Agnes Canon's War

by Deborah Lincoln

  Her mind ran often to the doctor, and she blushed sometimes to think he might be the reason—one of the reasons—she was no longer keen to travel away from Lick Creek. He was a gregarious and sociable man, and he appeared to delight in debating the great questions of the day. But his temper was quick and hot, and he had alienated several of the town’s leading citizens, in addition to Sam. The Kansas question and the feud between Benton and Atchison and particularly the subject of slavery in the territories were causing dissention among the men in town, and Jabez made no secret of his strong feelings.

  John often returned home from a Masonic meeting and told Nancy and Agnes stories of Doctor Robinson’s latest speech on Kansas and slavery and abolition. At first he laughed about it, especially one evening last month when words escalated into fisticuffs between Peter McIntosh and little Rufus Byrd. Though Agnes was not certain fisticuffs was the word for a scuffle between a Scotsman well over six feet tall and a wizened little rooster a foot shorter. But now it appeared that factions were developing in their little town. Everyone seemed to have an opinion, but of course no one had a solution, and many were ready to take offense at someone else’s opinion. John no longer laughed when he spoke of these discussions but was somber and his eyes showed worry. Agnes feared there was a dreadful quarrel coming.

  

  Her favorite walk led south and east, past the cemetery and down the back of the hillside on which it perched, into the undulating countryside crossed with rills and creeks, with outcroppings of granite, too stony and hilly for farming, not yet turned over to grazing. A serene weeping willow perched on the bank of a brook, trailing fronds into the water and concealing a nook carpeted with mosses and diminutive flowers. She loved to sit there, nearly hidden, listening for the rustling in the underbrush, pretending that the land was yet undiscovered and that she was one of those wild inhabitants who knew the secrets of every burrow, every hidden habitation.

  It was late April and the light had that iridescent quality that meant night approached and day creatures should scatter to their homes, but she was loath to leave—she sat with her legs drawn up, chin on knees, idly plucking at clover, half-heartedly looking for a four-leaf. She’d been there for half an hour, waving off the occasional mosquito, listening for the last trill of the song sparrow, when the subtle scent of tobacco smoke floated by on a shifting breeze. She was startled and momentarily concerned, since unsavory characters often roamed about this part of the frontier, but it occurred to her that anyone planning something nefarious would not light up a cigar first, and besides, she thought with an inward smile that she detected the scent of Doctor Robinson’s imported tobacco.

  Then he sat up, peering around a clump of sassafras from across the creek. “Do you always talk to yourself?” he asked, knocking ash from his cigar.

  Her mind raced back over her thoughts; she couldn’t remember what she might have said. She stammered something, then bent her forehead to her knees and hid her face.

  A shout of laughter rang from across the creek. “Come now, Miss Canon, I often talk to myself. Sometimes it’s the only intelligent conversation I get in a day.”

  She looked up, tossed a stray lock of hair off her forehead. “Then you know my secret. I’ve spent the past nine hours with thirty school children, and I needed an adult to talk to.”

  “And will I do?” he asked, rising and crossing the creek in two broad strides. He settled next to her on the bank. “I will confess I didn’t hear your words clearly, so your secrets are safe from me.”

  “I really have no very interesting secrets, Doctor, so it doesn’t signify whether you heard or not.”

  “That’s hard to believe,” he said, drawing on his cigar. “A young lady must have at least a few mysteries. In your case, perhaps they involve a certain Mr. Beaton?” He looked at her sideways.

  She sputtered. “Really, Doctor Robinson, whatever are you talking about?”

  “I’ve noticed he’s been spending evenings in your cousin’s parlor. As a matter of fact, the last three times I’ve visited my friend John, Mr. Beaton’s been sitting in my favorite porch chair.”

  “Aldo Beaton can visit whom he pleases. I’m certainly not concerned.”

  Doctor Robinson, looking innocently across the creek, grinned. “All right, so that’s not your secret. What should be my next guess? How about your age? That’s always a secret among young ladies.”

  “That’s a secret I’ll willingly share. It’s too easily discoverable.” She looked him square in the face. “I will be thirty next month.”

  “Ahh,” he said, “a mature woman.”

  “Spinster is the word, I believe.”

  “Not at all, Miss Canon. Spinsterhood is in the eye of the beholder.” He tossed a pebble into the creek, not looking at me. “Give me another.”

  “Really, sir, I’m sure I have a dull enough life that secrets aren’t a part of it. What about you? What secrets do you hold?” She turned toward him. “I hear you’ve had some involvement in the Kansas business. Is that not much more interesting than my confessions?”

  He studied the end of his cigar for a moment with a slight smile on his face. Then he turned to me. “No, Miss Canon, it’s not at all interesting. I have had very little to do with the Kansas business and hope in the future to have even less.” He took a last pull on the cigar and stubbed it out in the dirt of the creek bank. “That disaster must proceed without me.”

  “I suppose there’ll be fighting.…”

  “I’m sure of it. I have seen—argued with—the two sides and neither is willing to give an inch.” He lay back on the bank, crossing his arms beneath his head and squinting at the heavens, where the light faded. “The radicals from the north will demand equality of the races and the extremists in the south will insist on slavery from here to the Pacific coast.” He sighed. “I see no hope for a peaceful solution.”

  “Surely the reasonable men in the north won’t allow things to go that far. Not everyone is an abolitionist. Stephen Douglas appears to be a sensible man.”

  “Stephen Douglas is an opportunist.”

  “Really, Doctor Robinson, you make a very simplistic judgment.”

  “Not at all, Miss Canon. Douglas is attempting to make deals with devils on both sides. His first concern is to enrich himself by building a railroad. He’ll do anything that promotes that project at the expense of what’s best for the country.”

  “Oh, come now, Doctor, I can’t believe Douglas would sell out.”

  “Then you’re naïve, Miss Canon,” he said. “He’s already sold out.”

  She hissed and gathered herself to rise, but he sat up and smiled just a little and put out a hand to hold her in place. “My apologies. I have a vicious temper, and I let it control my tongue.” He turned to face her, folding his legs Indian-style. “I think you’re wise. I know you’re well-informed.” Agnes sank back down. “I’m afraid though that even well-informed people can only sit back and watch this train wreck.”

  His compliments were absurdly pleasing but his anger stung. “What would you do?” she asked.

  “Secede. The slavocracy should break off, form its own country and its own society. Heaven knows, slavery will die of its own weight soon enough. If the north insists on union, then we’ll be plunged into a war beyond anything we’ve ever seen before.”

  They were silent as the light died, deepening from an opalescent gray to a faint yellow, then to a soft indigo, her vexation dimming with it. “Do you think there will be war?” She chewed on a grass stem.

  “Yes,” he said. “I think there will be war.”

  “And it will start here, won’t it? Among all this rich cropland and these honest farmers.” She sighed. “What a travesty.”

  He cocked his head, studying her with dark, fathomless eyes. “Yes, Miss Canon,” he said. “It will start here.”

  They sat there, he looki
ng at the slowly appearing stars, Agnes looking into the creek as the water blackened with the mysterious tints of night, and neither of them spoke. It occurred to her that she felt comfortable, safe, with him there, though the future was uncertain.

  As the dark set in, he stirred, stood and reached out a hand to pull her to her feet. “I’ll walk you back, if I may. It’s getting late.”

  They strolled together up the hill, past the cemetery and through town to Agnes’s door. “I enjoyed our talk.” He bowed over her hand. “Perhaps we can have another adult conversation some time.” He smiled, turned, and left her on the doorstep.

  

  She encountered him several times that spring, the mild weather extending into late June before the heat and oppressive humidity came. Her evening walks refreshed her, and whether she walked in the hope of meeting him again or whether those chance meetings were unexpected she couldn’t say. When they met, they talked of many things. He asked her opinion of a young woman whose mama exhibited her for his consideration, and she told him that the young woman, Miss Baxter, was pretty and empty-headed. He continued to tease her about Mr. Beaton, and she fancied his teasing had an edge to it. He had seen her one Sunday morning leaving church in Mr. Beaton’s company, Mr. Beaton taking her arm as if he had every right to do so. She told him that Mr. Beaton reminded her very much of a gentleman she had known in Pennsylvania. He raised his eyebrows at that but pressed no further.

  They talked about Agnes’s students, who was bright, who struggled, and he offered suggestions on how to influence some of the more recalcitrant boys. He asked about the Bigelow children and hinted that their brother was up to no good. She replied that the younger ones held promise, but that Jake may as well withdraw since he made no progress at any subject. And they talked of his medical practice, within the bounds of propriety, and she saw in him a fascination, a passion for the wonders of the human body and the infinite permutations of the human mind.

  They also talked about the manner in which the townspeople were taking sides in the coming conflict—who was proslave, who was free state, the varieties of opinion that existed between those two poles—and she often saw flashes of his temper, which was capricious, blazing up suddenly with a growl and a flush of the face. He would raise his voice and roundly censure one man or another for his views, one faction or another for its actions, one section or the other for its obstinacy. Then his anger would dissipate as quickly as it arose, and he would laugh and change the subject. Agnes sensed, though, a deep and abiding frustration simmering in him.

  Once the heat came, it came with a vengeance. The temperature climbed toward the nineties, and thunder storms drove in from the western prairies. The folks of Lick Creek conducted their business early in the morning or late in the evening and retreated into their homes mid-day. There was little to do for a school teacher without classes. She visited Elizabeth and her little John Andrew at their home on the edge of the cherry orchard. Elizabeth's waist once again thickened, and Agnes did what she could to relieve her cousin of the heavier housework. Billy had made good his promise, joined a cattle drive to California in May. His letters were few and far between, but when they did come she loved the tales he wrote of sleeping in the open, riding night guard, attempting—but rarely succeeding—to outwit thieving natives. And she treasured the maps he drew for her and the snatches of song he copied out. Worry for him became her constant companion.

  In the evenings, when the heat abated, friends dropped by for coffee and cake and talk, and Doctor Robinson was occasionally one of the company, as was Mr. Beaton, unfortunately. They shared their newspapers and the gossip that drifted their way from Jefferson City and St. Louis. John and Sam, Doctor Robinson and Mr. Beaton, in agreement for once, denounced Atchison for promising to send his Missouri boys to Leavenworth and Lawrence to vote in the November election. They all wondered if Franklin Pierce, that amiable drunk in the White House, cared what happened in the West. Tempers flared over whether the Union was sacred or secession was legal, whether blacks should be resettled far from America or slavery should be left alone to die of inertia. Everyone agreed that northerners should stay out of Missouri and leave Missourians to manage their own affairs. But in spite of impetuous tempers and rowdy arguments, opinions remained fluid. The close group of friends, neighbors and relatives whom Agnes had come to love and respect were not yet captive to those uncompromising, unrelenting views that were soon to solidify into the hostility and hatred that would tear their little community into fragments.

  20

  August 1854

  The big bay gelding picked his way carefully through the mud, instinct and the feel of the soggy ruts his only guide. Ancient beech limbs overhung this stretch of the pike between Platte City and Barry on the road to Kansas Town. During the day, in decent weather, the road was pleasant enough, the woodland open and carpeted with old leaves and little underbrush. But tonight in the midst of a raucous mid-July storm it swam in inky darkness until the next bolt of lightning, when nightmarish shadows danced across the path. Thunder tumbled off the massive trunks, magnifying its roar thrice over, causing the horse to skitter sideways.

  Jabez hunched over Jupiter’s withers, hat brim pulled low over his eyes, impeding his view. Not that he could see beyond the horse’s nose, anyway. Jupiter had been his close companion since he returned from California, and he trusted the animal’s surefootedness. But the most accomplished horse might falter on a night like this, and with the rain dripping off his hat and under his collar, he was in no mood to trust either his or Jupiter’s instincts. He pulled his riding cloak closer around his shoulders. Without it he was soaked to the skin, with it he steamed like a hothouse lily. He mumbled a string of oaths to himself, then addressed them to Jupiter and shifted in the saddle.

  To take his thoughts off his sore and soggy rump, he replayed in his head the meeting that occasioned this journey. Three days earlier, just after Mrs. Watson, his housekeeper, cleared the dinner dishes, he had settled into the rocker on the front porch for his after-dinner cheroot. He worked through in his mind the operation he’d performed that day, in which he’d excised the badly infected tonsils of the Kunkel boy. The operation succeeded, and though the child was uncomfortable, he’d controlled the bleeding, checked the contagion. As he considered different ways of reducing pain, a grey mare towing an open buggy trotted up the street past Zook’s store and stopped at his doorstep. A figure in dust-covered trousers and vest descended, leading with his posterior and puffing with the July heat. Jabez groaned to himself. David Atchison looked about him and flung the reins over the fencepost. His wide face, flushed and damp, split in a smile, and he lifted a hand in greeting.

  “Robinson,” he boomed, hand stretched out as he mounted the steps. “I’ve found you with the first try. Good day, sir, good day.” He looked about him expansively. “Pleasant little town you have here.”

  Jabez stood, took the offered hand. “Senator. I’m surprised to see you here.”

  “Not a-tall, Doctor, not a-tall.” Atchison gestured to the chairs. “Mind if I have a seat?”

  “Of course not. Make yourself comfortable,” Jabez said, turning into the door. “Mrs. Watson,” he called, “Water and the whiskey, please.” Turning to Atchison: “Have you had your dinner, sir?”

  “I thank you, I ate on the road.” The Senator settled his bulk into Jabez’s rocking chair, which creaked alarmingly, and Jabez dropped into the second chair. Mrs. Watson brought tumblers, a pitcher, and the whiskey decanter, and Atchison poured himself a hefty shot without the benefit of water. Jabez took a smaller portion, offered the Senator a cheroot, which he declined, extracting a thick Partagas from his coat pocket.

  They both lit up, blew smoke in the direction of the street, sipped whiskey, said nothing for a moment.

  Casting about for conversation, Jabez started up. “You’ve been on the road for awhile, then?”

  “Left Gower early this morning, D
octor, came as fast as my mare could go.” Atchison blew a smoke ring.

  “Well, then,” Jabez said after a bit. “What can I do for you, Senator?”

  Atchison shifted in the rocker; it creaked again. He helped himself to another two fingers of whiskey. “I’ve become aware, Doctor Robinson, that you are acquainted with, perhaps related to, a certain Doctor Charles Robinson.”

  “I am. He’s a distant cousin. I met him in California.”

  “And what are your relations? Are you on friendly terms?”

  “I hardly know. We knew each other only superficially. He came to me for medical care after he was involved in a disturbance in Sacramento. I haven’t seen him for years.”

  “Yet you are related to him, and you both practice the same profession.”

  “I’m related to a great many people, Senator, and know a number of doctors.”

  “Of course, of course.” Atchison patted his sizeable belly. “Are you aware that this Doctor Charles Robinson has returned from California and is here in Missouri? And that he is leading that very Emigrant Aid Society that we spoke of last April?”

  Jabez took pains not to show his disquiet. “No, I was not aware. This is the emigrant movement to Kansas that you were denouncing? I wasn’t aware that he held abolitionist views. But then, as I said, I knew him very little.”