by Jane Smiley
We came into Kansas City late in the afternoon. It was now almost three weeks since I had left the town, and once again it was entirely different, and different, as well, from Independence, for Kansas City was in a full state of war, with troops of men in all varieties of uniform gathered together, marching, drilling, riding madly to and fro. The sound of weapons firing, always a feature of Kansas City life, was now almost constant. I saw that we had to get to the river as quickly as possible, get on a boat, and hide out there. A year earlier, this wouldn’t have been difficult at all, as all there was to Kansas City was the levee and the bluff above it. Now the town spread out in all directions, and I couldn’t tell where the river was. Lorna and I couldn’t help being daunted by the activity and the noise. As much as we knew we had to move deliberately forward, appearing confident and even at ease with our situation, it was nearly impossible not to stop and gape, not to startle, not to glance furtively around. Any number of shouts could be directed at us, could they not? And any of those could be just a warning to get out of the way (everyone on foot was in the way), but any of them could likewise be the Recognition. Lorna had lived at Papa’s all her life, some thirty years, as I guessed. There was no telling how many guests had passed through there, gotten to know her, knew now of her escape. Nevertheless, here in Kansas City, the balance of my fears had shifted, and I was now more afraid of getting caught up in an all-out war than I was of capture. Indeed, the newspapers pasted up here and there, on fences and walls, as well as those tossed in the street, all declared, "WAR! WAR!" in giant letters. Shannon had fled, and others were fleeing. I began to wonder whether we could get on a boat, and if so, when, and what it would cost. Twenty dollars for each of us suddenly seemed cheap, if that was our only chance. Thirty would stretch us, and forty break us. Forty seemed impossible, but you could see at a glance that in Kansas City right then, all bets were off. We came to a street corner, and I turned imperiously to Lorna and barked, "The boats may be full, Ila! We need to come up with another plan in case they are!"
"Yes, missy," said Lorna, submissively.
We marched on. I brought myself to ask directions to the levee, but the man I asked said, "Ma’am, I jes’ got here myself! I don’t know up from down here! An’t it excitin’?" And he spit at my feet and rushed off, pistols thumping at his sides. We walked on. Talking itself seemed so dangerous that I could summon the courage to do it only once. After a few more minutes, Lorna muttered, "We is gone de wrong way!"
"I don’t think so."
"I does!"
She smiled as she spoke to me, trying to please me for the eyes of any and all onlookers, but her voice carried grit. She muttered, "Ask agin! It gettin’ dark."
I thought darkness would be some respite myself, but I didn’t dare argue with her. Even so, I could hardly bring myself to speak. Every man around seemed the incarnation of danger. Finally, I spotted a boy. A boy of the sort I recognized perfectly, a lounging boy with a seegar in his mouth, thirteen or fourteen, white-blond of hair and brown of face. I approached him, and he said, "Hey, ma’am."
"I need to get to the river, where the steamboats are."
"I need four bits for my supper."
I opened my reticule. The boy looked into it, idly, shamelessly. I handed him fifty cents, and he took the money in his hand and tossed it into the air. Only after catching it and depdsiting it in his pocket did he look at me again. "Everbody knows the river’s down that way, but I bet you an’t goin’ to find no boat unless you booked your passage last month, ’cause ever boat is d— full!"
"We can try."
"You go down that street ... Nah, I’ll show ya." He spun around in front of us, whipped off his hat and stuck it on his head again, then trotted off. Lorna and I trotted after him. After a moment, he looked back at me and paused. When I had caught up to him, he said, "That your gal?"
"Yes."
"She looks mad."
"She just looks that way."
"I wish I had a gal."
"You do?"
"Nah, not for me, but you kin get eight hunderd dollars for a gal in these parts. Lots of ’em have run off, that’s why."
"Where to?"
"What’s the matter with you—an’t you got no sense? The ablishinists get’em all together and run ’em off to Ioway They do that ever night! Last night alone, they got twenty-three gals and ten boys! Probably the catchers’ll only get half of ’em back."
"Who told you that?"
"Everbody knows that." He plucked the seegar out of the corner of his mouth, spit in the dust, and put the seegar back. I said, "Is the area well supplied with catchers?"
"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 o
pen. 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 characterand 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.