by Jane Smiley
After supper, I made my way through Independence, turning south and traversing residential districts of considerable pretensions. It was well known in the west at that time that some Mormons made their home in Independence; not the same group that caused so much trouble back in Illinois and went to the great desert with handcarts, but Mormons nonetheless. I kept a curious eye open for some, but there was no telling. I’d heard that they didn’t hold with slavery; perhaps some of the folks I saw passing in the streets unaccompanied by Negroes were Mormons. Well, it was a way to keep my eyes open and my feet moving. In my new stockings, both pairs, my boots were almost comfortable. I was well beyond Independence by midnight.
There is a rhythm to any long walk, I discovered, or rather, there is a rhythm, but there is also a movement. The rhythm is the beat of one’s footsteps on the road, their steadiness denoting progress. When I was tired or discouraged, I took solace from that beat—my legs seemed to work of their own volition. There were times when I thought my feet couldn’t take another step—my soles throbbed, or my boots rubbed my heels and toes raw, or the very bones ached—but somehow my legs walked me through those times: after a while, whatever had hurt no longer hurt but was deliciously quiet. Above this beat were the larger movements of the walk—morning, noon, nighttime, but also country and town, solitude and company, calm, boredom, fear, lively interest, discouragement. Sometimes I was thoroughly at home in my male costume, a boy marching along. Other times, my costume seemed to grate over me, or stand away from me, or interfere, and I was acutely aware of myself inside it, almost as if my person were trying to separate me from it. Yet other times, everything about me that I had been thinking of, including pain or discomfort, fell away. Here was something: there were times I was so fatigued that I didn’t think I could walk five more steps, and then, a moment later, I would be suddenly afraid and find myself almost running. And after that, I would be less tired rather than more. Truly, there was so much to discover in such a walk that you could not discover it all the first time. I got well away from Independence before I settled down for the night by penetrating a large haystack in a field and pulling some of the hay down over me. I reckoned that I would make Blue Springs sometime the following day, as it was not so far from Independence to Blue Springs as it was from Kansas City to Independence.
Under the hay, I lay awake, even though only moments before I had been stumbling about half asleep, looking for a spot to sprawl. I yearned to remove my boots, which were heavy and constricting, even though I knew that I would pay tenfold in the agony of putting them on again in the morning for the relief of taking them off right then. If I took them off, my liberated appendages would swell overnight so that putting them on again would be a time-consuming agony. If I left them on, only the first twenty or thirty steps would be especially painful. I had decided ahead of time what I would do and how it would be, but now that I was lying under the hay, I seemed to be all feet, and all of me was crying out to be released.
Over all of that long day—all of those new scenes and new folks—lay the pleas of that slave child. The Eltons, who had no slaves, who had given me food, and water for washing, had seemed to bely that child’s very existence, and after that there was Independence and more food, and all the miles between the early morning and this late night. My feet, of course, ached a constant assertion that there was no room in my thoughts for any idea other than boot removal. But nevertheless, in the quiet, fragrant, hidden darkness (I couldn’t even see the moon through my covering of hay), the child’s voice pierced me again, made me wonder what "could not" meant. I was certain that I could not have saved that child. On the other hand, I was carrying my pistol in my bag, and I knew how to use it. I had shot more than a few turkeys, which are much quicker and more suspicious than a man is. Had I kept a level head and not run off, had I reconnoitered instead of panicking, I might have gotten into some sheltered spot, loaded my pistol, and confronted Master Philip. In retrospect, I saw that Master Philip was a buffoon and a bully. A little courage on my part would have surprised and routed him, would it not? Lyman, of course, could not do such a thing, but so early in the morning, there had been no one around. With no one around, Lyman was in abeyance, wasn’t he? Only Lydia was truly present, and she might have figured something out.
Well, I could only put my cowardice down to my femininity. There was the great shame of it. When all was said and done, it was Lydia who had panicked, Lydia who had run off, Lydia who hadn’t the wit to do anything else but seek a hiding place. The west was full of men, and of the stories of men, who confronted bullies. That was practically the normal course of western acquaintance: man meets bully, man endures bully, man pulls a pistol out of his hat and subdues bully, man and bully become boon companions. How, indeed, did Lydia plan to confront Samson and Chancy, whoever they were, having so thoroughly caved in to Master Philip? Such questions eventually drove out all thoughts of my boots, but neither was there much hope of sleep. I saw that all I could do was grip Thomas’s watch as tightly as I could and vow to do better, whatever that was.
Were I honest with myself, I would have to wonder why I had taken up the abolitionist cause. Thomas, of course, had made it attractive, so perhaps I had taken it up as a way of being courted. That afternoon with Frank in the creek at Roland’s farm had changed forever my perception of Thomas, as there was such a mysteriously knowing verve in the way he’d passed that money to Frank and caused Frank to pass it to the man in the cave. I had found so much charm in that that I had never even spoken of it to Thomas but cherished my secret feelings like a talisman. Perhaps I hadn’t wanted to hear a more mundane explanation of the incident. At any rate, we had so quickly set out for Lawrence, and so quickly taken up with our friends there, that I had gotten to be an abolitionist by reflex and, my sisters would have said, out of pure contrariness, as well ("just like Miriam"). Ah, well, my sister Miriam. When she was alive, I’d known of her abolitionism, of course, as it was the source of so much family dissension, but I hadn’t cared all that much about it. Yet, after her death, I had let it come to be her defining feature for me, the thing that helped her, from all of them, love me. Possibly that was it. Such a plain young woman as myself could find love only among abolitionists....
And then, in K.T., we abolitionists had been so hated, so stupidly, venally, cruelly, and ridiculously hated, that there was honor in being an abolitionist. For all their foibles, my friends there had been kindly, hard-working folks. I hated those who hated them, even hated the enemy more for my friends than they hated the enemy for themselves. But I couldn’t, in all honesty, look upon that as a virtue. I had become a hater, the sort who wanted to hang, shoot, dismember, clear out, and otherwise dispose of those who wanted to hang, shoot, dismember, dear out, and otherwise dispose of me. That was what my abolitionism had amounted to in K.T
But abolitionism was about slavery, after all, and the evidence of the Master Philip incident was that I hadn’t many instinctive feelings about slavery. I had been slow to act because I had been slow to feel. Master Philip and the child had played out a little scene for me, and even in my fear, I had watched it as comic rather than as tragic. Only afterward did that child’s voice come back to me as the voice of my conscience, you might say. I knew what I should have done only by surmising what Thomas would have done, and by then, of course, it was too late. It wasn’t just having to hide among my enemies that made it hard to be an abolitionist in Missouri; it was also having no friends.
The sun was well up and my nest hot and dusty before I awoke the next day. There was little relief in the open, either, as it was a hot, thick day, with clouds piling in the west. By Thomas’s watch it was past midmorning. I felt achy and vague, still full from my very heavy meal the night before, and also extremely thirsty. I had not picked a spot near water, and there were no streams nearby, so I made up my mind to approach the house I saw across the road. I must say that I was daunted, as it was one of those large places with columns, constructed of whitewas
hed brick, that was set back on a lawn. As I trudged toward the veranda, a pain seemed to lift up through my neck into my head, lodging itself in two burning points at the back of my skull. I grew dizzy, paused, took my hat off, and put my head between my knees for a moment, got clear again, and resumed trudging. About ten yards from the house, I realized that I had left my case under the hay. I let out a groan and dropped to the grass. Going back to get it, and going on to the house without it, seemed equally impossible.
The green lawn stretched away on all sides. As I lay down within it, it grew as large as a prairie, seeming to run to the horizon, as a prairie did, and to end only in the same sort of threatening clouds that had so recently oppressed me with their torrential, fiery tempests. This lawn gave me such a lonely feeling, such a feeling of general abandonment, that I started to cry and therefore had to pull my hat over my face. The pain in my head, which had subsided somewhat, was now matched by pains elsewhere, the source of which was utterly mysterious to me, unless they were the evidence of some sort of general collapse of my soul and body under the pressures of grief and exhaustion. The darkness inside my hat gave me some relief, though, and as I lay there gripping Thomas’s watch, I did feel myself swoon away.
"You be moanin’ purty bad, ma’am," said a voice.
And in my own voice, Lydia’s voice, I said, "Something is wrong with me." My voice came out high and light, as easy as water. I needed water. I said, "I’m thirsty," and I took the hat away from my eyes. A Negro woman was squatting beside me, perhaps thirty years of age, wearing a faded gown and a white kerchief around her head. She put her hand around the back of my neck; it was cool and firm, large and strong. She said, "You sit up, now, and I ken gi’ you somethin’ ta drink, ’cause I got milk right here from de springhouse."
I knelt forward and drank from a cup.
"What you be wearin’ man’s clothes for? Ain’ you got no dress?"
"I want to kill someone."
The Negro woman laughed.
But after that her face closed over, and she said, "Missy Helen done seen you from de house, and she sent me down heah. I see her lookin’ right now. You cain’ lay out on de grass—"
And a voice called from the house, "Lorna! Who is that young man? See him off! I won’t have any loiterers about with the master gone!"
Lorna stood up and went out of my sight. I closed my eyes. Sometime later, Lorna and her mistress were both kneeling above me. I opened my eyes and beheld their faces, framed in dark clouds, both looking seriously down at me, one black, one pale blond. The hand of the mistress, just a girl, smaller but no less cool than the hand of the slave, smoothed my hair away from my face. She said, "Lorna says you’re a female."
I said nothing. She felt my cheeks and said, "I do believe you are a female. Well, mercy me! And you surely got a fever. Well, we’ll take you in, I suppose, but it’s a good thing for you you’re a female, because Papa wouldn’t like me to be taking in a man!"
I said, "I only need some water. I’ve got to get to Blue Springs."
They looked at me, then Lorna said, "You be walkin’? I ain’ seen no horse nor buggy."
I nodded.
She said, "Ain’ walkin’ to no Blue Spring today. Big storm comin’ up, for one thing. It gone rain any moment!"
And it was true. As they helped me sit up, I could feel it in the breeze.
In the kitchen, sitting on a bench beside a stove, a bowl of corn pudding in one hand and a spoon in the other, I was seized with the worst pain of all, and I swooned away right then and there.
CHAPTER 22
I Am Taken In
If domestics are found to be incompetent, unstable, and unconformed to their station, it is Perfect Wisdom which appoints these trials, to teach us patience, fortitude, and self-control; and, if the discipline is met, in a proper spirit, it will prove a blessing, rather than an evil. —p. 205
I AWAKENED WITHOUT OPENING my eyes and lay in bed listening to the voices in the room. Through my eyelids I could tell that they had lit two candles. That, just that, was a divine luxury. And I lay between sheets, I could feel them, and I wore a nightgown, far too fine to be my own—where was my own?—and the voices were low and smooth.
"There, now," said the mistress, Helen. "That looks nice, I do think. Don’t you, Lorna?"
"Very nice, missy."
"You didn’t even look, Lorna! Take it in your hand and hold it up to the light. I mean that stem stitch. Look at those vines! Don’t they look real?"
"Lak weeds, you mean? Dat mornin’ glory vine is a weed, no mistake."
"Oh, Lorna. I think they look very pretty, and Minna will love them."
"Round de hem of her petticoat? Who gone see it?"
"She will simply know it’s there. That’s the best joy of being well dressed, if you ask me. Whether or not anyone notices—"
"Massa James ain’ gone notice, dat’s for sure."
"Lorna, you shouldn’t say that. Master James is going to be Minna’s husband—"
"Then she de one who gone hafta love him, not me. I jes’ got to keep my mouth shet."
"Yes, you do!"
"I know it!"
"I won’t say another word."
They sat quietly for a few moments, then Helen said, "He’s very handsome. He’s a regular cavalier. And he’s been to college in Virginia."
"So he say."
"Lorna!"
"Well, missy, ifn you don’ want me to speak my mine, don’ temp’ me."
"I think he’s a gentleman. He just has his own ways, is all."
"You nevah met no Virginny gentleman, Missy Helen."
"And you have?"
"Well, I have. Yes, I have."
"In Saint Louis?"
"Yes’m."
"And what do you know about them, pray tell?"
"I ain’ sayin’, ’cause den you’ll say I talk too free."
"I won’t."
There was a pause. Finally, Lorna said, "Well, missy, dem Virginny men, dey thinks awful highly of demself. Everythin’ dey do say, ’I am bettah den you, and I know it and you know it, too,’ but den dey treat everbody real nice, and dey always apologize when dey is forced to bring loaded guns and such into de house. And dey nevah nevah evah carry no knife in dey boottop. Dat’s a fact."
By this time, Helen was laughing, and finally she said, "Goodness, Lorna, you do talk so free. I’m not saying too free; just free."
Now there was a long silence, and Lorna said in a low voice, "Well, sure ’nuf, she be awake, I reckon."
This was my cue. I stretched and yawned and opened my eyes. I was in a high-ceilinged white room with two tall black windows. Lorna sat near me, on the right side of the bed, sewing a shirt by the light of one candle, and Helen sat at the foot of the bed, beside the other candle. She had set aside her work and was leaning forward to look at me. I pushed myself with my hands and raised up out of the pillows.
"Oh!" exclaimed Helen. "How are you?"
I shook my head back and forth, then said, "I don’t think I know."
"Do you have any pains?"
I reconnoitered. "A little. An ache, nothing much."
"Does your head hurt? You were holding your head and moaning in your sleep."
"I was?"
"Lorna gave you some drops, and you slept right through the storm."
"She did?"
"Deadly poison, I’m sure. Lorna is a deep one."
"My head feels like it did hurt, but doesn’t hurt anymore. You know? It remembers hurting." I sounded silly.
"I’m dying to know who you are and why you were wearing men’s clothes. I’ve so wanted to do that!" I saw Lorna look at her. "But Lorna says we have to let you rest absolutely for twenty-four hours, so you needn’t tell me a single thing right now, but just think pleasant thoughts."
"Call me ... Louisa," I said.
"Louisa?"
I nodded and closed my eyes. It was more pleasant to listen to them talk than to talk myself, which reminded my head to hurt a
gain. There were steps out of the room, then back in again, and after a moment, I felt Lorna’s cool hand under the back of my neck. When I sat up and opened my eyes, I saw that she had a basin beside her, and she was leaning over me. She said, "I got some broth here. Oxtail broth." She laid a napkin across my chest and then fed me in silence. From the end of the bed, Helen looked on eagerly. After a bit, she said, "I had a terrible fever one time. Papa thought sure I was going to die, and the doctor gave me up for lost, but Lorna just kept fixing that oxtail broth every day. It was a reason to live, I always said. Papa told me I was going to get up and see that all the COWS had lost their tails!" She laughed merrily, and Lorna smiled a tiny smile.
"Now, missy," said Lorna, "you don’ have to go tellin’ everbody your life story."
I estimated that Helen was a year or two younger than I, but she seemed even younger, still a girl, which I most assuredly was no longer.
After the broth, Lorna gave me a glass of cool well water to drink. It was clear all the way to the bottom, sweet and delicious. I drank it greedily, and she poured me another one. Then she said, "No wonder you thirsty."
I felt my forehead with my hand, and she said, "You ain’ sick." She seemed to know what I was, if not sick. But I took her prohibition on Helen’s asking me questions as permission to ask none of my own but simply to lie back in a state of comfortable ignorance, at least until the morning. I even felt Thomas’s largeness slip away to a more comfortable distance, and as I turned over onto my side, I felt myself, maybe for the first time, turn away from my sense of his presence. In the morning, I thought, I would resume my journey to Blue Springs and my pursuit of the criminals Samson and Chaney. I sighed and nestled down into the pillows. The women continued with their sewing for a bit; just as I was sleepily wondering where the men, or man, might be, Helen said, "I suppose they’ll be home sometime tomorrow. Maybe in the forenoon, if they get an early start."