The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton

by Jane Smiley

  And then we were in Lawrence, and then we were at Louisa’s, and then it was dawn, and then Thomas was back in our old bedstead and me next to him, holding his hand, and somehow I dozed off while Louisa was tending to the wounds.

  A doctor Charles knew came. I woke up to find him bending over me, and then I sat up and realized that he was bending over Thomas. He glanced toward me and said, "Hello, my dear," and I eased as quickly as I could out of bed and straightened my clothes. I looked at his face before I looked at Thomas, and his face was grave. Then I dared to look at Thomas. The doctor had bared his wounds and was probing the one in his shoulder with his penknife. Thomas’s skin was impossibly white and his face nearly blue. He winced one time, but other than that, he was unresponsive. I put my hands in front of my face, and Louisa put her arm around me and walked me over to one of her chairs and sat me down. She said, "I hope you are prepared for the worst, my dear."

  I nodded to say that I was, and perhaps I was: he had already been alive twelve hours or so longer than I had expected him to be; but perhaps I wasn’t, because at the same time that I sat there among the sober faces and the low tones of voice and the shaking heads, I also did not trust for one moment that these were actual scenes. I knew better: this would fade away, and something more familiar would come in its place. The doctor said, "Well, he’s full of lead, that’s for sure," and I thought, Then they won’t be able to get anything out with a magnet, will they? I said, "Has he spoken at all?"

  "He asked after you right at first, but he hasn’t spoken since."

  "That isn’t good, is it, Louisa?"

  She shook her head, then said, "Lidie, dear, the fever’s set in."

  I nodded, to show that I understood what that meant, but I didn’t, really. I didn’t know why the fever had set in.

  "I can pick at it," said the doctor, "but I hate to. I hate to do that. I’d rather put on a plaster that’ll draw the foreign matter out and let the young man’s system take care of itself. Myself, I don’t like surgery. I always say that surgery does more harm than good in the end. To tell you the truth, a body can incorporate considerable foreign matter if it will, and if it won’t, you can’t make it." Everyone nodded, but this seemed nonsensical to me. If there was something that the southerners had put into my husband, I wanted it out. Then the doctor spoke in a low voice to Charles, who was standing right beside him. Charles nodded.

  I said, "What was that?" and the doctor looked at me sharply, then said, "To tell the truth, ma’am, I don’t truly believe that your husband could tolerate any surgery. I think it would be too much of a shock to him, myself. He’s pretty far gone, ma’am."

  We stared at each other, then he broke away, put his penknife in his pocket, and turned to don his coat, a blue coat, K.T. all over. I didn’t believe he was a doctor at all. Perhaps he was a governor pretending to be a doctor, just as Governor Robinson was a doctor pretending to be a governor.

  "Now, Lidie," said Louisa, as if I had spoken aloud, but of course I hadn’t.

  After the doctor went down the stairs, I said, "You’ve got to find another doctor, a real doctor."

  "Now, Lidie."

  I turned to Charles. "Please? Please, Charles, you must know someone else, or some woman who knows ..."

  Later, a woman did come by. She was the wife of one of the legislators, and she had some emetic with her and the makings of a poultice for each wound. She told us what to do—to give a dram of the emetic every hour, and to change the poultices twice a day. Louisa felt that we should also get some broth into Thomas when we could, and a bit of whiskey now and then. We listened to our instructions and set up our sickroom as if we would be there for weeks—as we would be if Thomas should recover. Louisa and Charles bustled about, Mrs. Bush and Mr. Bush came in, and also Mrs. Lacey and one of the boys; the woman with the poultices had a friend, too, so in general there was a crowd and much talk, some of it about Thomas and his injuries, much of it about who had shot him. I told the story over and over. The only telling detail I could come up with was the sound of the one man’s voice—very southern—and the look on the boy’s face when he shot Jeremiah: he looked pleased. Perhaps I would know them to see them, but perhaps not—I couldn’t remember them, exactly. My only hope was that the looks of one of them would strike me should he appear before me again. Everyone speculated about who they had been, even bringing up names and looking toward me, as if I could say yes or no and that would be the one. I tried to explain how quickly it all had happened, and then everyone was sympathetic and declared that I should be bothered no more. And then, after a moment or two, they resumed speculating. When I asked what had happened to Mr. Graves, no one knew.

  In the evening, I fell asleep again, and after I woke up, everyone was gone except Louisa, who was sitting beside Thomas, gazing at him. When I opened my eyes, she said, "Feel better?"

  "Yes and no."

  She smiled. "He spoke again. He asked where his carbine was."

  "What time is it?"

  ’’After midnight."

  "You must be exhausted yourself."

  "Well..." She nodded.

  "I’m fine to sit up. I’m not tired at all." Really, what I suddenly wanted was to be alone with my husband. Here we had been married all of ten months, had known each other for less than a year, and we had hardly been alone together, if you thought about it.

  "I am tired," she said, "but I hate to ..." Moments later, she went off to bed, and my conscience smote me at my feelings of ingratitude. I took my place in the chair she had been sitting in and looked down at my husband. Frankly, I was amazed, still amazed. It seemed that there was no way I could get past this amazement into something more appropriate, more like what Louisa and the others seemed to be feeling. They had gone right into anger, sadness, and fear, just like that, but I was stuck in amazement. More even than the inner picture of Thomas falling behind the little wagon, I kept seeing the picture of Jeremiah rising on his back legs and then crumpling between the shafts. And of course, we hadn’t returned Mr. James’s little wagon or the harness. Everything—our flour and cornmeal and salt and the horse’s body and the wagon and harness—had been out there on the prairie all day, as if we had simply walked away from it, careless. It was very hard to keep everything sorted properly in my mind. I knew that Thomas, right here before me, should drive out all other thoughts as unimportant, but I was simply too amazed for that still.

  And yet it seemed as though the sight of him should work upon me in some other way, bring me into the present and set my grief before me. His face didn’t look like any Thomas that I had ever seen before, even Thomas sleeping. His face looked as if Thomas was absent and the absence was filled with something new, which I speculated must be pain. I thought that if the Thomas I knew were present, then he would draw me out of my amazement, but then if the Thomas I knew were present, I wouldn’t be so amazed in the first place. I put my hands to my head and felt it. I thought it must be feeling feverish from the thoughts that beset me, but it felt cool enough. He turned his head slowly this way and then that way, and gave out a noise. I did what Louisa had told me, which was to wring out a cloth in an infusion of witch hazel and place it over his forehead. He continue to turn this way and that, and strange thoughts continued to beset me. I said, "Thomas! Thomas!" but he made no answer, and my voice seemed loud in the room, and so I fell silent again.

  I sat there for a long time, deep enough into the night for the candle to gutter and expire. I regarded my husband without, I thought, taking him in. I did lie down on the bed, but then Thomas began turning his head back and forth again, as if in discomfort and pain, and so I got off the bed, for fear of making him worse. After that, I paced about the room for a while, looking out the little window to the dark street. Louisa had gotten a pane of glass somewhere. All of that—the troubles with the Missourians, the sacking of Lawrence, the Old Brown question—all of that had led to this, but this seemed such an astonishing thing for that to have led to! Thomas stopped turn
ing his head back and forth and lay still. I couldn’t see him very well in the dim light, so I took one of his hands in both of mine, and filled with the conviction that he was about to pass on, I said, "Don’t be afraid, Thomas." I thought, A sojourn in K.T. ought to prepare the soul for any other journey whatsoever. Sometime after that, he did pass on, and sometime after that—I don’t know how long—I realized it. I thought that if I had known him better, perhaps, or found a way to be more married to him in the past ten months, I would have known the very moment. I was sorry I had failed in that.

  I kissed his lips, cheeks, eyes, and forehead, and drew his hands out from under the covers, and placed them in the proper position. His eyes were closed. There was little to do except adjust his bed so that he made a neat picture, then sit down and wait for Louisa to wake up. Now I was a new person, one I had never desired or expected to be.

  BOOK TWO

  CHAPTER 18

  I Reconnoiter

  IN THE TWO DAYS BETWEEN Thomas’s death and his funeral, the news of the attack upon us rolled around Lawrence like ball lightning, setting the country aflame with indignation, or so I was told. Those around me seemed not so much indignant as stunned, and wondered why. I was stunned myself and wondered why. Hadn’t we talked of something like this for months? Didn’t we know something like this was always a possibility? Hadn’t others been killed—Barbour, Dow, Captain Brown? I felt that we should not be stunned, and yet we were. It was a conundrum. Mostly, too, I wanted Frank to come back, or be found and brought home. If the news brought him, then that would be one good thing, the only good thing. I have noticed over the years that every tragedy has about it some good thing: At least it didn’t happen in the winter, when it was so cold; at least we had ten months together; at least, at least. I thought, At least Frank may show up. But Frank did not show up, and then, thinking that he was staying away out of caprice or thoughtlessness, I got vexed with him and decided to put him out of my mind. When I confided these thoughts to Louisa, she told me, soothingly, not to be so hasty, but I was hasty, and I was angry with him.

  But children can be very early taught, that their happiness, both now and hereafter, depends on the formation of habits of submission, self-denial, and benevolence. —p. 224

  Thomas’s funeral reminded me of my father’s funeral only by contrast. Where the one had been obscure and even just, the other was wildly unjust and the occasion of much public clamor. Charles and Louisa and some other citizens of Lawrence urged me to go all the way and have a military ceremony, as they had done for Barbour, who was killed in the Wakarusa War in December. Were we not in battle, were we not engaged in an undeclared war with the Missourians, of which Thomas was a casualty? But that didn’t suit Thomas, I thought, whose approach to every event in K.T. had been cautious and peace-loving. He was most comfortable and happy in his black New England clothes, reading a book of poetry by the light of our evening candle. And so it wasn’t a military funeral, but it was a martial one, and a martyr’s one, and highly arousing to the swarms who attended. The procession that followed his coffin to the grave was a half mile long, and everyone carried arms. It didn’t matter at all that I couldn’t supply enough information about our assailants to even begin to know who they were; the funeral was all about vows of revenge, repayment, and retribution for a crime that should never have been committed, a vile act of bestial cruelty that was simultaneously beyond the human pale and perfectly typical of the Missourians. Mrs. Bush walked along with me at the front of the procession and held my arm to comfort me. "Oh, my dear," she said in her kindest voice, "I knew that something like this would certainly happen. I knew it a year ago when we first set out for K.T. Those people—well, you hardly want to call them people—were fulminating and cheating at elections and vowing revenge for ills they had not suffered, and of course it had to lead to something like this, but I always wonder, why this one? Why does the Lord pick this one rather than that one? Why Thomas and not Mr. Bush? Just last night, Mr. Bush declared that it should have been him if it had to be someone, as he’s lived a long life and done many things, and you and Thomas are just starting, were just starting. We’ve been along that road time and time again. I don’t know, my dear, we never know, but I am just so heartily sorry."

  The consensus of the group around the grave, most of whom were of a religious turn of mind, as most people are, was that the Lord would provide for Thomas, and handsomely, but that they would take care of the Missourians and assure them their just deserts.

  The troubling question was, who would provide for me? For the second time in a year, I found myself the subject of this discussion: What would I do, how would I support myself? At least I had no children, as some of the other K.T. widows had. I will hasten to say that I did not know the answers to these questions myself. What we had had was our crop, our stove, our claim, our youth, energy, and hard work. None of these had much value, especially the claim. Claims had stopped rising in price in the winter and had even begun to decline. The wonders of 1855, where a man bought a bit of land for a hundred dollars and sold it for five hundred, had ceased. In 1856, he was lucky to get seventy-five for it, or fifty. Immigrants from the east weren’t so desperate any longer, were choosy. And they were leery of Lawrence. It was as if the southerners and we ourselves had conspired to frighten the easterners away. You had to have convictions to live in Lawrence. The folks in Lawrence declared this with pride, but to most Americans, this was more of an accusation than a compliment.

  Mr. James and two other men went and got the wagon and disposed of Jeremiah’s remains. In fact, the prairie was dotted with the bones of oxen, mules, and horses that fell by the wayside. Jeremiah, so fast and so beautiful, had become one of these. Charles took Louisa and me out to the claim in one of his wagons. We passed the spot where the killings had happened, or must have, but though I watched for it, I couldn’t recognize it for sure. It was just a stretch of prairie, after all. We gathered my things and Thomas’s things. I gave most of Thomas’s clothes to Charles, and we brought the stove back, too. I sold that to Mrs. Lacey for ten dollars. Mr. Bush said that if the crop came in in August, then he would give me fifty dollars for that.

  My sisters wrote their condolences but didn’t suggest, right then, that I return to Quincy (I suppose they weren’t ready for that so suddenly). Harriet urged me to send Frank back, "since thinking of the two of you alone out there in that God-forsaken place simply gives me a such a turn I can’t think about it." Thomas’s father also wrote me by return post after receiving my letter detailing the murder. He lamented the news, which had prostrated Thomas’s mother. He and his other sons had never quite understood Thomas’s desire to travel, and they had felt that the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company would surely take better care of these boys than it seemed they had done. While the elder Mr. Newton shared most of Thomas’s beliefs, and adhered to them still, he had felt a year before that the emigrants were on a fools’ errand, which opinion this event had now shown to be true, perhaps, though Mr. Newton also felt that there were events afoot in the United States that were unprecedented. At any rate, as their daughter-in-law—though they had never yet met me, they felt they knew me through my notes to them (Thomas had written six letters and I had appended messages on five of these)—I was welcome in their home, and they knew a place would happily be made for me in their town. Mrs. Bush was partial to this plan, as the idea of living in Medford, civilized and orderly Medford, was akin to the idea of living in paradise to her.

  "You just don’t know what it’s like there!" she urged. "The town is so clean and neat, and the ladies are so good to one another! Sometimes I think that I would gladly pass on if I could just take afternoon tea one more time in my old home! It would be a winter afternoon, and Mr. Bush would have hitched our pony to the sleigh, and I would drive over there myself and sit by the fire with my friends Elizabeth and Katherine Keys and my cousin Lucy, who is very dear to me, and we would eat Elizabeth’s little cakes as the darkness closed in, and
then Mr. Bush would appear, all snowy from his walk, and we would drive home in the darkness to a nice chowder by the fire.... Oh, my dear, you can’t imagine, such bliss! You never mind the wind in Massachusetts, even in the winter. It stays outside, for goodness’ sake, where it belongs! Oh, it hurts me to think about it, a little. You surely must take them up on this!"

  Louisa wanted me to stay in K.T. She didn’t say so, but I knew she was assessing which of the many single men who were about might be the likeliest prospect. She didn’t have to say much—we both knew that many of the niceties of mourning for folks in the States disappeared fairly quickly in K.T. If it was hard for a man to be without a wife, it was all the harder for a woman to be without a husband, especially as most folks were so far from their families. And there were fewer women than men. A twenty-one-year-old with a claim of her own and no children was, well, not quite so attractive as the twenty-seven-year-old woman of property and experience Louisa herself had been only six months before, but the answer to my dilemma was there for all to see, and, as I had reflected so many times before, sentiment was deadly in K.T. When I said to Louisa, "But I don’t know Thomas well enough yet for that," she could not grasp my meaning.

  Thomas remained the great enigma, all the more now that he offered no additional clues. To discover who he was, why I married him, what that meant, I had to sift through the clues I already had, teasing out others that might be lurking there. As always—even more than always—other people interfered. I had never had enough time alone with him, and now had even less alone with my thoughts of him, since everyone wanted to do me the kindness of keeping me company, especially the kindness of talking about him and his virtues: He was such a thoughtful, calm man, very judicious and educated. Everyone looked up to Thomas, and so forth. More than one girl in the Emigrant Aid Company had set her cap for him. And a good husband, thoughtful and solicitous. Not every man in the world had to be the most enterprising. There was plenty of room for more deliberative types, like Thomas. And reserve was certainly a virtue, too. I listened to these remarks, but all they did was confuse me. They made a construction around the figure of Thomas that I was trying to get at, and I found myself very irritated but having to smile, anyway, and express appreciation of such kind thoughts.