Creation by Katherine Govier Page A

in its open air under his buffalo robe, alone and far from home. His daughters died. Lucy despaired of him and took a job as a governess. Her employer refused to have Audubon on the property. His enemies derided him as a ne’ er-do-well who had abandoned his wife and children for a dream of twitterers in the bushes.
    But he was not such a man. Even his father, for all his sins, did not abandon his children.
    He found a job teaching painting at a girls’ school in Pennsylvania. But he was not born to nurture the talents of others. As soon as he had money saved he headed up to Lake Ontario for the fall migration. He bought a little skiff and there, rowing alone, watching the flocks of birds muster and rumble up to wing southward, he understood at last the purpose of his existence: it was to create this giant book, a folio of every single bird of North America. The paintings would be engraved, and printed, and coloured. He would sell it by subscription. Fired with his idea, he sold his skiff for passage down the Ohio, sleeping on deck in his buckskins. At Cincinnati creditors chased him out of town. He begged fifteen dollars for a fare and wrote to Lucy. She sent him a message: if this is your life’s work, be on your way. Mine must be to keep the rest of us alive. You have my faith, she said, but that is all you’ll get from me, because my little savings are all I have left.
    The artist’s wife. Unsung and true as a sword.
    He knew by the passion of her anger that the door was still open. He found his way to her and told her how the great book of his life and of the times they lived in and of the lives of birds needed only a dozen of his years, and her complete faith. When they parted he had the rest of her savings. He presented himself to Nolte and, armed with introductions, sailed for Europe.

    From America to England, for the business of publishing, and back to America for the birds he has gone, stringing countries like beads on his life thread. Six crossings in as many years. But a seafaring man? Never. These crossings are his martyrdoms: on the sea there are wars and pirates, doldrums and tempests beyond his control.
    What is his world then, if not ships and water?
    It is a world of shores and arrivals. Of visions carried over water. Of a dream in a metal tube sent halfway across the globe. The sea is a gap to be spanned. It is the mother of his invention and the birthplace of his tales. In Europe he hobnobs with princes, while in America he is known as a bankrupt and a charlatan. He plays the two worlds against each other, acting the frontiersman in Europe, and the aristocrat on the fringes of civilization. He turns up in his fox-tailed fur hat at the Louvre, but in the wilds of America, he hints that he is the lost dauphin.
    But he wearies of stories now, especially his own.
    A ND ONE MORE THING the captain said. Dream in reverse .
    Here he is not mistaken.
    Yes. Dreams of heat and sun, dreams of tenderness. Of the scent of roses. And a small woman’s heart-shaped face. What would the captain say if Audubon were to tell him: I love a woman not my wife.
    The sort of men we are .
    T HE YOUNG GENTLEMEN RETURN. They clatter down the ladder with their baskets.
    “Look! Six little horned shore larks, two living, four shot.”
    “We watched them fly,” cries Johnny. “They spiral up in the air hundreds of feet, and tumble back down. Then up they go again, for the joy of it, as if in their own glass chimney, singing as they rise. Over and over, they did it.”
    “I wish I’d seen it!” says Audubon. “How did you get them?”
    “We found two young in a burrow under a bush; the male was nearby and Tom got him.”
    “Were they sitting right in the bush, nesting there?”

    “They were all on the ground, hiding.”
    The male is horned and masked with a black bib. The female is dun brown all over, and shows less white. The young are plump and downy.
    The deal table becomes a surgery. Shattuck and Ingalls take the