THE MAN WITH GREAT DESPAIR BEHIND HIS EYES
Meriwether Lewis stared down at the time-worn scrap of paper, holding it in his hands as if it were a rare butterfly too easily crushed. He’d been in one of his moods when the courier had summoned him two hours earlier. This time, he’d even loaded the pistol, placed it on the table near his chair and brandy. This time, he’d promised himself, he would follow through and be done with it. But now, sitting in Jefferson’s study, curiosity pushed the darkness aside.
The President pushed back his chair, stood and turned away from the paper-strewn table to gaze out the window at the rain-soaked night. Lewis, glancing up briefly, thought he looked tired.
“Mr. President?”
“As you know, Meriwether, I’m not one given to fanciful flights. By God, I am a man of science and reason, but this shakes me to my very soul and confounds my sensibilities.”
Lewis nodded, more to himself than not, remembering when this man — this intellectual Goliath — was his neighbor in Virginia. They’d spent hours talking together about plants and fossils and the expansive West. Thomas Jefferson was every part a scientist. He looked down at the green rectangle, wondered what tree this unlikely leaf fell from. He studied the face in the thumb-sized portrait and read the name again. “And you’re certain it is him?”
“Yes. It’s Jackson . . . that backwoods powder-keg. The years are heavy upon him in that likeness.”
They were indeed, Lewis saw. Andrew Jackson, now a judge somewhere in Tennessee after a brief stint in the Senate, was in all actuality not much older than himself. But he wore twenty, maybe thirty years beyond in the small drawing.
Lewis turned the paper over, a wonder tinged with some form of fear lifted the hair on his neck and hands. Another picture, another name beneath it. “This is the President’s House,” he said in a hollow voice.
“Yes.” Jefferson turned in from the window. “Yes it is.”
“But — ”
“But the President’s House isn’t nearly as old as the parchment. And it has never been called ‘The White House.’ At least not to my knowledge.”
“And neither to mine.” Lewis had spent a miserable winter in the unfinished, leaking shell of a house as laborers completed the work. “How did this come into your hands?”
Jefferson creaked into the wood chair and poured a glass of water from a ceramic pitcher. “A colleague at the Society purchased it at no small price from one of Gray’s men. A sailor on the Columbia claims to have traded it away from a Chinook medicine-man.” Captain Gray had named the river after his ship, Lewis remembered, and supposedly enjoyed several weeks of profitable trade among the West-coast natives. “The medicine-man claimed it held mystical properties, having come from a white holy man who lived deep in the forest north of the river’s mouth . . . a teller of fortunes, the Indian claimed.” Jefferson closed his mouth, pursing his lips in thought. “He should not be difficult to find, I would think.”
Lewis looked up at his friend, his President. “You are proposing that I go?” An excitement gripped him; he had wanted to explore the West for longer than he could remember.
“Yes. Congress has approved the funding to outfit this Corps of Discovery.” His brow furrowed. “But this is to be first and foremost a scientific and military expedition. The water route, the careful recording of flora and fauna, notation of any strategic import — these are all noble and legitimate endeavors. As written in the letter you shall shortly receive. This other matter is to be held in your strictest confidence.” The President’s jaw firmed.
“You shall have it, Sir.”
Jefferson smiled, reached across the table to pat Lewis’ hand. “I know I shall.” He paused, looking even older and more tired. The strain between the French and the British had worn him down, Lewis knew, and factions from the States grumbled faintly of secession as anti-Federalist feelings grew. “If you find him, Meriwether, I have to know. I have to know, if he can tell us, whether this Union we have forged with our very blood and tears and sweat shall abide or perish still in its crib.”
“Yes, Mr. President.” Lewis turned the parchment over again. It masqueraded as United States currency — a twenty dollar note — and next to an illegible signature stood four small numbers that grew larger and larger in his widening eyes: 1971.
He handed it back to Jefferson, glad for the delicate butterfly to leave his fingers.
In the months Lewis traveled with him, Drouillard’s anger often hid behind a placid face, but the half-breed suddenly spat into the mud, water running off his cap as he tipped his head. “Damn this rain,” he said and the Fields brothers sniggered. Dark eyes flashing back at them, he cursed them first in French, then in a half-dozen tribal tongues.
Lewis smiled at his stalwart companion’s outburst though today the darkness held him. It had followed Lewis across the continent, aloof but near enough to sense. Here, close to the end of their journey, it thrived.
Dark and bleak, the sky hung low with clouds when they could see it beyond the pine-ceiling. Still, the sky saw them and rained down its furious tears. The stink of ruined, rotting fur filled his nostrils and his ankles ached with every step. The damned rain pervaded everything, rotting even their clothes. The Pacific Coast, thus far, proved to be a wet and gray place.
Private Frazier sidled up to him. “Cap’n Lewis?” He turned to the lanky Virginian, but kept his feet shuffling forward through the loam that sucked at his moccasins. “Do you really think we’ll find a ship? And whites?”
“That’s what they said.” Two weeks before, a handful of Indians in a canoe had told him and Clark what to expect at the mouth of the Columbia. And as they made their way down the river, more and more of the natives wore sailors’ caps, carried rusted knives and cooked from copper pots. Last Thursday, they’d finally seen the ocean, distant on the edge of the horizon. Yesterday, Lewis and his small party had left Clark and the others to scout north of the wide river.
“Hell if I’m walking all the way back if there’s a ship,” Reuben Fields said.
“Hell if you ain’t.” Joseph Fields laughed. “Hell if we all ain’t, if the Captains have their way.”
The bushes ahead rustled and their dog bounded out, his black fur slick with rain. A small rabbit kicked its last in the Newfoundland’s strong jaws. He’s the only one who’s truly happy here, Lewis thought. The rain didn’t affect him, darken his outlook. Still, mood or no, they had their mission, and the Corps of Discovery was about its business regardless of the weather.
“We’ll rest here a bit.”
At his word, the men found trees to squat against, hiding from the downpour as best they could. Lewis leaned against an alder and Drouillard drew close. They spoke in low voices.
“Cap’n, I know it’s none of my concern, but if I knew what we were looking for I could be more helpful.”
Lewis looked at the dark man, nearly as tall as himself, and pursed his lips. “Even if I myself knew completely, I couldn’t tell you.”
Drouillard nodded. “The men are curious.”
“Let them be.”
The interpreter straightened. “Aye, sir.”
Lewis closed his eyes and let the heaviness take him. Weariness is to be expected, he realized, after eighteen months of walking, paddling and riding the wilderness.
Still, what an adventure so far. There would be much to talk about and celebrate when they returned. If they returned. If the rain didn’t wash the very skin from their bones.
They’d all celebrated when they glimpsed the broad, gray expanse of the Pacific. But the joy leaked out of him too soon. All his life it had, and for a brief moment Lewis craved death again. “This is the place to find it,” he said, not realizing he spoke aloud.
“Captain?”
“Never mind,” Lewis said. “Let’s move.”
At noon they broke into a clearing and an old Indian stood, leaning on a birch staff. Lewis nodded at Drouillard who stepped forward, hands signing their intent. The Indian waved him away. “We do not need to make the sign-talking,” he said in thickly accented English. He pointed to Lewis. “The Man-from-the-River told me he dreamed of a red stork flying in the direction of the sinking sun.”
The men mumbled and Lewis gave them a hard glance. They often called him ‘Red Stork’ when they thought he wasn’t listening.
Lewis approached the old man. The Indian watched him through squinted, dark eyes buried in a sea of wrinkles. “Who are you? How do you come to speak English? Are you the Man-from-the-River?”
The native shook his head. “The Man-from-the-River sent me to bring you to him. He wishes to meet the great Red Stork.” He motioned Lewis closer, out of ear-shot of the others. “He told me to show you this.” For a brief instant, a ball of green paper lay exposed in his palm, then he curled his fingers around it again.
“You’ll make camp here and await my return,” Lewis said over his shoulder. “I’m going on alone.” The old man turned and walked toward the clearing’s edge. Lewis glanced at Drouillard to confirm his order, and the interpreter nodded, eyes narrow.
Lewis followed the old man, catching up as the brush swallowed them. “You didn’t tell me your name.”
The old man didn’t break his stride. “I am called John Fitzgerald Kennedy.”
The rain stopped.
They walked until twilight fell, pushing aside the gray overcast day for a deeper gloom. Many times, Lewis tried to engage his companion in conversation, hoping to draw out information from the old man. He merely answered the questions with questions.
“Why is he called the Man-from-the-River?”
“What would you call a man pulled from the waters?”
“Where do the green papers come from?”
“Who can know where powerful medicine comes from?”
“Why are you called John Kennedy?”
“Why am I called by any name?”
“Can he really see the future?”
“Why is seeing the future more wondrous than seeing today?”
Eventually, Lewis surrendered and settled into a morose silence. Now that the rain had let up, he knew he should check the powder in his rifle and pistols. But the woods seemed quiet and the old man walked them with a confident, comfortable step that spoke safety to Lewis’ vigilant heart.
They broke from the woods into a clearing that hugged a sheer wall of rock topped thirty feet above with pines and moss and fern. A wooden lean-to nestled against the rock, a trickle of smoke leaking out from it.
“I must tell you he doesn’t make much of the white-man talk anymore. I think he has forgotten how. He is old. Older than me.” The Indian started for the shelter, then stopped as Lewis hesitated. “I will translate,” John said.
Lewis nodded, a sudden apprehension twisting his stomach. “Very well.”
As they approached, a faint chanting drifted to his ears, a mumbled litany that rose and fell like a song. It stopped as John lifted the weave of alder branches that served as a door. He hurriedly waved Lewis in, as if anxious to keep the moist evening air at bay.
Lewis unslung his rifle and stooped to look inside the dirt-floored lean-to.
The first thing he saw was a canopy of green paper, the bills hung from bone fish-hooks and dangling from the ceiling. It was the ceiling of a faded, soft forest that rustled as his shoulders brushed the lean-to’s doorway. The second thing he saw was the old man.
The Man-from-the-River sat on a doe-skin rug, legs crossed, hands turned upward and held at shoulder height. Long white hair flowed over his head and cascaded to the floor, like spilled milk, hiding what clothing he wore, if any. Large ears poked out from the pale tangle. His skin, pulled tightly over the bones, was slightly olive — perhaps of Spanish or Moorish descent — and his eyes were hidden behind a strange pair of dark spectacles. A long pink scar ran out from his scalp like a river leaving a forest, disappearing behind the spectacles, above his left eye. A small fire guttered in a pit dug into the floor, near the rock face.
Leaning the short-barrel musket against the granite wall, just inside the door, Lewis squeezed himself through the narrow opening. The room was surprisingly warm and he wrestled out of the stinking buffalo robe and pushed it outside, the hide already a casualty of the region.
He sat down before the Man-from-the-River and waited for John. As the old Indian settled in, Lewis drew a peace medal from inside his shirt. “The Great White Father sends this token of his regard for the Man-from-the-River.” He handed it across the fire and waited while John translated. Nodding, the faintest smile touched the old man’s lips as he took the medal. He turned and put it behind him, mumbling something.
John looked at Lewis. “The Man-from-the-River thanks the Red Stork for his generous gift and is glad that you have come seeking him.”
“How did he get here?” Lewis watched, listening to the translation.
“He awoke in the great river and did not know himself. I pulled him to safety. Over time, my people realized he had much medicine and charged me to care for him, but far from our village. This was almost thirty summers ago.”
Lewis pointed at the ceiling. “Ask him about the paper bills, about the pictures and words on them. Where did they come from?”
John shook his head. “It is not wise to ask such.”
“Ask him.”
The Indian asked the question quickly, gesturing impatiently at Lewis. Man-from-the-River nodded slowly, looked at Lewis, and shook his head as he spoke.
“They came with him out of the river and are a part of his medicine,” John translated. “You should not be concerned with them.”
“Tell him my Great Father believes that they are important and sent me to ask of them.”
John did, listened to the reply, and paused, asking the old man a question with raised eyebrows. Man-from-the-River nodded, saying the words again more firmly. “These are not why you have come. You have come to swim the dream-waters with the Man-from-the-River.”
Lewis tried to hide his frustration behind a smile. “No, I have come to know — ”
The Man-from-the-River started speaking, and Lewis let him. “You are a man with great despair behind your eyes, Red Stork. You are a man of tremendous courage but a mighty sadness washes you like the tide washes a stone. You have come to swim the dream-waters and be healed of your darkness.”
Lewis felt his temper stir as his patience faded. But he also felt something else stir. The simultaneous hope and fear of being known by this strange old man. His thumb nervously tapped the butt of one pistol and he held his tongue. Finally, he said, “I have no need of healing.” The lie rolled easily from him.
“Then we will eat,” the Man-from-the-River said through his interpreter.
At that, he produced a bowl of dried fruit and two smoked salmon from a recess in the stone wall. They ate in silence.
When they finished, Lewis tried again. “My Great Father is a knowledgeable man. He has worked very hard to build a strong and just home for his children. He watches them and worries for their well-being. He hears that Man-from-the-River has much medicine and can tell the future. He sees Man-from-the-River’s green paper and wonders what it is and where it comes from.” If he hadn’t held the parchment himself, hadn’t seen the thousands of them that hung suspended above his head, he would have felt alarmed for Jefferson’s mental state. His voice raised an octave. “Your servant, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, showed me one of these papers so I would come here with him. Now you tell me nothing about them. My Great Father will be unhappy if you do not send me home to him with answers for his questions.” He sat back and waited.
Man-from-the-River’s response was simple: “If your Great Father wished to ask questions of me, he would have come himself.” Silence settled over them. He spoke again, quietly. “But perhaps when swimming the dream-waters you will find answers for him. Many have powerful visions, for Man-from-the-River’s medicine is strong and sometimes his dreams are also shown when he gazes upon your own.”
“Very well, I will swim the dream-waters.” Lewis had participated in other tribal rites, finding them quaint and pointless however meaningful to these simple savages. And, he reasoned to himself, even the white man had his own, albeit superior, rites — baptism, communion, and the like. “But I am ignorant of such ways for my people no longer swim the dream-waters.”
Man-from-the-River nodded, smiling, and pulled off the dark spectacles to reveal his eyes. He spoke to John, who also nodded.
“Man-from-the-River is glad to swim with you and hopes you will find the healing of your sorrow in the waters.”
Lewis didn’t know what to say. All his life, he’d wrestled with his moods but in public, particularly since the formation of the Corps, he’d bent his will to concealing the gripping melancholy. Certainly Clark knew — they’d been friends long enough — and on more than one occasion Jefferson had asked after his heart, but they, too, had years under the belt. Was it possible this man could see past his resolve in so short a time?
Lewis said nothing.
John half-stood. “I will return in the morning. You will need no further interpretation.” He lifted the door to leave.
“I’d rather you stayed,” Lewis said.
“It is not the way.” He left, replacing the woven screen of branches. Lewis turned back to the old man.
Grunting in satisfaction, Man-from-the-River stretched a gnarled hand above his head and plucked a crisp green parchment. Laying it on a flat, smooth stone he reached behind and drew a bone knife. He duck-walked to Lewis and tugged at his pack, pointing at his bedroll and then at the corner of the hovel. Lewis unrolled it and stripped out of his jacket.
The old man ran the knife along his hand, not breaking the skin, to show Lewis his intentions. Familiar with the bonding ritual, Lewis nodded and winced as the blade sliced through his offered hand. A line of crimson beaded up and he watched it. Man-from-the-River cut his own hand and pressed their wounds together, chanting in a low voice.
After about five minutes, Man-from-the-River pulled away and drew a squirrel-skin sack from beneath his own bedroll. He carefully untied its strings, folded the green parchment in half length-wise and sprinkled a mixture of herb and powder into the valley it created. Then, he rolled the paper around it as if it were a cigar and ran his tongue around it to hold it shut. He twisted the ends and grinned up at Lewis with raised eyebrows.
Lewis smiled back, inwardly wondering what the contents of the medicine bag were and what effect they may have on his physiology.
Man-from-the-River dug a stick out of the fire and held it to one end while he puffed at the other. The room filled with a scent of old paper mingled with alfalfa. After drawing in a lungful, he grunted and passed it to Lewis.
He filled his lungs and burst into a fit of coughing. The smoke tasted sweet with just a hint of licorice. Man-from-the-River laughed and motioned for him to try again. He did.
They passed it back and forth for half an hour, each lungful stretching at Lewis’ perceptions. The room began to vibrate slightly. It pulsated like a great beating heart. He could hear the rasp of his beard growing, could see the blood racing beneath Man-from-the-River’s skin. Each time he moved, his surroundings moved with him. Finally, when the cigar was nothing but a glowing stub, Man-from-the-River re-opened their wounds, mingled their blood again, and waved Lewis to the bedroll.
He fell into it like it was the deepest of rivers.
Then, he swam.
*
Images crowded his eyes, fleeting pictures that moved across a window set in the side of an ornate wooden box. He heard sounds, too, but they were far away. He sat in a strange chair, reclined in front of the box, drinking a weak beer from a light but somehow metal can.
WHOMP.
He saw a low black carriage without horses, surrounded by strangely dressed men. A man sitting in back with a woman suddenly jerked then slumped over.
WHOMP.
He saw a large metal box-like something that settled down from the sky. Men holding strange rifles, wearing green uniforms and helmets, scrambled from it into a jungle.
WHOMP.
He saw a man-shaped creature jump from a ladder onto a dusty, barren landscape, heard a crackling voice talk about small steps and giant leaps.
WHOMP.
He saw the flag of the United States, burning in the hands of a wild-haired, wild-eyed youth, and realized the handful of stars had become a crowded field.
WHOMP.
Suddenly, Lewis was somewhere else — a room crowded with young people dressed strangely. He stood behind a lectern, a stick of chalk held tightly in his hand. In front of him lay an open book. His own face stared back at him from one of the pages. Clark’s face looked out from the other.
WHOMP.
The scene changed again to the comfortable chair and the window-box.
A black man in a suit led a mob of other blacks on a march through streets that looked vaguely familiar.
WHOMP.
“Miss, you’d better look at that note,” he heard himself say in a voice not his own. “I have a bomb.” He sat in a less comfortable, narrow seat with a briefcase on his lap. He opened it slightly, showing the indecently dressed woman a bundle of red sticks and wires. He sat in a tunnel-like corridor with humming in his ears. The other chairs around him, row on row from one end of the tube to another, were nearly empty. When he saw the windows, he looked out the one closest.
The first thing he saw was his reflection, also not his own. Instead, Man-from-the-River, thirty years younger, with short dark hair and dark skin, eyes hidden behind dark glasses.
The second thing he saw was the ocean of darkness above and below. He was flying.
WHOMP.
Now, weighed down by a pack and satchel, he stood by an open door and stairs leading down into the sky. Wind howled and tore at him. Outside, nothing but darkness and cold awaited him. A disembodied voice crackled near him: “Is everything okay back there, Mr. Cooper?”
“No,” he said and jumped into the storm.
He fell faster and faster, eyes forced open, until something snapped and billowed. Something like the hand of an almighty, saving god jerked him upward, threatening to rip him asunder. A moment of pain, then he floated on the air. Lightning flashed. Frozen rain pelted. Above him, a metal bird rumbled away.
Below him, somewhere lost in a November night, a river awaited. Time opened its mouth and swallowed him whole.
Lewis slept.
“I was a teacher, before.”
Lewis opened his eyes, forced them wide against the room’s threatened collapse. A sharp pain lanced the front of his head and his mouth tasted like dry ashes. Man-from-the-River sat slouched in the corner, dark glasses bouncing back the flickering fire.
Lewis stretched and sat up as quickly as his head allowed. “You speak English?”
The old man chuckled. “Sometimes. How do you think JFK learned it?” JFK . . . John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Lewis realized. “Now that was a goddamn shame,” Man-from-the-River said. “Oswald could have never pulled it off alone.”
Lewis didn’t know what to say. A dozen questions danced in his brain.
“Yes,” the old man continued, “Teaching history, you see the unlikely, accidental heroes and the true ones. You were a true one, Meriwether Lewis, and one of my favorites. The tragedy is that you never saw it. And me? Well, I was never a hero . . . just a guy who wanted to be part of history, a guy tired of talking about it all the time.” He nodded at the green papers overhead. “I suppose somewhere up there people still talk about both of us, too. Movies, books . . . God knows what else.” He laughed and it became a wet cough.
Lewis shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Man-from-the-River waved a hand and his outstretched fingers caught the smoke and dispersed it in gray tendrils. “You don’t have to, Captain Lewis.”
“Where do you come from?”
The old man coughed again. “Someplace I’ll never see again.” He pulled off the spectacles. He chuckled and then sang in a quiet voice: “We’ve all come to look for America.”
Lewis leaned forward. “The United States of America? Tell me, I beg you, what you know?”
“Jefferson sent you. Your Great Father, right?”
He nodded. “Yes. The scrip . . . it’s from our future, isn’t it?” Lewis swallowed back a sudden queasiness in his stomach. “You . . . you are from our future, too.”
Man-from-the-River smiled. “What do you really want to know Meriwether? You’ve seen everything in the dream-waters. You know the Union shall prevail. Oh, they’ll kill Abraham, Martin and John. Bobby, too. There will be wars and rumors of war. There will be peace and rumors of peace.” He paused. “What do you really want to know, Meriwether?”
Sadness sprung into his throat. Water pried at his eyes. He’d held it back long enough, denied it long enough. Whatever squeezed his heart also muttered that his one moment of true honesty was upon him here in this lean-to, thousands of miles from home. Lewis choked, his voice a whisper. “But,” he asked, “Will I prevail?”
Man-from-the-River looked away. “I am an old man. My remaining days are few and I have waited years for your arrival. Stay with me and I will teach you to swim the dream-waters alone. In time they will wash your sorrows as they have washed mine and those who came before me.”
Yes, he thought. For years he’d wrestled his demon. He could stay; he could find some kind of peace here, away from the world. There truly was medicine in this place, with this old man. But duty nudged him. “Sir, I can not.” Lewis’s voice shook. “And you have not answered my question.”
Man-from-the-River looked at him. Their eyes locked. “You will survive your expedition. You will be hailed a hero.”
Lewis held his stare. “That is not what I mean.”
“You are no coward. You are strong and hard to die. Remember those words well.”
“And my melancholia?” A tear leaked out. “I fear sometimes it may be the end of me.”
Man-from-the-River said nothing. Lewis waited but knew he had his answer. The knowing somehow gentled him. Hours crawled and Lewis drifted off again. He awoke with John Fitzgerald Kennedy gently shaking him.
The native pointed to a still, slumped figure. “He swims the deepest dream-waters now.”
Lewis stayed to help build the pyre. Man-from-the-River had left detailed instructions with John and they carried them out. He resisted the strong urge to snatch one of the green papers, the scrip of a far-away time. Instead, they packed them into a battered satchel and placed them onto Man-from-the-River’s naked chest.
Not Man-from-the-River, Lewis thought, but Man-from-the-Sky . . . Man-from-Tomorrow.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy lit the pyre and the kindling crackled to life despite the fine morning rain. “He wished for you to stay. He spoke often of you. He waited for your coming with great anticipation.”
Lewis nodded, lost in thought. Soon, he would head south and find his small group of men. They would meet up with Clark and the others on the Columbia, wait out the winter on that western shore and eventually turn homeward. What would he tell his President and friend? How would he tell this part of his journey? Or should he tell it at all?
The fire grew and ashes lifted from the burning satchel like gray butterflies suddenly freed.
Lewis sipped his brandy and watched the dancing flames in Jefferson’s hearth. Every flame now a pyre. Every ash, a question he knew he could not answer honestly.
“Missouri will suit you well,” the President said with a smile. “Governor Lewis.” He raised his glass and Lewis did the same.
“Thank you, Sir.”
“Anything for a hero of the Republic.”
There was an endless march of parades and speeches and parties. Attentions from the highest of society and huzzahs from the basest. Lewis lived in a whirlwind frenzy.
Jefferson stood and went to a high shelf. He reached for a large book, opened it, and removed the familiar green scrap of paper from its pages. He held it in his hands. “What of our other matter, Meriwether?” the President asked.
Lewis had thought long on what to say. He’d waited politely for weeks, expecting the question to come at any time. He cleared his voice.
“I . . . I found nothing, Mr. President.”
Jefferson remained silent, waiting for Lewis to elaborate.
“I did inquire. This medicine man – Man-from-the-River they called him – he died a year earlier of the pox, I’m afraid.”
Jefferson sighed, turning the scrip over again. “Perhaps a clever hoax then,” he said. “Still, wouldn’t it be something to know. To really know.”
Lewis closed his eyes. The brandy, the warm fire, wrapped him tight. Behind his eyes, despair lay at arm’s length, appeased for now. “To know what, Sir?”
Jefferson placed the scrip in the book, closed it and replaced it on the shelf. He smiled, his voice suddenly merry. “How it all turns out, of course. Our great experiment in Democracy.”
Lewis opened his mouth to speak, shut it, opened it again. “But . . . ”
“Yes?”
His words tumbled like the waters in a hundred rivers he had crossed over the past few years. “But if we could know, Sir, exactly how it would all come out. If we could know for certain that we either would or would not prevail in whatever task we had set our hands to do . . . would it change anything? If we knew success was guaranteed, could that not lead to risks that might undo our own future?” Jefferson studied Lewis, caught in his words. “And if we knew that our failure was certain, wouldn’t we still do what needs doing? In faith and in hope for something better?” He leaned forward now, feeling the heat in his face. The darkness stirred inside of him at the question, a cold lover rolling over in her sleep. “If you knew that you would fail, Sir, wouldn’t you still try?”
Jefferson laughed. “Of course.” He clapped Lewis’s shoulder. “My old friend, I think perhaps you’re a bit drunk.”
Lewis smiled. “Perhaps a bit.”
“I’ll find us coffee.”
Lewis again closed his eyes as his friend and President left the room. Sleep fell over him like a canopy of green paper bills. Images flashed against the inside of his eyelids. A door opening onto the sky. This time, no storm clawed and no darkness blinded him, but somewhere up ahead both waited. One day, he knew, they would take him. But not now. Instead, a clear, warm night met his leap. He spread his arms in supplication. Below, a river wound its way west throwing back moonlight and starshine, calling him towards some rendezvous he could not name. Once again, time swallowed him.
And he dreamed he was flying.