by Jane Smiley
It was readily apparent to me that I wasn’t the same person on the steamboat that I had been in Quincy. Certain fixed elements of my character that my sisters and I had always taken for granted seemed to have disappeared. For example, I’d always gone my own way, without making close friends of any girls my age, even my schoolmates, when I’d had them. Those girls seemed foolish to me, too interested in dress patterns and bonnets and pretty things, and I drew back from them. But really, they were smaller and daintier than I was, and pretty things looked flattering on them. I looked best in plain. And of course, there was the problem of my father and sisters. The fathers of my acquaintances were young, healthy, and mostly prosperous. My father’s friends, what few he had, had all died years before, and anyway, he had been a man who made deals, not strong ties or even alliances. He was interested only in men who had something to buy or sell, and each one of them was his potential antagonist. His dearest relationship had been to his horse, or possibly to his house. My sisters, too, had few friends, because always, and over everything else, they had each other, and none of them was really interested in anyone outside the family. An ax ground away from the family whetstone couldn’t even take an edge for them. And so for various reasons, mostly my own, I’d been friendless and liked it that way, been quiet and proud of it. Now, on the Independence, all the women and girls had some feature of note that made me long to speak in a friendly way, but the rifles shut my mouth.
And then there was the question of usefulness. There was plenty of time, as the days passed in the ladies’ cabin, to observe the other women and their children and, as well, to dip into Miss Beecher’s book. One moment I would watch a mother’s agile fingers as she brushed and plaited her three daughters’ silky hair, never losing patience with the flyaway wisps that made me, from across the room, desire to yank them out of the child’s head in frustration; the next moment I would read: "At least twice in the twenty-four hours, the patient should be well covered, and fresh air freely admitted from out of doors. After this, if need be, the room should be restored to a proper temperature, by the aid of a fire. Bedding and clothing should be well aired, and frequently changed; as the exhalations from the body, in sickness, are peculiarly deleterious. Frequent ablutions of the whole body, are very useful...." I looked up. Here was the German girl, finishing off the sleeve of a child’s knitted jacket that she had begun just an hour before. I read: "In selecting carpets, for rooms much used, it is poor economy to buy cheap ones. Ingrain carpets, of close texture, and the three-ply carpets, are best for common use." My eyes drifted down the page. "... cannot be turned ....," "... black threads ... rotten ... ," "... begin to cut in the middle of a figure.... ," "... ball-stitch ..." Beside me, a mother sat with her little boy, reading from an alphabet book. Every second or two, she said in a low voice, "Robbie, pay attention to what I’m telling you, now. Don’t kick the chair runner. What is this letter? Well, then, what is this picture? Robbie, look at the book with Mama." Robbie said, "I’m hungry, Mama! Don’t you have a bit of something to eat? When will they have dinner?" My book fell closed, and when I opened it again, I read: "It is wise, therefore, for all persons to devise a general plan, which they will at least keep in view, and aim to accomplish, and by which, a proper proportion of time shall be secured, for all the duties of life." I was surrounded by all the useful things that I was unable to do, had until now never desired to do, but would soon be required to do. It was all very well to tell myself that Thomas had been apprised of my uselessness. He had seen what he wanted to see in me, just as I had in him.
And I who could run and swim and ride a horse and write a letter and walk any distance now languished half asleep in my chair, lulled, or perhaps numbed, by the book in my hand and the quiet activities all around me. Indoors! Indoors! Even in Kansas, no doubt, most of my life would be spent indoors, doing what Annie and Alice and Harriet and Beatrice had been doing all my life while I was outside. Here, indoors in this cabin, the curtains were mostly drawn, and I felt as though I were stifling. All around me, the others were getting on with their useful business, unaffected, while I was suffocating.
And then the bell rang for dinner, and everyone ran for the door.
It was hard traveling so late in the year, with the river so low. It seemed that the boat grounded on a sandbar every hour, day and night. There would be a jolt and a shudder, then yelling and running, then she was up and over, or they’d floated her back. Twice the passengers all unloaded— according to some, for fear of explosion, and according to others, simply to lighten the load. Stories of this wreck and that explosion and the other accidents that resulted in so many deaths and injuries abounded, but in spite of the horror and the dread, daily activities went on quite smoothly, as if only a real explosion could prove to passengers and crew that there could be an explosion. Only our actual slow progress up the river seemed the possible thing. The scenic bluffs were impressive; the drinking water cleared a little as it sat in the glass on the table. Those who were used to it attested to its tangy flavor and healthful properties, but some said it made them ill.
Thomas and I improved our acquaintance at night, in our tiny stateroom. The only barrier between us and the cabin at large was a green curtain, under which, often enough, you would see one or two thrusting male stocking feet, as they allowed the single men to sleep on the floor of the ladies’ cabin after the ladies had gone to bed, which was at about eleven. If a lady had an emergency in the middle of the night, she had to step over a score or more of long bodies wrapped in cloaks or blankets, and by morning the air was insufferably close.
Thomas and I whispered to each other from our respective berths, I on the top shelf, he on the bottom. All around us, people were snoring, coughing, expectorating, sneezing, groaning, rustling, muttering, talking, laughing, and even crying. The whimpering of the sick baby went on and on, even though the poor mother talked to it and walked it and nursed it and tended to it, it seemed, twenty-four hours a day. Only the bustle of a grounding drowned out the somber noise of this child’s suffering and the low patter of its mother, saying, "He’s always such a good, happy baby. I don’t know what can be wrong with him. Forgive me the disturbance...." The help of the other women, who offered to hold or to walk the baby, so the mother could get an hour’s rest, only made her more apologetic. I would lie in my berth after Thomas and I had finished whispering back and forth and I was sure he had fallen asleep, and listen to that sad baby and its sadder mother and feel as low as I had ever felt in my life. It was all I could do to keep in my mind a picture of the orderly grid of streets on the bill advertising Salley Fork, Nebraska, or my image of Lawrence, Kansas, with its gristmill and library and lumber mill and evening lecture society and salubrious climate.
At the first light, we woke up and fled for the fresh air of the deck, along with almost everyone else in the cabin.
We never mentioned the rifles, and Thomas never looked at the Negro waiters who served the food nor at the five slaves who were traveling on the boat, three women and two men who were kept perennially busy tending to the wants of their owners. All had come on in Saint Louis. A man and a woman got off the first day, and the rest got off the third day. I believe they were Thomas’s first actual slaves, since he had never traveled in the south. I had been to Palmyra, Missouri, of course, and Hannibal, too. Slaves and their masters were common enough passing through the streets of Quincy, to tell the truth. Even so, I could not help seeing them as if with Thomas’s eyes. In the general hustle and bustle of everyone on the boat doing for themselves and their kin, these white women who waited to be served stood out boldly different. Once, when the boat grounded and we all had to get out and step through shallow water to a low spot on the shore some fifty feet away, a woman stood on the deck long after everyone else had gotten off, waiting for her slave girl of about fifteen to fetch her other shoes. It later turned out that the crew wouldn’t let the girl get the shoes but put her off on the other side, and so the slave owner just stood there
grasping at her ebbing dignity with two hands. It didn’t help the girl fifteen minutes later when she was crying and explaining in front of everyone what had happened. Her mistress’s shoes were ruined with the wet, and she slapped the girl, in spite of her tears or for her tears, or both. Thomas whistled to himself and walked up and down on the shore, away from the others. I kept thinking that it was those rifles that were weighing down the boat and that soon they would be thrown off with everything else, the box would break open, and something terrible would happen, far worse than a slap. After we got back to our saloon, there was an argument between the slave-owner woman and another woman, in the presence of the slave girl. "Of all of us on this long, tedious journey," said the one woman, who spoke in New York State accents, "you are the only one who has dealt a blow. This child is entirely in your power—"
"You know nothing about it," snapped the slave’s mistress.
"I know what we all see, that for the sake of a pair of shoes—"
"A new and expensive pair! Believe me, if I could free myself of the girl, I would. You have a smart traveling outfit on, and you and I are about the same size. I’ll tell you what. I’ll trade you the girl for your dress and the hat I saw you wearing with it. Then you can give her her freedom or not, as you please."
The New York woman was much taken aback and soon realized that the rest of us had all fallen silent and were watching her. The young slave woman was watching her, too.
Finally, her face went red, and she turned her back and walked away to her stateroom. The slave owner said, "You see? She didn’t buy you. Go back down to the lower deck with Pearl; I can’t stand the sight of you anymore."
The northern woman came off at a considerable disadvantage from this, with many in the ladies’ cabin saying, "They are plenty happy to be telling us what to do, but that’s all they really care about" and "They are perfectly happy for us to be with the niggers on an equal footing, but you know, they won’t touch them" and "All you really have to do is stand up to them, just like any other bully." There was much nodding and consenting to all of this.
I didn’t say anything, but I thought that the slave-owning woman had shown considerable wit, and I only wished that the northern woman had matched her. I know what I would have done. I would have said, in a very dignified manner, "I have no desire to own slaves, but I will give you my shoes if you will set her free." You could always take off your shoes right then and there, and that would be a seizing of the advantage.
That night, when I related the incident to Thomas in the privacy of our stateroom, he was much interested, but he didn’t think as ill of the northern woman as most of the women had. "You see," he whispered, "she couldn’t even put a girl and a dress in the same category."
"The girl herself could. She was ready enough to be traded for a dress."
The thing that always struck me about these disputes was that most things most people said seemed right enough for you to agree with, but the more sentiments you agreed with, the more confused you became, I asked Thomas if he was ever confused about this issue. He said he was not.
The next morning, the slave-owning woman and her party disembarked at Lexington.
From there it was only another day’s journey to Kansas City, hardly a city, or a town, or a village, but only a high bluff above the river and a little track running along it, nothing like Saint Louis. There were bigger towns farther up the river, which some of the other passengers were going to— Leavenworth was the name of one and Weston another—but as our preliminary plan was to go to the town of Lawrence and find Thomas’s friends, we disembarked at Kansas City. There had sometimes been discussion of Kansas City as a thriving western metropolis at Horace Silk’s store, but this village was not the Kansas City they were referring to there. Nor did I see how Kansas City could ever become the populous city that Saint Louis was, for great tree-clad declivities towered above the levee, and all goods had to be hauled up them on narrow paths. They were difficult to scale, even unburdened with goods.
There were plenty of folks around, though, and here in Kansas City we saw yet another new sort of person. The place was full of men I would soon come to know and fear as Border Ruffians. These men were Missourians, and to tell the truth, they reminded me forcibly of Roland Brereton, everlastingly G— d—ing everything, everlastingly working at a plug of tobacco and spitting every minute or so. Their hair hung down, long and dirty. They went armed, even walking down the "street," a big pistol or a Kentucky long rifle or some kind of knife to hand at all times. And these men were everlastingly loud and always talking about themselves: "No man ever throwed me! I’d like to see the one who’d try! I’ll whip two if I have to! Haw—if I get to! Ask me! I like to give a good whipping, I do!" I said to Thomas that "I" seemed to be their favorite word. Thomas stood out among them like a church steeple among chimneys, with his neat black trousers and his well-trimmed red beard and his shirt collar. They looked at him, too. At the time, I thought the contrast between them and him was all to our advantage. I must say, also, that their respect for me was exaggerated. Someone was always stepping into the mud so that I could pass, or touching his hat, or nodding at me, or offering to show me the hotel or some fine wagons or a good mule. These men would look at Thomas, then talk to me. I thought that this was just a quirk of the Missouri men, but later I realized that it attested to the depth of hostilities. Conflicts between strangers weren’t open yet, but the Border Ruffians were ready for them to be.
It was under the eyes of these men that the black stevedores unloaded our "harness" and the rest of our belongings, and it was these men who shouted out, "There’s a heavy box, an’t there? Can’t hardly lift that one, Joe, now can you? Got some books in there, don’t he?" The beating of my heart actually quivered the tucks in the bodice of my dress. "There are books in there," said Thomas, as if impressed by the talkers’ perspicacity. "There’s a very fine set of leather-bound sermons in there." Thomas never even removed his hat or his coat, though it was as hot a day as I had ever endured.
We asked around for a hotel and were directed to the Humphry House. It was nearly dusk, maybe just about time for our supper, but by the time we had walked from the landing to the door of the Humphry House and had climbed the plank ramp that served for steps, we could see no sign of anything like supper. The proprietor, his wife, some children, and two or three others were sitting between the doorway and an open window. "There’s a bit of a breeze," said the woman as we walked in. "I felt it."
"I felt it," said the proprietor. "A good breeze."
"Yes, ma’am," said one of the others.
"Yes, ma’am," said another, with such conviction that I expected someone to roundly disagree. If anyone had done so, it might have been me, for I felt no breeze at all.
"You’re too late for supper," said the wife, looking at us. "If you’re hungry, you can go on up to bed and sleep on it. That’s the best way." Her tone was friendly, as if full of good advice and entirely disinterested.
"Hot up there, though," said the proprietor.
Thomas said, "Perhaps you could show us the accommodations."
"Well, I could," said the proprietor, leaning back in his chair until it screeched, "but you can see them for yourself, up that staircase."
As we climbed the steep, railless steps, the wife called out, "Them beds is for the ones who’s down with the shakes. If you’re okay, you got to sleep on the floor!"
The sleeping room did for everyone and ran the whole length and width of the building, maybe twenty feet by thirty. They had laid out blankets on the floor. The beds were taken already by a full complement of sick people, and a small, dark-haired woman who didn’t look all that well herself was turning from one bed to another bed, a couple of spoons and a large cup in her hand. She glanced at us as we came up the stairs but looked too exhausted to say anything.
There were four beds, three holding one person each and the largest holding two men. The woman leaned over one of these and gave him a sip of w
ater. He groaned, a deep, manly, and agonized groan.
"He’s bad," she said, as if to no one. "He an’t going to make it." The man was struggling mightily with his fever, throwing himself about and kicking out at his bed companion, but that one was so thoroughly asleep that he lay there moveless and inert under the blows.
I said, "You’re good to nurse him."
"He’s my husband, you know," she said, again as if to herself. "But he an’t going to be for long." She gave the struggling man a long, unreadable look, then turned and carried some water to one of the other beds. Thomas said, "Are these other members of your family, then?"
"Never seen any of the others before." She shook her head, then half fell into a chair, seemingly beyond exhaustion.
I said, "May I get you something to eat?" before I realized that I had no idea where to get anything to eat, but she said, "No. Can’t eat. Can’t eat yet. Maybe tomorrow." She closed her eyes, and for a moment all of the patients were quiet, as well. Mr. Newton led me down the stairs. "How they doing up there?" said the proprietor’s wife. And before I had even opened my mouth to speak, she was shaking her head ruefully.
Out in the street, I said to Thomas, "We might find another place to stay."
But there was no other place to stay, and when we came back later, the floor of the sleeping room at the Humphry House was covered with bodies wrapped in blankets. The stars and the moon were clearly visible through chinks in the wall, and there was a breeze. It came in at every crack and was warm and thick. The provisions made for the ladies on the steamboat were nowhere to be found in the Humphry House. The best the half dozen of us could do for ourselves was to cluster at one end of the room behind a curtain that one of the ladies made from an old piano cover she had brought along with her from Tennessee. Did she also have the piano? she was asked. "Why, no," she said. "Never did have a piano, but I thought this was a nice first step." The floor was cottony, and it was easy to hear what was going on below through the chinks between the boards.
