The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [18]
I couldn’t help tweaking him just a bit, saying, "Are you reading aloud to me from some bill? Because this is a great advertisement for Dr. Robinson," but then, when his face fell, I offered, "You know, my sister Miriam ran a school for the children of escaped slaves in Ohio. I might have gone to teach there."
His answering smile was delighted and delightful.
As far as we knew, we had no place of our own waiting for us, but Mr. Newton was ever sanguine about how quickly things would fall into place once we got there. Our wedding was small and quickly planned, and that very day we saw our boxes, his and mine together, loaded onto the Galena packet for transport to Saint Louis and west. We went on board ourselves, my first time on a steamboat, and we stood at the rail, I in a new bonnet, my only bit of wedding finery, and waved off my sisters and brothers-in-law and nieces and nephews: young Frank, who was smoking his seegar openly, even though Harriet kept trying to snatch it out of his mouth; dear Annie, who I believe was counting the days until a much larger steamboat would be taking her away; Roland Brereton, who was d—ing the stevedores every minute but giving them tips for each box of ours they picked up and carried on board; Horace Silk, who was nearly in tears at not being able to go with us; and Harriet, Beatrice, and Alice, who looked amazed and relieved that I had been gotten rid of so suddenly and smoothly, after all.
The Galena packet, the Ida Marie, was a rather small, older boat with only a handful of staterooms, which carried the mail between Saint Louis and Galena, alternating with its sister ship, the Mary Ida, which ran the opposite direction. We boarded in the late morning and toward noon cast off. It was August 27, and the captain himself was the first person ever to address me as "Mrs. Newton."
It was a fine, warm day, bright and breezy. We mounted the stairs to the passenger deck, but not before I had a glimpse of the open machinery at the interior of the lower deck—the boiler and the gears—and the boatmen and steerage passengers standing around, watching the whole works. We walked deliberately aft, and for all their age, the white railings of the boat dazzled in the noonday sun. Mr. Newton stood beside me as the high Quincy bluff and my family disappeared behind us. The great wheel churned and splashed into the turbulent brown water, and after a brief time Mr. Newton led me to the ladies’ saloon, which occupied a portion of the lower deck just in front of the wheelhouse. Inside, three other ladies had made themselves at home, but the air was stuffy and close, and the windows were begrimed with soot from the firing of the boiler. On the other hand, the floor of the ladies’ saloon was more or less free of the brown stains of tobacco juice that decorated the sunny decking. Men, even married men, weren’t allowed, except to sleep with their wives in one of the few staterooms at night. By the same token, women, even married women, were not welcome on the deck, except under the unusual circumstances of an accident or a sight of special importance, and there were none of those until just above Saint Louis, when the boat would cross the mouth of the Missouri.
As I stepped over the threshold, all three ladies looked up, first at me, then at Mr. Newton—until he backed away and closed the door—then at me again. Two were gray-haired, already at their needlework, and one, dressed in black, was about my sisters’ age. Seated next to her was a little girl, also in a black dress. When the door closed behind me, everyone smiled. I found