The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [152]
Mr. James and two other men went and got the wagon and disposed of Jeremiah’s remains. In fact, the prairie was dotted with the bones of oxen, mules, and horses that fell by the wayside. Jeremiah, so fast and so beautiful, had become one of these. Charles took Louisa and me out to the claim in one of his wagons. We passed the spot where the killings had happened, or must have, but though I watched for it, I couldn’t recognize it for sure. It was just a stretch of prairie, after all. We gathered my things and Thomas’s things. I gave most of Thomas’s clothes to Charles, and we brought the stove back, too. I sold that to Mrs. Lacey for ten dollars. Mr. Bush said that if the crop came in in August, then he would give me fifty dollars for that.
My sisters wrote their condolences but didn’t suggest, right then, that I return to Quincy (I suppose they weren’t ready for that so suddenly). Harriet urged me to send Frank back, "since thinking of the two of you alone out there in that God-forsaken place simply gives me a such a turn I can’t think about it." Thomas’s father also wrote me by return post after receiving my letter detailing the murder. He lamented the news, which had prostrated Thomas’s mother. He and his other sons had never quite understood Thomas’s desire to travel, and they had felt that the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company would surely take better care of these boys than it seemed they had done. While the elder Mr. Newton shared most of Thomas’s beliefs, and adhered to them still, he had felt a year before that the emigrants were on a fools’ errand, which opinion this event had now shown to be true, perhaps, though Mr. Newton also felt that there were events afoot in the United States that were unprecedented. At any rate, as their daughter-in-law—though they had never yet met me, they felt they knew me through my notes to them (Thomas had written six letters and I had appended messages on five of these)—I was welcome in their home, and they knew a place would happily be made for me in their town. Mrs. Bush was partial to this plan, as the idea of living in Medford, civilized and orderly Medford, was akin to the idea of living in paradise to her.
"You just don’t know what it’s like there!" she urged. "The town is so clean and neat, and the ladies are so good to one another! Sometimes I think that I would gladly pass on if I could just take afternoon tea one more time in my old home! It would be a winter afternoon, and Mr. Bush would have hitched our pony to the sleigh, and I would drive over there myself and sit by the fire with my friends Elizabeth and Katherine Keys and my cousin Lucy, who is very dear to me, and we would eat Elizabeth’s little cakes as the darkness closed in, and then Mr. Bush would appear, all snowy from his walk, and we would drive home in the darkness to a nice chowder by the fire.... Oh, my dear, you can’t imagine, such bliss! You never mind the wind in Massachusetts, even in the winter. It stays outside, for goodness’ sake, where it belongs! Oh, it hurts me to think about it, a little. You surely must take them up on this!"
Louisa wanted me to stay in K.T. She didn’t say so, but I knew she was assessing which of the many single men who were about might be the likeliest prospect. She didn’t have to say much—we both knew that many of the niceties of mourning for folks in the States disappeared fairly quickly in K.T. If it was hard for a man to be without a wife, it was all the harder for a woman to be without a husband, especially as most folks were so far from their families. And there were fewer women than men. A twenty-one-year-old with a claim of her own and no children was, well, not quite so attractive as the twenty-seven-year-old woman of property and experience Louisa herself had been only six months before, but the answer to my dilemma was there for all to see, and, as I had reflected