by Jane Smiley
There were thousands of Missourians massed to attack Lawrence, and the first thing they did was sit and wait, allowing their numbers to swell and the people of Lawrence to ponder their fate. Nevertheless, we both sensed that even with many of our friends around, the pondering we did out on our claim was lonelier and more fearful than what they were doing in town. What if Lawrence was sacked, burned to the ground, cleared out, our friends hanged, shot, tarred and feathered? It was not a prospect to contemplate by yourself. Had we been in Lawrence, I thought, we’d be drilling and building, digging and talking, making preparations for our own defense. It would at least be lively and invigorating. Late in the afternoon—that would have been Friday—we did what people with dilemmas always do—we tried to have it both ways. Thomas got on Jeremiah and rode into town, leaving Frank, over loud protests, with me, and carrying the last of the Sharps rifles, except for my own, in saddlebags over Jeremiah’s rump. He intended to reconnoiter the "war" and return in the morning. If he didn’t return (but of course, he would), he would send someone else, either to get me or to stay with me.
The transparency of this plan didn’t escape any of the three of us, but it allowed us to act. After he left, Frank and I busied ourselves for our evening and night as if it were the last—a project that we wouldn’t have to repeat. We allowed ourselves a good supper—corncakes and dried apples and some honey and a stew of prairie chicken and wild onions. We built a good fire in the stove—not eking out our wood supply but pouring it on. Every time we thought of what might be happening in Lawrence, we put on another piece of wood. Without mentioning it, we both sneaked glances around to the southeast, toward Lawrence, to see if the sky was alight. But the night stayed dark and crisply chill; no fires on the horizon. I lit a candle and brought down "The Song of Hiawatha" from Thomas’s shelf of books and tried to read it aloud to Frank as Thomas would have, slowly, savoring the words, letting their rhythms form a little music in the cold air. I let myself think about him already being dead, as a way of preparing for that. All over Kansas, no doubt, women were praying, and men, too. That was the way with most folks in K.T., and in the States, but Frank and I didn’t pray. It didn’t occur to us. We had swum in the ocean of religion all our lives and not gotten wet. After our reading, we went to bed, again as if for the last time, bundling into the quilts and blankets and embracing sleep as if we’d never sleep again.
In the morning, I woke up early, just after dawn, and already knew that Thomas had not returned. Whatever elevation of spirits we’d achieved the night before was utterly gone now, in the teeth of the wind and the flat gray sky and the white frost over everything, inside the cabin and out. The stove was barely warm and would gulp down much of our wood just to get hot enough to cook breakfast. My pitcher of water had a thick film of ice. Nothing, it seemed, could be touched without pain. We lay in bed, disconsolate. I asked Frank if he regretted his journey to Kansas now.
"Nah," he said. "Something might happen. Nothing’s gonna happen at home. Everything’s fixed there. Here everything’s loose."
"Loose and sliding downhill," I said.
"I’ll tell you one thing, though. Thomas an’t no farmer."
"Isn’t."
"He’s got schoolteacher or something written all over him. My pa says that’s how you tell an abolitionist. They’re all goldurned schoolteachers, and I have to say that I gave that aspect of things plenty of thought before I come here."
"Came here."
"But he’s left me alone about it and hasn’t made me write anything. He’s about as handy as a brick. It makes me nervous when he gets out there with that ax."
"He goes slow. He’s not practiced."
"It’s like he wasn’t ever a boy."
"Well," I said defensively, "he wasn’t a western boy, a rude boy who gets to do everything he wants to all the time."
Frank shrugged. To myself, I acknowledged this was true. It was very much as if Thomas had never been a boy but had always been a man. This was what set him apart from the other men I knew.
We lay in bed chatting all morning, as though we hadn’t a thing to do in the world, and then, toward midday, Mr. Bisket arrived with his wagon, hitched up to his little horse and Jeremiah, and we ran out of the cabin to greet him. In no time at all, we had all our things packed that we would need for a prolonged stay in Lawrence—clothing, bedclothes, weapons and ammunition, books, candles, a skillet, all of our provisions. There was no question, no remonstration. The very wagon and horses carried about them the air of bustle and great events that were not to be missed. We rolled away from the claim, over the crispy hard and frozen prairie, without a backward glance.
There was plenty of news. Sheriff Jones was hot to invade Lawrence and kept sending for Branson, the fugitive. No one was saying where he was, but Bisket speculated that he was well on his way to Iowa by now. Jones planned to use the search for Branson as a pretext to roust out folks he particularly hated, and most people in Lawrence expected at least a few of their homes to be burned down, in retaliation for the burning of the Missourians’ homes.
Mr. Bisket had been drilling all day the day before. He said, "They’re afraid of our rifles, deathly afraid. And you know why? They know you an’t got to be much of a shot to hit something; you just got to have plenty of firing caps and balls and black powder. They all pride themselves on being able to pick the eyeball out of a squirrel at a hundred yards, but they know we an’t got to do that. We got these rifles; all we got to do is keep loading and firing. An’t got to load anything down the muzzle one time. I wish we had us some artillery. Robinson’s been talking about it. He wrote off to Thayer, they say, asking for some fieldpieces. I’d like to see that!" He laughed.
I asked if Thomas was drilling.
"Nah. They got him digging at the fortifications. Anybody who an’t exhausted has to do that. That’s hard work. Tomorrow’s the attack."
"Why tomorrow?"
"I don’t know. That’s what everyone says. Depends on when they run out of whiskey. When they run out of whiskey, first they get mad, then they sober up and get smart. They got to attack while they’re mad but before they sober up. Jones has the whiskey coming in to them by the barrel. Some folks are all for us attacking them, since we could take ’em easy, but Robinson says we got to sit tight and let them make the first move, or the U.S. Army’ll be down on us like a blanket."
"I thought there were thousands of them."
Mr. Bisket shrugged.
A bit later, he handed me the reins and slipped down off the wagon seat. He motioned to Frank to join me in the front and then whispered, "I’m gonna look around. You an’t carrying anything suspect, so just ride on into town and go to the hay house." Then he walked away.
Darkness was coming on; I hustled the two horses up to a trot and shortly came to some Border Ruffians huddled around a fire. I kept on without speeding up, or looking toward them when they shouted. They let me by, but another set stopped the wagon, held Jeremiah by the bridle, and peered at us.
"What’s your name?" There were three of them, wearing soft hats, their faces lost in their whiskers. They had on layers and layers of humble clothing against the cold and carried long Kentucky rifles that looked awkward and outmoded by the standards of the Sharps carbine but were nevertheless deadly. I opened my mouth to speak but hesitated just a moment, unsure of what to say. In that moment, Frank said, "She can’t talk. She can’t hear nor talk. I go along with her everywhere."
"Where are you going, then?"
"We’re going into town."
"There’s a war in town."
"Nah!" said Frank, dumbfounded. "Who’s fighting?"
"We’re gonna clear out them d— black abolitionist traitors!"
"Well, good," said Frank.
"What’s yer name, boy?"
I shook the reins, and the horses tried to step out, but the Ruffian tightened his grip on the horse’s bridle. He said, "Tell her she can’t go nowhere till we get to the bottom of a couple of th
ings." Frank tapped me on the shoulder, and I looked at him alertly. He made some enthusiastic motions with his hands and face, at which I nodded. Then Frank said, "I’m Frank Brereton. Who are you?"
One of the others spoke up. "He’s an abolitionist’s worst nightmare! Haw!" He spit on the wheel of the wagon.
"We’re gonna burn them out down in that hole of abolitionists. We’re just waitin’ for some stuff! What’s her name?"
"She’s my cousin Lydia Brereton. We’re visiting from—"
"Illinois!" exclaimed one of the men. "Haw!"
Frank didn’t even look nonplussed. He said, "That’s about right."
"You know Burton Brereton, then?" said the man.
"He was my paw’s uncle. He was a killer," said Frank. I sat stock-still, a blank look on my face, as I struggled to pretend that I couldn’t hear this very interesting exchange. "I never met him," said Frank, conversationally. "He died before I was born. But we had them dogs."
"What dogs?"
"Them dogs that were descended from the bitch that warned Uncle Burton about the killers."
"I never heard about no dog."
"Well," said Frank with some animation, "that’s what happened. The dog snuck away and went to get Uncle Burton, and the killers didn’t realize it, and then Uncle Burton, who was raised among the Indians, snuck up and killed those men. He slit their throats."
This was not the story I’d heard, but I remained impassive.
"Hunh," said our interlocutor. "Well, my paw lived in Edwards County for five year before he come to Missouri, and he always said that a man named Burton Brereton was the death of the meanest and worst criminal who ever lived. So here you are."
"Here I am," said Frank, taking credit for the whole thing.
"And she’s your cousin." He pointed to me.
"Yes, she is, but she don’t know the story," said Frank.
"She’s a big one," said one of the men, in an unkind tone of voice. One of the others laughed.
Frank said, "You don’t have to insult her."
"I thought you said she can’t hear nothing."
Frank didn’t quite know how to answer this and fell silent. "And ugly," said one of the other men, speculatively, smiling at me. I smiled back at him. "Ma’am," he said, still smiling, "you are about as plain as an old sow."
I nodded and grinned.
He grinned back at me. "I bet you are an old maid!" I laughed and tossed my head flirtatiously. All the men guffawed.
"Deaf as dirt from the day she was born," said Frank.
"I’m cold," said the man who was holding Jeremiah. "What are we doing here?"
The man who had known about Burton Brereton said, "If they want to go to Lawrence, I say let ’em."
"We gonna check the wagon?"
"Nah. Nah. It’s too cold for that." The men stepped back, I waited, and then Frank nudged me. I shook the reins until the horses were trotting briskly through the dark. In a moment, my teeth were chattering, and there were a hundred things I wanted to say to Frank, but I kept as silent as I would have if those men were perched on the back of our wagon, waiting to hear me speak.
Lawrence was busy with warlike preparations. When we came along Massachusetts Street, we could see groups of men lit by long wood fires. Some had shovels and were digging and mounding up fortifications, while others had guns and were watching over the guns of those who were digging. As I noticed this, Frank crawled into the back of the wagon and brought out our guns, my Sharps rifle and the rifle his father had given him. I tried to discern the figure of Thomas, but there were so many men and they were so busy and ill lit that I couldn’t make him out. I wondered, with a pang, when I might see him. When we were driving along with Mr. Bisket, it seemed a matter of course that I would see my husband practically as soon as I arrived in Lawrence, but now I saw the real state of things, and I had misgivings about leaving our claim—at least if I were there he would know where to find me. The horses were tired, but I urged them more quickly to the hay house, eager though I was to see my husband. This was the first thing I learned about war—that it makes the briefest parting almost too painful to bear.
The hay house was considerably deteriorated. The thatching that had looked so neat in the summer was now partially fallen out and patchily replaced with hay, sticks, cloths. One end of the house had slumped. My misgivings about leaving our claim swelled, and then swelled again with the revelation that in fact, in K.T., there was no place of refuge now. And then I called out, and Mrs. Bush came bustling out of the house with a light, and she looked excited and happy!
"My dear!" she said. "I’ve been looking for you all evening! Thomas was here for his supper, and he was most anxious for your arrival—we hear Ruffians from Lecompton were all along the road to the north, and I so feared you’d be turned back, or worse! And Frank—"
Frank jumped down. "I told them she was deaf and dumb, and then I lied about everything else, too. Is supper over?"
I said, "He talked their ears off, till they were too cold to listen and let us go on. But we lost Mr. Bisket...."
Frank took the horses and wagon down the street, where Mrs. Bush said Thomas had found a place for the horses to be fed and the wagon goods to be stowed for the time being.
Inside, sitting around the stove with Mrs. Bush, were some new people—the hay house was never too ramshackle to hold a good set of visitors, and these were the famous Laceys from Massachusetts. Mrs. Lacey was a round, fresh-faced woman of maybe thirty-five, I guessed, from the size of her sons, who were fourteen, twelve, and eleven, and all big, stocky boys, still dressed in their New England clothes. Consciousness of our women’s gossip about the Laceys had rendered me both disapproving of Mr. Lacey and a little ashamed of how we discussed him. I said, "You’ve waited so long to come, and now there’s a war—"
"But I wouldn’t have missed it!" "Oh, my land of mercy," said Mrs. Bush. "I am happy to miss any war going, but now that they’ve carried it to us, well, then, we must see it through! But I am all for Dr. Robinson. Tonight, at the Free State Hotel, he said to the men that if the Ruffians attack us, then all of the north will rise up in a rage; and if they go off without attacking, then they’ll be simply a laughingstock; and so we can’t lose, if you ask me, but of course the poor men are out there in the cold, drilling and digging—"
"And we have to sleep with our rifles on our pillows!" said Mrs. Lacey, apparently invigorated by it all.
I said, "Do you really think all of the north would rise up in a rage? They seem so far away and intent on their own business."
"You may mark my words, my dear," said Mrs. Bush happily, "the slave power is driving them into our arms one by one, every day. If you lived in Lawrence, you would see it. People come here from those soft, careless places like Indiana or Ohio, and they don’t care one way or the other about slavery or about the Negro, and then they feel the resolve of the slave power, and they can’t help but resist. Mr. Bush and I are far more sanguine than we were even a few months ago. Look at General Lane. He didn’t care one way or the other about slavery till he came here, and now he is with us all the way."
I was surprised. "I thought you hated General Lane!"
"He is a dissipated man, and every month there’s talk about him and some new woman. Mrs. Quinn has three small children, one of them a babe in arms, and she went to his house in front of his very family and wept and cried for him until her own husband had to take pity on her and drag her away!"
"Thomas thinks it would be better to have General Lane as an enemy than a friend—"
"I’ve known your husband for a long time, my dear, and he is a very particular man, which I admire, but sometimes a man can be too particular." She shook her head. "And you know, Mrs. Quinn hasn’t been entirely right in her head since."
"Well," put in Mrs. Lacey, "doesn’t that make you wonder exactly where the fault between them lies? General Lane is a compelling figure of a man, mo-o-ost assuredly." She spoke brightly, and Mrs. Bush gave her q
uite a look, as if she had appropriated all K.T. privileges first thing, without even earning them.
Frank, who had been eyeing the other boys and, as it were, circling them, asserted that he slept with a rifle on his pillow and had every night of his life. I laughed, thinking of my sister, but the Other boys looked at him with visible amazement. All of them were bigger, but not even the eldest carried himself with quite the same self-reliant demeanor. Frank turned to me. "I’m going out," he said. "I got some things in the wagon to sell, and everybody’s up, it looks like. I heard that when there’s a war, you can get pretty good prices." He disappeared through the door of the hay house (no longer cloth, but now real wood) faster than I could remonstrate with him.
Mrs. Lacey and her boys all looked after him, startled. She said, "How old is that boy?"
"Twelve, almost thirteen."
Her elder two boys’ faces took on expressions of wondrous anticipation—the K.T effect on boys.
Thomas came in sometime after midnight. The Bushes now had bedsteads, but the rest of us arranged ourselves in the usual fashion, dividing the room with a cloth between the men and the women. I’d stationed myself nearest the door and was wrapped in my dressing gown and a shawl. I was wide awake, and I’d intended to jump up and greet him with all sorts of effusions, but in the event, I lay there as if asleep, covertly watching him. Mr. Bush had left a candle burning, and there was also light from the fires outside in the street. First he pushed the door open slowly and peeped in, then he took off his hat and set his carbine down just inside the door. Then there was a pause, as he must have been engaged in removing his boots, because he entered carrying them, in stockinged feet.
