The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [141]
"There were killings before."
"But they were more incidental. Folks weren’t going out to look for people to kill, with lists in their hands."
"He had a list?"
"They say he did. The ones who say he did it, at any rate."
Here was the question, to me: In a place where everything was true, could it be true that Old Brown and his men had done the killings and that they had been five miles away from the killings, both at the same time? In the United States, these things couldn’t be true at the same time, but in K.T. it seemed as if they could.
We were alone for the next two days, and we didn’t have any visitors or news, but Thomas couldn’t leave the subject of Old Brown alone. I would say, "Don’t you think Jeremiah seems to have less heat around that cut now?" and he would say, "That man Wilkinson was one of the worst of them, but..." Or I would say, "We need to find some papers for the walls," and he would say, "If they would just come forward and tell the story, then maybe we’d know it wasn’t so bad. But this running off and disappearing, well, that doesn’t look good. Of course, in K.T., just traveling to and fro can look like running off...."
On Wednesday, a week after the sacking of Lawrence, we had another great rain, and though we set ourselves things to do inside, it was monotonous and uncomfortable to hear the rain on the roof and to have it coming in everywhere—we hadn’t enough pots and pans and dishes and receptacles to catch any but the worst streams. The mudding I had done was still wet, and I could see it crumble and trickle away. We had dry wood and made a fire in the stove and boiled up some tea, but the tea reminded me of Louisa and her two bedsteads and four chairs and little guitar and cups and saucers and warm, dry apartment, and I felt sick with longing all the time that I tried to make myself happy by renewing my gratitude at Jeremiah’s return. We had been sitting silently for a long time, the afternoon so dark with rain that we had a candle lit, and I was sewing up holes in our bed tick and Thomas was cleaning the guns, and he broke the silence by saying, "Why couldn’t they leave well enough alone? This is another mistake. Rash acts are always mistakes, because from a distance they look more than rash, they look evil, and that drives—"
I flared up. "I’m glad they did it! Well, I’m not glad they did it, because I’m sorry for their wives and children, but for land’s sake, Thomas, don’t you understand the need for action? Even if it’s just one’s own need? Things build up! You can only take so much after a while! A person can’t be cautious, cautious, cautious every minute of every day. I don’t condone what they did, but I understand it, don’t you?"
"No, I don’t."
"Then how in the world can you call yourself an abolitionist? You know, I’d hardly ever met an abolitionist before you, but I feel I’m more passionate about it all than you are. Your plan is to wait and wait until slavery goes away. Well, generations could die before then, including our own generation, here in K.T. Time as you live it is much longer than time as you look forward to it. It’s all very easy to say, Well, in fifty years this and in fifty years that, but they could kill us tomorrow. Don’t you ever want to say, Well, bring it on, let’s have it out?"
"That’s the way they think. Fighting it out."
"Well, perhaps I’m one of them. We aren’t from New England where I come from, and I don’t always understand New Englanders! You seem ready to talk all about it and tell everyone what to do, but then when they talk back to you, you just keep talking! A westerner doesn’t understand that. Talking has to come to fighting, one way or another, and if it comes to fighting on their side and not on ours, then we suffer."
"You make no sense."
Well, that stung, because perhaps it was true. I said, "It seems perfectly clear to me!"
"I don’t see how