The Expeditions Read Online Free PDF Page B

the sun lay half-hidden behind the western hills, orange and scarlet streamers rising in the chalky sky. He watched the woman trudge down the cider mill road, a column of dust trailing her like a phantom. When she’d disappeared he returned to the parsonage and took off his jacket and brogans, sat at his bedroom desk with the folded letter before him. Only when the light had failed completely and he was surrounded by darkness did he think to light a lamp.
             
    He woke shivering in the moonlit dark. His clothes felt greasy against his skin and his forehead was damp with sweat, even in the night’s chill. Reverend Stone groped atop the side table for a phosphorus match, lit a candle stub and watched the room flicker into existence. He rose from his bed and shut the half-open window, dulling the crickets’ creaking, then sat at the desk with his son’s letter and a tin of McTeague’s Patent Toothache Medication. He placed four brown tablets under his tongue. He set the tin on the desk, beside the letter and whale-oil lamp. Tin, letter, lamp—the arrangement seemed somehow ceremonial, like objects on an altar. The tablets tasted of bitter herbs.
    He removed his collar and unbuttoned his shirt then waited for the numbness to creep over him. When it did, the feeling was like a velvet mask against his face, a tickle in his lips and eyelids that slowed his blood to a thick trickle. He felt deliciously warm. He fumbled four more tablets from the tin and placed them under his tongue and leaned his head back and closed his eyes.
    When the surge quieted Reverend Stone picked up the letter and read the date: May 30, 1844. Ten days previous. His son was likely in the far Northwest by now, amid foreigners and half-naked savages. The minister tried to recall Elisha as a very young child, before he’d grown solemn and distant, but he could summon only certain details. The mud-colored hair. The clear blue eyes, his mother’s eyes. As a child he’d been exuberant, delighted by life, but as he’d grown older this quality had vanished. What was the pitch of his voice? In his mind’s eye Elisha spoke, but the voice belonged to Edson.
    Reverend Stone read the letter again, then placed it in a drawer. A moth fluttered near the candle, its wingbeats a soft patter. Outside the crickets’ song grew louder, as if in alarm. The minister took up the candle and a whiff of smoke caught his throat, and he coughed until his chest pinched and the rasp turned wet and thready. Without looking at his palm he wiped it on his trousers. He shuffled through the kitchen to the back door and stepped out into the restless night, waiting for the dark to coalesce into familiar forms: the squat chicken house, the pump like a stooped old man, the sharp roof of the privy. To the east, Newell was asleep, its men and women dreaming of wealth and distant lands. Good people, he thought. We are all good people, absurd and lovely. We are all God’s children. Reverend Stone understood suddenly that he must leave Newell and go to his son, to tell the boy about his mother’s death. The notion pierced him.
    He heard a rough scratch, like a boot scuffing pebbles. The sound paused then resumed, quickening to a steady pace. Wingbeats burst from the chicken house. Beside the house, a pair of brilliant eyes flashed then disappeared. The fox. Reverend Stone stood motionless, listening to the chickens’ uneasy warble. He backed through the doorway and padded to the lumber closet, and from the back of the closet door he lifted an antique Springfield flintlock and tattered shot bag. He loaded powder and ball and primer then moved back through the kitchen and stepped out onto the wet grass. The scratching quickened and paused, quickened and paused. Reverend Stone glimpsed a smudge of motion and he raised the musket to his shoulder and sighted down the barrel at what he thought was the fox. The scratching stopped. Sweat rose on the minister’s forehead and hands