Heaven & Earth Holding Company

Undiscovering America

3 Undiscovering America Somewhere today, on some ethereal preserve, all the old explorers gather in Manhattan for one of those trendy group photo shoots, some meet-and-greet publicity tour for the History Channel. They clank onto a loading dock with their breastplates and swords, navigating among each other, bumptious, grumpy in their puffy pantaloons, their helmets curved like half-moons. They shake hands all around, gruffly, line up roughly alphabetically: Balboa pressing forward, Cabot saying cheese, Columbus, of course, Coronado, Cortez, dodgy DeSoto, Vasco da Gama and old Ponce de Leon, nervous Magellan in his Arrow shirt, black-hatted Father Marquette, his cellmate, Joliet, coon-skinned Zebulon Pike peeking out, Pocahontas holding hands with John Smith, Sacajawea, smiling, like the Land O’Lakes maiden, between Lewis and Clark, and lonely Vespucci at the end of the row, mumbling to himself his mother’s regrets, Amerigo, Amerigo. After the shoot is over, Francisco Pizarro, the group spokesperson, announces that they are leaving America, all of them, going back, going home, sailing backward down the Hudson for the Southeast Passage, in their tall ships, the Golden Hind, Nina, Pinta, Santa Maria, past the Port Authority, the Statue of Liberty, past the Hamptons, past the Fountain of Youth, the Seven Lost Cities of Gold, past the Pathfinders and Explorers backed up on their way to the mall, till their ships look like toy boats, toy boats, till their ships are so small, till they sit at the edge of the world, till they fall, saying this is not what we were looking for, this is not it at all. ...