The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton (32 page)

Another man said, "Laban, here, and myself, we come out and shot a few times into the air, but it was just for show. We couldn’t do a thing. There was ten men, anyway, and they was far gone into their cups."

Laban sighed. "I had me the best team of mules I ever had here. Just bought ’em a couple of weeks ago. They shone! Cost me a hundred dollars apiece. Gone now."

I walked away. It just seemed like Jeremiah had to be somewhere, that if I looked I could find him. It had to turn out with Jeremiah as it had with our other things—a bit of damage, but nothing serious. For a few minutes, I wandered around, looking among the houses and buildings in this part of town. There was the same destruction here as elsewhere—interiors of homes broken up and turned over on the street, men, women, and children picking through things, looking for things, talking and crying. I was like one of them. I saw a woman pick up a cup and grin, then call to her husband, "Here’s one that’s not broken!" and I expected to turn a corner and find Jeremiah looking at me, his dark, large eyes in his pale face intelligently recognizing me, his ears swiveled forward. Never once had Jeremiah failed to approach me when I came for him, never once had he ducked my grasp or tried to get away or run off. But of course they would have been yelling and hooting, shooting in the air to panic the horses and mules. The animals in the pen would have been rolling their eyes and snorting, tossing their heads in that terrified equine way, and Jeremiah, who was an intelligent and responsive horse, but still a horse, would have been one of them, as terrified as the others. It hurt me to think of it, all the whinnying and bumping up against one another, the flailing of hooves and the danger, and then they would have been running, and I didn’t know how to think of that, where or how they had gone, so my imagination went dark.

Well, sentiment was a cruel joke in K.T.

And practically, of course, now we had no horse, and Louisa and Charles had no animals, either, and so how would we get our things out to our claim, and how would Charles, should he return from his imprisonment, make an income, and how would we all, in Lawrence, go on from this and recover even what we had had two days before, which was little enough in any case, if you thought of Susannah Jenkins’s letter, and how she counted up the losses she’d incurred in K.T. and settled happily for any sort of life at all, if only it wasn’t in K.T?

Everyone we knew was worse off than a year before: Mr. James had lost his wife and children; the Jenkinses had lost their husband and father and, it appeared, most of their means. The Bushes lived in a tiny fragment of a house, far humbler than what they’d left in Massachusetts, and were grate-ful for it. Louisa, for all the good face she put on it, had lost a husband and now, perhaps, another one. The Laceys? After she came, he was absent more and more, and now the rumor was that he was staying with a woman at the other end of town most of the time, but of course no one spoke of it, and all pretended that he was just very taken up with business. The Holmeses? They had barely made it through the winter on the charity of their friends, and any hopes he had had of forming a congregation had been dashed—no one in K.T seemed to cotton to his fiery brand of Christianity. The Smithsons? They were farther from their publishing project than they’d been in the fall, and old Mr. Smithson had broken his arm, to boot. Thomas and myself? We had little money, few hopes, and now had lost our most valuable possession. And who had not seen the waves of men and women who were worse off than ourselves and our friends, who’d died of fevers and other illnesses far from all friends and far from their homes, at the end of their funds and without their names being known to those caring for them? Even the Robinsons. There was the model for us all. They had risen the highest and had now fallen the lowest—he taken by the authorities, their house burned to the ground. The Kansas prairie was full of graves where people had buried everything they loved, everything they knew.

Frank, who was walking beside me, said, "I don’t know when I been this mad before."

I gave a little bark of bitter laughter.

"It an’t a laughing matter."

"Isn’t a laughing matter."

"Well, you are laughing. That just makes me madder."

I looked at him. His eyebrows were low over his eyes, and he was frowning mightily. He didn’t look especially boyish. He said, "My feeling is, they shouldn’t have done it."

"Well, of course not. Look at the suffering...

He caught my gaze, as if the suffering were beside the point. Transgression was the point for Frank.

"Men do what they think they need to do. I hate to say it, but the Missourians think they have right on their side, also. They think—"

"I an’t going to try and know what they think. I am going to fix my thoughts on what they did." He walked a little ahead of me, and I caught up.

"Frank—" But I didn’t have anything to say. You could look at it both ways. We were fools to have come to K.T. in the first place, or they were knaves to have destroyed us (hastened our destruction, perhaps a realist would say). Or both were true. As I’ve said elsewhere in this narrative, in K.T. most things were both true and false, and it depended on your circumstances how you chose among them.

Finally, I said, "Well, now we can say that maybe we shouldn’t have come here. When I look back to how I felt in Quincy, it seems like some kind of idle whim, the fruit of thoughtless ignorance. But back then, it seemed like everyone wanted to come to Kansas."

"It don’t matter how we got here or whether we regret that, and I don’t. I would have got here without you as well as with you, Lidie. But what matters is whether they should have done this, and they shouldn’t have, and I an’t going to think any more about it than that." He turned off abruptly as we came to Fourth Street, and I watched him go for a moment before I recollected myself and called out to him, but he waved me off without turning around, and I thought right then that I would never get him into school again in his life, and here was another loss, Frank’s future, for he was making himself a K.T man, a ruffian of a sort, no matter what side he was on in this controversy, and I didn’t have a word of influence over him.

CHAPTER 17

I See the Bottom of the Well

If an artery be cut, it must be immediately tied up, or the person will bleed to death. The blood from an artery is of a bright red color, and spirts out, in regular jets, at each beat of the heart. —p. 240

THE BEST BIT OF NEWS WAS THIS, that when I got back to Louisa’s place, there was Charles, smiling, dirty, and tired. When his captors had fallen into the stupor that was the natural end of their revelry, he had simply walked away, pausing only to select two of their better rifles and some hundred rounds of ammunition. He showed us the weapons and was much pleased with his escape. But he had bruises, one on his cheek and one on his neck, and a cut above the eye. When he afterward went out for a moment, I asked Louisa about them. "Well," she said, "they had their usual fun with him, knocked him down and kicked him once or twice, and of course some offered to hang him right there, but others restrained them. That’s the sort of people we have to deal with."

I said, "I suppose they know that when they start anything they’ll be too drunk later to finish it." We exchanged a sour laugh. It was galling to be at the mercy of such low characters.

Now everyone in Lawrence commenced to do as he or she thought best. There were those, hard to understand, who decided to ignore the sacking of the town and get on with their business of farming or keeping a shop or milling or whatever, and, it’s true, there are always these sorts of cold stones who look like men and have wisdom on their side. Others, perhaps those who hadn’t liked K.T much in the first place, hastened their plans to backtrack and shortly left for Ohio and New York State, or decided that Nebraska was, perhaps, a colder Kansas, but one without conflict. Hotter-blooded ones were even harder to understand. We all agreed that stay we must, simply because the Missourians wanted us out, but there agreement stopped. Charles was all for carrying the war to the Missourians, somehow, or at least to their fellows in Franklin and in Leavenworth and in Kickapoo. What they had done to us should be done to them, summarily and with even greater force, and not only because such were the measures men like that could understand, but also because now that they had done it once, with success, they would be all the more likely to try again, with even less restraint, and for even more slender reasons. Hadn’t they vowed to hang, shoot, knife, dismember, and clear us out? If we expected them to stop now, we were sadly mistaken, Charles thought. Louisa was, by contrast, all for defending the town. We should conserve our weapons and our provisions, rebuild the fortresses and earthworks, commence the drilling. If another attack was to come, and it was, according to both Charles and Louisa, then those with weapons should be at home, using them to protect, rather than running around the countryside, where they were likely to get in trouble, for one thing, and likely to do no good, for another. Thomas declared that in all the fighting, sight of the main goal had been lost, and that was making Kansas a free state, as a first step to abolishing slavery everywhere, which Thomas thought would take a generation or two but was inevitable if K.T could be won. "This is the summit of the mountain," he said. "The water will fall one way or the other. If it falls to the south, then in a generation or two there will be slaves in Massachusetts, and free labor will be everywhere driven out. If it falls to the north, then, the south will be free in the same period of time. But it all depends on Kansas." Thomas, who was not a fighting man, wanted to renew our applications to Congress and work for the election of a good Republican, and free any slave that he should happen across on the side.

As for me, I held many incompatible views in a kind of seething soup or stew, and I wondered at the consistency of the others. I thought that in a place like K.T, you could easily act one way one minute and another way the next minute, and smile or laugh or cry all in the same minute. I wanted to kill something, preferably a Missourian, preferably the man who had driven off Jeremiah, preferably more than one. Before they died, I wanted them to give back Jeremiah, apologize to me, and know what brutes and liars they were. At the same time, I wanted no more violence of any kind, no disturbances to my system, to the town, or to the spring that was shaping up before us. I wanted no more burnings or screaming, no more of those revelations of loss such as I had had when I saw the broken and empty corral, which made you feel suddenly drenched with grief. I wanted no more fear such as we all felt right then, fear of the Missourians, yes, but a greater fear of something else, which hadn’t yet happened but had certainly been set in motion.

I wanted Frank to stick right with me and show me at every moment that he was safely himself, a thirteen-year-old boy interested in money and business; but he wasn’t, and I simultaneously wanted him out there, where I knew he was, banding together with other boys who had their weapons with them and righteousness on their minds. My brain held many contradictory thoughts, but I knew Frank’s didn’t. Frank’s brain held a simple thought, and I wished for his sake that he knew the many complexities, but also I wished for my sake that I believed in the simple.

Ah, well, I was agitated. All over Lawrence, citizens were praying for various things—revenge, peace, war, fortitude, wisdom, safety, the death of enemies, the elevation of the bondman. Had I been the praying sort, I would have prayed only for a quiet mind.

We went to bed that night, Thursday, and the next. By Saturday, the cold ones were getting on with business, and Lawrence seemed calmer. Charles had bought a new mule of a backtracker, and Thomas and I had agreed to borrow the mule on Sunday to take our things out to the claim.

There was an old man in K.T. who afterward became famous, by the name of Old Brown, old John Brown. He came from Ohio or New York somewhere, and wasn’t related to any of the other Browns—there were lots of Browns in K.T. I can’t say that I ever saw him, though Louisa said that she did. Perhaps we saw some of his sons or associates, as there were quite a few of them, riding through the town or buying something here or there. They had a place south of town, down on the Marais des Cygnes, where my brother-in-law Horace always talked about settling. Free Staters and proslavery people were all mixed up down there—it wasn’t pure enclaves, as it was in the north. Later Mr. Holmes said that he saw Old Brown with his famous weapon, some kind of thing like an adze or a pike, odd-looking. But afterward, as with everything else, all sorts of people wanted to get next to it, and that is why I want to stress that I never saw Old Brown or his sons or friends, nor did I know at the time that what Old Brown did would become the most famous thing about K.T. in some quarters and utterly unknown in others. The fact was, what Old Brown did, and to whom, and why, was a common story around the time that it happened, and it showed us all the new world we had gotten into and what that meant, and so most people didn’t say much about it, because that was a world that most people in their right mind didn’t enter willingly.

We went to bed Saturday night. Sunday morning, we got up and Thomas went to hitch the mule to Charles’s smaller wagon. I made breakfast for Louisa, Charles, and myself. Frank was out early. I had let our insistence that he come with us to the claim slip by. Charles said he could use him, and so, officially, he was to stay with Charles and Louisa and be a help to them. Louisa was still up and around most days, but she was a bit ill that morning. I gave her dry wheaten cakes, which settled her. All we were thinking of was that now the parting had come and that we all would miss our intimacies. I liked Charles Bisket enormously now—he was so cheerful and agreeable and tall and languid-looking and ready to help anyone at any time. Charles made you think about good luck, which he always seemed to have. Was there such a thing as luck, really, or was it just Charles’s good nature reflecting back onto himself? As for Louisa, for all her faults and pretensions (and I felt that I could catalogue these with perfect clarity), there was a solidity in the bond we shared that seemed unshakable by things as trivial as annoyance, let’s say, or foolishness, or vanity, on one side or the other.

I wrapped up a stack of cakes in a cloth for later in the day, and Louisa rose from her bed to present me with some other things—tea and honey and the last of her dried apples. Then, through the broken window, we heard the wagon and the mule pull up outside, and Charles trotted down the stairs. I embraced Louisa and gave her a kiss and drew her wrapper more closely around her shoulders. I saw Thomas and Charles and a man I didn’t recognize in confabulation where Thomas was holding the mule. I didn’t see their faces until I got down there, though. Their faces, when I saw them, were pale in the spring sunshine, and I said, thinking nothing, "What’s the news?"

"It’s a terrible thing," said Thomas. He opened his mouth and closed it, then said, "I can’t say it."

"Some men were killed," said Charles. "Some proslavery men down south about thirty miles."

I saw by their looks that there was more to it than this, but I restrained my curiosity. The stranger shook his head and walked off. Charles and Thomas continued to load the wagon, though we hadn’t very many things, and they were shortly done. As we drove north out of Lawrence, we saw knots of citizens gathered in the streets. I looked deeply into Thomas’s face, but he was looking steadily at the mule’s haunches, and everything about his demeanor warned me off. We went along in silence. The ride to the claim normally took about an hour on horseback, somewhat longer in a wagon. This time, the prairies were wet from the spring rains and we had to pick our way rather carefully and circuitously. After about an hour, we were still but halfway there. I didn’t mind. This drive, I thought, was our last respite before the beginning of seriously hard work and heavy solitude. Finally, Thomas cleared his throat and spit off to the side, which was odd for him, as he didn’t chew tobacco. But he was spitting out what he had to say.

"A man and his two sons, and two other men, also, were killed last night down around the Pottawatomie area. They were killed by Free Staters in sight of their wives, who were begging that their lives be spared."

"Who were they?"

"Do you know that fellow Allen Wilkinson, who’s a delegate to the bogus legislature?"

I nodded. This Wilkinson was something of a loudmouth.

"He was one. The man and his sons were named Doyle, and then there was another man, whose name I don’t know. He was visiting, and they called him out in the sight of three other men."

"Who did the shooting?"

"It wasn’t just shooting."

"What was it?"

"I don’t want to tell you."

"Don’t, then."

"It was hacking."

"You mean like up in Leavenworth? With axes?"

"Something of the sort."

We pondered this in silence.

I said, "Tell me who did it," fearing that it would be someone we knew. Daniel James was angry enough for that.

"Brown."

"Brown the newspaper editor?"

’Another Brown. They call him Old Brown. I think I’ve seen him. He’s one of those that make you want to cross the street with one look. He had his sons and some others with him."

That was Sunday, the day we borrowed Charles’s new mule and went to our claim. I remember it clearly, and so that’s how I know what folks knew about that, and how quickly. My first reaction was a hardhearted one, I admit. I said, "If the southerners kept their mouths shut a little more, they might fare a little better."

"These were unarmed men, whose wives were begging for their lives."

"How many times do they vow to hang us or shoot us or clear us out? How many times do they call for our destruction in the bloodiest terms? It seems to me that if people talk all about these sorts of things long enough, they can’t be surprised when these things happen."

Well, Thomas was not pleased with my less than womanly response, but he didn’t condemn me. We rode along. The mule went easily enough. The plan was that we would unpack our cases and belongings, and then Thomas would drive the wagon into town and walk out again. He didn’t expect to be back with me until after dark. I estimated that that was enough time for us to digest each other’s views on the subject of the killings, or, as it later came to be called by some, the massacre. Of course, in Lawrence, folks always referred to it as "those killings." As for a mule or another horse, well, it was possible that something would turn up, but our funds were exceedingly low, and we were pondering what we had that we might sell. What with the "sacking" and our poverty, our future seemed to have gotten rather short, and we didn’t try to look far into it. Over the years, I’ve noticed that about impoverishment and danger—both make the present moment seem full and almost agreeable, but with the sense that you must keep your head down and your eyes on your feet, for fear.

We came to our cabin and drew up the mule in front of the door. It didn’t look too bad—it looked familiar, easy to claim as our own. In spite of the wet weather, the stands of wheat and barley looked good enough, to our untutored eyes. They were green and tallish. Thomas had broadcast the seed more thickly than thinly, and the wet earth was hidden in the green. These green bits were only patches in the larger sweep of the flowery prairie, and there was just a light breeze—none of that heavy K.T. wind. In one of his previous trips, Thomas had set the door on its leather hinges again, and that did wonders for the look of the place. We carried in our belongings. The spaces between the logs that I would soon be chinking with mud let in some light, and things seemed cheerful enough. By noon, we had eaten some of our wheat cakes from the morning, and Thomas and the mule had rattled away again. I watched them go for a long time, until they had disappeared over the rim of the prairie. My husband’s back pleased me, for how straight it was, how strange and yet how characteristic of him. I still couldn’t say that I felt about him as other women seemed to feel about their husbands, that they were essentially familiar and without mystery. But I wasn’t thinking these thoughts at the time; I was just watching the prairie fill up with loneliness around his receding figure and persuading myself that his return would effect the opposite.