Private Life (55 page)

on. Every agency is overwhelmed by the war effort. At first I couldn't get in.... He shifted

in his chair. No one in Knox's office knew who ... Then he coughed and said, Well, my

dear, they asked me ...Just then she was genuinely curious. Go on.They asked me to stay

away. They ... He began clearing his throat over and over.Well?Someone gave an order

that no guard should admit me to any secure building in the capital, and if I tried to gain

admission, I was to be arrested. He fell silent, trying to leave it at this.Did you get

arrested?More silence, then, One time.Andrew!I didn't mean to argue with the young

man, but he was very disrespectful.What happened then?I spent a night in jail. In the

drunk tank, because they seem not to have had anywhere else to put me. It was rather

interesting. My theory is that drunkenness is actually a sort of allergic reaction--She said,

Stop.He took a deep breath. I paid a fine. Five hundred dollars. But then he fell silent

again.She stared at him. You should know that they did act on the one report, and they

threw Mrs. Kimura in jail and interrogated her and now she's dying of pneumonia she

contracted there. The whole thing makes me both angry and sick.Oh dear.Oh dear?I

didn't mean for that to happen.What did you mean to happen?I thought maybe they would

be sent to live with relatives in Japan. You said that the older boy had gotten married-Andrew, they weren't spies.He smoothed his mustache and took a sip of his tea. He said,

No, of course, they weren't spies.Einstein isn't a spy.No one seems to think that he is, no.

No one seems to think that he's been to Vallejo, either. You did express doubts, my dear.

I admit that. I don't remember what you said in so many words....She said, Andrew, you

are so perennially certain of your own innocence. You have ... But even now she didn't

know how to accuse him. Finally, she said, Pete doesn't blame you. I saw him today.How

is--But I do. I blame you for ... But she stopped. He was looking at her, and she saw that

he had no way of knowing what he didn't know. She said, I should have stopped

you.Could you have? He seemed genuinely perplexed.I don't know.SHE got a note from

Naoko that Mrs. Kimura had died and that Naoko and two friends from Japantown were

being sent to a relocation camp in Arizona. Margaret sent her a box of warm clothes and

some books, hoping she would be allowed to keep them. In her note, Margaret said that

they would send her whatever she needed, no matter what. She didn't know what else to

offer. She never again heard from Pete. She wondered why she hadn't begged him to take

her to Vancouver. And she knew it was because he thought she was going to.When the

knitting ladies asked her how Andrew's trip to Washington had gone, she said that it had

been a failure.Mrs. Jones said, Well, I'm sure it was well intentioned, and we should be

grateful for that.It was not well intentioned. She kept on knitting for a few moments, then

put her work in her lap and looked around. Even Miss Jones, now Mrs. Milligan, looked

exhausted. Her husband was stationed in North Carolina for the time being, then would

be off to Germany. Mrs. Roberts had a grandson in the navy and a granddaughter in the

WAC. Mrs. Jones's husband had died in the winter. Mrs. Tillotson's youngest son was on

a submarine in the Pacific. Everyone looked as old as the hills, Margaret thought. I told

Andrew that I am going to write a book.Are you really!What about?I know you love

reading.Didn't you say your cousin wrote a book? Was it your cousin, dear?Did you

know I once saw a hanging?Good heavens!Back in Missouri. I was five. It would start

with that.Hangings weren't uncommon then, said Mrs. Roberts.My brother Lawrence

took me. He was thirteen. I can't imagine why he took a five-year-old to a public hanging.

It must have been May, so I wasn't even five, actually. There were people everywhere. I

remember sitting down on the step of the gallows and refusing to go another step. She did

remember this--her back to the gallows.You poor child!They unshackled the outlaw right

beside me, before Lawrence thought to pick me up. The sole of one of his boots had split

away, and as he went up the steps, the flapping made him stumble. It formed in her mind

as she spoke, the whole scene.What was your mother thinking?She was home having a

baby. They always said they didn't know where we had gotten to. I think my brother gave

me a couple of crab apples and a roll of bread. When the outlaw got to the top of the

steps, they took him to the center of the gallows. I think Lawrence said, That one stinks.

My bonnet must have been put on my head, because for a while I could only see boots

and white clover flattened in the grass. Then Lawrence put me on his shoulders with his

hands around my waist.The outlaw wore a red shirt. A man beside him shouted, Son,

what's your name? It was like a play.You remember all the details?In a way. In a

dreamlike way.You were five?My birthday would have been a month later. The outlaw

stood himself up a little and said, Jefferson Davis Claghorne. Don't ask me how I

remember the name.A woman next to me said, Why, he's just a boy hisself.The accent

came out of her mouth like a voice from far away.Son, you have been sentenced by the

court of this county to hang for the murder of Ezra Salley, and of Daniel Lackland. Do

you understand why you are being hanged?Our part of Missouri was heavy Rebel

territory.You have also robbed banks in Callaway County, this county, and Audrain

County.Maybe he fancied himself a member of the James gang, said Mrs. Roberts.Son,

do you have any words to say before you meet your just and fitting punishment?Now the

outlaw looked away from the other man and out at us, in the crowd. Right at me, I

thought, a little girl on her brother's shoulders. He gripped a Bible in his hand, then

dropped it, then bent to pick it up again. He looked at the Bible for a moment, then at me

again. It was like the little girl was the only one he could see in the crowd. I was. I was

the only one. But I could see everything. Two men came up behind him and lifted the

noose over his head. One of them held his shoulders, and the other one tightened the

noose so that it made his head cock to one side.Mrs. Roberts said, I sometimes think

people had no sense at all in those days.Do they have any sense now? said Mrs.

Jones.Another man came up and said something to the outlaw that I couldn't hear; then he

took the Bible out of the outlaw's hands, opened it, and put it back in his hands. And the

outlaw said, I cain't read, you know. Lord, it's true I done it.And just then, as Lawrence

was lifting me off his shoulders, the floor of the gallows fell away, and the outlaw in the

red shirt dropped toward the ground but jerked to a halt. The crowd gave off a loud noise,

not a shout or a groan, exactly, but something made of many sounds. I never heard that

sound again.Oh, my dear, said Mrs. Jones. I'm amazed that you remember it so well.I do,

said Margaret, I do remember it now that I've dared to think about it. There are so many

things that I should have dared before this.And her tone was so bitter that the other ladies

fell silent.

A Note About the Author
Jane Smiley is the author of numerous novels as well as four

works of nonfiction. She is the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, and in 2001 was inducted into

the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She received the PEN USA Lifetime

Achievement Award for Literature in 2006. She lives in northern California.

PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Copyright (c) 2010 by Jane Smiley

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division

of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited,

Toronto.

www.aaknopf.com

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random

House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Smiley, Jane.

Private life : a novel / by Jane Smiley. --1st ed.

p. cm.

eISBN: 978-0-307-59378-8

1. Officers' spouses--Fiction. 2. United States. Navy--Officers--Fiction.

3. Marriage--Fiction. 4. Psychological fiction. I. Title.

PS3569.M39P75 2010

813'.54--dc22 2009037000

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, geographic locations, places, and

incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The

author's use of names of actual persons, places, and characters is incidental to the plot,

and is not intended to change the entirely fictional character of the work.

v3.0

Table of Contents

Cover

Other Books by this Author

Title

Page

Prologue:

1942

Part One - 1883

Part Two - 1905

Part Three - 1911

Part Four - 1928

Part Five - 1937

Epilogue:

1942

A Note About the Author

Copyright