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Authors: Mark London Williams
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bites.
The bites have made everybody crazy at one
time or another. Sometimes we can’t even sleep, and Seaman’s even
been driven to howling. The “skeeters” as Kentuck calls ‘em, have
gotten him all over his nose and ears.
“Hey, young Eli, grab a hold of this — we’re
gonna push over to shore and get out for awhile.”
It’s York. I’m on the keelboat now, and he
wants me to grab one of the long poles that are used for what they
like to call steering. Basically, all you do is push against the
bottom of the river and send the boat in whatever direction you
want to go. The poles are handy when the boat is stuck near a
sandbar, but they only work when the water is shallow enough.
I wonder what these guys would think about a
digital system that let you steer by getting signals back from
satellites?
“We’re gonna look for some game for
tonight,” York tells me, as I step over with him to the boat’s
starboard side —that’s a sailing word I learned from Clark that
means the right side, if you’re looking toward the front. And it’s
the side closest to shore right now.
When York says “game,” he’s talking about
deer or elk or maybe one of those buffalo that we’ve been
spotting.
‘”Course, you’re lookin’ like maybe some
other things out here consider you the game.” He’s pointing
to my arms, which are covered in mosquito bites.
At first, when the ticks and skeeters
started to chew me up, I got really scared. What about West Nile
virus? Dengue fever? River blindness?
What about slow pox?
But none of the guys had ever heard of those
things. Then I remembered that in the days before global warming,
diseases all had separate homes — the shifting weather hadn’t let
them spread all over the place yet, like in 2019.
If anyone here in the Corps of Discovery
knew what was coming, would they do anything different to change
it? Head it off?
Could they do anything? Can the future
really be changed?
Isn’t that why the government and Mr. Howe
want to turn me into Danger Boy, so that, somehow, the future can
be more controllable?
“I like the quiet out here,” York says. “ I
like bein’ away from most people. What about you?”
Since there are about seven billion people
living on the earth I come from, I’ve never seriously considered
the question.
In my time, it’s hard to get away — from
people, or viruses.
“ Castor! Castor! ”
York and I are pulling the boat to shore and
one of the men who’s gone ahead is holding up a dead beaver by its
tail, pretty happy about his kill.
“ Castor! ”
It’s Pierre Cruzatte, one of the main
boatmen. He’s half French and half Indian. Besides hunting and
steering boats, he plays his fiddle a lot at night by the campfire.
I had never heard of any of the songs he plays. I wonder if he
makes them up.
Maybe he’ll make one up tonight about dead
beavers. Castor mort . See, I picked up a few words. Cruzatte
likes to talk a lot during the day. He also seems to only see well
out of one of his eyes, but he’s still able to steer the boats
pretty well.
As for castor mort , well, there’s a
lot of mort in my time, at least when it comes to animals.
There aren’t too many beaver or buffalo or bear left out in the
once-wild parts. People and bugs have mostly taken over. I never
even thought about it much until I wound up here.
The problem with all these animals now,
though — like that beaver that’s been caught and killed — is that
they’re going to expect me to eat it later. And when I start to
think about it, my stomach starts acting funny.
“Hey, where are you—?”
But I don’t have time to answer York’s
question. As soon as we’re close to shore, I jump out and run into
the bushes.
Most of what they have to eat here is meat —
any kind of meat. They hunt it, skin it and stew it. Pretty much
anything they can get their hands on: deer, birds, snakes, all
kinds of fish, gophers (I think), and, lately, more buffalo.
I
The bites have made everybody crazy at one
time or another. Sometimes we can’t even sleep, and Seaman’s even
been driven to howling. The “skeeters” as Kentuck calls ‘em, have
gotten him all over his nose and ears.
“Hey, young Eli, grab a hold of this — we’re
gonna push over to shore and get out for awhile.”
It’s York. I’m on the keelboat now, and he
wants me to grab one of the long poles that are used for what they
like to call steering. Basically, all you do is push against the
bottom of the river and send the boat in whatever direction you
want to go. The poles are handy when the boat is stuck near a
sandbar, but they only work when the water is shallow enough.
I wonder what these guys would think about a
digital system that let you steer by getting signals back from
satellites?
“We’re gonna look for some game for
tonight,” York tells me, as I step over with him to the boat’s
starboard side —that’s a sailing word I learned from Clark that
means the right side, if you’re looking toward the front. And it’s
the side closest to shore right now.
When York says “game,” he’s talking about
deer or elk or maybe one of those buffalo that we’ve been
spotting.
‘”Course, you’re lookin’ like maybe some
other things out here consider you the game.” He’s pointing
to my arms, which are covered in mosquito bites.
At first, when the ticks and skeeters
started to chew me up, I got really scared. What about West Nile
virus? Dengue fever? River blindness?
What about slow pox?
But none of the guys had ever heard of those
things. Then I remembered that in the days before global warming,
diseases all had separate homes — the shifting weather hadn’t let
them spread all over the place yet, like in 2019.
If anyone here in the Corps of Discovery
knew what was coming, would they do anything different to change
it? Head it off?
Could they do anything? Can the future
really be changed?
Isn’t that why the government and Mr. Howe
want to turn me into Danger Boy, so that, somehow, the future can
be more controllable?
“I like the quiet out here,” York says. “ I
like bein’ away from most people. What about you?”
Since there are about seven billion people
living on the earth I come from, I’ve never seriously considered
the question.
In my time, it’s hard to get away — from
people, or viruses.
“ Castor! Castor! ”
York and I are pulling the boat to shore and
one of the men who’s gone ahead is holding up a dead beaver by its
tail, pretty happy about his kill.
“ Castor! ”
It’s Pierre Cruzatte, one of the main
boatmen. He’s half French and half Indian. Besides hunting and
steering boats, he plays his fiddle a lot at night by the campfire.
I had never heard of any of the songs he plays. I wonder if he
makes them up.
Maybe he’ll make one up tonight about dead
beavers. Castor mort . See, I picked up a few words. Cruzatte
likes to talk a lot during the day. He also seems to only see well
out of one of his eyes, but he’s still able to steer the boats
pretty well.
As for castor mort , well, there’s a
lot of mort in my time, at least when it comes to animals.
There aren’t too many beaver or buffalo or bear left out in the
once-wild parts. People and bugs have mostly taken over. I never
even thought about it much until I wound up here.
The problem with all these animals now,
though — like that beaver that’s been caught and killed — is that
they’re going to expect me to eat it later. And when I start to
think about it, my stomach starts acting funny.
“Hey, where are you—?”
But I don’t have time to answer York’s
question. As soon as we’re close to shore, I jump out and run into
the bushes.
Most of what they have to eat here is meat —
any kind of meat. They hunt it, skin it and stew it. Pretty much
anything they can get their hands on: deer, birds, snakes, all
kinds of fish, gophers (I think), and, lately, more buffalo.
I
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