Bleeding Kansas

by Sara Paretsky

  She was looking out the window, not at him, but she nodded grudgingly.

  “Maybe next semester you’ll feel like picking up the reins again, hmm? I don’t want you to wreck your chance for a college education, Lulu. You have the brains to go to a good school.” He paused, then said, “You and Robbie Schapen still seeing each other?”

  She gasped, then whispered, “Sort of.”

  “And you’re being careful?”

  About sex? About stirring up talk in the valley? The unspoken end of the sentence. He looked over at her. Her head was bent down, so that her brown curls fell forward, exposing the long white line of her neck. She looked so fragile that he could hardly stand it. He repeated the question until she gave him back a muffled assurance.

  Part Four

  HALLOWEEN

  FROM ABIGAIL COMFORT GRELLIER’S LETTERS

  August 29, 1863

  My dearest Mother,

  How can I find the words to recount our horrors? I sit among the charred ruins of my home, my children clutching my skirts and crying. They want their papa. They look for him on the road, but he will never come home again.

  All last week, the air was hot and still, as if the prairie itself were Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace, seeking to burn us to a cinder. The corn shimmered under the sun, so that from the doorway of the house my eyes were nigh blinded by the glare, and I fancied myself standing outside Grandmother Peabody’s neat frame dwelling in Lynn, shading my eyes from the sun striking the green waters of the Atlantic.

  Oh, Mother, if you knew the ravages of my guilt in the midst of my grief! How many times did I let the sun go down on my anger with M. Grellier. His noble ideals were too great to be encompassed in the body of a farmer. When he set off for his school, how I did inveigh for his leaving me alone to deal with the homestead and the children. When he was going on an errand of special grace, instead of praising him I whined as if I were Baby, grizzling over her new teeth.

  How my shame at my harsh words now threatens to strike me to the ground. Why did I not rejoice in my good fortune, to be married to a man of such lofty principles? Instead, I cried out bitterly. I had broke the sod alone, save for the help of our kind neighbor, Mr. Schapen. I had planted and harvested nigh on my own for eight years. Now, when blackbirds threatened the crop, could he not stay?

  No, he replied, in his patient way. For this hot weather means that the freedmen, who have lately moved into our free state of Kansas from Missouri, escaping the vile slavery under which they toiled, are free from their labors—for you must know that many hire themselves out as farmhands to earn money for purchasing a stake of their own. And as many are eager to learn to read and write, my husband must needs teach them. The school meets—met—close to the homes where the freedmen and their families live, some fifteen miles distant, and M. Grellier deemed it kindest to our horse not to drive him back and forth in this dreadful heat each day but to bunk with one of the freedmen.

  On the morning of 21 August, the children and I slept badly on account of the heat. All the windows, covered by mosquito netting, stood open, as I prayed for some stirring in the wet heavy air. Around four in the morning, the clopping of many horses on the main road, which is a scant half mile south of our homestead, roused me. I stole out of the house and saw, against the predawn sky, the silhouette of many men on horseback. I feared at once that it was the demon Quantrill, who had vowed to raze the town of Lawrence, out of his hatred toward us for making Kansas a free state.

  Scarce knowing what I did, I flung on a few garments. Helen and Nathaniel I dragged wailing to the cellar and told they must make no sound, that they must answer to no voice but Mother’s. Tucking Baby under my arm, I raced on foot to rouse our neighbors, first the Schapens, then the Fremantles. Mr. Schapen rode to the town as fast as he could to sound an alarm, but, alas, he arrived too late. They had already begun their rapine—burning, slaughtering—oh, the murder of Judge Carpenter while his wife lay covering his wounded body with her own! They lifted her arms and shot him in the head. God, have you no mercy? And yet she had this mercy, that she was with her husband as his soul left this world.

  All day Friday, the children and I huddled in our cellar. As the rebels returned drunk on that which makes men madder than all the rum in the Indies—drunk on the blood of their fellow men—we heard them yelling and carousing. They came into our yard—even now I can hardly write for the shaking that fills my entire body! I lay across Baby to smother her cries, nigh suffocating her, while Helen and Nathaniel shivered under my shawl, frozen so by fear that the thermometer might stand at 120 degrees and not warm them. The Ruffians, laughing the whole time, set fire to our house, my little house that took five years’ hard work to build.

  When we finally rose from our hiding place, our house lay in cinders around us. We had naught but the few things I had brought to the cellar in my old tin trunk. Our only blessing was that Blossom and her calf had escaped notice, for the corn where I hid them is now eight feet high. The smoke and turmoil distressed her sadly, and she gives little milk, but enough that my babes have something for their evening meal.

  By and by, Mr. Schapen and his mother came to see how we fared. The reports were of the gravest, he said, many slaughtered, many Negroes murdered. Did I have the strength to go with him? When Mrs. Schapen offered to take the little ones home with her—their homestead had escaped the rebels’ attentions—I said I must see for myself.

  We arrived at my husband’s school in a few hours’ time, hours in which we passed through such scenes of destruction, fires still smoldering, bodies lying in ditches! I pray your eyes never look on such terrible sights. And there, just outside the shanty walls, lay my husband’s body, among those of the men whose children he had gone to teach. Their wives and babes stood round, as desolate as I—more, for they must needs witness these cold-blooded murders. We fell into one another’s arms, sobbing and praying. One woman begged for my pardon for bringing my husband into harm’s way, and those were the only words that could possibly have brought me strength.

  “It is what we came into Kansas to do,” replied I. Not to be murdered, to be sure, but we were called by God to take up His yoke, the yoke that our countrymen had laid on the bondsman, and we were to count no cost. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” The heroes of Shiloh and of Gettysburg played their noble roles in the conflict that consumes our nation, but my children’s father was a greater hero still, for he laid down his life for his friends.

  I can write no more, dearest Mother. Don’t fear for our safety, for our good neighbors watch over us.

  Ever your loving daughter,

  Abigail Comfort Grellier

  Forty-Seven

  HIDEAWAY UNCOVERED

  HALLOWEEN FELL on a Wednesday that year. The Monday before, Lara’s grounding was finally over, and she and Robbie were blissfully reunited in the Fremantle barn. After a time, they looked up, still holding each other, but ready to take part in the larger world.

  Gina and her friends from town were laying the bonfire for their Samhain festival, pulling boards from the bunkhouse and gathering brush from the apple orchard and other trees on the property. They were also picking apples from the trees that still bore fruit. It was part of the ritual that the harvest all be in or fairies would blight the crops, Gina said.

  Some of the group were placing buckets of sand around the perimeter of the bonfire. The fall had been so dry that area farmers were being warned not to burn off any fields, and, in town, they were considering banning barbecues.

  Elaine Logan was tagging along after the other women, picking up small sticks and adding them to the pile. She stopped frequently, sometimes looking toward the barn, almost as if she knew Robbie and Lara were up there. It was Robbie who first noticed her staring at the loft.

  “How could she know?” Lara whispered. “She’s too big to climb the ladder, and we’d see her if she was trying to hide behind a bush or something. Can you i
magine her climbing down into the ditches? She’d never get out again.”

  They both laughed quietly but soon fell silent, uneasy about whether they’d been found out.

  When Elaine thought no one was looking, she pulled a half-pint from her sweatpants and took a quick swig. Lara mimicked her, mockingly, which shocked Robbie. His church prohibited alcohol altogether, as Lara knew.

  “Oh, come on, Robbie, everyone knows Junior was drinking Mogen David in the parking lot as soon as he started high school, and Chip used to see him after football games over at the Storm Door.”

  “Just because Junior gets drunk even while he makes Nanny believe he’s the most pious boy in the whole county doesn’t make drinking right. And Elaine Logan, she’s been homeless all these years. I wouldn’t think you’d find it a joke to see her getting drunk.”

  “She came to my church last Sunday, and she’d already been drinking before the service started. She stood up and called us all whited sepulchres. And she made a creepy remark to my dad, kind of suggesting she’d seen you and me together,” Lara whispered in a hot undervoice.

  “All the more reason to take her drinking as a serious problem instead of making fun of it,” Robbie said doggedly.

  “Maybe you’d better go to your church Halloween party with Amber,” Lara said. “You can tell her how dreadful alcohol is and how terrible I am because my parents sometimes have a drink on their anniversary or my dad shares a beer with Blitz and Curly. Amber can pat your arm and say, ‘Oh, Robbie, I’ve been so worried about your immortal soul, but now I know you’ve returned from the brink of the pit.’”

  “Don’t, Lulu! You know I don’t talk like that about you, so why do you make fun of me when I’m trying to stand up for what I think is right?”

  “I won’t if you won’t preach at me.” She made a face, somewhere between a pout and a kiss, and held out her hands to him. They came together again.

  It wasn’t the only issue they disagreed over. Salvation Bible Church was opposed to evolution and to birth control; Riverside Church actively supported both. Because Robbie was lonelier than Lara, he struggled more to understand her point of view than she did his. Everyone at Salvation Bible when they turned thirteen took a pledge of abstinence until marriage. At least once a month, Pastor Nabo preached on how people who used artificial contraception or had abortions, or who disputed the creation of the universe as described in the inerrant Word of God, would be writhing in torment someday. It was hard for Robbie to think that the Grelliers really were Christians, when they believed that the earth was billions of years old, or that Cindy Burton wasn’t damned for having an abortion.

  “But you told me it was Junior who raped her,” Lara said.

  “Junior came back and bragged that he and Eddie had done it together,” Robbie said. “But it was Cindy who took the innocent life of her baby.”

  “If anyone is going to hell, it should be Junior and Eddie. They’re the ones who hurt an innocent girl,” Lara argued. “And it wasn’t a baby. It was a little fetus as big as my thumbnail.”

  “And you don’t think that was wrong?”

  “Robbie, I don’t. Especially when her own brother—Don’t you see how gross that is? The baby would have had horrible problems if it had been born. Don’t send me to the Salvation Through the Blood of Jesus Full Bible Church’s hell, please. I mean, not unless Chip is there, and Gram and Grandpa. Anyway, how can we speak for God, deciding who is damned and who is saved? God is so much bigger than us, so much bigger than our hates and fears.”

  Lara was unconsciously quoting Pastor Natalie and Pastor Albright. Like Robbie with Pastor Nabo, she had listened to her church’s theology every week her whole life and believed it to be the truth.

  “Only God knows what is in our hearts and souls,” she added. “And He knows that in my heart and soul, against all my best judgment, I’m in love with you.”

  And the argument ended, as theirs always did, in each other’s arms, fumbling hotly in the sleeping bag, Robbie tormenting himself with the question of whether he’d be doubly damned if he, a., let himself get inside Lara and, b., used one of Chip’s condoms to go there.

  It was after that particular argument that he first asked Lara to go to his church’s Halloween celebration. “We don’t do a hell house—you know, those setups some churches use to show us what happens to the damned. But Pastor Nabo preaches about the godly life, and then we have kind of a dance. Chris and me are going to play this year.”

  “Can I wear a costume?”

  He shifted uncomfortably. “Pastor Nabo discourages them because they’re part of the satanic version of Halloween. No, don’t jump down my throat. I’m only telling you what he calls it.”

  “If I can’t wear a costume, then everyone would know it was me,” Lara said. “And, pretty soon, our private business would be everyone’s supper conversation.”

  “But a lot of kids come from the community because their parents like them to be in a safe place on Halloween,” Robbie urged. “And I want you to hear me play—I mean, really play, not just listen to my lame podcast that I had to record myself. Oh, why can’t we see each other publicly?”

  Lara hunched a shoulder. “My dad already knows—or, at least, he’s guessed—so it’s just a question of your father.”

  “And Nanny and Junior. Oh, Lulu, maybe we could run away together.”

  “To a cave by the river!” Lara was enthusiastic. “We could live on what we stole, or maybe Kimberly Ropes would bring us care packages. In the spring, I’d plant sunflower seeds and tomatoes. You could sneak over to your place and get us milk!”

  “I was thinking of Nashville, so I could try out my music for a real audience and see what they think.”

  For a moment, they both got carried away by the fantasy: Robbie a star, singing on Grand Ole Opry, Lara famous for her album-cover designs. No more getting up every day at five to milk, no more Nanny criticizing every move Robbie made, no more Susan sitting like the original Immovable Object, sucking all the air out of the Grellier house.

  Lara’s cell phone rang. It was Jim. The grounding still fresh in her mind, she answered at once. Her father told her she had fifteen minutes to get home.

  “If we aren’t going to run away together tonight, we’d better get home now or he’ll ground me for a whole month instead of two weeks,” she reported.

  Reluctantly, they untangled their arms and legs and slipped down the ladder to the barn floor.

  Elaine Logan was standing at the bottom. “I caught you, I caught you, I knew you were up there! Mean children, not letting me play with you. What will you give me not to tell?”

  The two stood frozen for a moment and then dove through the loose board in the back of the barn and ran for their lives through the field to the road.

  “Spies inside, spies inside!” they could hear Elaine screaming to Gina and the other Wiccans. “Myra the murderess has her spies looking at you!”

  Robbie and Lara crossed the road and landed in the drainage ditch, waiting for the pursuit to begin in earnest. A minute later, they heard the eastbound freight approaching. They scrambled out of the ditch and jumped across the tracks. Shielded by the train, they ran on the grading until they reached the county road, where they laughed triumphantly.

  “Still,” Robbie said after a final kiss, “we’d better find a different place to meet.”

  “How about Nassie’s manger?” Lara teased.

  “Don’t joke about it, Lulu,” Robbie begged. “Junior’s started lurking around Nassie’s pen at night. He had so much fun beating up the lady from Animals R Kin, he can’t wait for someone else to try to break in. He’s carrying Dad’s second gun, the Colt. He even talks about training an armed militia, but Dad won’t agree to that.”

  “Doesn’t he have to go to class or anything over at that Bible college?” Lara asked.

  “Yeah, like Junior ever cared about class, even in high school,” Robbie said. “He got the football coach to give him some spe
cial pass or something for the holy or sacred or whatever work he said he was doing, guarding Nassie, because curfew over there is supposed to be eleven o’clock for all the good Christian boys and girls.”

  Headlights appeared on the Schapen road. Lara fled for her own home; Robbie dropped into the ditch.

  Forty-Eight

  WORD STORM

  LARA REACHED HOME, breathless, as Jim was taking lasagna—another gift from the church women—out of the oven. He looked meaningfully at the clock, but all he said was, “Bring plates over to the oven and get yourself washed up. You’ve been mining coal or drilling for oil, judging by your looks.”

  Lara ran up to the bathroom to clean up the worst of the dirt; she’d have to wash her hair after supper. She helped Jim set up trays in the family room, where Susan was ensconced in her corner of the couch, the afghan making a handy barrier between herself and her family.

  Over supper, Lara tried again to interest her mother in the Halloween bonfire. “They’ll be dancing, and everything, like they always do. They don’t call it Halloween, you know, but Samhain, which is some ancient word meaning ‘summer’s end’—I looked it up at school. Gina’s picking apples from the old Fremantle trees to roast in the bonfire—”

  Lara broke off nervously, afraid that Susan would ask how she knew, but Susan only stared at her dully and said, “That’s nice,” in the dead voice that made Lara want to pick up a knitting needle and skewer her mother. Jim raised his eyebrows but said nothing—not for the reasons Lara feared, that he guessed she’d been on the Fremantle land overhearing Gina—but because he wanted to know what Gina had been doing and saying, and he could hardly ask his daughter. Lara stopped trying to make conversation. She gulped down the rest of the lasagna, hurried into the kitchen with the dishes, and ran upstairs, muttering, “Homework.”