made tender to Hackett of the payments then owing on the principal and, accordingly, I was informed that the promissory note was not then in default.  “So, if you are being paid in due course,” I inquired, “is not this entire dispute now moot.”  Hackett looked at me with paternal solicitude.  “Oh not at all my dear fellow,” he rejoined.  “Although Watkins is current on the debt, I very much fear that he will find himself hailed into some other court on unrelated obligations.  If the court hold the money in trust, then, we must ask – in trust for whom?”  “In trust for you,” I replied.  “That is not a matter of decree,” Hackett observed, “in fact, the answer to that issue remains to be decided by the Court.  If the residue is construed to be Watkins property, then, other creditors – and I know that the fellow is much embarrassed financially at this time – those other creditors will achieve priority over the debt owed to me.”  “This is true,” I replied, “since your obligation on the note has not yet been reduced to a judgement.”  “Exactly,” Hackett said.  “So you must make a petition to the Supreme Court to have the matter of the ownership of the residue on the mortgage decided in my favor.  Only in that way will my interest in the proceeds be truly protected.”  I could not dispute this reasoning which was, of course, sound and so we agreed that I would file such motion papers as to join the issue before the High Court and when summoned would paddle my canoe downstream to the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi, the site of the State capitol and the Supreme Court.  Again, Hackett proposed payment in gold and silver specie or, alternatively, pledged the Mah-kato bottom land, forty acres in extent – a lonely place at the bend of the river but accessible, Hackett represented, by steamboat if such could be assembled upriver at the falls of St. Anthony, and, soon, he alleged quite possibly a valuable conveyance in prospect of emigration expected on account of the fertility of the soil in that region.  “There will be no emigration to speak of,” I averred, “the war will attract all of the best men to the cockpit of battle in Virginia and no one will venture west until hostilities cease.”  Hackett’s face crinkled: “You are a shrewd young fellow.  But the war will be ended in a matter of months, that is a certainty.”  Perhaps, I said, but added that I preferred payment in specie and not land and that ended the discussion.  

       Occupied with such thoughts, sleep comes as the campfire winks out in the darkness.  But only a short rest and bruised... Tired muscles in my shoulder twitch me awake and the stings of biting insects creep and crawl over all exposed skin.  Too many pests here on this wet meadow with the river gurgling over stones and sticks a dozen paces away. Wind booms above, sweeping the prairie.  Atop the bluff, the gale will blow this fog of winged and buzzing creatures away, at least that is my supposition and so, concealing the canoe and my trade-bundle in a clump of thistle, I make my way in the inky darkness to a height overlooking the intricate black twists and turns of the river, spreading my bed roll in the grass on the open prairie.  There the wind rolls overhead in a great torrent and makes a hollow thunder in my ears and, just as  sleep beckons, the bellowing in the sky shakes me awake again: clouds passing above and myriads of stars winking down on my hilltop.  Fear: I am far from the embers of my campfire (it was cold and dead anyway) and completely alone.  Will some wild beast assault me from this howling darkness?  Are there wolves prowling about or red men?  Thieves or ghosts?  The darkling plain stretches away to a grim horizon and there is no friendly light anywhere in this immense, echoing and lonely wilderness.  What have I done?  To go this way alone and friendless – and for a few silver and gold coins.  The wind rudely rouses me each time I seem to have fallen asleep.  Will this night never end?  Perhaps, better to be devoured by mosquitos and stinging flies than to lie here exposed under these hammer-blows of wind. 

            Then, the air is grey and the wind has relented and gone to hide its monstrous face in the caverns of the night.  Chill exhaustion everywhere. A faint blue suffuses darkness and the birds make merry in their coverts amidst tree and brush.  Grouse startle up toward the pink sifting into the eastern sky.  Time to make my way to the river-road again.

            The second day, old voyageurs aver, is the hardest: muscles unaccustomed to such hard use make protest; weary bones file their appeal.  The canoe is a boulder, lifeless in the chill dawn – and hunger, hunger comes with dizziness; how can this clumsy lump float?  By what virtue?  A jackrabbit huddled amidst salad of thistles.  No noise now, no clamor of the fowling piece lifted awkwardly, or the clatter of the powder and charge.  Look how the pool is agitated by the longlegged spiders striding it – tiny ripples expanding in the stillness.  The rabbit’s nostrils twitch, sniffing the air and some other eyes, marksman eyes also are there – I can feel them, sharp against my shoulder, denting the space that I occupy, a prod from the thicket behind me.  Who is here?  A foot pads against a leaf, a litter of leaves, making a serpentine rustle.  Someone has descended from the bluffs to watch me as I stand aiming my piece at the rabbit, hand trembling – if its an enemy (how can I have enemies?  Charley, a fellow that everyone adores?), if an enemy, the shot at the rabbit might be wasted, and as I stoop to reload, perhaps, the tomahawk or the spear will gouge me, lance me through the lungs.  Slowly, now, any swift motion aggravates the foe to action, slowly, turn to the eyes... A she-wolf, haggard with fur fouled around her quivering cage of ribs, teats swollen, she looks at me and I return her regard, a hundred paces away under a bush heavy with dew, panting a little as she looks at me and, then, turns her muzzle toward the rabbit and a fish troubles the mirror of the river’s bend, gulping at a water-strider, and the rabbit startles, leaps, shows white underbelly and is gone, and the gaunt wolf licks her nose with her tongue red as a flag and pants more heavily, and, then, with great dark eyes still regarding me, backs away into the brush...

            Excitement drives my arm and paddle, a thousand fast stokes down the river, the meadows and pastures new – once you are underway, it’s not so bad, and even the hunger stays at bay, at least for the first several hours.  May – the Hungry Moon, that’s the name for this time among the Indians, May, not January or February or March – in those months, the stores laid in for winter are still sufficient, and the provender is not so stale as to be unpalatable, and the deep snow snares prey, the deer are heedless and the elk and the bison, foraging amidst the saplings and easy to take with rifle or arrow, the hungry month is May, when all winter’s cache is exhausted and the beasts bury themselves in the thickets to find mates for one another, and the berries are not yet ripe and the fruit is not yet formed and still blossoms as buds and even the roots under the soil are thin and pallid and unfit for food – now’s the time, when dogs are devoured and leather boiled for soup and children with swollen bellies are buried and the last husks and hulls of the winter’s warehouse are dredged from the bottoms of barrels or unearthed from secret stores and eaten although half-rotten and ruinous for the digestion... Charley, you might catch a fat frog and fillet it, or take a fish from the river, but the fish too are concealing themselves in deep green grottos hidden beneath the stones in the stream... I had thought to kill some game and butcher it on the way and, then, pause to roast my meat along the riverbank, but a sickly rabbit and a melancholy she-wolf, these are the only beasts that I have seen, sad companions along this long road...

            Is it an hour before dusk?  More than an hour, since the days are long at this time of year, increasing light and heat day after day, although it was still cool for this day’s travel, a mercy since I am tired and hungry and would not want to contend with heat as well.  An hour or more before dusk and a good distance traveled over the river, mostly mindless work dipping the paddle and dipping it again, and steering straight without any process of thought at all, driving the canoe with the current become second nature so that I will dream tonight of snags and floating logs and places where the water tried to turn me and send me in some direction that I opposed.  A wide expanse of water between shallow hills here, the rift of a road cut in the clay and gravel descending a slope toward where the river thins itself into a sheet of motionless water pooled against a sandy beach – that would be a good place to camp, but someone is there, a fire boils up some steamy smoke (the wood must be green) and a kind of wigwam made of twigs sits under an arbor built from stakes and topped with branches still green with leaf, some brown children naked in the shadowy thicket, a great tree toppled over and lying on its side on the river’s sandy bank and some garments, furs, perhaps, and taffeta drying on the brown barrel of the trunk... Indians, of course, and probably thieves so, after edging up along their shore -- the camp looks deserted but the children are playing, I can hear their cries in the thickets, and a little yellow dog trots out to bark at my canoe – maybe, best not to occupy this same side of the river with red men that I don’t know amd that may be hostile or just hungry and desperate and so inclined to thievery, it’s in their nature, particularly during the Hungry Moon when food is scarce, yes, it’s best to glide across the river, slipping up to the opposing shore where deep ruts and a cut in the bank show that wagons have passed this way, crossing when the water was low – it’s deep today, horse-shoulder deep in the cool swift sluice in the middle of the shallow lagoon, some tangle of abandoned livery on the slope where I ground my canoe and oxen dung speckling the meadow, dry enough I suppose to use for a fire...It’s inhospitable to not greet the Dakotah camped across the water, to not exchange some palaver with them, whoever they might be, and inquire into their health and the health of their squaws and children, but I am on a mission, and Indians can be inconvenient, difficult to assess in their motivations and intentions, and, unless I have something to trade for food (and I have not brought anything), I have no basis for intercourse with them. 

            The moon ascends the sky but the land is still light – it’s a freak of this season – and I grope some minnows out of the stream, I suppose, I can make do with a bite or two of their slimy flesh and, then, I lounge with the fire snapping and unspooling a wisp of smoke across the water and, from the other side of the river, I hear cries, musical cries, echoing over the lagoon.  It’s a little darker but still not even dusk, not yet grey twilight and, then, the water stirs and I look toward the river and see an Indian approaching, gliding soundlessly over the stream in a flat-bottomed pirogue – the man is standing in the prow of his boat and dragging it forward with a long pole with which he probes the mud bottom of the river and the mists are gathering about him, gathering on the water which is the color of the sky and grey, at last, crepuscular, the grey sky and the grey river and the darkness of the forests that are a darker grey complex with darkness and the Indian approaches without a sound, without hailing me – perhaps, he thinks I am asleep – scarcely a ripple under the pirogue which carries him like a ghost toward my camp.  He edges up to the river bank, plows the prow of the pirogue into the place where the grass is cut by wheel-ruts, and, then, limps across the clearing to where I am lounging, his motion now that he is afoot strangely rude and abrupt compared to the soundless sweep of the flat-bottomed boat across the still, vacant face of the lagoon. 

            Outlandish, like most Indians, he wears a beaver top hat and canvas leggings but his big round belly is bare – this fellow has not been starving – and his shoulders are draped like the shoulders of a society matron in a shawl of muslin and odds and end of quilted fur.  The man’s face looks familiar to me – his eyes are surrounded by wrinkles that open and close when he smiles, and he has broad, open features; he looks somewhat like Hackett, like Hackett’s red brother, a big man with a wide face at war with his slow, sorrowful gait.  His face is disfigured: half of his nose is cut away and there is a livid paste of scar of the wound in which a bit of bony gristle is embedded like a white worm. 

            “My friend,” the Indian speaks. “Friend,” I say.  “I am the ferry man,” he says.  My reply: “Very good.  An excellent occupation.”  “I do not disagree with you,” the Indian says.  “I’ve come to greet you and ask if I can be of service.”  “Not right now,” I reply. 

            A soft voice, without emphasis, ending each utterance with something like an interrogative – Indians always speak English quietly as if apologizing for their presumptuousness.

            The ferry man: “It seems a hungry camp.”

            “I ate some time ago.”

            “I have some eggs, across the river.”

            “But I have eaten.”

            The Indian: “Surely, you might eat again.”

            “What will the eggs cost me?”

            The ferry man: “No more than the fare across the stream and, then, to come back here.”

            “Which is?”

            He names a small fare, a few pennies.

            “But I have excellent accommodation,” the ferryman says.  “You may prefer to spend the night on my bank of the river.”

            “I have already made camp here.”

            “But I have excellent accommodation.”

            So speaking, he sits on log that I have drawn up to the embers of my fire, unsheathes an old knife and begins to whittle at a branch.

            “How is business?”

            The Indian: “Oh, it is not so good.  The war keeps emigrants from coming.”

            “I should think so.”

            “Maybe, they go the other direction now, back this way across the river –“ he points eastward to where his camp lies. 

            “Just going the other way.”

            “So I am paid for that direction too.”

            “It could be,” I say.

            The Indian: “Do you have news of the war?”

            “Not recent.”

            “There was a great battle in Tennessee recently.”

            “I have heard of that and read accounts.”

            The Indian: “Both sides, it is reported, lost the fight.  But it was a very big fight.”

            “Pittsburgh Landing, I think,”

            “I have heard another name for the place,” he says.

            “A very big fight.”

            “Many soldiers dying each and every day,” says the ferry man still whittling on his stick, the smoke from my fire coiling around him so that the half of his nose remaining moves spasmodically as if inhaling snuff.

            “All of the Indians would like to join in the battle to free the black white men,” he says.

            “The war is to save the Union.  The rest is incidental.”

            “No matter,” he says.  “The Indians would like to join and win glory in the fighting.”

            “I’m afraid that would merely complicate things unduly.”

            The Indian: “Why?”

            “It’s hard to explain,” I say. 

             “If many white men are killed in the war, then, the wagons and emigrants will go back over the river and return to where they have come from,” he says.

            “I don’t think that will happen.”

            He looks at me quizzically.

            “There are too many white men,” I say.  “There are more of them than you can imagine.  They will die all day long, night and day, and yet there will be more of them than you can possibly conceive.”

            “You do not think that they will have to return to their homes in the east?”

            “I don’t think so.”

            He waves the smoke curling around his head away from his injured nose.

            The Indian: “The tribes would like to join the Federal army and be paid for their service.  They know how to fight.”

            “Of course,” I say.  “But it is a different kind of war.”

            “Killing is killing.  What difference can there be?”

            The merchant in leather goods – harnesses, reins, saddles – from Galena had borne the battle and victory at Buena Vista deep in the vale of Mexico.  During the blizzard, when inebriated, he spoke these words: “War is a very grand and majestic thing.  But make no mistake about this – it is a criminal enterprise organized on the most sublime scale.” 

            I nod my head, not inclined to philosophize with this red rascal.  What does he know of our ways?

            “Do you think that all the young men will go to be soldiers?” the Indian asks.

            “As many as need be, I suppose.”

            “So do you think they will empty out the land to the west of here and leave it for the Indians?”

            “Not much chance of that, no, I don’t think so.’

            “Then, the Indians will have to be paid their annuities, paid what is due for the land that they sold before going onto the reservation.”

            “Of course, they will be paid.”

            The ferry man: “There are many who say that they will not be paid.  That the annuity money will be used for this war to free the black white men.”

            “Those who say that are scoundrels and trouble-makers.”

            “The white traders have refused to sell on account,” the Indian says.  “It must be that they fear that the annuity payment will not come as credit on the amounts owed.”

            “Anyone who distrusts the Federal governments about the annuity spreads lies and discord.”

            “Then, why won’t the traders sell on credit?”

            “That is their right,” I say.  “I know that to be true because I am a lawyer.”

            “Oh, a lawyer.”

            “Yes, a lawyer.”

            “And, even, now I am on my way to Court, in St. Paul – is it far?”

            “Not more than a day with the river running high as it does right now.  It is very high.”

            “Good.  I will be there tomorrow to argue my case.”

            The ferry man: “If the government doesn’t pay the annuities owed to the tribes, then what?”

            “I suppose the tribes will have to hire someone like me to take the government to court.”

            “Can that be done?”

            “Certainly, it can be done.  It is debt due and owing, payable in June if I remember the treaty correctly.”

            “It is due and payable in June,” says the ferry man.  “Indeed, you are right.  But I think that with the war, the white men think that the debt is no longer owing.  I think that they no longer recognize the obligation.”

            “Nonsense, the war doesn’t excuse a debt.  Who ever heard of such a thing?”

            The ferry man: “I think the tribes would forgive the debt if the white men went away, if they were to vanish to fight their war and leave us alone here.”

            “But that will never happen.”

            “Then, the annuity must be paid.”

            This is becoming tiresome: “Of course, the annuity will be paid.  The war doesn’t excuse a debt.  A debt is a debt.”

            “You are sure of that.”

            “As a lawyer, I am sure of that.”

            “Then, we shall go to my camp, across the water, and feast on eggs and fowl in celebration of the annuity payments that will be made soon.”

            “And what will that cost me?”

            “Merely a few coins.  Or, perhaps, one or two of those fine furs you have bundled there in your canoes.”

            “I am hungry again,” I say.  “I will come to your camp to have some eggs with you, but let me not inconvenience you with another transit across the water.  I will paddle across myself and, then, return to my camp after I have eaten.”

            “As you wish,” the ferry man says.  “It is your exertion.  But I will be paid my fee for the passage.”

            “I will pay you now,” I say. 

            Handing him some coins, which he inspects, holding them close to the glow of the embers, darkness falling now and coyotes howling in the hills above the river. 

            Firelight flickers on the knuckle of low land where river shallows lap.  Canoe dragged onto the strand to plow a furrow in the moist sand – I want the canoe close at hand since this red cut-nose gentleman seems something of a ruffian.  A black-eyed black-haired girl barefoot in the sand, an older woman, somewhat stout, hovering in the shadow – naked children bobbing and ducking in the darkness:  half-laughing, half-angrily, the ferryman pitches a piece of driftwood in their direction. 

            The eggs are small, fried with a sliver of meat that may be fowl or some rodent peppered with birdshot.  The ferryman offers me grog, but who knows what it contains? – an agent might sell an Indian any unwholesome brew, laced with cayenne pepper and camphor, and so I’m not about to taste the foul-smelling drink that the ferryman ladles from a sort of bucket into his tin-cup.   “Have you seen many pioneers in this last week?”  “Not many – because all creeks and rivers are swollen with melt-water from the snow and the ways are muddy.”  “Any traffic on the river?”  “None yet, but it will come in the next week if the war in Virginia and Tennessee and New Orleans does not interfere with those making their way along the river-road.”  “Will the annuities be paid?”  “I have said that they will be paid.”  “Who has assured you of this payment?”  “It is the full faith and credit of the federal government.”  “But has someone assured you?”  “I have spoken with no one.” 

            The Indian’s dark, ruined face shines orange, sweat-lined, half-savage and half-serene, like Hackett’s features, his nose uncut but otherwise marred by the sun and years – “Will you remember that I am a friend to the white man?”  “You are a friend, indeed,” I tell him.

            A child is rattling my wares in the canoe.

            “Who is there?”

            Hackett cut-nose pitches a half-burned faggot at the canoe and the child yelps as the brand hisses in the lagoon. 

            Distances are deceitful in the darkness.  The lagoon shallow and still stretches a great distance and I wonder if I am not crossing it at some diagonal oblique to the general flow of the river – I dip my paddle in the darkness and the campfire behind me shrinks to a mere orange petal bright against the velvet night and, then, suddenly the canoe lunges to the side, dragged by the current of the river for some distance downstream until I slip from the stream into the enamel black glaze of the lagoon pooled beneath my river-bank...Now where is my camp? and the cut where the wheel ruts are slashed into the shore and the little peninsula of grass where my embers were burning when I crossed the river paddling along the ferry man in his uncanny, gliding, silent pirogue? 

            I circle back, paddling upstream along the bank but can’t find the place where the ford emerges from the water and slash apart the sod and so, at last, I draw ashore in the inky black, along a featureless shelf of turf undercut by the stream, secure my canoe on the ground and, then, hike up and down the river in the inky dark for a half-hour, retracing my steps until, at last, I find the charcoal remnants of my campfire – there across the lagoon and the swift place where the river’s main bore pulses, I see a tiny pinpoint of fire in the darkness: the ferryman’s campfire two-hundred yards away, across the river.

            Sleeping poorly, another night – but tomorrow, I’ll be under the cover of a roof, with a bed with pillows, perhaps: at dawn, a sense that the Indian has crossed again and stands at my elbow in the swirl of river-mist – but I squint into the fog and can see only the she-wolf, gaunt and hungry, licking her lips and gazing at me with yellow eyes.  Where is my fowling piece?  In the canoe, I suppose.  The she-wolf dips her black nose in the stream and laps at the water with her raw red tongue.  Then, she trots into the thicket.  The birds which have yielded their song to her stealthy approach and retreat, commence calling to one another making a deafening racket.  On the hills, the trees are flopping uneasily with gusts of wind that turn their leaves upside down so that the white surfaces beneath the green glitter. 

            Last day on the river:  current streaming strong toward the northeast, millrace between overhanging bluffs shining as the sun seems to lift them up and hold them to the sky.  The paddle, now, mostly a lever with which to cut the current right or left and steer through the swift channels, slipping past small islands with forlorn trees drowned in the flood, stockades of branch and boug and suddenly barring the way athwart the blast of the river flowing toward the court and its judges in St. Paul.  At this rate, I will make my mid-day lunch in the taverns of the capitol –  stables in a cove (glistening brown-backed horses), just one step from land to water, some cabins atop a knoll, a clutch of teepees under a hollow bluff with streams gushing down to spray their water into the great river, for a mile or two, a road running along the river atop the embankment, but the water so high that it has brimmed over and decorates the ruts and furrows of the thoroughfare with slivers of reflected sky, then, a long and solemn procession of Indian burial mounds one after another humped up on the hillsides, tombs harboring who knows what wealth in silver and gold, then, a bend like the flourish of a mighty snake liquid across the land and the great expanse of floodwater toppled over its banks to make a vast glittering lake –

            The river seems to depart the lake several miles away through a notch in the green ridgeline – at least that is my supposition – a kind of saddle in the bluffs barring the way, remote across the broad bowl of wind-whipped waters, the opposing side of the lake all intricate with many bays and points of land half-submerged in the water.  Best to aim for the notch in the hillside and set a diagonal course across the lake impounded here between the green slopes.  The wind whips up behind my shoulders and as I reach mid-point in the lake, white-capped waves are breaking against the canoe and drenching me with icy spray and the canoe is bucking and rearing like a freakish colt.  Suddenly, I am in danger and the canoe in peril of swamping and paddling makes no progress, all this wild commotion seems locked in place, all a-roll, up and down, and turning sideways with the impulse of the waves cresting against the little vessel.  Now my strength is to no avail and my cunning (such as it is) counts for nothing because I have no control over the canoe – it is borne where the current and the waves desire, tossed high and, then, dashed down on white-capped surf that looked like little or nothing from the shelter of the river banks (Oh, if I could reach them now!) but which are huge and frenzied in their midst.  The wind howls and booms and I feel it’s cold fist cuffing my ears and I am deafened by the tumult of the waves and the crashing water – How long can this endure?  It makes me dizzy and I would like to cower in the canoe, head-down, and let the tempest carry me where it would – but, to go down in that way, blind and resistless...  No, I keep my eye on a parcel of river-bank, deep-drowned to be sure, but known to me by the column of trees that are standing hip-deep (if trees had hips!) or breast-deep (if bosomed!)...a palisade far ahead of me, branches agitated by the water roaring around them – yes, that must be the river bank, the edge of the channel if the river were confined to its banks, although the flood has raised itself, and flung water another two- or three-hundred yards out to the verge of the bluffs – that stockade of drowned trees is distant, but it makes an objective, at least, a place on which to focus my eyes in this chaos of shifting, jolting water – how did I find myself in this peril so swiftly?  So without warning?  – it’s too far, I’ll go down in the midst of the wave-tossed lake, but, perhaps, if the canoe can reach the trees, I can desert the vessel, crawl up into the branches that the waves even now are battering, hang there like some sort of ripe and ridiculous fruit – but, then?  Then what?  How to reach the shore?  Can it be waded?  The water seems too deep, like an ocean lurched up on the river’s edge..but, maybe... sixty yards to the trees, maybe, less, perhaps, I can swim that distance, forty yards, then, stalled on this incessant heave-ho of waves, thirty yards...twenty...I think I could desert the canoe now and make for the branches, but, then...some vortex turns me around and I am facing back toward the open lake through which I have passed, but the lake receding fast and, suddenly, I’m speared in the kidney and the shoulder, cast among the trees that are armed like lances with sharp boughs and branches – how they bruise and batter me!  I swing around and the canoe crashes into a trunk, hits hard another tree, careening through the grove – if I put my hand outside the canoe it will likely be crushed to pulp between the edge of my boat and the tree-trunk around which the water is swirling – more twigs tearing at hair and, then, I seemed to be moored against a huge oak, a rough pillar of tree, but I use the paddle to push off, no! the current smashes me back against the wall of the oak, push off again! Spinning, then, plowed back into the oak’s trunk once more, take courage! Charley, take courage! Another effort! Then, the canoe slices past the great, half-drowned oak and some flesh is abraded by the tree’s rough bark, all green and bearded with moss, blood flowing from places where the branches have pierced me, blood on my forearm, a wild ride between saplings that whip at my face and eyes, then, larger trees scattered as obstacles across the water-meadow where a current has kicked me sideways, each tree lunging viciously at the canoe, lunging like mad dogs chained in place, the front of the canoe slashed and bushes beneath the water reaching up to try to snatch the paddle from my hand...it’s impossible that I will survive this gauntlet of trees and branches whipping at me and...then, the river is behind and the current bends around a corner and the steep slopes hang overhead, wild with cascading trees and shrubbery, a silver pennant of a waterfall gushing along a column of yellow rock, and, there, a steep headland all fluffy with ferns, maidenhair ferns in rich array, fiddle-heads delicate with spring unfurling all around the place where I have crashed my canoe into a steep, wet point of land...

            Trembling all over – how long was the fight with the wind and water?  The big trees high above gather tenderly over the point of land and very distant, remote: the blue washed sky...  The cool wind moans and sighs – I stagger from the canoe and throw myself into the ferns, shuddering in every muscle, half-frozen, teeth chattering – and, the sun pushes down through the greenery and caresses my face and chest... I am going to be whelmed underwater, a castaway, drowned a dozen fathoms deep – and for what? To collect Hackett’s loathsome debt and serve his greed.  Abject, a servant to servants... For what?  A puddle of greasy coins.

            Where am I? Maiden-hair, fiddle-head, pretty names – green, lustrous filigree, scent of heat in the air, but chill wind rushing through the thickets.  Someone has been watching my sleep in this bed of ferns.  Eyes:  Hackett?  Lad, you must be up and away?  The court is waiting; it is folly to keep a court and judge waiting.  The day has much advanced while you slept pillowed on ferns.  I am being watched.  Sitting upright:  the canoe where I left it aground, dug into the soft mud bank. Rustle in the brush, then, walking on soft moccasin paws – the she-wolf, hungry, her sad, red tongue swinging like a pendulum between her jaws.  She ambles along the edge of the water, pauses, fixes me with her gaze – yellow eyes, eyes that know something that is just beyond the verge of where words can go. 

            What was the phrase: “the receipt of fern”? – Shakespeare, but where?  What play?  Fern seed makes you invisible.  “I think you are more beholding to night than to the fern seed for walking invisible.”  But the she-wolf saw me; the wolf watched while I slept like a sentinel.  Animals can always see more than we see: spirits of the dead, fairies, nymphs and genii of spring and glade. 

            The river is a corridor plated with green along its sides, a road that sweeps in broad curves between embankments tangled with willow and oak all woven together in a cloak of vine.  It will not be far now.  In some places, the banks are blunt mossy ridges confining land flooded to the rim of the valley; impromptu lakes beyond the pierced shores of the river, speckled with stands of trees shuddering in the wind on little islands of high ground.  The river spins and whirls, brown veined with white foam. 

            What hour?  Later than I supposed – I must have fought the wind and waves for half a day and, now, the sun is declining and the river falls and falls, sliding to the center of the earth, and still there is no town, no sign of human habitation, an endless monotonous green suspended on the crest of the great tawny current.  The hollows are mysterious with grey fog and a water fowl howls like a baby.  Where am I?  Perhaps, the waves whelmed me, dragged me under and this landscape is posthumous, some version of an afterlife, but one that makes no sense.  It is growing dark and cold and the water draws me onward...

            Quite dark, now: there’s some vagueness in my memory of the last hour – was I asleep on the current.  Where is my paddle?  Am I adrift?  Lost?  No, the paddle is lying across my lap – perhaps, I dozed for only a few strokes.  But who knows?  The moon rises and pours silver onto the water.  The receipt of fern works in two directions: perhaps, it makes me invisible, but also renders the landscape invisible as well – has the city already slid past while I was asleep?  Could I have missed the city with its court?  The river joins another river and that river flows around the world to the sea and the sea is also a river and it flows between the continents and the continents and all the waters of the earth are borne on the dark currents of the universe.  Everything flowing, shifting, slipping away – If the city is behind me and I have let it pass while I slept there is no way that I can reverse my direction against this insistent flood.  I would have to draw the canoe ashore, abandon it, and foot the way to the court – but there are no roads, I don’t know how I would come through the flooded land even to the edge of the river and the river bluffs. 

            Strong moonlight glittering everywhere that water flows or stands – moonlight twitching in the shallows where the great snapping turtles are feeding, moonlight glistening on the trees.  An orange glow: is this the city?  My hopes rise.  But it is a cave gouged in the river bluff, a dark socket glinting with the imprint of flames, a bonfire burning inside the hollow hill – what is moving there?  A man with horns on his head or a demon?  Someone is singing.  Shadows cast on rock.  I am lost, completely lost.

            I put my head down against my knee.  The river throbs beneath the canoe.  The current shifts me effortlessly to the broad middle of the current and drives me along the path that the moon makes on the water.  Time passes.  It is hopeless.  I feel the city behind me, on my shoulders, a presence like a hot coal burning me.

            What is that smell?  Dense, moist, foul – the odor wafts across the water.  Pigs, a pig-stye.  Some lights among the trees.  Where there are pigs, there are people.  Then, a dog is barking.  Another dog takes up the chant.  More dogs.  A geometry of piers and wharfs, wooden fingers stretched out in the water, and some barges with tents on them where people, it seems, are sleeping – I can hear them snoring – then:  black against the grey dawn, some muddy lanes drooping down through hollows, shacks built up against the bluffs, a creek slipping down alongside the rutted cartway roofed-over by a little footbridge, houses on the hill made of lathe  with white wood fences, a stables with a dung heap, roosters crying-out and a woman pumping water in silhouette against the sky streaked here and there with smoke from fires, cauldrons lined-up against the slant river-bank where the laundresses work, ash and embers on the half-drowned beach, more boats moored on ramshackle docks, shanties and lean-tos, privies on in the green pits cleared in the ridge, a quarry full of crumbling stone on an opposing bank, and the growl of haggard-looking mills rising above gloomy mill-races: St. Paul. 

            A strand, foul-smelling, with cairns of mussel-shell and a gobbet of dead fish melting in the sun.  Beach the canoe.  River-front shacks that seem to have been recently underwater, daubed with mud, heaps of cloth and sundries flood-ruined and decaying on humid thresholds.  An Indian boy is squatting in the shallows, lunging for tadpoles.  I ask his name.  Something that I can’t pronounce, a chuckling row of vowels.  “No, no,” I say, “my lad – What do they call you?”  “They call me ‘Willy’.”  “Well, then, Willy, here is some coin.  You watch my canoe and tend it well.  See to it that my bundle of trade goods is not meddled with  and, at mid-day, there will be some more coin for you.”  He grins and kicks happily at the tepid shallow water.  I haul my fowling piece from the damp canoe, my valise, and my package of clothing for the Court.   

            Up hill, on higher ground, more cabins and houses built from sawn timber and plank-wood walkways along the mire of the lane.  People about and stirring.  Here I am at home: nodding to those on the paths between houses, eyes meeting mine and, then, politely averted, hats tipped, voices whispering from rooms above, a bright spill of filthy water from a window sill, cats slinking about and dogs bearing bright badges of offal in their jaws.  This is the world of men, the city and its creatures, habitual, tidy and not-so-tidy, the garbage dumps sunken amidst waste brush, garments drying on fence posts, an inebriate clawing his way home, stumbling and falling, puddles where the heavy wagons have ripped the road.  Here’s a public house where a washbasin may be procured and a rasher of sow-belly with eggs and biscuits, a closet for a change of clothes, lugging the fowling piece and my pack of clothing from the dining hall into a shed where the landlady, for another passel of coins agrees to watch this luggage.  Tradesmen hustling along the lanes. Hammers drumming outside and saws howling as they cut wood, scaffolding standing against the sky.

            Valise in hand, I set out for the Court, confident and with a quick step, but soon enough I am confounded. Who would have thought that the way could be lost in a city?  The city is the home of men and built according to their desires and needs and, of course, it is my faith that one street will lead to another that will carry me, in turn, to the halls of justice – I have some faint instructions from the serving-man at the public house, but his words are rapidly eradicated by the bright day and the bustle around me (did he say ‘left’ or ‘right? Or ‘straight ahead’?)  A snarl of teams and carts block the way and men are bellowing at their oxen and mules, and a horse, appalled by the clamor, lunges and cries out, kicking clods of earth into the air.  Then, my street becomes a mere alleyway, snaking like a cow-path along the face of a hill congested with shanties.  The ground drops out below my feet into a deep cleft in the river bluff smoky with chimneys, and, then, someone tells me that I am walking in the wrong direction, that the courthouse is behind me, among the manor-houses on the opposing ridge – I reverse my way and climb a ladder of trembling wooden steps to the hilltop where there is a booth and a man selling loaves of bread, beside him a milk maid with greasy face, wares spread under an arbor.  In a grove of trees, tall and stately, there stand some public buildings, mostly framed from wood and, amidst them, heavy logs heaped together to make a jail, rude and thatched with sod – where there is a jail, there is law, and, indeed, on the knoll beyond the jail, next to a stable-shed and a place where some carriages with horses in harness are attended by barefoot boys, toes grubbing in the dung – there, now! take caution that your shoes freshly boot-blacked are not spoiled – here it is:  the courthouse, bearing a small white cupola like a tiny top hat, two or three surly-looking bailiffs on the porch, spitting and smoking cigars.

            Inside: high ceilings, stale air, unoccupied pews, the Bench bearing a portly gent that I have seen before as Registrar of Title at the land-grant office in Winona, tobacco-stink and rank odor of unwashed bodies, a witness in the box shuffling his boots, some tedious matter of a dishonored bank instrument underway, counselors at law affecting poses of studied nonchalance, the court reporter grimacing as he writes the record –

            “Charley,” the Judge says, interrupting the proceedings.

            “Your honor.”

            “I didn’t think to see you so early.  You are most punctilious.”

            “At the Court’s service,” I reply.

            The fat jurist is already sweating, although it is still morning-cool in the room.  He shakes his hand at the litigants. 

            “Let us take a brief recess on this matter so that I can conclude the Court’s business with our brother from – is it St. Peter?”

            “Traverse des Sioux, your honor.”

            “Indeed.  So you have come quite distance to this assize?”

            “That is true your honor.”

            The Judge is grinning.  Why is the fat rogue grinning?

            “Well, you may approach,” he directs.

            “Thank you.”

            I come between the heavy tables wrought of dark wood where a scatter of pleadings lies in disregarded.

            “Welcome, brother Charley, welcome.”

            “Thank you, your Honor.”

            “I haven’t seen you since Winona.”

            “Have you been long adorning this Bench, your honor?”

            “ ‘Adorning?’ Ah, Charley, you are quite the scoundrel.”

            “If it please the Court.”

            “The governor appointed me to this honorable Bench but three months past.”

            “Congratulations are in order.”

            “Thank you.”

            But why is the fat rascal grinning at me?

            “Do you appear on a matter involving a defaulted mortgage and two promissory notes given on the obligation?”

            “That is correct.”

            “I have your papers which, of course, are in good order.”

            “Thank you.”

            I look over my shoulder.  Is there an appearance on behalf of the debtor?  No one seems attending to our colloquy at the Bench – counsel engaged in the dispute over the dishonored instrument, it seems, have left the court and are, perhaps, already smoking pipes or cheroots on the porch outside.  The scrivener ignores our banter and flexes his bruised fingers and wrists. 

            “And you appear on behalf of?”

            “Watkins.”

            “Watkins?”

            The Judge seems perplexed.

            “Watkins, by your submissions, is the debtor.  You seem to have changed sides Charley.”

            He wiggles his finger at me.  I can feel the hot blood of the blush rising to my cheeks and ears.

            “I have mispoken, your honor, I represent Mr. Hackett, the appellant in this matter.”

            “Always well to know whose case it is that you are arguing.”

            “That I can not dispute, Judge.”

            “I would think not,” he says, grinning again.

            “It is the dust of the road,” I say.  “Momentarily, it has clouded my mind.”

            “That is understandable,” the Judge says.  “It is long road and arduous.”

            Again, I look over my shoulder: empty pews, an elderly woman peering through the open door, frightened to cross the threshold before this awful bar of justice.

            “Do you note any appearance of your adversary party?” the Judge asks, now his grin splitting his face from ear to ear.

            “None, your honor.”

            “Then, I must inform you that Mr. Watkins has filed an appearance just an hour ago, by affidavit delivered by courier.”

            “Affidavit?  I have seen no such affidavit.”

            “We must all acknowledge that it is untimely filed.”

            “What is the affidavit?”

            “I shall show you as you wish.  But, Mr. Watkins has attested to this Court that he has gone to be a soldier, enlisted only yesterday in the Union cause.  Even as we speak, he is now drilling with a company newly formed at Fort Snelling.”

            “It seems a stratagem to –“

            The Judge interrupts me: “To serve his country in a time of great crisis?”

            “Perhaps, but –“

            ”Charley, Charley, surely you are a Union man.  We are all Union men in these parts.”

            “I am a Union man.”

            “So, my friend, what would you have me do?”

            “I am obliged to persist in asking that judgment be issued on my petition.”

            “And, thus, penalize a patriotic fellow who has chosen to set aside his business to serve the cause of the nation?”

            “That is not my client’s intent.”

            “Then, what am I to do?”

            “Your honor, I am not aware of any law that authorizes the respondent’s default on the basis of his military service.”

            “Even as we speak, there is pending in our Federal congress a law for the relief of soldiers and sailors embroiled in this present civil war.”

            “But has that law been enacted?”

            “Not to my current knowledge.  But who knows?  I would be loathe to grant the relief that you suggest, Charley, and, then, learn to our mutual dismay that the statute was passed even as we are speaking – or, perhaps, yesterday, or the day before.”

            “So what am I to do?”

            “Patience, patience,” the Judge speaks through his grin.  “That is my counsel.”

            “I must protest –“

            ”We are all obligated to do our duty to the country.”

            “That is not in dispute –“

            ”I am going to hold this controversy in abeyance until the cessation of hostilities arising from the secession.”

            “Your honor, may I inquire on what authority?”

            The Judge shutters his grin a little: “On my authority, on the authority of this honorable Court and this honorable State, on the basis of elementary principles of justice and equity.  Fair play, Charley, fair play.  I will not have our brave boys in uniform bit in the backside by this sort of a lawsuit.”

            “I see your honor will brook no argument on this point.”

            “I will not, Charley.”

            I back away from the Bench.  The scrivener has not yet dotted an “I”.

            “May I have a record?”

            “I will dictate a record later,” the Judge says.  “And issue an order appropriate to the circumstances.”

            “Thank you, your honor.”

            “Charley, don’t be so glum.  Why so crestfallen?  Have you read of the great victories at New Orleans and Pittsburgh Landing?”

            “I am aware of them.”

            “This conflict will not abide more than a month, six weeks at the most.  All these young fellows are enlisting so that the glory of the imminent victory does not elude them.”

            “Yes, your honor.”

            “I am sure that you will be back before this honorable court in not less than two months and, then, it will be my pleasure to entertain the petition that you have brought before me.”

            “Thank you, your honor.”      

            Departing the courtroom, the courthouse: stiff-legged and formal, decorous, a water bird on stilt-feet picking with long beak at the puddle-vermin.  Bumble-bees along the well-trodden path to the privy, humming and buzzing in blossoms.  I should pursue another profession.  Stink and mire.

            Outside in the fresh air, river wrapped around the city like a blue-green ribbon:  as I turn toward the court on the hill, river wrapped around my shoulders like a shawl – I have been on those waters so long, I sense them still coiled around me like a garment -- wind whispering, the sparkle of bottle-glass below in dumps, cess-pools glittering, the tinkling of the city awake and at work, bells and harness-jingle, hallooing...

            To the public house for a meal and sleep.  The rattle and clatter of cutlery and dishes washed in the lean-to outside my window, fat wives gossiping, someone singing... Now, it must be late afternoon and I suppose that I have lost my canoe.  River-front: where was it that I came ashore?  The slip of stream over sculpted sandstone and a footbridge: here’s the marge of the river, cattails and reeds, some children lounging, but no canoe, a skiff moored to a tiny fur on a point of land, beyond, Indian girls swimming, bare limbs.  “Where is Willy?”  Pointing.  In a cut of the bank, the canoe nestled and the child sitting in shadow, eating something.  Good and faithful servant, here’s more coin.  Just another hour, if you please –

            Trading with a Frenchman with broken teeth: he drives a hard bargain but, at least, I have money for the way home.  “I will throw in the canoe to boot,” I say.  “For what?”  “Another two dollars.”  Handshake and another two dollars is in my pocket.  I lead him down to the river and display the canoe.  “Not a good canoe,” the trader says ruefully.  He scratches at the flea-bites on his wrists and neck.  “Not a good canoe,” he mutters once more. “You have skinned me.”  I shrug.  “It is a perfectly serviceable canoe.”  “Now, I know better than to trade with you in the future, my friend,” he says.  But his lips are open to make a smile showing the wreckage in his jaws.  

            In this season, the sun shines brightly for many hours.  If I walk at a good pace, and don’t rest over much, I can make six miles before it is dark.  I know a tavern with stables where a traveler might rest until morning – yes, six miles, less than six miles along the St. Peter road.  A path curves to the hilltop where the road lies on the level, a broad sandy way split here and there with ruts. 

            When I have gone a mile, someone cries: “Charley, Charley, is that you?”

            Myrick, sitting on a boulder ripped from a nearby field new-planted in wheat, meerschaum pipe between his purplish lips.  Somehow he has shouted to me around the obstruction of pipe clenched in his teeth. 

            I amble to his resting place beneath a vine-entangled oak still a bit blasted by winter and bare-branched, a surly crow glaring down at us.

            “Are you off to the war, Charley?”

            “That’s not for me.  I’m a lover not a fighter.”

            “Likewise,” Myrick says.  He grips the pipe in the corner of his mouth, managing to speak, then, spit without displacing its stem.

            “Would you care for a bit of company on the ramble down south?” he asks.

            “Most assuredly.”

            We walk together for a mile whilst I rehearse to him my tale of woe.

            “Any man who goes to the law should expect to depart with his skin in tatters,” Myrick says.  “You are lucky to escape with so much flesh remaining.”

            He has put aside the pipe but is now sucking on a reed plucked from a marshy place along the road.  Myrick is a fellow who must always have something in his jaw or cheek.  Even now he seems to be sucking a hoarhound packed up against his gums.

            “The annuity is due the tribes in a few weeks,” Myrick says.  “My brother and I have extended much credit and the debts are due.”

            “So it will be a fine pay-day for you?”

            “When the annuity is issued.”  Myrick nods.  “Already, the Indians have half-expended their credit for this coming winter.”

            “Don’t talk of winter yet.”

            “It will be upon us before we know.”

            “Well, I am glad you will be handsomely paid.”

            “Merely honest wages,” Myrick says.  “It is hard labor to stand guard over a warehouse of victuals in the midst of such a mob of thieves.”

            “The hunt last season was not propitious. I think the Indians are very hungry.”

            “Poor beggars,” Myrick says.  “But a man must be paid.”

            “That is certainly true.”

            A rod ahead of us, at the head of green and leafy ravine, a Indian boy stands, pot-bellied, waving a battered tea-kettle at us.

            “See,” I say. “He’s hungry.”

            Something like a dog squats in the dense foliage greedily watching the little boy with yellow eyes.

            The child dances toward us, waving the tinker’s kettle.  He is wary, expecting a kick, perhaps, or a fist-blow.

            I drop a coin in his pot where it makes a hollow sound.

            “It won’t do any good,” Myrick says.  He stoops, picks up a rounded pebble, and inserts it in his mouth.  “I’m getting thirsty,” he slurs.

            “I know.”

            Four miles before we rest.