Was_a novel

by Geoff Ryman

  “Nice people,” Dorothy repeated. Saying it made her feel small and warm and comforted.

  “It’ll be like going to church in Lawrence,” said Aunty Em. “We just had the one old cottonwood meeting hall, and the sun made the boards curl up, so the wind blew between them, and we’d all sing just to keep warm. Sometimes your grandfather would read the lesson. He had a fine voice for reading, he’d make the words come alive. He would read the Sermon on the Mount and make people weep from the truth of it. That was his most favorite passage in the Bible. And we’d stand up from those wooden benches and sing those grand old hymns just like in New England. And your mama, she was the littlest and she would sing such a sweet little song.”

  Suddenly Aunty Em was no longer smiling. “I don’t suppose your mama ever told you about Lawrence.”

  Dorothy could feel the sun going behind a cloud. “No, Ma’am.”

  “She never told you?”

  “No, Ma’am.”

  “Well. That was where we lived first. Kansas was just being settled, and we wanted it settled by Northerners. So the Company was formed to help us move across. We came from New England, Dorothy, from Massachusetts. Your grandfather was one of the first to say he’d go. He was a very brave man. He came all the way across the United States to Kansas, and he was one of the first. He left July 17th, 1854, one of the first thirty men. And it was a triumphant progress. They were cheered at the train stations.”

  Dorothy half imagined it, the flags and excitement, and people cheering a good man. It was all part of the Meeting feeling.

  “Your grandfather wrote letters about it back home to the newspapers, Back East. He was such a lettered man, your grandfather. We followed the next year. I came across when I was thirteen years old. Oh! This was a beautiful country then! Nothing between horizon and horizon. I can still remember my first sight of Lawrence, across the river, in the trees. We came across in the ferry and stayed with such nice people, a minister. He had an Indian servant girl, and she gave me a buffalo rug to sleep on. Then we went out to look at our new house that your grandfather had built.”

  Aunty Em paused, looked at the fields, the flowers. “I can remember the first time I heard a Western voice. A woman from Iowa. She told us a store had ‘a right smart chance of calicoes.’ Your mother and I laughed and laughed, and no one could understand why two little Yankee girls would find it funny.”

  Aunty Em went silent again, listening to the mule. “Anyway,” she whispered, “it’s the children of the Company we’ll be meeting today.”

  Aunty Em drew a deep and shaky breath.

  Lawrence sounded beautiful and happy and full of laughter.

  “Lawrence had trees?”

  “Lots of them, honey, all over the place.”

  “And Indians and buffalo?”

  “Not so much even then. People were planning to make their living farming. The hunters had already moved on, to places like Wichita.”

  “Why are we living out here?” Dorothy asked.

  Aunty Em’s face went darker. “We had to move out here, Dorothy. Didn’t your mama ever tell you why?”

  Dorothy shook her head.

  “Border ruffians attacked the town. Called themselves Federal Marshals and carried the flag of South Carolina.”

  Aunty Em flicked the reins. “I remember getting up in the morning and seeing them on top of Mount Oread. The birds kept singing, the sun shone, and there were five hundred armed men on the hill. They fired cannon at the Free State Hotel until it fell. They destroyed the office of the Herald of Freedom where your grandfather wrote his paper. They came to arrest him, but he had already given them the slip. They came into our house, all leering, and asking for the man of the house. And I told them they knew where he was, driven from his own home. So they ransacked it. They were as drunk as skunks and singing ‘Katy Darling’ and ‘Lily Dale.’ And they read our letters and stole our clothes. They even destroyed the only daguerrotype I had of my mother! Then they set the house on fire. My little sister and I had to push a burning bed through the window. After that, my father thought we would be safer out here.”

  Aunty Em’s rage seemed to subside, then flared up again. “And they did it twice! Once in ’56 and again in ’63. Only the second time they killed every man they could find. And not only men! They killed boys, children. They even killed babies if they were little boys.”

  “Why?” whispered Dorothy in horror.

  “Oh! Because the South wanted to own slaves. They wanted to own people like dogs. And because of them the whole country had to go to war!”

  “Why did they kill children?” Dorothy asked.

  “Because their minds were twisted. They were so deep in evil, they couldn’t find a pathway out. The glorious South. And your mother went to live there! In Missouri, St. Louis, the city that tried to stop us from even getting to Kansas. She has to go and move there, not four years after the ashes of Lawrence were finally cold.”

  Dorothy could not remember a war. She could not remember anyone in Missouri killing people. But it would seem that her mother had lied to her, not to tell her this.

  “How could she do it to us?” said Aunty Em, helpless with anger and unhappiness. “Go off to St. Louis with that man.”

  Dorothy’s mother was a bad woman. Dorothy had no idea her mother had been that bad. She began to be afraid that she was bad, too.

  “Those Southerners owe every Union family five hundred dollars at least. Clemency indeed! You let them go and look what you have. Outlaws, that’s all they are. You hear of the James gang, Dorothy?”

  Dorothy shook her head.

  “Murderous, thieving scoundrels. They were Southerners. They were there in Lawrence that very night. They were there, killing children. They ought to have been hunted down like dogs.”

  Aunty Em drew in a long, shuddering breath, and Dorothy hung her head and picked at her nails. “God forgive me. But that’s what I feel.”

  It had been a beautiful day, and Dorothy had been happy. She had thought she was going to be happy. She began to cry now, for the horrible thing she didn’t understand, and for the promise of happiness that seemed to have been broken.

  “Oh, honey, I’m sorry,” said Aunty Em. The sight of the child crying, crying for the right reason, crying for the reason Aunty Em wanted her to weep, moved her beyond measure. “We won’t talk about that. We won’t talk about that anymore. It’s just too nice a day to spoil.”

  Aunty Em stopped the wagon and enfolded Dorothy in her sweaty hug. It seemed to the child that the very earth was bleeding. What other terrible secrets were there? She could imagine the terror, being in your own house, and having to run from bad men who wanted to kill you.

  “I’m not a Southerner,” said Dorothy.

  “No, honey, of course you’re not.”

  “But I lived in Missouri!”

  “Well, that wasn’t your fault. Your mother went to live there, and you were born there.”

  “But they still kill people!”

  “Yes, but that’s only a few of them. Now hush, there’s no need to be scared now, the war’s over.”

  Dorothy wasn’t weeping because she was frightened; she was weeping because it had happened at all. Didn’t Aunty Em understand that?

  Aunty Em kept her bony arms around her. “We’re going to Meeting,” she said. “Meeting’s in a big white tent.”

  How could a big white tent make up for murder?

  “And there’s going to be lots of singing, and we’ll meet some nice new friends who’ll be so happy to see you.”

  “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.

&nbs
p; “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.