The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton (60 page)

"Yeah, but they an’t good ones. I could be a catcher. They git twenty percent around here. That’s good money! If your gal run off, and I caught her, you’d have to give me a hunderd and sixty dollars to git her back!"

"What if I didn’t have that money?"

"Then I could keep her."

"I don’t believe that’s true."

"Well, it is. Man told me. His brother was a catcher, and he was goin’ to git into the business hisself! There’s the river. You got another two bits?" I saw that he was looking carefully at Lorna, so I handed him some more money, and he tipped his hat, then ran off. We made our way down to the boats. The shafts of late-afternoon light had blued now, and I thought soon we would be doubly safe, in the darkness, on some boat. Of boats there were not too many, but the levee was seething with activity, much more than it had been three weeks earlier, when I’d fled the Missouri Rose. That was the first boat I searched for, fearful that the captain would know me, but it wasn’t there. We had four choices—the Herald, the Jack Smith, the Missourian, and the Southern Joy. Of these, the Southern Joy looked the biggest, so I began with it. Lorna stuck close behind me. We strolled up the plank to the Texas deck, and I took a moment to gaze around, arranging myself a bit and trying to spy out the captain. The Southern Joy wasn’t quite as new as it looked from a distance—the white and gold paint on the railings was dingy and cracked, and the decking had buckled in many places. My thoughts strayed to the boiler, but I pulled them back. A door to the saloon opened, and the captain, an extremely tall man in a dusty blue uniform, emerged. When he saw me, he smiled, but it was a closed-over sort of smile that didn’t give me much hope, and in fact, he said at once, "Now, ma’am, don’t be askin’ me about passage down to Saint Louis, because I cannot do a thing for you! I got me a boatload o’ women and children already, fit to sink where we sit, and them sandbars between here and there is goin’ to be a trial, so don’t ask me, unless you got you some lit- tle ones, because I am makin’ provision for mothers with little ones."

"How can you do that?"

"Well, I turn back the others who an’t got no little ones, don’t I? I hope I never see such a time of tribulation as this again! I did not learn this river in order that I might choose one over another, and once this time is over, I will again leave that privilege to the Lord in His heaven!"

I had seen so few women and children in Kansas City that I thought he must have all of them on board his boat. I said, "Thank you, anyway."

"Don’t thank me, ma’am, because I an’t worthy of thanks!" He walked on past me, shaking his head. Lorna whispered, "Offer ’im mo’ money!" but I shook my head. I led the way down the plank, and we went on to the Herald.

The Herald made no pretense at all of being luxurious, and I doubted the boiler even more profoundly, but it was right beside the Southern Joy. It did not bode well that there were only two men aboard, Negroes, one sweeping and the other doing some carpentry work. I said, "May I find your captain?"

"Nah, ma’am," said the carpenter. The sweeper didn’t even look up. "He done disappeared."

"Is the boat planning to go downriver?"

"Nah, ma’am. She ain’."

"Why not?"

Now the sweeper and the carpenter looked at one another and shrugged, then the carpenter said, "Don’ know, ma’am." Lorna took in a breath, and they both looked at her curiously, but I put my hand on her arm. The two men went back to work, and we made our way down the plank. Lorna was breathing heavily. I said, "There are two more!" But I, too, was more disheartened than I let on. Our endeavor had now taken on a feeling of futility.

The Jack Smith was a trim little craft, as neat and clean in reality as the owners of the Southern Joy would have liked their boat to be. I could see that she had a shallow draft, good for the Missouri, and that the windows of the saloon were shining and newly washed. Men and a few women passed up and down the plank, and the captain stood by the deck railing. I looked up at him from the levee below, immobile, until Lorna gave me a poke in the back. The captain watched us every step up the plank, then tipped his hat, but he didn’t say a word. Lorna dared not poke me again, but I felt her inner impatience. Finally, I said, "We’re looking for passage downriver."

"Are ya now?"

"To Saint Louis."

"Well, well, well."

"When are you leaving?"

"Could be anytime." He continued to inspect us, first me, then Lorna, at his leisure. His scrutiny gave me a heavy feeling of dread, but I smiled and kept my head up.

"I need passage for myself and my gal. We’ve been aban ..." But I let my voice trail off, unable to find the energy for that good lie. I coughed. "I have been abandoned here in this—"

"Have you now?"

There was something entirely sinister about his manner, and Lorna reacted to it, too, taking a small step back. This was his signal for removing his gaze once again from me to her. Folks passed us. I felt pinned to the spot, until finally I managed to say, "No doubt you are besieged with passengers."

"I got room. Gal got to go below, and you got to take another lady in with ya."

"I—"

"Gal kin do your business all day and go to ya after seven in the mornin’, but she got to sleep with them others. Always have done it that way, always will. But I didn’t make ladies go together till now."

"What’s the fare?"

"Twenty-two for you and eighteen for yer gal, here."

I allowed myself a little smile.

"And you have room?"

"Got two rooms left, two passengers to each room. Cain’t tell who you’re gonna be with, though."

"That’s fine. When do you leave?" With so little room left, I fully expected him to say tonight, or tomorrow morning, but he said, "Two, three days."

"Oh! Why so long?"

"Waitin’ for a repair to the wheel. Can’t get a workman here to save your life! They all got their guns and are headed for Lawrence. Fool’s errand, if you ask me." My spirits, which had lifted, dropped into my shoes. He said, "You want the room?"

"Maybe."

"Pay me now, then."

"But we need to leave sooner than that. I want to try the last boat."

"Can’t hold it for you. Last two."

"Can’t I just try the last boat? Maybe she’s going down sooner!"

He shrugged. "Maybe. You got five, ten dollars?"

I neither nodded nor shook my head.

"I kin hold it for you for that."

"That would seriously compromise my funds...." I looked around, not daring to consult Lorna but not receiving any sense of what she wanted to do, terrified of being stuck in Kansas City for three days, but more terrified of being stuck there even longer. The sense of desperation I felt was new even for me and perhaps partly owing to my fear of this man. I shrank from putting us into his hands, and I tried to discern what it was about him that roused my suspicions so. It was impossible to tell—he was a plain-looking man. I looked at him, then looked down toward the levee, undecided. There below, staring up at me, was David B. Graves, the original David B. Graves. He looked at me, looked at Lorna, who was right beside me, then tipped his hat to me and walked away. I nearly fell down and, in fact, sank against Lorna, who bore me up with a look of surprise on her face. The captain of the Jack Smith said, "Are you ill, ma’am?"

"We’ve walked a considerable distance."

After a long, heavy moment, he said, "You and your gal kin go into the lounge for ten minutes. That’s all, though, jes’ ten minutes. It’s over there."

Down on the levee, David B. Graves was making his way through the crowd, and he wasn’t strolling or ambling, he was striding. I said to the captain, "Thank you for your kindness, sir. Perhaps if I sit down, I can gather my thoughts." I let Lorna bear me up just a bit. When the door closed behind us, we hurried to a corner and sat down with our heads together. I whispered, "Lorna! You have to walk away from me as soon as we leave here!"

"Why’s dat?"

"A man recognized me who knows me."

"You done said you don’ know nobody round heah."

"I don’t, but this man turned up. He keeps turning up, and he’s been good to me, but he’s terrifically sound on the goose question, and I took some money from him. It’s too involved a story to—"

"I cain’ go apart from you! Dey’ll stop me fo’ sure!"

"Make out to be shopping for me or something, or looking for a doctor. I can be taken with something, a fit or a bad head. But you have to get away. He can’t see us together, because he knows me well enough to know I would never have a gal! We have to get away from the river and try to find a place to hide." Now the Jack Smith’s departure three days thence presented itself in a different light. I would pay our passage, then we would secrete ourselves somewhere—with Nehemiah at the livery stable, perhaps? or out in the country?—and then make our way back at the last moment. I wasn’t thinking very clearly, but I felt a rush of desperate strength that made me think we could try anything and possibly succeed. Lorna looked hesitant and even afraid, and I remembered my first sight of her face on the front lawn of Day’s End Plantation, and how I could tell by looking at her that she would know what to do with me. And she had known. I took her hands in mine and squeezed them. I whispered, "We’ll pay our money to the captain, then you help me down the plank and across the levee. I’ll wave good-bye to you and sit down somewhere, and you go off with your bundle, and if anyone asks you, you say your missy is Jane Horn and you are looking for a doctor, but then, if they direct you to a doctor, wander around without finding him, and soon it will be dark! Don’t get too far away, and when it’s dark, I’ll find you. I think I know a place to hide." I hoped I could talk Nehemiah into something.

Lorna nodded, and we stood up. She helped me out the door of the lounge. I saw at once that right there, at the top of the plank, the captain was having an altercation with three men. One of them was David B. Graves, and he saw me before I could step back into the saloon. Lorna was holding me up, and he and she exchanged a glance, too. He said, in a hard voice, "There they are. Harmon, you grab the niggah!"

"This is my boat!" thundered the captain.

"You an’t gonna be a party to nigger-stealin’, are ya?" shouted one of the men, and Lorna and I stepped back into the saloon and slammed the door.

"I ain’ nevah seen dose men!" exclaimed Lorna. "How dey know?"

"It’s me! It’s me, Lorna!"

And she gave me one anguished look, only one. In the next moment, I saw her inure herself, draw away, begin to take this in. I grabbed her hand and ran across the room to the largest window. As the men entered the door, I kicked at the window and pounded at it until, as they rushed over to us, it broke. I stepped through and tried to pull Lorna with me, but the pieces of glass still in the frame slowed us, and the men grabbed us. Mr. Graves was the one who grabbed me, and when he did, I slapped him. And when I slapped him, I covered his face with my blood. The other two men grabbed Lorna by the shoulders and the feet, and while the captain held the door, the three of them dragged us out onto the deck and threw us down. Perhaps we had fought them hard. They were breathing heavily. I don’t know. All I remember is how frenzied it made me to know that it was through me that Lorna had been betrayed.

There was quite a crowd of men on the deck, and a few women, too, and all their mouths hung open. Mr. Graves, his face and shirt red and glistening, exclaimed, "Gentlemen! We have foiled a nigger-stealing right in our midst! Night has fallen! Some of us are bloodied! But you may all rest assured that a man’s property will be restored to him! And that the thief, a young lady though she is, shall be punished!" The assembled Missourians gave out a clamorous cheer, and the two men who had hold of Lorna dragged her off. She was quiet, neither protesting nor crying. It was me that was screaming "No! No! No!" until I could no longer see her and no longer manage to utter a word.

The crowd dispersed. The captain said, "Git ’er off my boat!" and Mr. Graves gripped me by the arm and half pushed, half pulled me down the plank. When we got to the bottom, he said, "Mrs. Newton, I regret any elegiac sentiments I might have expressed toward you on an earlier occasion. I will say no more."

CHAPTER 27

I Backtrack

... it must be borne in mind, that the estimate of evils and privations depends, not so much on their positive nature, as on the char
acterand habits of the person who meets them. —p. 39

IT TOOK THE CATCHERS, I later learned, about two days to find Papa and match up his runaway with Lorna. That boy had been right: there were catchers everywhere, and every one of the lot was busy scaring up trade. For his part, Papa had wasted no time putting together an advertisement in Independence in which both Lorna and I were described. My height was against me; I was said to be "a plain tall woman in a nankeen dress and green bonnet with short hair and large hands"—unmistakable. Lorna was described as "a serviceable slave-girl, solidly built, of a discontented disposition, with a vertical scar on the left side of her neck, just under the ear, an inch and a half long." I, her friend, hadn’t noticed the scar. Papa, her enemy, had.

Mr. Graves took me to the jailhouse for safekeeping, but the sheriff and his wife didn’t make me stay in the jail; they put me upstairs in one of the rooms, with the door locked. The sheriff himself didn’t seem to want to have much to do with me, and his wife, Mrs. Hopewell, said, "We an’t never had a lady in the jail before. I told my Frederick that I just can’t do that, at least till they decide what to do with you."

"Are they going to hang me?"

"They hate nigger-stealin’. No tellin’ what they will do. My Frederick says he don’t know what it will be like, findin’ a judge and a jury in these days. He says they should of shot you at the time and been done with it, instead of involving the law. I know that sounds hard, but he an’t really a hard man, for a sheriff. I reckon it will depend upon Mr. Day and his views in the matter. I don’t expect they will tar and feather you, though. That’s what they generally like to do, but I don’t suppose they’ll do it to a lady."

She gave me a Bible to read, with the remark, "They had slaves in Bible days, didn’t they, now?"

"What did they do with Lorna?"

"Oh, the catchers do something, I expect. I don’t like to think about it myself." She shook her head violently, as if shaking off the whole subject.

She washed my hands and bound the cuts. They throbbed for a day or two. Since I couldn’t write, she had me dictate a letter to my sisters. What I dictated was a few dry sentences. What she wrote was the following. It read:

To my dear sisters in the east—

I am sure you will be surprised and dismayed to learn that I am put in jail in Kansas City for niggah-stealing, which I did even though the man I stole the niggah from was good to me and gave me the hospitality of his house for two or three weeks before I run off with the gal. There is no telling what they are going to do with me, they might hang me but they haven’t hanged a female in Missouri, at least around these parts, for a long time, as long as the sheriff can remember. Maybe I will be lucky and not be hanged. If I am hanged, then this is my last words to you. I am heartily sorry for what I have done, and for the shame I have brought upon my dear family. I trust in the Lord to do what he thinks best with me after I have passed into his loving hands. If I am not hung, then you need to send me some money so that I can leave this place and come back home to you, as the sheriff and his wife can do nothing for me, even though they are God-fearing and charitable people, and the state makes no provision for Niggah-stealers. If you do not send me means, then surely I will get into trouble again. Forty dollars will be enough.

Your dear sister,
LYDIA HARKNESS NEWTON

Mrs. Hopewell had her heart set upon sending this letter, as she was very proud of it, and so I let her. She told me that it would probably take two weeks for the money to arrive, and that if they didn’t hang me, she would charge me ten dollars for two weeks’ room and board, "And let me tell you, you can’t get it no cheaper in Kansas City in these days!"

Now I came into a state of being talked to and done to. While the sheriff was too embarrassed to come in, Mr. Graves, who had an interview with me the day this letter was written, seemed entirely in his confidence. He entered the room, had the door locked behind him, and started booming at once. I was sitting in a chair by the window, looking out, but I hadn’t seen him coming down the street. He exclaimed, "Mrs. Newton! Was I staggered when I saw you and that gal up there on that boat deck? Indeed I was! Staggered, and then, very shortly afterwards, in a matter of an eye blink, I was dismayed. Ma’am, I was hurt for you! You have got no business with this nigger-stealing, which is a very low thing to do, and now look where you have landed! The sheriff of this town, I don’t mind telling you, is a man of rigorous moral views, and he said to me, ’David B. Graves, I find myself in a dilemma. This isn’t a plain killin’ or one man cheating another or even a horse-thievin’, which we’ve got plenty of in these parts and is always clear-cut. This is all bound up in other things. You may say that this is a clear-cut crime, but as a sheriff, I say that this crime is defiled by opinion! A sheriff hates to see that.’ Mrs. Newton, if you had just gotten on the Missouri Rose the way you pretended to do, well, ma’am, you wouldn’t have fallen so low as this! That’s what I deplore, myself. This whole matter just sullies my esteem for you, and, indeed, for your late husband—"

"What happened to Lorna?"

"I am not going to get into personalities here. Maybe that is your difficulty, ma’am, but I won’t do it! I look at the principle involved, and I see a transgression, and I look no farther!"

"You knew we were abolitionists the first time you met us. You were kind to us."

"Now, ma’am, we’ve got some sophistry here. Everybody in the world knows that views are different from acts. I do verily believe that as citizens of this great republic, we may proclaim our views far and wide, from the highest mountain, if need be, and let no man stop us, and I do believe a woman may do so, as well, and in that I am what you might call progressive, but I do believe it! That is why we have made our home on this continent and away from the sinks of Europe, if I may so term them. Should the day come that the institution of servitude and bondage that we have in this state pass on, then I say, so be it, that is the will of God and His people, and David B. Graves says, so be it. But I see all around me far less judicious men than myself, who descend from views to acts, and what has come of it but sorrow, horror, and conflict, as you yourself can testify, Mrs. Newton? What do these acts do but inflame others? What is their result but war? I, I am a commercial man! Do I wish to put my commerce at the service of one side or the other? I do not! My principle is to serve both sides, to have no sides, indeed, but to serve all! What will become of me? What will become of us all?"

"But she wanted to be free!"

"If I wanted to be a horse or a bird of the air or a fine lady in Richmond, Virginia, should I then have my wish? We are born who we are, and we get nowhere pinin’ to be otherwise."

He had on his most orotund manner, and he was so smoothly certain of himself that it was impossible to argue further.

We fell silent for a few moments, then he said, "I find that in spite of all, Mrs. Newton, I still feel a protective spirit in your behalf, and I do promise right here and now to do all I can to prevent your rashness from resulting in yet another tragic outcome!"

"But you put me here!"

"Ma’am, I confess. I am fatally divided on this subject. I see the act, I see the principle, I see the person. This brings into my intentions a strange flux." He rose.

I couldn’t thank him. I only sighed. He bowed and left. It occurred to me afterward that he had been talking in his inflated style. He was a strange man, I thought, a real chameleon, and it seemed somehow fitting that it was be who betrayed me.

The next day, shortly after my breakfast, the key turned in the door, and Mrs. Hopewell’s oval face peeped in and announced Papa. Then he was there. He was exceptionally well dressed, even for him, in fine white trousers, shining black boots, a light-blue waistcoat, and a buff frock coat. He carried cane, gloves, and hat in his hand. His little bald head shone as if from vigorous buffing, but his face was sober, even drawn. He entered, perched on the chair beside the door, and regarded me with birdy sadness. I admit that this made me more ill at ease than I had expected to be (I had all along suspected that Papa would be unable to resist seeing me). Rather than meeting his disconsolate gaze with righteous anger on Lorna’s behalf, I met it with some mortification. At long last, he said, in his roundest, richest tones, "Helen is extremely distressed."

"I suspected that. I—"

"Perhaps you don’t know how thoroughly you have smashed all of her affections. She had a sincere fondness, even love, for you yourself, and you not only left without a word after leading her to believe that the outcome of my offer would be a happy one, you stole away the other dearest person in her circle. Though your plot has not succeeded, thanks to the quick thinking and true principle of Mr. Graves, from Helen’s point of view it might as well have, as Lorna is as thoroughly ripped from her as if you had succeeded."

"What have you done with Lorna?"

"Did you think of that before you hatched your plot? Did you wonder how Lorna might suffer if your plot failed?—and many more of them do fail than succeed. The catchers are not a merciful or deliberate class of men. They do necessary work, and they have the necessary temperament for it."

"Where is Lorna?"

"Don’t adopt so high a tone with me, miss! What has become of Lorna is not your business, and I won’t allow you to think so by divulging her whereabouts. In fact, Lorna was never your business, though you claimed her as such. But I understand your late husband was an abolitionist, and I know that we expect ladies to be guided by their husbands, no matter what misguided views they themselves hold."

I supposed that if I told Papa that Lorna had claimed ME, it might be worse for her, wherever she was. I put my head down and bit my lip. Papa took this gesture as a submissive one. He continued, "I know, Mrs. Newton—for I know your true name now—that you have too fine a spirit to persist in folly and recklessness. I forgive you much in the name of your grief. The Lord himself knows that I was beside myself with grief for two years after my late wife passed on. Although you seem composed, of course much feeling runs deep. That’s the sort of woman you are. I can feel that. This foolishness of stealing my servant surely grows out of the mental instability produced by your experiences in this country at so young an age." He sighed.

"Lorna wanted to escape." But I whispered it.

"Ah, Lorna! No one could ever say that Lorna was ill-treated or uncared for. Lorna herself couldn’t say it and didn’t say it. In fact, she often expressed a wordless thanks to me for according her the privileges she exercised in my service. No one can ever convince me that Lorna doesn’t love us and doesn’t know the virtues of the position she held in our family until now. Delia said to me just yesterday, ’Massa Richard, dat Lorna don’ know nothin’, if she done dis thing! I tol’ her and tol’ her all dese yeahs to thank de Lawd for her blessin’s and fergit de res’, and I thought she done listened to me, but I see she ain’.’ Mrs. Newton, I have made a study of Lorna over these years, and I know her inside and out. Once in a while, once in every few years, even, something would seize Lorna and force her to act foolishly, to act against herself. My late wife felt it should have been beaten out of her at a young age, but I erred and could not take so strong a hand. Now I regret that. But Harris is always telling me that if you don’t beat them sooner you will beat them later, and you do them good to give them a taste of the lash—"

"Please!" I exclaimed. "I can’t bear this! You are wrong in every way! Down to the roots you are wrong!"

We stared at each other. His gaze went from my face to my bandaged hands and back to my face. His countenance was not hard but, instead, sympathetic, sentimental, without the least doubt of what he was saying and thinking. He sighed. He said, "You are so obdurate for such a young lady! I fear for you, I honestly do. Life itself will teach you what well-disposed elders cannot."

It was useless to talk to him, useless to talk to them all, but I tried a different tack, one last time. "Oh, sir, please do me that last kindness of telling me what has been done with Lorna! Please, I beseech you!"

First he shook his head, then a look of some pain crossed his face. Then, at last, he said, "I could only do what her actions demanded. I had to sell her south. She knew that would happen if she listened to your blandishments, and it did. She has only herself to blame. But I am weak enough to feel it. And it has broken Helen’s heart."

Mine, too, I thought.

Before leaving, Papa took my hand and kissed the bandage. His last words to me were, "This is a tragedy."

I continued to sit at the window, looking out and listening to the muffled clanging of cell doors below. As befitted a person in a state of being talked to and done to rather than talking and doing, I didn’t have many thoughts, but I did wonder about the tragedy of it. No doubt Papa was right that this was a tragedy, though certainly we would differ on what parts of it were tragic. And I wasn’t as sophisticated about tragedy as Papa was, with his fine library and his college education. But a tragedy did seem to me to be something that took place on one spot—at home, perhaps, where all the characters were gathered together and all knew each other and the actions of each destroyed the others. I myself didn’t feel like a character in a tragedy. For one thing, I didn’t really fear they would have the gumption to hang me. Everyone in Kansas City was too distracted for that. And if I wasn’t hanged, then I probably wouldn’t be shot. Shooting was something folks seemed to do on impulse, and when the impulse passed, they couldn’t bring themselves to do it, only to say that they should have done it. Mostly, I suspected, I would be talked to and talked about: opinion was the real currency of the west. Somehow, I would get back to Quincy, where my sisters surely would not care to know about what had happened to me, and where they would insist in all sorts of ways that we just forget it and get on with finding something useful for me to do. This did not smack of tragedy, but of what, I didn’t know enough to say.