The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [4]
My sister Beatrice’s husband, Mr. Horace Silk, sold dry goods on Maine, at Lorton and Silk. Mr. Jonas Silk, the old man and Horace’s father, held the reins of the business in a tight grip. Lorton was long dead. As a result, Horace was as little consumed by his interest in calico and muslin as he was much consumed by his interest in western land. Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas—the walls of Land S Co. were papered with bills that offered, for a fair and reasonable sum, city lots in lovely, tree-shaded towns, country farms watered by sweet flowing streams, gristmills, sawmills, ironworks, every sort of business. Brother Horace and his cronies pored over the bills, comparing and contrasting the virtues of every region, every town, every named river and stream. They were forever putting together their investments, forever outlining schemes, forever scouring their relatives for funds, but in truth Mr. Jonas Silk was as niggardly as he was jealous, and my sister Beatrice had as much interest in Kansas as she did in the czar of all the Russias, and so my brother Mr. Horace Silk worked out his plans in a white heat of frustrated eagerness.
Of all the women, it was only I who listened to the men, though I made no show of doing so. The towns I favored numbered three: One was Salley Fork, Nebraska, where the grid of streets ran down a gentle southern slope to the sandy, oak-shaded banks of the cool, meandering Salley River and where the ladies’ aid society had already received numerous subscriptions for the town library, which was to be built that very summer. Town the second was Morrison’s Landing, Iowa, on the Missouri, where the soil was of such legendary fertility and so easy to plow that the farmers were already reaping untold wealth from their very first plantings. The third was Walnut Grove, Kansas, where the sawmill, the gristmill, and the largest dry goods emporium west of Independence, Missouri, were already in full operation. Horace himself had a fancy for a farm on the Marais des Cygnes River in Kansas, which was the finest farming land in the world and, according to the bill, located in the best, most healthful climate—just warm enough in the summer to ripen crops, always refreshed by a cool breeze, and never colder in the winter than a salubrious forty degrees. Fruit and nut trees of all varieties, bramble fruits, and even peaches were guaranteed to grow there.
For many months, one of my main pleasures in life had been to linger in L and S, prolonging my errands there for Alice and gazing upon the delightful bills, with their neat street maps and architectural drawings. Quincy, which had been a mere handful of buildings when my father arrived, seemed old and run-down by comparison. Even so, my chances of getting to any of these places seemed at least as remote as Horace Silk’s, and as often as I gazed upon my favorite bills, I also vowed to put away the thoughts that agitated me. My sisters were as fixed in their various homes as stones, and as difficult to lift. I had no money of my own and no companion. Even my father’s old horse had died some three years before, never to be replaced, since my father had no use for a horse. That horse was the last familiar creature that he remembered the name of. As recently as six months before his death, sister Beatrice found him in the barn, looking at the horse’s empty stall and muttering, "Wellington." That was the horse’s name, after the duke himself.
I turned from the glare of the window and crept back to the carpet roll. There I squatted and peered down. Harriet was fanning herself. Her face was bright red. Beatrice was saying, "... a nice chicken business."
"And where," said Alice, "would we set her up with this nice chicken business? And ..." She paused and caught her breath indignantly. "If Horace is going to set anyone up in a nice chicken business, then in my opinion Annie is far more