The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [177]
"I come up from Louisiana about a year ago. If you want to know, I was working a steamboat, but she run aground and wrecked, so I thought enough a that, I’m a horseman, anyway, not a riverman. And I was sorry to lose that mare. She was a Kentucky mare. You could turn her on a dime, and she could go like sixty. If I ever see that G— d— abolitionist again, I’ll kill him for sure!"
Once Mabee was chattering, then the last holdout started chattering, too, and I got busy scribbling notes as fast as I could, mostly for show, though, as I was sure I wouldn’t be able to read anything I’d written down in such dim light. But they had more to them than one little article, and I knew I wouldn’t have much trouble with my composition. A good half hour or so went by, and then I said, "What’s your plan, boys?"
A silence fell over the room, then Mabee said, "Cain’t tell you that! Can we? We live a secret life!"
Now the volubility went out of them, and they glanced back and forth at one another, and then at me. It must have just been occurring to them that I intended to publish their story and reveal them to the world. After a minute, Lewis, who had struck me as the sharpest of the lot, said, "If we get famous and have our pictures in the paper, how are we gonna get the jump on abolitionists?"
They all thought for a moment. I said, "Abolitionists don’t read our paper. Abolitionists can’t abide our paper."
Mabee said, "What would happen, we’d have to leave this area and conduct our operations in K.T I been thinkin’ we should push off that way, anyhow, because right here we’re livin’ off our friends. We want to live off our enemies."
I whispered, "This would be a kind of farewell piece, then."
They all thought for a minute, then nodded. Lewis said, "You tell ’em we’re gonna go raise h— in K.T, haw haw!" I laughed at this joke, then moved toward the door. Mabee said, "Where ya goin’ now?"
"Got to write my article and turn it in before three o’clock, or it can’t be in this week’s paper."
"What about the picture?"
Oh, that artist I had waiting. I said, "I got to bring him out here tomorrow. He didn’t want to come along today because I didn’t know if I’d find you."
Mabee stood up and opened the door a crack, then looked out carefully, then opened it the rest of the way. He said, ’An’t nobody out there. Okay. Now, you bring that fellow right here tomorrow, but not too early. We want to be dressed and in all our gear when he comes. We don’t want to be greetin’ no artist in our drawers, haw haw!"
We went out on the step, and he stared at me. I saw that Athens was grazing in the yard, maybe fifty feet from the door. Jeremiah, of course, would have looked up and walked over to me, but Athens just continued to graze. Mabee (Joseph, his given name was) said, "You talk funny, and you look funny, too."
I nodded.
"But you’re all right, anyway." He looked at Athens, then at me. He said, "You got any money?"
Only then, for the first time, really, did I think of Frank among just such a crowd (though, of course, of a somewhat higher tone, being New Englanders and reading men). I had been terribly angry with him, angrier than I realized. Really, there was no telling what he was doing, was there? Or what he had heard; what he knew about Thomas, what he knew about me. I had expected Thomas’s death to simply call him back, like some sort of resonance vibrating all over eastern K.T. I pulled the five dollars out of my pocket and handed it to him. A little guilt about Frank began to seep through my anger and color it.
Mabee said, "Thanks," almost graciously.
He turned and went back inside, closing the door behind himself, and I ran down across the yard and just about vaulted onto Athens, all my fears rushing up just then, as if they’d been