The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [140]
Thomas, who had had second thoughts about a trek over the prairie when there was no moon, waited to leave Lawrence until daybreak. He could not believe his eyes at the sight of Jeremiah standing by the fence, and me poulticing his cut again, and our good fortune right there, big as life. After I put down the poultice and untied the horse, Thomas grabbed me about the waist and kissed me and spun me around. He kept saying, "I can’t tell you how sure I was we’d have to backtrack! I didn’t see any future here, I was as low as I’ve ever been, but now ... !"
Well, how were we to know? At any rate, it was a splendid thing to feel my husband’s arms and hands press against me and to lean into his chest and to hear his joyful voice in my ear, and to look into his face and have him put his fingers into my hair and take all the pins out, one by one, and then pause to put them carefully in the pocket of his shirt. Then I shook my hair out, and it fell to almost the middle of my skirt, and we went inside the cabin.
I caught a catfish in the river and fried that up with some corncakes for supper, and over supper it came out that we still were not in agreement over Old Brown. Those killings had taken place Saturday night, and it was now Monday. As always in Lawrence, Sunday had seen no lack of talk. Some were saying that the five men were having a meeting when they were surprised by a group that may have included Brown and may not have. The killings were intended to preempt plans the men were making to attack Free Staters in their beds that very night. The men had been armed and had returned fire, had even begun firing. Another story was that Old Brown, or someone, had indeed killed four of the men, just shot them fair and square, the way you shoot people in K.T.—a shooting was a shooting, which was different by far from a hacking—but that the fifth man had died on a hunting expedition that strayed among the Indians, and the Indians had done the hacking. The proslave forces had only made it look like Old Brown, or someone, had hacked him up in order to reflect against the Free Staters. Others said that it was the same with these five as it had been with Jones—their own sympathizers, some men from South Carolina, in fact, had done the killings in a drunken fight and then decided to make it look as though Free Staters had done the deed. Old Brown was a bona fide character and hated by many because he invoked the Lord on his side all the time, so he was ripe to be slandered. And still others said it was just like Jones in another way, too: No one was dead, all were alive and only slightly injured. The whole "massacre" was trumped up by the Missouri papers to incite another attack on Lawrence, this time with "justified" executions. Old Brown and his sons hadn’t been anywhere near the spot. I liked this last story myself—it fit in so neatly with what we had experienced from the Missourians before—but Thomas shook his head.
"I think the story we heard Sunday, the first one, has the ring of truth to it. When they told it, people were horrified and didn’t want to utter such words. Now they’re all talking fast, with eager looks. They’re making up stories, and all the stories are going to bury the truth of what really happened."
"I think the stories show that nobody knows what really happened. What’s Old Brown himself say?"
"Nowhere to be found."
"Well, K.T. is a big country. That doesn’t mean anything." What I really wanted to say was that the killings didn’t seem like our business, as we hadn’t known