The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton

by Jane Smiley

  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.

  Time passed more slowly in the jailroom than ever it had before in either K.T. or Missouri, where time had a way of fleeing. Now there was plenty of time to sense each pain sprout, grow, blossom, and give way to another. Although I didn’t sleep, I did wake up, and each awakening was a shock. Thomas was dead. Yes, dead. The journey was over, and he wasn’t at the end of it, as somehow I’d hoped, expected, imagined he was, without even knowing I was doing so. It is wrong to say that you can watch someone closed in his coffin, put in the ground, and covered over, and not expect him to be there when you turn around. It is wrong to say that you can visit his grave, even kneel upon it and place prairie flowers upon it and have all your associates speak of it as if they know it as his grave, and believe that he is in it. I hadn’t believed that he was in it, or perhaps I wouldn’t have left him there, so far away. Had I had ten years with him, or thirty years, perhaps I would have come to the end of him and let him die, but in only ten months, I had hardly gotten through the beginning of him: the kindness, the air of amusement, the love of myself that never seemed to falter no matter how unwifely, unwomanly, I acted. And then there was his desire to act on principle. All of these things about him I had hardly begun to contemplate. And it is wrong to think, as I sensed others thinking, that a ten-month marriage is only a glancing blow in a woman’s life. With each painful moment there in that jailroom, I felt how much I wouldn’t be getting past that ten months.

  I had no child. I supposed that most women I knew would say, considering my circumstances, that this was fortunate. Lorna would have said so; my sisters would have said so. And in the pantheon of dead children, mine was one of the unknowns—his or her face only a speculation, his or her name only a fancy. My child hadn’t had even the tenuous hold on life that Mrs. James’s baby had had. My mother had once told me to think of all my dead brothers and sisters as crystal spirits. The Lord poured His wine into them for a time, and that helped us to see their features, and then, for His own reasons, He poured it out again and took their transparent selves back to Him. I don’t know where she got this idea; possibly from our minister. I hadn’t thought of this image in years, but now, in the jailroom, it haunted me. My child, our child, hadn’t gotten even that far, could have held no wine. Nothing about him or her was revealed. I mourned this mystery as if it were his or her very self. Mrs. Hopewell heard me weeping and came in from time to time to give me cups of tea, apparently gratified by my remorse and my show of womanly feeling.

  And Frank was no doubt dead, too, and it was such a grievous thought that thinking it through was beyond my strength.

  And what about Lorna? What in the world had made me think I had anything in the way of strength or quick wits to offer Lorna? Our escape had been a fool’s errand from beginning to end. She had looked to me for aid, and I had let her do so, all the time that it was actually me counting on her. It
seemed, looking back, that I couldn’t have fled without her, that the luxury and languor of Papa’s plantation would have inexorably gummed me up, immobilized me, and when Lorna claimed me and insisted I help her, she invested me with the power to move. Everyone felt Lorna’s concentrated force—Helen couldn’t do without her, Bella had had to fight her, Papa had to summon all his faculties to assert himself over her, and after acquaintance of only a week or two, I had accepted her as my reviver, felt the cool, firm sensation of her hand on my neck as a promise. It was hard to see Lorna simply, as another desperate woman powerless against the institution of servitude, against Missouri and Kansas and guns and horses and catchers and dogs and distance and lack of funds and chance, but that’s what she was in the end, wasn’t she? And the ways she would have to pay for her mistake in trusting me I would never get to know and always be tempted and terrified to imagine.

  It was all very different from the bills we had pored over in Horace’s store, with their pictures of wide streets, square blocks, libraries, mills, stores, and ladies’ improvement societies everywhere. Now, even though I had been to K.T. and seen the chicanery there firsthand, I still didn’t know if those bills were simply wishes or if they were pure frauds, and if the latter, whether someone else had defrauded us or if we had simply defrauded ourselves.

  What K.T. and Missouri really were was talk. People in the west made a big house of words for themselves and then lived inside it, in a small room of deeds. And now that I was silent, that didn’t mean the talk didn’t still surge and storm around me. From the other rooms in the jail, from outside, through my window, open or closed, I heard constant shouting, calling, talking (and shooting), day and night. Everyone loved to talk, to boast, to threaten, to claim, to damn, to preen, to narrate, to lie, to pile word upon word, expression upon expression. That’s how Jim Lane got so big in K.T.—he was the best talker. But after you talked for a while, it seemed, you ended up talking yourself into acting. Didn’t matter what side you were on or what your principles were; if you talked about them long enough, well, you had to act on them. Now that I was in jail, I didn’t know what I thought about principles anymore. It seemed as though the main result of having any was dislocation, injury, pain, and death. But of course, that left out Lorna.