The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton (41 page)

He drew me into the office and brought me over to a desk, where he handed me a chair, a piece of paper, and a pen. I thought for a moment, then wrote a page about my long-ago swim of the Mississippi River, only changing my direction. "The grand and heavy weight of the continental waters pressed against me, almost bearing me under. But I did not pause to think of my death, knowing that such thoughts could only bring on such an undesirable result. I fought the brown force with all the strength of my limbs and sinews...."

"A mite flowery," declared Mr. Morton, "but all the words are spelled right." He pushed his spectacles up on his head and scrutinized me so long that I thought the game was up, but then he just said, "Can you ride a horse, son?"

I nodded.

He leaned forward. "How long you been in these parts? Not long? Good. Here’s what I’m interested in, Lyman. I want to know what it’s like to be one of them boys out there in them bands that are marauding here and there. Are these just gangs of boys up to mischief, or are these soldiers for the southern cause in the making? You look to be about sixteen."

I nodded.

"That’s the age of some of these boys. Now." He sat back and glared at me. "Are you one hundred percent sound on the goose question? Because you an’t goin’ nowhere in these parts if you an’t."

I had stolen boots and a hat; I had stolen, in a sense, Mr. Graves’s money that he’d paid for my passage; I had deceived Miss Carter; I had deceived all my friends; I had become a man—a boy, rather—and so it was no effort to me to nod. One hundred percent sound on the goose question. I did wonder, though, what Thomas would think about that.

"Good," said Mr. Morton. "There’s a horse in the livery stable over a block, Colman’s Livery. Brown horse named Athens. You get on him, and you find one of them bands, and you write about that, and if you do a good job, I’ll give you regular employment. I’ll tell you something: I don’t know a thing about you, Lyman Arquette, but you strike me, somehow. Maybe it’s your affliction, but I am moved to give you a chance, son."

I whispered, "Thank you, sir."

"Now," he said, "here’s an advance on your pay." He put a dollar in my hand. "Go get yourself some supper at the hotel across the street, and I’ll see you bright and early in the morning. You got a place to stay?"

"Yessir," I whispered.

Five minutes later, I was strolling away, as astonished as I had ever been in my life.

My supper, which I took in a nearby hotel, made what you might call an avalanche of sleepiness cascade over me, but I wanted to see the horse, so I walked around to the "livery stable," not an establishment the kind reader should confuse with a large building containing stalls and horses and equipment, but rather something quite similar to what I was used to in Lawrence—a large corral and a smaller building beside it, almost a shed, really, though this one was fairly large and contained prairie hay piled up in reserve for the horses, as well as tack and equipment hanging from the walls. There were eight horses and four mules in the corral; of the eight horses, two were chestnut, one was a dun, two were bays, and three were brown. Of these, two were mares, and so I figured Athens to be the round and somewhat swaybacked fellow scouting for wisps of hay in the dirt. He had a wide blaze from his foretop to his nose and looked well on in years. The contrast between him and Jeremiah made my throat tickle. On the other hand, the hay in the shed looked tremendously inviting, and I made straight for it and lay down upon it and nestled into it with a boldness born of irresistible desire. Not long after, an elderly Negro man was looking down on me. I could barely keep my eyes open, even in the midst of this confrontation, but I managed to say in my harsh whisper, "Please may I sleep here? I an’t got money for a room."

"Cain’t sleep here," said the man, in an accent that I found hard to understand. "This here’s Massa Harry’s place. Ain’ no hotel."

"I work for the newspaper." I gestured toward Athens. And then I simply fell asleep, as if dropping over the side of a cliff. There was nothing he could do about it, or I could do about it, though I think that he jostled me. It was no use. I was without will, and no doubt immovable. I remained unmoved, and woke, right there, just about at sunup. I remembered the elderly man instantly and scrambled to my feet, but he wasn’t around. No one was around except the horses and mules, who must have been hungry, as they were looking at me with interest. I picked the bits of hay off my jacket, reminded myself that I was a man named Lyman Arquette, that I had been hired at the newspaper and already owed my employer a dollar.

In the bright light of a good night’s sleep, my new situation seemed impossible, and I saw that my successes the day before were surely attributable to good luck more than anything else. If my masquerade had the day before been something like sliding down a snowy hill on a child’s sled, it seemed that today it would be like scrabbling back up that slippery hill. Such are the effects of mood, and my mood today, clearheaded and fully aware, was far more daunted by my project than it had been in weeks. But I had to go on with it, if only to gain access to the seething gossip of the newspaper office and the benefits of a horse to ride. I also knew, with utter conviction, that I was doing just the sort of thing now that Thomas would disapprove of. Thomas was a conservative man, thoughtful about the proprieties, loath to offend, eager, even in his abolitionist convictions, that righteousness and justice be made palatable to all, including those who were to be force-fed. Square and aboveboard was his habit and his ideal. And inside his clothes I was planning a tangle of deceptions that, I fervently hoped, would end in a killing or two.

But it was painful to think of Thomas and best not to be daunted by paradoxes, and so I made my way back to the newspaper office and managed fairly quickly to get an audience with Mr. Morton, who looked as if he’d been up for hours. He was brisk. Had I seen the horse? Was I ready to take on this assignment? Was I armed? I needed to be if I was going out into the countryside. (To this I nodded, telling the truth with the sense of telling a lie.) Well, then...

I whispered, "How do I find one of these bands?"

"Well, let me see, now. Two days ago, some boys rode up to the Welch place, three or so miles out on the Westport road, and asked for something to eat. You could start there. That’s what got me thinking about this."

I nodded.

"Now, here’s five dollars. You don’t have to be livin’ off the country the way these boys are. You identify yourself as one of my reporters, and you pay for what you get." I nodded, taking the money. "But," he said with a laugh, "that don’t mean you shouldn’t drive a hard bargain!"

I nodded, and Mr. Morton turned away. There was nothing else for me to do but return to the stable and get on my way. An hour later, I was astride old Athens, clopping through the bustle of Kansas City, looking for the Westport road. The southerners had stolen so many New England weapons from waylaid shipments that about one in five of the rifles I saw on the streets around me was similar to my old carbine. I was able to reflect on this with a surprising want of rage. I had envisioned my passage through the world of my enemies to be a wrathful one, with every evidence of the southerners’ stupidity and evil driving me to an even sharper pitch of fury, but things weren’t turning out that way. What seemed to be happening was that Lawrence and everything Lawrence meant was turning into a dream of a sort compared to the pressing reality of my new life as a man. Or perhaps it was that now that I was wearing Thomas’s clothing, I was becoming more judicious, like him.

After a bit, I left the town behind, though the road was busy enough, and it was nearly a full-time job to touch the brim of my slouchy hat to every passerby, especially, I tried to remember, to the few ladies in wagons and buggies. All the same, it was pleasurable to be riding Athens. He hadn’t much go, but his ears were forward, and he seemed content to amble along, taking in the passing scene. I saw a farmer fixing his fence, and I said, in a croaky voice, "This the Welch farm?"

"Nah. A half mile up that way." He shaded his eyes against the sun to look at me, then went right back to his work. It was eternally surprising to me the way no one questioned my masculinity.

There were two farms a half mile up, a prosperous one on the right, with a two-story house, one of those funny western houses you used to see, with a passage right through the bottom that was enclosed across the top, called a "trotway." This farm had plenty of outbuildings, was well fenced, and I could see the wife feeding chickens, the husband going into the shop, and some little girls jumping rope. Across the road was a less prepossessing place, with a small cabin for a house, and a shed for a barn, and no one around. I did what I would have done in a band of marauding boys: I turned in where it was most likely I would find abundance. The farmer came out of the shop to greet me, and all the females stopped what they were doing to look. Everyone seemed immediately suspicious—further evidence that the band of marauders had passed this way. I touched my hat but didn’t take it off. I whispered, "Good morning to you," and the farmer stepped closer. "What was that, boy?" he said.

I dared to croak a little louder. "Morning, sir! Name’s Lyman Ar-Arquette. I work for Mr. Morton, who has the paper. We were wanting to find out if some boys came by here a day or so ago. I’m looking for them."

The husband and the wife glanced at one another across the yard, but the girls went back to their game.

"Maybe," said the husband.

"You Mr. Welch?" I croaked.

He nodded.

"Well, we heard a bunch of boys came through here and asked you for a meal."

"Maybe."

"They did," piped up the wife. "Spent the night in the barn, too." She looked defiantly at the husband, who scowled.

"Believe me, Mr. Welch, I an’t going to do nothing to them boys or to you. I’m just from the paper. I’m looking for them boys to see about them. It’s just that the last report of them was that they were hereabout."

"Still are," said the wife.

Now this struck fear into me. My plan had been to talk to the Welches. I hadn’t let myself think much beyond that, because I didn’t think my disguise would hold up under the scrutiny of boys, in a group, already suspicious, and without much to do except to inspect me. I tried to sound eager. "They are?"

The man gestured across the road. "Holed up in that old claim. Them people moved away to Texas. An’t nobody took it over, so them boys went in there."

"I saw ’em last night at sunset," said the oldest little girl. "They was chasing something."

"Hog, no doubt," said Mr. Welch. "Them folks didn’t catch all their hogs before they left, and now the hogs had some shoats. There’s hogs all around here."

I cleared my throat. "How many boys are there?"

"Half a dozen, maybe; maybe not quite."

"Good eaters, too," said the wife, ruefully.

"Did they, uh, did they threaten you with weapons?"

"They surely had ’em along. We could see that plain as day," said Mr. Welch. "They asked where our niggers were, and when we said we didn’t have none, they didn’t like that. But they didn’t actually threaten us, and they an’t crossed the road since."

"I wish they’d move on," said the woman. "Over supper, they said they was gonna go out to K.T, but they an’t yet."

Now the both of them turned away. They were finished talking to me, and I remembered that I hadn’t taken any notes of this conversation, as had been my plan, just to flourish my profession a bit. The wife went into the house and the husband into the shop again. The four little girls were now playing "statues," a game I had played endlessly as a child. I turned Athens and went out to the road, then turned back toward Kansas City, rode a few yards, and stopped to look at the cabin across the road. No sign of life. Of course, these were boys, so I pulled out my pocket watch. It wasn’t even eight-thirty in the morning, so it could be they were sleeping. I put "my" watch carefully back in "my" pocket—I was suddenly painfully aware that I wasn’t who I looked to be—and then I gave old Athens a kick in the ribs and rode across the road and into the yard, the way you do when you think, Why not? and then don’t let yourself answer that question. A horse whinnied from behind the cabin, putting to flight my last little hope that the cabin was empty, but no shots rang out, no shouting, no descent of boys upon my helpless self.

Athens went of himself around the corner of the cabin, and I saw that four horses were confined to a corral in the back. Its fence was intact, but it looked like the rest of the fences had been cannibalized to repair that one. This wasn’t much of a farm—underbrush had already encroached on the fields, and sure enough, a couple of half-grown hogs were rooting around out there, along with some crows and a few buzzards. I dismounted Athens, thinking I would look in a window, but the only opening was covered with oiled paper, not affording much of a view, so I finally made an end to my hesitation and went up the stoop and banged on the door. The good thing was that I had the sun at my back. I banged again. Athens, and my pistol, were right behind me. He practically had his foot on the step with mine. The door opened suddenly, and Athens threw up his head.

A young man with no clothes on except his drawers stood blinking in the doorway. He looked as surprised as I did, I’m sure, as he said, "G— d— , that an’t you, Clark! I thought—"

"Who the h—," shouted a voice from inside. "That Clark? I’m starvin’!"

"An’t Clark!"

Now there were three young men in the door, in different states of undress, and the third one to come up had a pistol, which he cocked. I dropped Athens’s reins, pushed the door open with my left hand, and stepped into the room, saying in my croak, "Boys! I’m here to make you famous! We heard about you in—in Saint Louis, and I come from the Missouri Democrat to find out your story! From there, who knows—maybe it’ll go all around the country." I figured even these boys would be impressed by the most famous paper in the state.

"Saint Louis?" said one boy.