"Your papa cain’ ride as hard as he useta."
"Maybe by supper, then."
There was a pause, then they fell to whispering. I made out that I was the subject, and guessed that who I was and my reception by the men was the topic of discussion. They must have come to some conclusion, because soon enough the whispering died away, and I fell into a happy doze, in which everything pressing—where my bag was, where I was, where Samson and Chaney were, what was to become of me—seemed as remote as the czar of all the Russias. I was not asleep but instead floating in a dream of total comfort. It pleased me to wonder if I had ever been so comfortable in my life before. Certainly not in Kansas, or on the steamer, or in my recent peregrinations, but perhaps I had never been so comfortable even in Quincy, even in my own bed, where I had lain awake so many nights, dissatisfied, nursing complaints or, alternatively, cultivating fancies about my future.
The night went on. I drifted up and down in my dreams. One of the candles was quenched, but the other one burned steadily downward. Sometimes footsteps went in or out of the room, sometimes there were long periods of silence, sometimes there were even reassuring snores. I awoke for good shortly after dawn—the sun was bright and low in the window at the foot of my bed. It had only just risen above the horizon. I sat up.
The room looked different than it had the night before. No longer high-ceilinged and cavernous, it was now just a room, whitewashed and pleasant, but a bit on the small side. I lay in a four-poster, with bed curtains tied back on either side of the headboard. A green-and-white-checked oilcloth covered the floor, and a small wardrobe, two chairs, and two small tables formed the rest of the furniture. On one of the tables sat a basin and a pitcher. In one of the chairs sat Lorna, sleeping with her chin resting on her chest. Through the windows I could see the front lawn, whose vastness had defeated me the morning before. The view out the window made me remember my case, which was surely still under a haystack across the road, but when I threw my feet over the side of the bed and sat upright, I am sorry to say that all sense of well-being drained right out of me, and I thought I would swoon again. I must have made some sound, because Lorna woke up. She said, "Ah, me! Mornin’ already." She adjusted the kerchief around her head, then eyed me. Finally, she shook her head. I pulled my feet back under the covers. She said, "Missy, you cain’ get up. Least for a day or two yet. You done had you a baby!"
"What!"
"Well, it waren’t no baby, but it mighta been, ifn you’d held on to it."
I gaped.
"You mean to tell me you didn’t know you was in dat condition? I sweah ta mercy, you is a strange one. Did you think you is a man, really? I ain’ nevah seen nobody lak you. You seem ta drop outta de sky, no horse nor mule nor bag nor nothin’, dressed up lak a man on de lawn out theah, and den we got so much blood, and you was senseless to boot. Well, it war the bigges’ thing to happen heahabouts in a considerable time!"
I said, "I knew, but I forgot about it."
"I ain’ nevah heard of that befoah."
"Some men shot my husband." I thought that should be explanation enough. I lay down again. The small room was hardly so pleasant, the bed hardly so comfortable. I wasn’t disconsolate just yet, only still wondering, only still taking it in, but I saw despair just ahead, and myself starting to drop toward it. I dosed my eyes against the sunlight and heard Lorna leave the room.
Well, I had suspected my condition. I had just begun to wonder about it before Thomas was murdered, but hadn’t yet mentioned it to him, and then it had seemed beyond my strength to utter a word about it even to Louisa. And then, after I got to Kansas City and became Lyman Arquette, my condition got to be that much more of a secret, even to myself Lyman couldn’t be said to be aware of it, and even Lydia was focused completely on Thomas’s killers. Who was harboring the child-to-be? And it was also true in K.T. that women didn’t’ put too much stock in a child, even a born baby, until it showed its powers of survival. That might not be until the child was one or even two years old. Louisa, with her knitting and naming and announcing, was uniquely sanguine compared to others I’d seen, almost all of whom had buried some. Most women, and I was among the majority, hardly dared let themselves hope for a joyful outcome, much less count on it as Louisa seemed to do.
Even so, I put a pillow over my face to block out the sun, which was filling both windows and blinding me. I was a blank.
Sometime later, Helen came in. By now I was lying quietly on my back, my arms at my sides. I was looking up at the ceiling. I felt closer to being dead than I ever had in my life. Helen looked far away, prettily dressed in a pink wrapper with roses stitched around the collar. She carried a tray with a plate of toast and a cup of tea on it. She looked at me expectantly but said only, "Good morning, Louisa! How did you sleep? It wasn’t such a hot night, was it?"
Louisa! Oh, yes.
She set the tray beside me on the bed.
Sitting down in the chair closest to me, she looked at me kindly for a moment and then said, "Oh, my dear! Lorna told you what happened, didn’t she? I knew she would. She always blurts everything out. You can’t imagine the sort of trouble she gets into with Papa because of it. Last year he got so angry he sent her to my sister. Well! That went wrong, let me tell you...." She paused, then her voice dropped. "Oh, mercy! I do think that if what happened to you were to happen to me, well, I would just die! When I get married, I want the little ones to come, just one after another. I love little ones. But Lorna says what happened to you happens all the time, and she thinks it’s a blessing, really, but it’s hard to see it for that, when..."
It was then that I realized I had lost everything. Something else might have happened: Samson and Chaney might have taken another road, and Thomas and I might have continued to our claim, put Jeremiah away for the night, gone to our little bed. I might have told him of my suspicions. It was August. Our crop would be ripening. Frank would certainly have turned up sometime, and by now I would have been sewing and knitting little clothes. Louisa would have taken a great interest in my condition, given me quantities of advice and assistance. We would have tormented ourselves with fears and worries—we had no money, war seemed perennially imminent, K.T. was hardly so hospitable as we had anticipated to either crops or men. I would have thought of Mrs. James, though perhaps never mentioned my thoughts. A midwinter birth in a rickety claim shack was something to be feared, was it not? What a treasure of fears these would have been! Now I feared nothing.
"Oh! I’ve made you cry!" said Helen. She took my hand. "I’ve said all the wrong things! I haven’t talked about heaven at all, and heaven is our comfort! My mama could talk about heaven in the nicest way, as if it were a big lighted house and our whole life here was just a night journey, and at the end of it, after all the muddy roads and the rain and the cold wind and the hunger unto starvation, well, to see those lighted windows up ahead, and all the other travelers arriving at the door, and to hear the Host call out! She could make you welcome death—at least your own. I tried to welcome hers, I really did, but I was only a girl then, that was eight years ago now, it was hard. But she said, ’Ellie, love, I feel that I am entering the mansion, and I am expected there, don’t grieve,’ and so I didn’t, so much, for her, but I surely did for myself. But there must be a special room in the mansion for those littlest souls—"
And then she, too, began to weep, putting her hands over her face and sobbing.
It astonished me that I had lost every single thing, including, at the moment, my very name and history. Right beside me, practically right in the room with me, was the other life that I had not managed to live, a common mode of existence, the natural extension of my first twenty-one years, the very easiest thing to go on with, it must be said. And yet I had gotten onto a different track entirely, and I had followed it to this room, among these strangers. She hadn’t said the wrong things, because nothing she might have said could have lessened my astonishment. I sat up and took a sip of the tea, and I was reminded how, w
hen I got to Kansas City and woke up that first morning in the Humphry House, I had been so afraid, and it was a bite of something in my mouth that had gotten me over my fear. I took another sip. The tea was warm and bitter. I wondered what it would enable me to go on to. After drinking it, I took up the napkin and dried my tears.
"Oh, my goodness!" Helen sat up and took a deep breath. "Well, I am sorry for you, Louisa, and you may stay here as long as you care to, and you don’t have to tell me a thing about yourself, though of course I am dying of curiosity. This toast is told! Shall I have Delia make some more?"
"Who is Delia?"
"You haven’t met her. She’s the cook. I don’t know what she was doing when you came yesterday. More than likely, she was down in the cellar, looking things over. She’s a terrible one for hoarding, you know. She’s always making more jam and more jam and telling Ike to plant more potatoes and turnips and such. She’s scared to death we’ll starve someday. Why, this winter—when it was so cold?—we were fairly bursting, she made us eat so much at every meal. She kept saying, ’You thin out, you gon’ die, missy!’ And she will never thin out herself! She doesn’t say any of that to Lorna, though. No one tells Lorna what to do except Papa. When I was a girl, she had a husband come, you know, they had a ceremony and everything, even though Papa said no good would come of it, and he didn’t hold with servants getting married. Her husband was Jake Taler, whose owner made rope in Independence, and Jake got around some. I saw him myself, two or three times, but Jake didn’t tell her what to do, either. She told him what to do! I must say I am a bit afraid of Lorna myself."
"What happened to him?" I was much interested in the fates of husbands.
"Oh, I don’t know. I was only a girl. It was before Mama died, even. It was Mama who persuaded Papa to let them have the ceremony. He got sold. Papa said he was worth too much money to stay around here. This country don’t support a lot of niggers. That’s what Papa says. Let me get you more toast."
She stood and picked up the tray, then walked out of the room.
Things went on like this for another day, as the men turned out to be delayed. Helen confided to me that she was very glad to see me, as she had had no one to talk to in weeks—her two friends who lived but a short ride away were gone to Saint Louis for the summer and wouldn’t be back until the middle of September. Her sister Minna was up in Booneville at her aunt and uncle’s farm, preparing for her October wedding to the mysterious Mr. Oates, said to be from Virginia. Mr. Oates had purchased a farm between Booneville and Lexington, and wanted to be married from there, and her older sister Bella had moved to Saint Louis two years before, after her own wedding. She, Helen, was the last one left unmarried, and though she had two local suitors, neither one interested her, but she supposed she was going to have to take one or the other in the end, unless the influx of real cavaliers, who were coming in to "deal with those abolitionists," should supply the area with superior possibilities.
From time to time, Lorna came in, and it was she who tended to me. She was utterly strict in her nursing. She gave me strengthening broths and teas, changed the bed linen, changed my nightdress, bathed me, especially my feet, which after two days out of my boots were considerably swollen and covered with blisters. She pricked each blister with a needle and squeezed out the water, then swabbed my feet with an infusion of witch hazel. After that she dusted them with fine cornmeal. The degree of refreshment afforded me by this procedure cannot be described. She and Helen washed my hair. I lay on my back across the bed (the sheets and the counterpane pulled back), with Lorna supporting me under the neck and Helen pouring warm water through my short hair, then rubbing my scalp with a fragrant soft soap, then more water to rinse. It had been maybe a year since I had bathed in warm water. Lorna carried it up, pitcher after pitcher, an endless supply. Then Helen brought in towels and gently, oh so gently, patted and kneaded the strands dry, commenting all the time on my hair’s thickness and weight and color.
I said, "I suppose it came six or eight inches past my waist before I cut it off."
"I know it was splendid," exclaimed Helen. "I don’t see how you brought yourself to give it up!"
"It was a great deal of trouble. I haven’t missed it."
"But to do away with one’s beauty like that!" She looked at me. "I mean..."
"When my husband was killed, that did away with my beauty, because he was the only man who ever found me beautiful." Saying this gave me a pang, but it was a delicious pang—I had been avoiding thoughts of Thomas since first awakening in this room.
"My goodness," said Helen. "That is the saddest thing I ever heard any woman say!"
"Is it?" I said. I thought "They shot my husband" was sadder.
And Helen said, "Lorna told me some men shot your husband." She was sitting behind me, lifting the short strands of hair off my neck and fluffing them. Then she ran her fingers from the back of my neck upward, lifting. Well, it was as sad to hear it as to say it. She said, "Was it ... ? What was it ... ?"
"It was as if they took everything inside me and gave it a cruel half twist and then left it that way. I just felt it from head to toe."
"Oh, my goodness!"
"My husband was a great reader. Often, he read aloud to me, and I loved his voice; it was so thoughtful and deep, and it filled our little place right up. But even more than that, I loved to watch him read silently. He was terribly absorbed. I never got over the pleasure of seeing him absorbed in something he loved to do." As I said these things, which I had never said before about Thomas, I realized how true they were. "Many things amused him. He had a little smile, which was almost not a smile but a very private look, that showed he was watching something or someone. I loved that look. He was a good man. And he aspired to be a good man, too."
"Oh, Louisa! What was his name?"
I almost said Charles, but that disguise seemed a betrayal, and what would it hurt to tell the truth? I said, "Thomas."
"Were you together for many years?"
"A few months. Ten months. This time last year, I hardly knew him."
"Was he from around here, then? We know everyone down to Blue Springs, but I’ve never seen you before. But if you’re from over by Lexington, perhaps Papa knows your people."
She said this brightly, and I drew back, remembering where I was and who she was. I said, "He was from Kentuck. Round about Frankfort, I believe." Oh, Thomas! My sailmaking, oceangoing Bay State man! Perhaps it was I who would end up betraying you the most! I said, "I can’t talk about it anymore. It hurts me to talk about it."
The day passed away, and Lorna allowed me to have a bit of supper— pieces of boiled chicken and some bread with blackberry jam on it, a sliced-up peach. She said, "You color is much bettah. You done got ovah dis thang pretty quick, I mus’ say." She seemed suspicious.
"I doubt if I’ve hardly begun to get over it."
"If you a woman, you got to git ovah one thang aftah another, so you bettah start right quick."
"Helen said you had a husband."
"Still do, but I ain’ seen ’im now fa seven yeah. He done got sold to Arkinsaw dese seven yeah ago." She spoke matter-of-factly. "He send me word from time to time." She smiled in spite of herself. "But you got your reasons ’at you ain’ talkin’, an’ I got mine, and I ain’ talkin’, neider." She took up the tray and the dishes from my supper and left the room. She came back a bit later with a candle and her sewing and, while I dozed, sat beside me, turning the cuffs of someone’s white shirt. Helen came in—I heard her light, sympathetic voice in my sleep—and then she went out. Sometime later, I woke up, woke up completely, and sat up in bed. I guess that it was fairly late, as Lorna had fallen asleep in her chair without blowing out the candle, which had burnt down almost to the holder. The shirt she was sewing lay in her lap, and she still held her needle in her fingers, though her thimble had fallen to the floor and was rolling about—most likely the noise had awakened me. I got up to blow out the candle—I had a horror of candles burning whe
n everyone was sleeping and always had; there were too many stories of inadvertent tragedy—but I paused to gaze at Lorna, partly because when she was awake she seemed to repel your gaze or turn it away, as if you had no right to peruse her; and it was with some trepidation that I perused her now, fearful that she would wake up and punish me. She was of medium height, smaller than she seemed, broad-shouldered and large-busted. The white kerchief around her head set off her dark skin like a frame. She was not beautiful—perhaps she was too old for that, being past thirty, no doubt, but her face was utterly distinctive, with a high forehead and prominent cheekbones, a strong chin. Where Helen’s visage reminded you of silk, Lorna’s reminded you of stone, of something smooth and cool and impenetrable. Only her lashes, which were long where they lay against her cheeks, had a beauty to them. And her hands, too. Her hands were as lovely as they felt, slender and strong and, even in repose, full of their long history of getting things done. I blew out the candle and returned to my bed, where I lay for a long time wondering how soon I could get away from this farm and what I would do then. Soon enough, my present feeling of enforced leisure would give way to something else. It frightened me that for the first time in many months, I had no idea what that would be.
At any rate, they would not allow me to get up the next day, either, even though my strength was returning as impatience and irritability. For one thing, I knew my case was out there across the road, thrust under the hay. Without it, I hadn’t even a dress to wear—my old brown dress that I had come to Kansas in was what I had left, since I had cut off the skirt of my cream-colored figured muslin—nor did I have Thomas’s books that I had saved, nor did I have my pistol or my rounds of ammunition. Helen was tiny—her nightdress stopped just below my knees. My guess was that the papa was a small man, too, and so there would be no stealing of clothes. When Lorna came in with my breakfast, I said, "What did you do with my things I was wearing?"