The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [249]
Lorna nodded, and we stood up. She helped me out the door of the lounge. I saw at once that right there, at the top of the plank, the captain was having an altercation with three men. One of them was David B. Graves, and he saw me before I could step back into the saloon. Lorna was holding me up, and he and she exchanged a glance, too. He said, in a hard voice, "There they are. Harmon, you grab the niggah!"
"This is my boat!" thundered the captain.
"You an’t gonna be a party to nigger-stealin’, are ya?" shouted one of the men, and Lorna and I stepped back into the saloon and slammed the door.
"I ain’ nevah seen dose men!" exclaimed Lorna. "How dey know?"
"It’s me! It’s me, Lorna!"
And she gave me one anguished look, only one. In the next moment, I saw her inure herself, draw away, begin to take this in. I grabbed her hand and ran across the room to the largest window. As the men entered the door, I kicked at the window and pounded at it until, as they rushed over to us, it broke. I stepped through and tried to pull Lorna with me, but the pieces of glass still in the frame slowed us, and the men grabbed us. Mr. Graves was the one who grabbed me, and when he did, I slapped him. And when I slapped him, I covered his face with my blood. The other two men grabbed Lorna by the shoulders and the feet, and while the captain held the door, the three of them dragged us out onto the deck and threw us down. Perhaps we had fought them hard. They were breathing heavily. I don’t know. All I remember is how frenzied it made me to know that it was through me that Lorna had been betrayed.
There was quite a crowd of men on the deck, and a few women, too, and all their mouths hung open. Mr. Graves, his face and shirt red and glistening, exclaimed, "Gentlemen! We have foiled a nigger-stealing right in our midst! Night has fallen! Some of us are bloodied! But you may all rest assured that a man’s property will be restored to him! And that the thief, a young lady though she is, shall be punished!" The assembled Missourians gave out a clamorous cheer, and the two men who had hold of Lorna dragged her off. She was quiet, neither protesting nor crying. It was me that was screaming "No! No! No!" until I could no longer see her and no longer manage to utter a word.
The crowd dispersed. The captain said, "Git ’er off my boat!" and Mr. Graves gripped me by the arm and half pushed, half pulled me down the plank. When we got to the bottom, he said, "Mrs. Newton, I regret any elegiac sentiments I might have expressed toward you on an earlier occasion. I will say no more."
CHAPTER 27
I Backtrack
... it must be borne in mind, that the estimate of evils and privations depends, not so much on their positive nature, as on the characterand habits of the person who meets them. —p. 39
IT TOOK THE CATCHERS, I later learned, about two days to find Papa and match up his runaway with Lorna. That boy had been right: there were catchers everywhere, and every one of the lot was busy scaring up trade. For his part, Papa had wasted no time putting together an advertisement in Independence in which both Lorna and I were described. My height was against me; I was said to be "a plain tall woman in a nankeen dress and green bonnet with short hair and large hands"—unmistakable. Lorna was described as "a serviceable slave-girl, solidly built, of a discontented disposition, with a vertical scar on the left side of her neck, just under the ear, an inch and a half long." I, her friend, hadn’t noticed the scar. Papa, her enemy, had.
Mr. Graves took me to the jailhouse for safekeeping, but