The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [87]
I was surprised. "I thought you hated General Lane!"
"He is a dissipated man, and every month there’s talk about him and some new woman. Mrs. Quinn has three small children, one of them a babe in arms, and she went to his house in front of his very family and wept and cried for him until her own husband had to take pity on her and drag her away!"
"Thomas thinks it would be better to have General Lane as an enemy than a friend—"
"I’ve known your husband for a long time, my dear, and he is a very particular man, which I admire, but sometimes a man can be too particular." She shook her head. "And you know, Mrs. Quinn hasn’t been entirely right in her head since."
"Well," put in Mrs. Lacey, "doesn’t that make you wonder exactly where the fault between them lies? General Lane is a compelling figure of a man, mo-o-ost assuredly." She spoke brightly, and Mrs. Bush gave her quite a look, as if she had appropriated all K.T. privileges first thing, without even earning them.
Frank, who had been eyeing the other boys and, as it were, circling them, asserted that he slept with a rifle on his pillow and had every night of his life. I laughed, thinking of my sister, but the Other boys looked at him with visible amazement. All of them were bigger, but not even the eldest carried himself with quite the same self-reliant demeanor. Frank turned to me. "I’m going out," he said. "I got some things in the wagon to sell, and everybody’s up, it looks like. I heard that when there’s a war, you can get pretty good prices." He disappeared through the door of the hay house (no longer cloth, but now real wood) faster than I could remonstrate with him.
Mrs. Lacey and her boys all looked after him, startled. She said, "How old is that boy?"
"Twelve, almost thirteen."
Her elder two boys’ faces took on expressions of wondrous anticipation—the K.T effect on boys.
Thomas came in sometime after midnight. The Bushes now had bedsteads, but the rest of us arranged ourselves in the usual fashion, dividing the room with a cloth between the men and the women. I’d stationed myself nearest the door and was wrapped in my dressing gown and a shawl. I was wide awake, and I’d intended to jump up and greet him with all sorts of effusions, but in the event, I lay there as if asleep, covertly watching him. Mr. Bush had left a candle burning, and there was also light from the fires outside in the street. First he pushed the door open slowly and peeped in, then he took off his hat and set his carbine down just inside the door. Then there was a pause, as he must have been engaged in removing his boots, because he entered carrying them, in stockinged feet.
These little movements, bespeaking both exhaustion and thoughtfulness of others, struck me with a pointed tenderness. He yawned two or three times and rotated his shoulders, first the left and then the right, then he put down his boots and reached around to the back of his neck with his right hand, and rubbed and pressed there. I sat up and said, "Would you like me to do that?"
At the sound of my voice and the sight of me sitting up in my quilts, Thomas smiled with ready and evident warmth. I didn’t know that I had been watching for his smile, but I had been, for the remarks of the Border Ruffians that cast aspersions on my person had not gone as unnoticed as I’d let on. All he said was, "You’re safe, then, my dear wife. I’m very glad. I was torn about your coming, and worried, too." He sat down on the quilts, and we clung to each other. I said, "Frank preserved us."
"What happened to Bisket?"
"He melted away in the darkness, and we haven’t seen him since. Mrs. Bush said that we