The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [223]
I hardly remember this supper. I do not know how many men ate with us, or what we ate. I do know that Helen sat far away from me, at the other end of the table, which had been pulled out to its full length. Papa seemed in high spirits. There was a great deal of talk about what the abolitionists had done, would do, couldn’t do, should be obliged to suffer, and would find out about. I don’t remember any of it. There were many men at the table, perhaps a dozen. I scrutinized each of their faces with a rudeness allowed only to a woman. Maybe, I thought, if Chaney Smith and Samson Perkins weren’t the culprits, I would recognize someone else. Stranger things had happened, had they not? And then there was this—the bartender in Kansas City had told me that "Chaney and Samson" were boasting about killing someone. If not Thomas, then whom? But in fact, I didn’t care about that unknown whom. I cared about Thomas. Revenge was too frightening to be abstract; it had to be most particular and careful. I attempted to construe every face into one I had seen, but it was simply impossible, and of course, very soon, I lost the moment, as we ate our supper and each face became familiar. I thought of shooting them anyway, or some of them, those who talked in the most boasting, hateful way: "Oughta burn ’em out now!" "Shoulda done it months ago, when we had the chance!" "Some folks wouldn’t hear of it, but they was dead wrong!" "I say, and I always did say, jest shoot the d— black abolitionists as they come up the river. You kin tell who they are at a hundred yards, and pick ’em off at that distance, too, if you’re any kind o’ shot!" (Much laughter.) It went round and round as they worked themselves up to ever higher degrees of indignation, with Helen and me exchanging a glance every so often. The company got rowdier and rowdier, and finally Papa gave Helen the signal that she could escape, and we smiled and curtseyed our way out of the room.
"Now," she whispered at the bottom of the stairs, "we go up and lock ourselves in my room, as you never know what might happen, and although, of course, everyone respects Papa more than anyone, and listens to him, and he and Mr. Harris wouldn’t let anything get out of hand, still, you never know. Papa and Mr. Harris aren’t as young as some of the others, and maybe you’ve noticed that Papa is rather on the small side."
I thought of the pistol under my bed and said, "Get your work, and we’ll go into my room. It isn’t directly over either the dining room or the parlor. And bring your nightdress and wrapper, too."
We went up.
We went to bed.
Helen fell asleep, always sure in her heart that she was safe.
Papa got the men off in a clatter of hoofbeats and threats against the north.
Papa mounted the stairs and went into his own room.
I reflected upon the failure of my project.
It was easy now to follow the thread of failure back through the last weeks and months, as easy as following a red thread through a blue weave. It was easy to see that all the circumstances that had seemed to point me here, to this house, tonight, to this fateful act of justice, had been nothing at all, just a jumble of chance encounters, wishful steps, ignorant certainties. It was easy to see that the world I saw bearing down on me and directing me had in fact issued out of me. I had been the light that, shining upward upon the random branches in the forest canopy, transformed them into a net. It was so easy to see this that I lay there lost in astonishment that I had been so foolish, but also lost in astonishment, fresh astonishment, that it had all happened, even that Thomas was dead, even that I had ever married, left Quincy, gone to Kansas. I had a sensation