The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [41]
All the streets were named for states, and the best street was Massachusetts Street. There were buildings of all kinds and in all states of construction—stone walls rose beside frame buildings, which sat next to lean-tos built of hay. Some residences were dug right into the ground, and their owners were busy building over them. Other houses had come in pieces, or so we were told, from the States; one hotel, where we wanted to stay but decided not to, because of contagion, was called the Cincinnati House, because it had been floated somehow from Cincinnati and put back together in Lawrence. The streets were dusty paths, but they looked very much as if they wanted to be streets and soon would fulfill their ambitions. Almost as soon as we got to Lawrence, Mr. Graves took us into a new store, run by a man named Stearns, that was well stocked with not only local produce, like butter, eggs, apples, and melons, but also stoves and chairs and tools and buckets and plates and cups and yard goods and even books. Mr. Graves swelled its stock of highly rectified whiskey and seemed pleased with the price he got. He also sold the man some spoons, a black coat, three boots, a wooden leg with the fourth boot glued onto it, a bushel of unripe pears from Missouri, and a saddle. Then Mr. Graves was happy and carried us, as a favor, to the top of Mount Oread, the great Lawrence landmark, which looked out of town toward the prairies to the south. By this time, it was nearly dusk, and Mr. Graves invited us to gaze upon and enjoy the prairie sunset as if he himself had arranged it for our benefit.
Thomas had asked at the Cincinnati House after his friends from Massachusetts, but no one there knew any of them, or rather, everyone at the Cincinnati House who had been in Lawrence for any time at all was ill, and everyone still on his or, mostly, her feet was almost as new to the country as we were. Mr. Graves himself, afraid of infection, only called in at the window—he wouldn’t by any means enter the door. At the Stearns establishment, we were told that almost everyone was at Big Spring for the day, making up a government for the Free Staters to war against the illegitimate government that the Missourians had forced upon the State. I have to say that I heard all this, sometimes sitting in Mr. Graves’s wagon and sometimes leaning against it, but I didn’t pay much attention. I was too busy staring at the building here, the business there, the animals and people walking to and fro from here to there. There was a kind of New England righteousness about it, about the way that the town looked and the way that the people carried themselves. Thomas, who had been a bit of an odd but intriguing duck in Quincy, looked right at home here.
Thomas did not let either the undesirability of the Cincinnati House or the absence of his friends perturb him now that he was in Kansas, and I found myself taking on some of his equanimity. As we rode down from the top of Mount Oread with Mr. Graves, a man passed us on horseback, and Thomas said, in a voice entirely unsurprised, "There’s Bisket now. Hello, Bisket!"
Mr. Bisket was an exceedingly tall and thin young man, certainly no older than I. His long arms and legs seemed to gangle around the compact dimensions of his pony. He drew to a halt. "Newton! We stopped looking for you and thought sure you were dead! But you an’t! Halleluia!"
Mr. Bisket turned his horse and walked alongside our wagon in the deepening evening gloom. Thomas turned to me. "Well, Bisket," he said, "I was delayed in Quincy with Howell, and so I found myself getting married! Lydia, my dear,