Was

by Geoff Ryman

  “Did my papa kill anybody?” Dorothy asked.

  “No, honey. He was an Easterner.”

  “Is that the same as North?”

  Aunty Em’s face was crossed. “Yes,” she decided.

  “But St. Louis is East and people call that the South.”

  Aunty Em sighed. “Honey. Kansas is right in the middle, where North and South and East all meet.” She went into a long explanation, of halves of the country, but it still wasn’t clear. Then Dorothy understood. In Kansas, North and South and East and West were ways of calling the same thing good or bad, depending on how you felt about it. Dorothy’s father had been from the North, but he was bad, so he was East, that’s all.

  “Am I from the North or the East or the South?” she asked.

  “Well now, I’d say you were from the West,” said Aunty Em.

  They rode on, to the base of the hills. Roadrunners darted across their path. Birds with bright yellow breasts and black bibs sat on fence posts and sang. Their song was loud and very slightly harsh. Aunty Em sighed and said something very strange. “Guess neither of the Branscomb girls married very well,” she said and shook herself, as if out of a dream.

  They moved out of the fields and into the woods of Prospect. The eastern slope was covered with trees, but on top, the hill was smooth and windswept and crowned with a few low evergreens.

  Down below, to the right, there were the orderly, patterned fields of corn and the straight surgical scar made by the MA&BRR. Beyond the train tracks was a line of tall willows, oaks and sycamores, marking the Kansas River. Only half hinted at amid the clouds of green was another rise, another hill on the St. George side.

  To the people of Manhattan, this was still Zeandale, but to Dorothy, it was another country. Oak Grove, she called it, after its schoolhouse. There was always a breeze through that valley as if the river itself were breathing. On the wind, buzzards or hawks with huge wings were carried, their feathers spread like grasping hands. “Look!” Aunty Em exclaimed and pointed. A heron flew overhead.

  Dorothy turned in the cart and looked behind her. Where the river curved inward, a line of trees seemed to reach out and meet the wooded slopes of Mount Prospect to form a nearly solid wall of green, except for one narrow passage. You would never guess there was an even broader, flatter valley beyond it, with Sunflower School and her aunty’s house. Aunty Em called the passage the Gate, even though you never noticed when you were riding through it. Beyond the Gate, there were blue-gray hills, rolling off into the eastern distance, bald on the western side that looked toward the prairies.

  They began to see other wagons. Aunty Em forgot herself and called out, “Harriet! Harriet Wells! This is Emma!”

  And the woman turned around in her seat and nudged her man. “Why! Emma Branscomb. How be you? How was your winter?”

  “Well as could be expected! Going to be a good year!”

  “Most certainly. Lovely spring!”

  Aunty Em smiled and murmured confidingly to Dorothy. “Old settlers,” said Aunty Em. It was the highest mark of approval.

  The road suddenly plunged steeply down the hill. Looking straight ahead, Dorothy could see the uppermost branches of the trees, as if she were flying, as if the cart were going to come to roost there. The curtain of leaves seemed to part and down below was the City of Trees and one of its two great rivers.

  Trees lined the Kaw on either side, and Dorothy saw the river from above, big and slow and shallow and brown, winding off in either direction, nosing its way into deeper and deeper countryside, lands Dorothy had never seen.

  The wagon moved on, down another dip through more trees. Then the road spread out, as if relaxing in sunshine, on the river’s bank. There were tall, wispy grasses and pink flowers with leaves like rounded ferns. The soil was gray and baked like the crust of a pie, but the ruts the wheels made were full of glistening mud, crisscrossed with long grains of grass and the bodies of flies.

  In the middle of the river, sandbanks rose, like the backs of giant turtles. On the other bank, there were huge, shadowed trees. The wagon bounced up onto stones; the shoreline was macadamized by them. The road began to climb again up the bank toward the bridge. The bridge was made of stone, and its stone supports rose up like towers from the midst of the river. Trees that had been carried by the spring currents were piled up around the towers. The trunks and branches were black, as if they had been charred.

  Dorothy and Aunty Em got out and walked the wagon up and over the bridge. Farther downstream, there was the crisscross ironwork of the railroad bridge. The local line was joined there by the Kansas Pacific. Ahead of them was Blue Mont, and the lumberyards and train depots that formed the outer edge of Manhattan.

  Instead of going into the town, the wagons turned left. Still walking, Aunty Em guided the mule over the train tracks. With a heave and a hollow thumping, the wagon went up and over the rails.

  Beyond the tracks, between them and the Kansas River, there was a meadow of grass, ringed around with oaks and huge cottonwoods. In the middle of the field was a white tent with wagons drawn up all around it. People stood in groups, men permanently holding their hats off their heads. Dorothy wondered if Meeting might be like a circus. Boys in loose shirts ran up and offered to corral the livestock.

  “The mule’s name is Calliope, son, and she kicks so be careful,” called Aunty Em, striding forward. Her eyes were beginning to gleam.

  People knew who she was. They turned, stopped talking, and walked up to greet her. They hugged her, called her Little Em, kissed her breathlessly, called to other friends to hurry, Emma Branscomb was here.

  “And I’d like you all to meet my niece, little Dorothy Gael.”

  “Why, you must be Millie’s little girl,” said a fresh-faced, fat woman bending over, smiling. “Dorothy, we’re so pleased to see you here in Kansas.”

  It was the truth. The woman really was pleased. It was the first time anybody had said that they were happy to have Dorothy in Kansas.

  Gratitude poured over Dorothy. “And I’m so pleased to be here!” she piped, hopping up. There was laughter.

  “Pretty country, isn’t it, Dorothy?”

  “Oh yes, Ma’am. We saw lots of flowers.”

  More laughter. Dorothy had said something that was right.

  “I tell you, ladies, there are times I have to ask myself if this is a human child or a little angel who’s dropped to earth. I can’t stop her from doing her chores. She just works and works, sweeping, washing the dishes, taking care of the hens. I’ve never seen a child like her for helping out.” Aunty Em’s hand was firmly on Dorothy’s shoulder.

  “She must be just such a comfort.” The fat woman looked back up. “After all that terrible business.”

  “Well, we are sent trials in order to test us. Harriet, and there’s no bed of thorns that doesn’t also bear a rose.” Aunty Em patted Dorothy again.

  They began to talk of adult things. Aunty Em pretended that the farm was going well. “We’re thinking of bringing in some hogs.”

  “Oh yes, that’s good if you can stop them from rooting out the crops.”

  “Well, Henry’s planted a hedge, keep them in.”

  Before the winter there had been a murder. A colored man called George Hunter had killed someone in anger. Everyone said the dead white man had been trouble. But still, it was the first violence around those parts since Monroe Scranton had been lynched for stealing Ed Pillsbury’s horses, and that had been back in the sixties. They talked of Negroes crossing the border and wanted to know Aunty Em’s opinion.

  “The South created the problem and wants us to solve it. And it’s our Christian duty to welcome them.”

  “Hard enough for anybody making any kind of business work,” said one of the women.

  “There’s some of them that are as honest and hardworking as you could wish. Edom Thomas for one.”

  “Oh, certainly. Some of them Exodusters have settled in right smartly.”

  They went
from group to group, and people exclaimed, “Emma! Emma Branscomb!” More greetings, more hugs and kissings and kindly questions. Aunty Em’s face became fixed; her smile and bright eyes glazed with happiness. The eyes were famished. Feed me, they seemed to say, I have hungered for this. Dorothy clung on to her hand, feeling forgotten.

  “I tell you, I await the Spirit,” said Aunty Em. “I tell you, after last winter, I need the Spirit.”

  “Amen, amen,” came the replies, in clusters like flowers.

  “There’s this world, and there’s the next, and sometimes the next just reaches out for you, and you yearn for it, yearn for its refreshment.”

  “Hallelujah.”

  Hally hoo hah, Dorothy thought they said.

  Em looked hungrier. “Is it this new boy?” she asked.

  “Reverend Salkirk? Oh, yes.”

  “How is he?”

  “They say he called powerful good up in Junction City last week. First of the season.”

  “He was good by the end, but a bit roundabout,” said another woman, rail thin like Aunty Em. They might have been sisters. “He doesn’t know how to go for it direct.”

  “Nobody called like our father, Emma,” said the man who was with her. He was much older, with a long white beard. “God rest his soul.”

  “For me nobody could and nobody ever will,” said Aunty Em. “But let’s see what Reverend Salkirk can do.”

  “I’m ready for the call,” said the fat pink lady. “I feel just like a calf let out in the spring field for the first time.”

  The people were farmers like them, and they dressed like them, not like the folk of Manhattan. Their children ran about in groups, slightly older than Dorothy. Dorothy watched them, shyly, slightly hiding behind Aunty Em. She knew the children wouldn’t say they were happy to have her in Kansas. She felt safer with the adults.

  Then, as if rising out of the mist and the flower, a figure in black came limping and twisting its way toward them. For just a moment, Dorothy thought it was a ghost, as if her bad mama were coming out of the South.

  The face was familiar, as if in a dream, and that held a certain terror for Dorothy, too. And then dimly, as if someone had called the woman’s name from across a far field, Dorothy remembered who it was.

  It was Etta Parkerson. She was wearing another black and beautifully made dress, all scallops and ruches, and she walked with a tall, sad-eyed man, old enough to be her father.

  “Etta! Etta Parkerson!” said Aunty Em, her smile somewhat sour, caught as she was between two social worlds.

  “Etta Reynolds, now, Emma.”

  “Oh! Of course!” said Aunty Em, hand on forehead as it shook from side to side. “Everyone. This is Etta Reynolds. She is niece to the Goodnow family, and only this February was married to Mr. Reynolds.”

  Hands were shaken politely. Mr. Reynolds’s hands seemed to be made of stone and looked large enough to have torn his wife in half.

  “I’m glad you could join us, Mr. Reynolds,” the old settlers said, meaning, cordially, what are you doing here?

  “My husband is a follower,” replied Etta. “How are you, Dorothy?”

  Dorothy murmured that she was fine. She had first met Etta in another lifetime. She dimly remembered that Etta had been kind to her; she also seemed to remember that Etta had said something that even now disturbed her, though she could not remember what it was. This time, Dorothy did not warm to Etta.

  Aunty Em launched into another performance of Dorothy as domestic angel, how she cleaned and tidied and helped around the house. Etta listened for a while.

  “Emma,” she said. “Do you think you could look after my husband for a while? It’d like to show Dorothy some of the field flowers.”

  “Why, that would be a great kindness, Etta. Alvin, do you feel safe with us?” Alvin Reynolds grinned and rocked in place and plainly did not feel safe at all. Etta held out her hand toward Dorothy. There was nothing for Dorothy to do but take it. They walked together down the slope of the field, toward the river. Etta’s boots swept the top of the grass, sideways, as if kicking it. What does she want? Dorothy wondered.

  There were flowers, like ground-hugging buttercups, the size of Dorothy’s hand. There were vivid little stars of blue on the tops of long stems, and plain white flowers clustered together. There were echoing cries of children, running to the river, and the shade of the giant trees, showing the silver underside of their leaves in the wind.

  “Drudge, drudge, drudge, eh, Dorothy?” asked Etta.

  Dorothy said nothing. She had a wildflower in her hand and was picking it apart.

  “You can work until you disappear, Dorothy. It won’t be enough. People don’t love a drudge. But sometimes they love selfish people, for doing what they always wanted to do themselves.” There were the sounds of wind in long grass and other children playing together.

  “You look tired,” Etta said. “Tired and scared. I find Emma Gulch scary sometimes.” Etta crouched down and tried to peer up into Dorothy’s face. “They’re never grateful, Dorothy. You can never do enough in someone else’s house. They always think it’s their due. You’re always the poor relation.”

  What is the point, Dorothy thought, of talking to me like this? This is talk for adults. What am I to do? Leave? Where could I go? Fight? How can I fight Aunty Em?

  “I want to go back,” said Dorothy.

  Etta sighed and said, “All right. But promise me, Dorothy. Promise me if things get too bad, you won’t pray to God to change you. You’ll pray to God to change them?”

  What did that mean? Dorothy began to walk on ahead, back up the gentle slope. It was some kind of truth and Dorothy didn’t understand it or need it. There was nothing the truth could do for her expect give her pain. The truth was harsh and for adults. It frightened her. Dorothy needed lies.

  “Did you have a nice talk?” Aunty Em asked as they approached.

  “Yes, Ma’am,” said Dorothy, head down.

  Etta said goodbye. Dorothy did not look up. She heard her boots through the grass. Swish, swish, swish, with a cripple’s gait.

  “What can she be thinking of?” asked the pink lady in a low voice. “Don’t she know about women’s troubles? Poor little thing is only the size of a child herself.”

  “I reckon the Goodnows were surprised,” chuckled one of the men. “I reckon they thought the Parkerson girls would be marrying some nice young men from the college.”

  “They’re moving to Wild Cat. Out of harm’s way, I guess.”

  Dorothy realized that she might not see Etta ever again. Her eyes seemed to swell from something like sorrow, something like anger.

  “She thinks,” said Dorothy, pink-cheeked, looking down, with a child’s voice, “that she’s going to be happy.” That ended the conversation.

  “Which seems a good enough reason to marry,” said Aunty Em. “Shall we go to Meeting, brethren?” She took Dorothy’s hand, and gathered up her skirts to march. The others followed.

  It was hot inside the tent. Sunlight glowed on the white canvas. There were benches set on grass. It was as if there could be buildings with grass floors, grass floors with flowers growing in them, as if people could sit down to breakfast amid flowers.

  They were sitting down to prayer. They passed the prayer books among them. Their voices seemed louder in the tent, men reaching across to shake hands, women calling out across the tent and waving. Aunty Em walked down the center aisle holding up her best black skirt, and she looked leaner, taller, back straighter than ever. When she turned to sit down, her dress whisked smartly around, and she nodded to the people near her and gathered up the dress and sat down slowly. It was as if she were someone else.

  There was a banner across one side of the test. Dorothy couldn’t read it. “What’s that say? Aunty Em? What’s that say?”

  “‘Gather ye unto the Lord,’” said Aunty Em. “And that little part underneath says ‘Revival and reform.’ That means to drive out sin and evil.” Aunty Em’s eyes stil
l gleamed. She was still hungry.

  A young man in black walked quickly across the front of the tent and hopped up onto a wagon. The Meeting quietened at once. Children’s attention was drawn with a pat or a slap; a baby was howling, there was a hissing into silence.

  The young man had wavy blond hair and a blond beard. “Good morning,” he said simply.

  “Mornnn’,” came back a mumbling reply.

  Aunty Em drew back and cast a critical eye. Dorothy turned and watched her. So far it was like an ordinary Sunday. There would be prayers and song, and Dorothy would get bored and have to sit still. Maybe the best part had been outside when they were all talking and being nice.

  “Seems to me we got a lot of fine folk moving into Kansas.”

  No response. People weren’t sure if they agreed with him.

  “They come from all over, North, South. Fine people with some money to spend, or no money to spend, and not all of them see much of a future in working the land. Some of them move out to Abilene, or out to Wichita. I hear Dodge is going to be next, following the quarantine line wherever the money is cheapest and nastiest.”

  The silence was the silence of approval. The people understood now.

  “And in these fine new cities of the new Kansas, where the business is brightest and fastest, these thriving cowtowns that seem so proud, with their money and their banks, there are sights the like of which could strike a righteous man blind, and from which all righteous women would shrink like flowers from a flame.”

  Murmur of agreement. They would shrink away, the poor women of the land.

  “And I have to ask myself: Do these fine people know what Kansas means, and what Kansas stands for? Do they know that this is the free state, the place to which the righteous flocked, to say ‘No more!’?”

  Hally hoo hah, said the Meeting.

  “No more to sin and greed. No more to exploitation. No more to the cross of slavery. Or the cross of the Eastern banks and Eastern factories!”

  Hally hoo hah.

  “But lo, brethren, sisters, behold what comes slinking silently in. After the war, after the locusts, after the storms, and the broken hearts, what comes following in, after the people of Kansas have broken open the land, but people whose only god is the almighty dollar, whose only joy is in alcohol or bad women. Pray for them, brethren. But pray for yourselves too.”