To Live Forever: An Afterlife Journey of Meriwether Lewis by Andra Watkins Page A

smoke and engine oil drifted through the air. Somebody shouted, and laughter answered, almost close enough to make out conversation. Individual voices.
    Emmaline tugged at my sleeve. “Nothing below, except this.” She held a blown-up ring, pink on one side and clear on the other.
    I looked at Jim. “Seriously? That’s all you have? No life jackets?”
    Jim shook his hairless head.
    A child’s doughnut wouldn’t save us if we got hit. If the boat sank, we’d never be able to share that flimsy thing and float long enough to find the shore. I imagined the three of us, snared on a tree branch, clinging to a toy. What a ridiculous sight we would be to whoever found us.
    If anyone found us.
    The boat lurched. Violent. Em grabbed onto me, while I wrapped one arm around the console and sunk to the floor. Jim kept to the wheel, his big hands fighting through the commotion. I locked my arm around Emmaline, just as the boat rolled sideways. We hung there, frozen above the river. Waiting for impact. Jim bent his knees into the waves, and I slid along the flooring and rammed into the side, my beat-up body between it and Emmaline.
    Our craft righted itself and surfed the barge’s wake, tossing us around the floor. With another intense shift, I lost my grip and was sucked over the side. My feet toyed with the river, and I bit my tongue and gripped the railing. The barge drowned Em’s scream.
    My body swung like a pendulum above the churning water. On the uptake, I wedged one foot over the edge and hung there until Jim’s hands steadied my foot. With traction, I was able to hoist up my other leg. When the boat leaned the other way, I fell into the cockpit beside him and Em.
    I held Em to me while the boat continued to thrash. Glass rattled, and my teeth gnashed in my head. After a minute, the boat calmed down, and everything quieted. The water fell still. My breathing matched both Em and Jim, fast and spooked.
    She pulled her head away from my stomach and looked up at me. “Are we okay, Merry? Did we make it?”
    “Yep. We sure did. This time. That was some boat work, Jim.”
    He nodded and blew out air. “A miracle is what it was.”
    I watched as the fog swirled and parted to reveal a glimpse of water. Within the hour, it would be clear enough to use a compass and head upstream. Jim took his place behind the wheel. “Fog’s lifting a little. Let me check things out before we move along.”
    “Do you think that boat was looking for me, Mister Jim?”
    “Can’t say, Em. Whether it was or no, I got to get you off this river before sunup tomorrow.”
    “Where will we be when we get there, Merry?”
    “Natchez, Mississippi.”
    I shuddered, an involuntary reaction. I wasn’t ready to walk through its gateway. To cover the miles that would carry me across my grave.
    Not yet.
    Perhaps not ever.

EIGHTEEN
    I tried to kill Lewis. He never knew.
    Maybe that’s because I always led others to carry out my desires. My evil deeds. Life was for preserving my name. For getting ahead. My reputation was on the line.
    A double agent had to be cognizant of the stakes. Head of the United States Army. A spy for Spain as Agent Thirteen. Sometimes, I forgot the rules in my zeal to stroke every master.
    When the Spanish army rode into the plains, they reminded me. I told them to intercept Lewis and Clark. Arrest them. Not kill them. But, the Spanish, they made my instructions the same thing. Sent three separate search parties into the Missouri watershed, trying to find Jefferson’s great Corps of Discovery. All because I told them to.
    Even as I sent bird claws and rocks to the President—stupid gee-gaws for an idiot man—I instructed the Spanish to annihilate his dream.
    I wrote Meriwether Lewis’s death sentence. In Spanish maps and cipher letters.
    If the Spanish army had christened me head of a search party, I would’ve found him. Oh yes. And, I would’ve stood on the sidelines while they slaughtered my nemesis.
    I would’ve kept