The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [74]
"They can’t live with us," said Mr. Holmes. "We can’t live with them. We can’t look upon them holding bondmen without going blind to the will of the Lord, nor can we live beside them undirtied by their filth. We have our souls to think of as well as theirs and the souls of their slaves."
"There an’t one person in ten here in K.T.," said Mr. Bisket, "who thinks like you do, Holmes, and eight of the nine who don’t would like to kill you for that sort of talk. I think if we keep our mouths shut, those slaves’ll disappear from here soon enough. Can’t do anything with them in K.T. They don’t grow cotton here."
"But," said Thomas, "they grow hemp right over in Missouri, and tobacco, too. Slaves do that work."
Mr. Bush said, "I give way to no man in my aversion to slavery and the slave power. Eli Thayer is a personal friend of mine, and I feel no less strongly than he does about it. But even so, I hesitate to free a bondman I’ve never met from an owner I don’t know, and send him or her off to a life she may not understand or want. Do we come upon a woman in the night, wrench her from sleep, tell her she’s free, and send her packing? Where does she go? Who are her friends? What funds does she have? I ask myself if I’m prepared to guarantee her for a week or two, to send her to friends. If I’m not, then I’d better not meddle."
I said, "You might have asked the woman what she wanted to do."
All the men turned and looked at me. This remark put a stop to the conversation. All in all, I thought, it was no doubt better that the woman had been gone. Northerners, even abolitionists, knew more about how and why to chop down the slavery tree than they ever knew about what to do with its sour fruit.
There was less discussion, let me say none, about what should be done with the Missourians’ cabin. The Jenkinses moved into it within a few days and did just as we had, though with a degree more satisfaction—they papered over the log-and-mud walls with sheets of the treasonous Liberator. I was pleased to have Mrs. Jenkins and Susannah in the neighborhood, and they immediately became friends with Mrs. James, who was a sweet lady and, Susannah said, not at all like her husband. That the Jenkinses’ new cabin was a considerable improvement over their old one seemed to render them extremely forgiving. Now there was a woman or two every half mile, or even closer. It made the country seem settled and gave our windy cabins a cozy feel.
I think we all thought we were settled now, that we had passed through a few trials, done some unpleasant but necessary deeds, and established ourselves. Certainly, Thomas and Frank and I felt that way. In the course of our labors, there was much visiting back and forth, sharing tasks, and discussing every little thing.
Susannah, who now went four or five days between shaking, told me that she liked to come to our cabin above all, and tried to do so every day or two, always bringing along her own bit of tea and a few corncakes, and her own cup and spoon. "You know," she said, "I do like being out here with Mama and Papa, and the cabin is ever so much nicer than the hay house is, but I wonder how my husband is to find me out here. Mama and Papa discussed it the whole night before we came, standing outside the hay house and trying to keep me from hearing." It was true that their place was a little more out of the way than ours, and they had fewer passing visitors.
I said, "The whole night?"
"Well, long enough for the subject to become tedious even to me. But they never disagree, you know. When they talk about something, first Papa says one thing, then Mama says another, then Papa says what Mama just said, and Mama says what Papa just said. In this case, Papa said that we couldn’t very well leave the cabin empty, and Mama said that a young, well-grown girl had to be in the way of traffic, not out on the prairie, and then they each said what the other said, and then Papa