the other. Rita sat knock-kneed, slump-shouldered, arms crossed over her breasts, like a girl at camp on the first day. A great mystery about how to be happily female was closed to her. Wasn’t everyone afraid of these strange women? Didn’t anyone realize the bad things that happened when they didn’t like you? He wished Emily would come over and talk to her, but they always used man- rather than zone-coverage when socializing. “So . . . are you writing a book or something?” she asked.
“You could say that. It’s about Lewis and Clark. Actually Lewis, mainly. But somehow Mary Shelley and Washington Irving and a whole bunch of people have gotten into it.”
She nodded, drinking. They already knew each other, somehow. She looked over at Pablo, because he was the real mystery, Bill could tell, the true other, even though she showered naked with him and ate with him and picked out dining room chairs with him. And yet this stranger seemed so familiar to her, like they’d known each other before. So what was love? You struggled so hard to know the beloved. And then some weird guy you talked to for five minutes finally got you to relax. Her brow worked on this mystery. She needed to get it worked out before she and Pablo went ahead with this baby they’d been talking about, not after. And that was Bill’s generation, all right, always figuring it out ahead of time. For his own parents, there’d been nothing to figure out.
As for the captains, they were told, basically, Pull this off, and you’ll enjoy happiness, prosperity, and honor forever after. The sky was the limit, thanks to the Revolution. In fact, Lewis was given an unlimited letter of credit, carte blanche, to finance his expedition. He took his first step westward on 30 August 1803. And almost killed a woman that same day. That Lewis, the historical Lewis, was also a soft touch with the ladies, mentioning the beautiful wives of friends met along the way, and the striking looks of Pierre Chouteau’s half-breed daughter. Practically a feminist ideal, at least for the day, Lewis noted how women were treated among each tribe, and cited the worship of male and female gods, both Manitou and Michimanitou.
When Bill got up, Rita stood and came along with him and was smiling. Emily was already well into her second glass of wine. She’d wanted to come but didn’t like being parted from Henry just now. And Lewis didn’t know what to do for her exactly, but no man was a prophet in his own country. So he came up behind her and put his arms around her shoulders and she held them, and looked out into the undulating current of the river, unctuously snaking away and away oh so endlessly. “I just know he hasn’t eaten,” she said. “Some mother. I can’t even feed my own child.”
“He’ll eat when he’s ready,” Bill said.
“He’s starving before my eyes! My little boy is hungry and where am I? Drunk, and about to eat a steak.”
“It’s got to be some girl,” he said. “Cherchez la femme.”
“Did he tell you that?” She stiffened slightly in his arms.
“No, but doesn’t it always come down to that? I mean, doesn’t it?”
She shook her head, whipping his face with her brown hair, and worked loose, pushing him away. “No, I don’t like you anymore,” she said. “Go away.”
So he watched Russ turn the meat and poke the potatoes. It got dark. Jasmine and Leslie did some kissing up against a tree.
As a young man, Lewis had surely had conquests, a few. But after the expedition, he had no luck with women. And even the deepest research into these liaisons went nowhere, and uncovered nothing. Clark was always trying to set him up, but he fended off most of it, and started calling himself a “widower with rispect to love,” whatever that meant. Nothing, post-expedition, came easily to Lewis. Not like it did for Clark with his new bride and family, a house in St. Louis, a position as superintendent of Indian affairs, and promotion to brigadier general.
They gathered around the fire with their glasses, to eat the steaks withtruffle butter that Russ doled out from a margarine tub, and roasted-rosemary potatoes, and one hell of a nice trifle for dessert: custard, bananas, strawberries, walnuts, cognac, all layered in a dark-chocolate cup you could pick up and eat. Emily ate barely half her steak, and mulled one bite of potato in her mouth, then spat it into her napkin. But nobody turned down a refill on wine. Soon her eyes were on fire from the inside, and a high basted color came into her face. She laid her head on his thigh and gazed into the fire.
“Didn’t they eat a lot of dog on the trail?” Leslie asked.
“Lewis preferred it to anything, but Clark wouldn’t touch it,” he said. “They were hungry in the winter. One time, they ate their candles. Another time, starving dogs crawled into camp and ate up their moccasins.”
“I know it’s supposed to be a proud moment, or whatever, but I find the whole thing kind of sad,” Rita said.
“I agree. Like with the buffalo and everything,” Jasmine said. “How they were all gone in just a few years.”
“No, I mean everything about it,” Rita said. “Every last thing.”
“I bet they got a lot of action on the trail,” Pablo said.
“If the captains did, somebody cut it from the accounts,” he said. “The men hooked up frequently with the native women and that was treated as no big deal. Except for this one time, when somebody’s husband caught his wife coming in late and stabbed her three times.”
“Sounds like a big deal,” Emily said.
“True,” he said. “But don’t some diplomatic practices do terrible violence to the individuals involved?”
Jasmine, who was tough, nodded matter-of-factly. Of course, women were generally tough now, in the new century, and had few illusions. The male-dominated power structure was toppling more easily than expected. Men were letting women into everything now, pulling back every curtain sort of sheepishly to reveal . . . ta-da! . . . nothing much, a box of Playboys, a few French ticklers they’d bought one time at a truck stop. Surprise. No dripping female corpses hanging from the rafters. Oh well.
Russ topped up their wine. Emily’s breathing on Lewis’s thigh was causing a slow-glowing tumescence to develop. Pablo gave Rita a back rub as she sat with her forehead on her knees, and she was groaning.
“Lewis killed himself, didn’t he?” Leslie said, with her sort of bulging eyes on his, an anxious expression. “Do I remember that or am I making it up?”
“That’s tragic,” Rita said, with eyes closed to better feel Pablo’s hands.
“Please. That’s not tragic. Tragic is wringing hands and tearing clothes,” Pablo said. “Tragic is everybody laid out dead at the end on a bloody stage.”
In the firelight, his face was almost medieval, bearded, wild-eyed and monk-like.
“Maybe tragedy isn’t that obvious now,” Bill said. “Maybe it’s quieter and it hides better.”
“A busful of kids going over a cliff,” Rita said. “That’s tragic.”
“That’s horrible,” Bill said. “It’s a catastrophe and a disaster, but is it tragedy? Does it show agency on the part of the hero?”
“It does if it’s your kid on the bus,” Emily said quietly.
“But traditionally, the hero has to choose death,” he said. “And in fidelity to something bigger than
