by Jane Smiley
It was late in the day when I woke up, maybe an hour before sunset, and I didn’t quite know how far I had gone or how far I had to go yet. I’ve got to say that I felt a moment of panic, or rather, I was once again intimidated by the largeness of my project. It seemed far beyond my strength and my wit. I had twenty-nine dollars now, with the three Mr. Morton had given me. Not much, but no doubt enough to get me to Blue Springs, to the Samsons there. After I was finished with them, I felt, I would have no need for money. I was hungry. I got up, smoothed down my clothes, took off my hat and put it on again, and resumed walking. In K.T., it was a regular thing that if someone was making his way in the countryside late in the day or at night, or if someone had no food, he might stop at any claim cabin he saw and ask for hospitality. Sometimes the places where he might stop had little enough to offer, but sharing was the rule, and in return the traveler might pay a bit of money, or do some work around the place. No doubt, even though Missouri was longer settled, it wasn’t so surprising to farmers and householders by the side of the road when travelers did the same here. But of course, anything like this would expose me the same as taking a ride would. My hunger soon began to conflict with my prudence, though, and I wondered what to do. While it was August, and I knew there must be various things ripening by the side of the road, berries and whatnot, I didn’t see any, and I was afraid to explore and to be caught stealing. I kept on walking, not so fast as before. The afternoon light reddened and grew shadowy, and not so many folks passed me, leading me to wonder if I had gotten off the road to Independence. I scrambled down to a little stream I passed and took some water. It was clear enough.
What could you eat? I hadn’t ever thought much about this question before. In Quincy, I ate what was set before me—pork, sometimes chicken, bread, corn bread, butter. Cucumbers. Pickles. Steak. Greens. Apples. Peaches like the wonderful peaches I had shared with Nehemiah (peaches were ripe in Missouri; I looked around but saw no orchards). Watermelons, which grew in the sandy areas down by the river. Eggs. A lovely boiled egg. Cakes and especially pies. Alice had liked to make pies, had a definite way with a crust. Toast. Jam. Blackberry jam especially, seeds and all. I had picked and boiled down many a pail of blackberries myself. Hotcakes.
In K.T., we had prided ourselves on making do. Much was scarcer than in the States, though there were prairie chickens enough and turkeys. Bread flour was almost unknown, corn and cornmeal ubiquitous. Hot corncakes, stirred up with that limey water they had there, and a bit of salt. Well, there were many things worse and not many better. That was what I wanted right then—not anything fancier than that: just a dishful of fragrant yellow corncakes, with maybe a bit of honey on them.
These thoughts made me feel faint, I admit, but I didn’t want to stop thinking them; that seemed like yet another deprivation, hunger beyond hunger. So I walked along, thinking of good food and feeling my stomach turn over and my mouth water. I’d heard that people could go without food for three days or more. Sometimes in the newspapers or other places, there were pieces about mountain men or parties of pioneers who went without food for weeks on end, and it wasn’t as though we hadn’t been a bit pinched from time to time the previous winter. In addition, I had eaten what most people would consider a good enough meal the previous evening. Nevertheless, a bit of hot sausage would be good, and some boiled potatoes with butter. Even a carrot, just a crisp raw carrot out of the ground. I cast my eye down each side of the road, but I didn’t see any gardens. No doubt they were planted back near the houses. Each time I saw a house or a cabin, of whatever sort, I was tempted to turn toward it, but each time I saw a man or a woman in a field or in a yard, I knew I dared not. I kept on, Thomas’s watch firmly clenched in my hand, but no doubt I wasn’t making much progress. Soon enough, it was dark, and I went under some bushes, where, if I placed my case at my head, I could see a sliver of moon but was myself hidden from the sight of passersby. The ground was damp and soft with leaf mold. The sharp, earthy, woody smell helped to drive away thoughts of food, and I quickly fell asleep.
I woke up considerably bolder, and eager to vacate my night’s bed, as small insects, or the ghosts of small insects, seemed to be crawling all over me—up my trouser legs and down the back of my neck. I scrambled out of the bushes and jumped up, throwing off my hat and running my hands through my hair, shaking my shoulders and stamping my feet. The sun was up, and I immediately heard the haw haw of Missouri laughter. I put my hat on and tried to summon some dignity. I coughed, then croaked, "Is there something funny, sir?"
"Haw haw haw haw!" shouted the man, who was sitting on his wagon seat, flicking his whip at the tips of his mule’s ears. The mule stood there calmly, only shaking his ears as if at flies. "That was some little dance, boy, that was!"
I could still feel things running up and down under my clothes, so I snapped, "Thank you very much!" and reached under the greenery to retrieve my case.
"Now, boy, you been walking a long way, I ken tell by lookin’ at ya! Where ya headed?"
"Independence. Blue Springs."
"Is that so? Haw haw haw. What’s wrong with ya? Why are ya talkin’ that way?"
It seemed tedious to tell, and even a bit dangerous to pursue further colloquy with this man, so I didn’t answer but only adjusted my hat and coat and began down the road. After I had taken maybe five steps, he shouted, "That an’t the way, boy! You got turned around!"
I stopped.
He laughed.
I glanced toward the wagon and saw that a Negro youngster of maybe ten or twelve had sat up in the back of the wagon and thrown off its covering. The child was now staring at me. I couldn’t tell from either the cropped head or the shapeless garment whether it was a boy or a girl. The master saw me looking and turned around, shouting, "You lay down, now! You an’t got to sit up and look around!" The child disappeared. Then he said to me, "Independence is that way," and pointed behind me. I tried to walk confidently forward, but after two steps I couldn’t do it, and hesitated. The inevitable "Haw haw" rose from the wagon. In fact, the man was so excited that he laid the whip exuberantly across the mule’s shoulders a couple of times and then stood up and slapped his thigh. The mule jumped forward, knocking the man off his feet. He fell back in the wagon.
Now it was my turn to laugh. And I could have sworn I heard a giggle from under the wagon canvas. The mule, however, came immediately to a halt, rather than running off, which would have been my preference. In the meantime, I got my bearings and saw that I was headed in the right direction, after all. The undergrowth that had provided me with shelter for the night had been to my right when I sought it and was still to my right; across the road was only rail fencing and pasture. Without glancing at the man or the wagon, I marched forward. Soon enough, the mule came up beside me, and then I felt a poke in the middle of my back—the whip, no doubt. I quickened my step. The mule quickened his step, and I felt another poke. All at once, I turned around and demanded, "Who are you?" in my most authoritative croak.
The man was grinning, showing clearly the effects of tobacco—his few teeth were brown as nuts—and behind him, a little dark head bobbed up, and a high voice said, "He Massa Philip!" then dropped down again. Master Philip spun around, his whip held high, but the child had disappeared. The shaft of the whip came down rather ineffectually on the canvas, then Master Philip spit into the road, raising a puff of dust. He turned around on the seat and faced me again. I had gotten a few yards off by now, maybe twenty, and I was walking fast, though every step was agony in my large, heavy boots. Over the night, my feet had swelled, and numerous tender spots from the day before now burned against the heavy leather as if I had no stockings on at all. But I hastened forward, looking for a break in the brush to slip through, out of the sight of a man who appeared to me possibly mad and certainly threatening. He whipped the mule into a trot and closed the distance between us. I stumbled and dropped my bag, which fell partly open, necessitating sufficient delay so that the mule came up beside me again.
I looked at the man and began backing away. He said, "Now, boy, I notice about you that you an’t got no manners. Here I am, your elder and better, no doubt, and I asked you a question, and you an’t answered it but just croaked at me like a duck. Round these parts we know a thing or two about a thing or two, and I’m guessing you to be a stranger, and an unfriendly one at that. You some G— d— abolitionist, or something?"
I didn’t say anything but turned and attempted to hurry away. A curve in the road now revealed a break in the fence across the way, and I thought if I ran I could get there and off into the field. I doubted whether Master Philip had enough interest in me to pursue me off the road. Nevertheless, he did whip up the mule to a steady trot, and they came on behind me. At the break in the fence, the mule was practically on top of me, Master Philip was haw-hawing to beat the band, and I was able to duck around in front of the animal, waving my arms and brandishing my bag in the mule’s face, so that he threw up his head and came to a halt, toppling the man out of the wagon into the dirt. I slipped through the opening in the fence, hearing but not seeing Master Philip pick himself up with a torrent of curses. From the back of the wagon came high-pitched yelling: "Massa Ablishinist! Save me! Tak me ’long, Massa Ablishinist! Don’ leave me wid Massa Philip! Tak me! Tak me!"
I ran across the field as far and as fast as I could, never looking back but hearing both the screaming and the cursing until they blended into one sound and then were lost in the other sounds of an August morning. When I stopped at last, out of breath and ready to drop, I couldn’t be sure that I actually saw the wagon and the mule, nor did I care, as my pulse was pounding so hard in my ears that that itself made me afraid, and a kind of red cloud seemed to be closing over my sight from both sides. I staggered into the shade of a stand of hackberry trees and knelt down, resting the top of my head on the cool earth. I closed my eyes.
Perhaps I crouched in that position for ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, not unmindful of Master Philip but too overwhelmed by my own exertions to make much of him. Then I came more to myself and peered about. He was nowhere to be seen. I spied some deeper shade and crawled to it, and only then did I recall the pleas of the child.
At first they seemed only strange, as if, somehow, they were a performance that had nothing to do with me. Of course, they had nothing to do with Lyman Arquette, who was the boy walking along the side of the road, who was from Palmyra, Missouri, and for whom the institution of Negro servitude was a righteous and inevitable disposition of natural, and scripturally justifiable, inequality. A slave screaming to be saved was, to Lyman, a piece of disobedience that deserved punishment. If Lyman were a kindly fellow, then he would stay the master’s hand from too severe a rain of blows and counsel Master Philip to attempt to win his servant’s love and loyalty through gentler means. But all things considered, taking to his heels had been Lyman’s wisest choice, given the unpredictable irascibility of Master Philip, who was certainly armed and might be happy to shoot a strange boy of no value to himself, while desiring only to whip his own property. It was surely not required of Lyman that he risk his life to preserve the child from but a few of the many, many blows he had received and was certain yet to receive.
And yet it was with Lydia Newton’s ears that I heard the child’s pleas. I knew perfectly well the difference between Lydia and Lyman, that Lyman was merely an outward appearance. Save me! There had been a fullthroated note of pure desire and pure grief, mingled, in the child’s plea. Tak me! Surely Master Philip had heard the same desperation that I heard, the same hatred of himself, the same richly felt revulsion. Would he have then turned on the child and beaten it senseless, beaten it to death, beaten the hatred out of it? For I had noticed one thing in this far western territory, and it was that men, and southerners in particular, couldn’t stand to be made to seem mean or dishonorable in their own eyes, that they would commit any aggression to efface that feeling. New Englanders, like Thomas, acted on what they called conscience, which made them seem self-righteous but also allowed them to turn away without a fight from those who disagreed with them. Southerners acted on what they called honor, which existed only in how they considered themselves to be regarded by others. Often, this made them friendly or sociable, but someone who thought ill of a southern man and made him see himself through disrespectful eyes had to be proven wrong, even if you had to kill him to do it.
Did I think I could have saved that child? No.
But his voice hurt me every time it came back to me, and I thought Thomas might have handled the whole incident more coolly and to better effect. Oh, Thomas! It seemed as if he pressed me hugely now, as hugely as ever he had alive.
A man and a boy who were coming out to hoe their field found me lying in the trees. When they had gotten to within a few paces, I sat up and put my hat on straight. As they were neither frowning with suspicion nor grinning with mischief, I suppressed the urge to run. The man came over to me, peered into my face, and poked me on the shoulder. He said, "You all right, boy? You’re on our land, I reckon. An’t got nothing fa ye. Best be gettin’ on."
I got my feet under me and went to stand up, but I couldn’t quite make it and fell back. The man pushed his hat to the rear of his head and gave himself a scratching, and the boy came over and stared down at me. He was a year or two younger than Lyman.
"Well, now," said the man. "Harley, run git yer ma." I closed my eyes. He raised his voice. "Tell her ta fix somethin’ up fer this boy. He looks done in!"
And so it was that I came to spend the morning at the Elton farm, home of Burley, Harley, and Opah. Opah did bring me some mush with butter and milk in it, and she and Harley did take me back to their small house, but fortunately, I was so rank after over a week in the same clothes, with no bathing or washing facilities, that Opah refused to come near me and banished me to the barn with a towel and a lump of soap when I wouldn’t let her take my hat or my jacket. A bit later, Harley appeared with a bucket of warm water, and then he ran off to help his father with the hoeing I had interrupted. I carried the bucket around to the side of the barn away from the house, and I washed my face and my short hair, took off my jacket and washed my neck and my arms, took off my shoes and stockings and washed my feet. Opah’s cow and chickens watched me carefully, and a dog came, also, and sat at a distance, gazing sometimes at me and sometimes at something afar. I said as little as possible, croaking as low as possible, and they did what they were supposed to do, gave up intercourse with me as profitless. Toward noon, I turned the bucket upside down and set a dollar on the bottom, held down with a piece of a brick, then I set off across the fields again, toward the road. My feet were flaming. When I got there, Master Philip and his slave child were so gone that I could almost tell myself that they had never been there but had been figments of an early-morning dream.
Revived, I continued on my way toward Independence, and by late afternoon, the swelling of traffic unmistakably revealed that I was approaching that famous metropolis of the west. Independence is older than Kansas City or Lawrence by some twenty years, in fact looks to be of an age with Quincy, though differently built—no high bluff above the river and dark woods behind, but instead wide streets set in open, gentle hills, so that you feel the open spaces of the west are at hand, and all you need do is begin your journey. The streets were full of outfitting shops and emporia of every variety. Livery stables were everywhere, their yards full of horses and mules. I couldn’t help letting some of the grays, especially, catch my eye, and it was easy to go from that to imagining that Jeremiah was only stolen, that he might turn up here of all places, but I kept walking. Lyman kept walking. Lydia gawked at everything—houses, low white fences, flower beds and blooming roses, ladies in buggies with their children beside them, the dark faces of slave women in kerchiefs, with yoked buckets over their shoulders, chatting at the town wells, folks of all ages and types, old and young, black and white, tall and short, rough and gentle, going in and out of buildings of all sorts, or idling at corners, chewi
ng on their seegars or spitting into the street. Even after Kansas City, coming into Independence was like reentering the world. I could stop here, refresh myself, change into a dress or—
I turned in to a men’s haberdashery, opening the door before I quite realized what I was doing. There, by pointing and croaking, I managed to purchase two shirts and a collar, as well as two pairs of stockings. Then, a ways down the street, I went into an eating establishment, and did just what I had done on the steamboat and in Kansas City: my dollar paid, I filled my plate as quickly as I could with everything close at hand (a piece of beefsteak, some beet pickles, corncakes and corn pudding, a piece of bread, some sliced cabbage, and a peach), and I wolfed it all down willy-nilly until I couldn’t contain another morsel. This place wasn’t so rough as some others; there were women here, but I ate like a man now, half through trying and half through habit—that is, I leaned over my plate, I wiped my mouth with my sleeve, I ate quickly and with a hearty appetite. I ate, in fact, as if no one were watching me (ladies always behaved as if someone were watching them, and more often than not, someone was, if only a sister or a friend), and when I was finished, I lolled in my chair and looked around, as if it were my prerogative to watch without being watched. Then I pushed my chair back with a scrape and sauntered outside. I did not, however, make use of the spittoon, as did most others; even for the sake of my masquerade, I could not enter so deeply into manly habits as that!