Creation Read Online Free Page B

the last Audubon heard of him, he was on his way to making another.
    There may be few roads in America but there is a skein of names connecting men to men. The high rub shoulders with the low. The famous make their way through crowds and wilderness alike, to fetch up at humble homesteads. Only this year Daniel Webster brought him a brace of ducks to be painted. He and Lucy encountered the great General Clark, who with Meriweather Lewis were thefirst Americans to make the crossing west to the Pacific, resting in his wheelchair on his sister’s estate near Louisville. George Keats, brother of the poet John, came to Kentucky with money to invest — but Audubon does not like to think of it: Keats is another man whose debt he is in. Why, Lucy herself has links to the English intelligentsia; her family doctor in England was Erasmus, the grandfather of Charles Darwin the scientist. Everyone of significance has connections, and some people of no significance have them, and some, like himself, invent them.
    He tells himself there should be no difficulty tonight, on shipboard, in an old acquaintance conjured. Yet he feels cornered and it seems as if the cold sinks deeper into his spine.
    “We’re a long way north of New Orleans. I do not know this Gulf. But you do, then.”
    “Aye. The Gulf, the Grand Banks, and all the way down north to the Labrador.”
    “Down north?”
    “Down north. Up south. It’s how we say it here. They say it’s on account of the maps the Portugee had when they first come for the cod. They say north down’s the way the ancients drew their maps. Or maybe not. Maybe it was just upside down.”
    Godwin moves away and is gone into darkness.
    This is not inspiring Audubon’s confidence.
    T HE MOONLIGHT DISAPPEARS and the night goes on and on, black and blacker. The singing is over. The sea briefly gives back a star’s beam, and slops against the sides of the schooner. The mast creaks. The damp salt smell rises into his nostrils. It is quiet.
    The bird’s eye is open. Audubon’s eyes are shut. He puts his thumb under the bird’s neck and his forefinger on its crown, and strokes its feathers. It responds by cawing and jumping off his hand. Gone.
    “Goodnight, Anonyme,” he says.
    He wants to sleep. But first he must speak to Lucy. He speaks to her each night before bed. He has done this in Edinburgh and Liverpool, in the Florida Everglades, wherever he has travelled. He willdo it in Labrador as well. He speaks aloud as is his habit, and only the raven and the tar on the nightwatch hear.
    “Lucy,” he says. “My dearest friend and one true companion, my heart’s solace, it is cold and I am afraid. Were I a bird I could escape this place and come to you. Instead I stretch my arms to reach you in the dark. But no. The Ripley is hundreds of miles from you, from anywhere. And I must tell you a strange thing: our pilot was a bodyguard for Nolte —”
    The ship turns at her anchor. The stars reel in and out of cloud. The rocks, when struck by a bit of moonlight, glistern. There is a scuffle down below as the young gentlemen tumble into their hammocks. The mast creaks, and the ropes rub against the timbers. He will sleep on deck.
    “Anonyme?”
    A caw from a coil of ropes gives his whereabouts. Audubon gets to his feet, wrapped in his buffalo robe, and looks from shore to islands and back. Earth here looks as treacherous as water. When they want to go on shore, how will they walk?
    Will he die here?
    No. He cannot.
    If he dies, would the Work then be completed by his helpers, his family — his rivals, even? No, he must finish.
    On the northern horizon, he notices a great swipe of shimmering pale green, a curtain that seems almost to hum.
    Is it some enormous migration of birds? He hugs the robe around his shoulders. Dear God, is it the future, written in wings? Can he read it? It is not so strange a thing, to read the future in what your eyes take in.
    H E CAME TO LABRADOR ALMOST YOUNG . He will leave