CHAPTER

30

 

At nine o’clock, the doors to the Interpretive Center opened and a handful of people trickled in. The receptionist, a gray-haired man with a kindly face, gave them a short speech about the center’s theater and exhibits.

Journey continued to look around. The family with the blond toddler was just ahead of them. Several elderly people had come in. A young black woman wearing shorts lagged a little behind.

Journey looked hard at the young woman. Had he seen her before?

He looked at her again. She was studying her guidebook, forehead furrowed. He turned away.

“What?” Tolman asked.

“Nothing. It’s nothing. I’m more jumpy than I realized.”

They went down a short flight of steps to the auditorium, which held eight rows of seats. The walls were stark and plain. After a few minutes, soft synthesized music filled the room and a video projection appeared on one wall.

Journey squirmed. The film was on the natural history of the area, how in the past this area had been near the Earth’s equator and part of a vast sea. The voice-over launched into a narration about the Devonian era.

There was something here. The Poet’s Penn had led here, to this spot on the Ohio River, a river that was at one time a major commercial highway. But the thought wouldn’t take shape, flitting away from him instead.

“You want to say something,” Tolman said.

They exited the auditorium and walked through the building, looking at the well-developed dioramas and graphics about the area’s history. They wound to the back of the building, and Journey stopped dead in his tracks, causing Tolman to bump into him. He stared at a graphic depicting how the river had been dammed beginning in 1866.

“Nothing’s the same,” he said.

“What?” Tolman said.

Journey didn’t answer her, jogging around the corner. They’d come full circle to the reception desk and a gift shop that sold books on the area’s history, right alongside pens and pencils and plastic boxes full of colorful rocks.

Journey leaned on the counter. The man with the kind face said, “How do you like the exhibits? Sorry the fossil beds aren’t exposed. It’s been the wettest summer we’ve had in thirty years here. Where are you folks from?”

Journey ignored the man’s question. “I’m a historian, and I’m doing some research on the area, particularly with regard to the Civil War era.”

“Oh, the Falls had quite an interesting history at that time. You know, there were Union Army posts here on the Indiana side in Clarksville, and in Jeffersonville, too. There was a real panic during the war when word came back that the Confederates were going to invade Louisville, so civilians were evacuated across the pontoon bridge to Jeffersonville. And you know what the Union Army did?” The man laughed. “They erected logs into the riverbank to look like cannon, which might fool the Confederates into thinking Jeffersonville was fortified. Maybe it worked—Louisville wasn’t ever invaded.”

Journey shook his hand from side to side. “All right … the first dam was built at the falls in 1866, right?”

“Yes, sir. Now the McAlpine Lock and Dam system—”

“But is anything here today the same as it would have been in 1865?”

“Excuse me?”

Journey gestured around the room. “This whole area. With everything that’s been done to the river, none of this is as it was then.”

The man picked at a fingernail. “I can’t say—”

Journey’s mind was racing. “What about the railroad trestle? When was it built?”

“That was 1895. I guess when you put it that way, there wouldn’t be anything just the same. Can’t expect things to be the exact way they were that long ago.”

Journey pulled at Tolman’s arm. “Come on.”

They stepped back outside. A few more clouds had rolled in, and the day had become overcast.

“What?” Tolman said. “What is it?”

Journey leaned against the railing, his back to the Ohio. “Think about this. Tell me … think in terms of 1865. How would this area around Louisville have been different from the area around Fort Washita in Indian Territory?”

“I don’t … I wasn’t a history major.”

“Think! Where was the country at that time? What was going on here? What was going on in Oklahoma?”

“I don’t … I don’t know anything about Oklahoma. Indians, I guess. The Indians were in Oklahoma. This isn’t a classroom lecture, Dr. Journey.”

“But you’re right. Fort Washita was where the first page of the Appomattox document was found. At the time Washita was built in 1842, it was the most remote outpost the U.S. Army had. It was truly the frontier. The Native people who had been brought there on the Trail of Tears from the Southeast were in the area, but there weren’t many white settlers.”

“All right, I get that.”

“But here. How would Louisville compare?”

Tolman thought for a moment. “It was more settled. You said it was a major supply point for the Union in the Civil War.”

“Exactly! It was settled. It was a city, and it was growing. It was a steamboat hub. Things were happening here, things were changing all the time.”

“But I don’t—”

“The man who wrote that document knew that Fort Washita was in the wilderness, and he knew that this was settled. He couldn’t have known what kind of growth the West would undergo after the war. Oklahoma Territory and Indian Territory didn’t merge into a state until 1907.”

Tolman looked surprised. “That’s really recent. I didn’t realize that.”

Journey nodded. “We’re a young state. But at the time of Appomattox, no one could tell what was going to happen in the West. So he felt that he could safely bury something in the ground there—he wasn’t expecting it to stay there for nearly a hundred fifty years, after all.”

Tolman began to see it. “So he wouldn’t have done the same thing here. This was a major city. But that still doesn’t tell us anything about your missing pages.”

Journey was quiet for a moment, then started toward the steep concrete steps he’d climbed earlier. There were six sets of nine steps each. At the bottom, he turned back to Tolman and said, “I’ve been thinking about this all wrong. The Poet’s Penn wasn’t to tell where another clue was. It is the clue.”

Tolman sat down on a step. “Explain.”

“He meant to lead whoever found the first page back here, back to Louisville.”

“What do you mean, back here?”

“Because he was from here. He didn’t bury anything or hide anything at the Falls of the Ohio. But this was his home base. He figured that whoever found the Fort Washita page would understand that the whole business about the poem and the river bending and the waters falling would make us understand who he was, and bring us to his hometown.”

Tolman noted his use of the word us, and smiled. “All right, I can see that. But Louisville’s a big city—how do we find someone from 1865 who would have gotten close to Grant and Lee?”

“No, the answer’s right in front of us: The Poet’s Penn.”

“The poet?”

Journey sat down beside Tolman. “No. Not him. The writing style doesn’t match. His writing was very vivid, lots of imagery and description.” He folded his hands together. Far off to their left, a whistle sounded as a freight train started across the trestle.

“I keep thinking of something Sandra told me,” Journey said.

“Wait a minute … Sandra. Who’s Sandra?”

Journey hesitated a moment. Tolman noticed the hesitation. “Sandra Kelly. A coworker of mine,” Journey said. “A friend.”

Tolman nodded and said nothing, watching the subtle shift in his dark eyes.

“When she read the first page of the Washita document, she said it sounded … what was the word she used?” He gazed off across the river at Kentucky, then looked at Tolman again, as if he were in a trance. “Businesslike. She said it sounded businesslike.”

He took his backpack off his shoulder, unzipped it, and pulled out the legal pad where he’d made notes to himself. His slanting cursive filled margins. He slapped the pad against his knee. “This is who we should be looking for.”

“Who?”

“David Stanton published The Poet’s Penn for six years. His money ran out in 1864. But for that entire six years, the journal was funded by a Louisville banker.”

“Holy shit,” Tolman whispered, then in a louder tone, said, “A banker. He would have had money.”

Journey nodded. “It makes a lot more sense for him to get close to Grant and Lee than an itinerant poet.” He thumped the pad again. “This is who we need to find. His name was Samuel B. Williams.”