The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [32]
"Never seen any of the others before." She shook her head, then half fell into a chair, seemingly beyond exhaustion.
I said, "May I get you something to eat?" before I realized that I had no idea where to get anything to eat, but she said, "No. Can’t eat. Can’t eat yet. Maybe tomorrow." She closed her eyes, and for a moment all of the patients were quiet, as well. Mr. Newton led me down the stairs. "How they doing up there?" said the proprietor’s wife. And before I had even opened my mouth to speak, she was shaking her head ruefully.
Out in the street, I said to Thomas, "We might find another place to stay."
But there was no other place to stay, and when we came back later, the floor of the sleeping room at the Humphry House was covered with bodies wrapped in blankets. The stars and the moon were clearly visible through chinks in the wall, and there was a breeze. It came in at every crack and was warm and thick. The provisions made for the ladies on the steamboat were nowhere to be found in the Humphry House. The best the half dozen of us could do for ourselves was to cluster at one end of the room behind a curtain that one of the ladies made from an old piano cover she had brought along with her from Tennessee. Did she also have the piano? she was asked. "Why, no," she said. "Never did have a piano, but I thought this was a nice first step." The floor was cottony, and it was easy to hear what was going on below through the chinks between the boards.
"You hear what some boys did up in Atchison?" I couldn’t see the speaker, who pronounced the name of the town "Atchinson." He laughed. "They got this black abolitionist who was trying to sneak out of the territory, back to that Boston hellhole he come from, and he was going around town saying some things, you know, black abolitionist buncombe, and they lashed him to a couple of cottonwood poles and pushed him out into the river and told him if he lived he’d be sorry, and if he lived and come back there, they’d kill him some other way!" A lot of laughter greeted this tale.
"Kill every one o’ them treasonous scoundrels, you ask me. What are they doing coming out here? They got no business out here!"
"Well, one more of ’em knows that now. Just shoot ’em as they get off the boat, I say. Bam bam bam, like ducks on a pond. We’d be better off, and them too!"
"Kill’em for their own good!" This was followed by considerable hilarity, as every man in the lower story appreciated the witticism. Thomas’s optimism had not prepared me to hear the expression of such sentiments, and I was much dismayed by them. I turned my face into the pillow I had made of my petticoat. After a moment, the woman next to me, who I’d thought was asleep, said in a whisper, "The only real danger is if they get drunk and start shooting through the floor and all, but Laster, that’s the owner, he can generally push ’em out before they get that far." She spoke with a decided Kentucky or Arkansas pronunciation, so I didn’t answer her for fear of identifying myself with my first word. She smiled. I smiled. I thought I would never go to sleep, but the next thing I knew was a mighty rustling and stamping, as everyone got up with the sun pouring through the walls and started pulling on boots. There was a small basin for washing, and beside it a large pitcher with a little brown water in the bottom. Above these, a mirror hung on the wall and beside it a single comb and a single cloth. Long dirty hairs hung from the comb. I went downstairs and outside. Thomas, whom I hadn’t seen anywhere in the sleeping area, was talking to a man in a large slouch hat at the foot of the ramp. When I came up to them, he said to me, "David Graves, here, has a wagon and has agreed to carry our boxes as far as Lawrence."
"If you’re going to Lawrence," said Mr. Graves, "you’ll be wanting