She said, Andrew, you are so perennially certain of your own innocence. You have … But even now she didn’t know how to accuse him. Finally, she said, Pete doesn’t blame you. I saw him today.
How is—
But I do. I blame you for … But she stopped. He was looking at her, and she saw that he had no way of knowing what he didn’t know. She said, I should have stopped you.
Could you have? He seemed genuinely perplexed.
I don’t know.
SHE got a note from Naoko that Mrs. Kimura had died and that Naoko and two friends from Japantown were being sent to a relocation camp in Arizona. Margaret sent her a box of warm clothes and some books, hoping she would be allowed to keep them. In her note, Margaret said that they would send her whatever she needed, no matter what. She didn’t know what else to offer.
She never again heard from Pete. She wondered why she hadn’t begged him to take her to Vancouver. And she knew it was because he thought she was going to.
When the knitting ladies asked her how Andrew’s trip to Washington had gone, she said that it had been a failure.
Mrs. Jones said, Well, I’m sure it was well intentioned, and we should be grateful for that.
It was not well intentioned. She kept on knitting for a few moments, then put her work in her lap and looked around. Even Miss Jones, now Mrs. Milligan, looked exhausted. Her husband was stationed in North Carolina for the time being, then would be off to Germany. Mrs. Roberts had a grandson in the navy and a granddaughter in the WAC. Mrs. Jones’s husband had died in the winter. Mrs. Tillotson’s youngest son was on a submarine in the Pacific. Everyone looked as old as the hills, Margaret thought. I told Andrew that I am going to write a book.
Are you really!
What about?
I know you love reading.
Didn’t you say your cousin wrote a book? Was it your cousin, dear?
Did you know I once saw a hanging?
Good heavens!
Back in Missouri. I was five. It would start with that.
Hangings weren’t uncommon then, said Mrs. Roberts.
My brother Lawrence took me. He was thirteen. I can’t imagine why he took a five-year-old to a public hanging. It must have been May, so I wasn’t even five, actually. There were people everywhere. I remember sitting down on the step of the gallows and refusing to go another step. She did remember this—her back to the gallows.
You poor child!
They unshackled the outlaw right beside me, before Lawrence thought to pick me up. The sole of one of his boots had split away, and as he went up the steps, the flapping made him stumble. It formed in her mind as she spoke, the whole scene.
What was your mother thinking?
She was home having a baby. They always said they didn’t know where we had gotten to. I think my brother gave me a couple of crab apples and a roll of bread. When the outlaw got to the top of the steps, they took him to the center of the gallows. I think Lawrence said, That one stinks. My bonnet must have been put on my head, because for a while I could only see boots and white clover flattened in the grass. Then Lawrence put me on his shoulders with his hands around my waist.
The outlaw wore a red shirt. A man beside him shouted, Son, what’s your name? It was like a play.
You remember all the details?
In a way. In a dreamlike way.
You were five?
My birthday would have been a month later. The outlaw stood himself up a little and said, Jefferson Davis Claghorne. Don’t ask me how I remember the name.
A woman next to me said, Why, he’s just a boy hisself.
The accent came out of her mouth like a voice from far away.
Son, you have been sentenced by the court of this county to hang for the murder of Ezra Salley, and of Daniel Lackland. Do you understand why you are being hanged?
Our part of Missouri was heavy Rebel territory.
You have also robbed banks in Callaway County, this county, and Audrain County.
Maybe he fancied himself a member of the James gang, said Mrs. Roberts.
Son, do you have any words to say before you meet your just and fitting punishment?
Now the outlaw looked away from the other man and out at us, in the crowd. Right at me, I thought, a little girl on her brother’s shoulders. He gripped a Bible in his hand, then dropped it, then bent to pick it up again. He looked at the Bible for a moment, then at me again. It was like the little girl was the only one he could see in the crowd. I was. I was the only one. But I could see everything. Two men came up behind him and lifted the noose over his head. One of them held his shoulders, and the other one tightened the noose so that it made his head cock to one side.
Mrs. Roberts said, I sometimes think people had no sense at all in those days.
Do they have any sense now? said Mrs. Jones.
Another man came up and said something to the outlaw that I couldn’t hear; then he took the Bible out of the outlaw’s hands, opened it, and put it back in his hands. And the outlaw said, I cain’t read, you know. Lord, it’s true I done it.
And just then, as Lawrence was lifting me off his shoulders, the floor of the gallows fell away, and the outlaw in the red shirt dropped toward the ground but jerked to a halt. The crowd gave off a loud noise, not a shout or a groan, exactly, but something made of many sounds. I never heard that sound again.
Oh, my dear, said Mrs. Jones. I’m amazed that you remember it so well.
I do, said Margaret, I do remember it now that I’ve dared to think about it. There are so many things that I should have dared before this.
And her tone was so bitter that the other ladies fell silent.
A Note About the Author
Jane Smiley is the author of numerous novels as well as four works of nonfiction. She is the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, and in 2001 was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She received the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature in 2006. She lives in northern California.
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2010 by Jane Smiley
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
www.aaknopf.com
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Smiley, Jane.
Private life : a novel / by Jane Smiley. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-59378-8
1. Officers’ spouses—Fiction. 2. United States. Navy—Officers—Fiction.
3. Marriage—Fiction. 4. Psychological fiction. I. Title.
PS3569.M39P75 2010
813′.54—dc22 2009037000
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, geographic locations, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author’s use of names of actual persons, places, and characters is incidental to the plot, and is not intended to change the entirely fictional character of the work.
v3.0
Table of Contents
Cover
Other Books by this Author
Title Page
Prologue: 1942
Part One - 1883
Part Two - 1905
Part Three - 1911
Part Four - 1928
Part Five - 1937
Epilogue: 1942
A Note About the Author
Copyright
Jane Smiley, Private Life
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