The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton (40 page)

I stood still as he passed.

I saw at once that as long as I was a man, I would be able to do whatever I wanted, and that I would have a taste of freedom such as no woman I had known, even Louisa, had ever had. I stood up and strolled—ambled, really—down the length of the deck, looking for the gangplank, not quite sure where I was on the boat but thrusting one hand in my pocket and carrying my bag with the other, kicking out my feet as I walked, and altogether impersonating, I realized, my nephew Frank. The trousers hung around me, and their inseams rubbed together as I walked. But there was a lovely feeling to it of big strides and nothing in your way, that I remembered from the last time I’d worn trousers, the day our party had tried to parley with the Missourians at the Jenkins claim.

Some Negroes were pulling up the gangplank as I got to it.

"Hey, boys, wait for me," I said, as if I’d been saying such things all my life, and the two men looked at each other, then tipped their caps, and one of them said, "All right, boss," and down it went. I strolled off the boat, idling, to all appearances (I knew I would have to get a seegar somewhere very soon). Down on the dock, I turned, watched them pull up the gangplank as if I didn’t have anything better to do, then waved. One of them waved back.

Of course, I had no idea where I was going or what I was going to do for the rest of the night, but it seemed as though all I had to do was remain in character as a man, or rather as a boy of, say, sixteen, old enough but still plausibly beardless, and every opportunity would present itself to me. My name would be Lyman. Mr. Lyman Arquette, close enough to my maiden name, Harkness, so that when men—other men, that is—addressed me by my last name, which was the custom in the west, the name would ring a bell. I would at least look up, giving myself a single precious moment to remember who I was.

My state of mind, which was both exhilarated and fearful of discovery, belied my real condition, which was more in danger of eventual starvation than of anything else. Even though, having eaten well during the day, I reckoned I wouldn’t have to eat again until suppertime the next evening (eighteen hours thence, but I didn’t let myself think of that), what then? I had but forty dollars, and everything in Kansas City was dear. Signs outside of hotels I had seen as we were riding through town read "Rooms, three dollars," or even "five dollars," and that was only for one night! My limited funds put a time limit on my vengeance; my masquerade, as good as I could make it by aping the ways of men I knew, would stand up to neither doing manual work nor engaging in another common western practice—sleeping two or three to a bed to save on lodging costs. Lyman Arquette would have to be a rather solitary, self-effacing fellow, always ready with a laugh, and ready to take a drink, too—Missourians required both—but keeping himself as much in the background as possible. I strolled away from the riverside and into manhood, trying to look alert and be alert. Every woman knew that men were rough and violent among themselves, and that anything could happen.

CHAPTER 20

Lyman Arquette Investigates

It may be set down as the unchangeable rule of physiology, that stimulating drinks (except in cases of disease) deduct from the powers of the constitution, in exactly the proportion in which they operate to produce temporary invigoration. —p. 107

AS SOON AS the sun was up, I roused myself from behind the wagon where I had taken refuge and began looking for a newspaper office. It had come to me in the night, as I was almost drowsing, that that was where gossip on every subject was to be discovered. As I walked about, I made up my own story—a boy from Palmyra, Missouri, a town across the river from Quincy that I had visited several times, my father a man like Horace Silk, but as for myself, no taste for retailing, Mother dead. My ambition was to learn print setting and newspaper writing, so that I could go west, out to California, say, and start up my own newspaper. I was a good Democrat, a follower of Senator Douglas and Senator Atchison, though of course too young to vote, and a believer in popular sovereignty. I practiced saying "them G— d— black abolitionists" to myself. But I planned on taking a great deal of refuge in silence and shyness.

Kansas City was both more and less than Lawrence—more in the sense that there were more people, animals, vehicles, buildings a-building, activity, and business; less in the sense that as quick as everything went in Lawrence, it had gone all the quicker in Kansas City and was therefore all the more ramshackle and make-do. In Lawrence there were women, which meant families, homes, farms, gardens, teacups, and a lending library (or plans for one). In Kansas City it didn’t look like there were women, which meant a lack of all these same things. Kansas City was half business, half politics, all money. Kansas City was in Missouri, and so there were slaves, too, doing a considerable amount of the work and none of the idling. As an idler interested in politics, I was unremarkable among the other citizens.

I found a newspaper, the Missouri Freeman, shortly after seven—I know the time because I made a practice of ostentatiously pulling "my" watch from my pocket and looking at it, so as to get in the habit—and men were already going up and down the stairs of that office as if great things were stirring. One group of three men ran up the stairs, and I joined them. The door to the pressroom (the only room) was wide open. As we burst in, one of our number exclaimed, ’Jack Morton! Wake up!" A man stooping over a table at the other end of the room turned around, as did all the other men in the room, who numbered six or eight. "Shannon’s called in General Smith and ordered him to go and attack Lane’s army before they get out of Nebraska, and Smith’s refused to do it!" Now there were cries of "Traitor!" "Treachery!" and "Where’s Sumner?" from all about the room, and the man Morton, who must have been the editor of the paper, stepped forward and said, "Now, Joe, where’d you get this story?"

"These boys," he said. "They’re just in from Lecompton, and they had it from one of Shannon’s own men!"

"They’re going over! The soldiers are going over to the northern side, d— ’em! I could of told you they would," exclaimed one man as he pushed his way to the front of the group.

"We got to do everything ourselves," said another.

"That’s right!" exclaimed a third. "It’s all very well what they say about keeping order and makin’ them G— d— abolitionists obey the laws of the territory, but when it comes right down to it, them black abolitionists do what they want without so much as a by-your-leave, and the army jest sets there!"

"Okay, boys," said Morton. "Let’s write this up. You come over here and sit down, and you talk and I’ll write."

I was tempted to ooze along with them. No one had yet looked at me with much scrutiny, so excited were they by this news, but the editor’s desk was far back in the room, and I decided it would be more prudent to stay by the door. I set my bag down next to the wall and stood looking at some papers from the previous week ("Paupers and Thieves Pouring into Lawrence; Backers in Mass. Say Prisons Will Be Emptied! Investigations by our correspondents have turned up a plot on the part of Amos Lawrence and his cronies to transport the thieves and criminals of the northeast wholesale to Kansas Territory. Prison officials are overjoyed at the prospect; most of the money for the transportation has already been raised from the usual backers. One man, who refused to be identified for our readers, declared, ’Everyone knows this will solve two problems at one time. Kansas will be populated by men who owe us something, at least a vote, and we will be freed of these misfits and foreigners. The backers have agreed to buy every man a claim, free and clear. I hope the claims run all the way to the western mountains!’ ") or out the window at the wagons, horses, oxen, and men rushing up and down the street below.

I rehearsed my name, Lyman Arquette, and my story. By the light of day, I wasn’t quite sure what sort of figure I cut. Thomas’s jacket flapped around me, and of course my dress bodice had to be hidden, so I was buttoned up to the collar, with my hat pulled far down on my head. I seemed to have put on the braces holding up my trousers improperly, as they kept slipping uncomfortably off my shoulders, and I had to surreptitiously adjust them every few minutes. The trousers themselves and the shoes worked well enough, though, as my stockings were quite thin, I couldn’t help wondering about the grooming habits of the man whose boots I’d stolen. All in all, I was both comfortable and uncomfortable in my new clothes, which made it rather difficult to attain the sort of slouching nonchalance that I hoped would keep me unnoticed and unremarked upon. I definitely needed a shirt. How much would that cost ? The men I knew, including Thomas, had had their shirts made by their wives or daughters. In fact, I had made Thomas two shirts over the winter, but dissatisfied with my own workmanship, I had given them away with the other things. I glanced down again at the article I’d been reading ("Of course, the Free Staters, as they call themselves, will present their new citizens as bona fide homesteaders and family men, which makes us ask ourselves, ’Why is it they don’t know the difference between criminals and homesteaders?’ Our readers may hazard a guess. But the real outcome of these transportations may redound to our side in the end—law-abiding Missouri citizens and their sympathizers in Kansas Territory will be all the moré justified in acting on our own behalf in clearing out the nests of malefactors"). The article, which would have had me and all my friends in K.T spitting with rage, left me strangely unaffected, no doubt because I could hardly risk being or acting affected, but also because I couldn’t quite take in such a ridiculous set of ideas. Best, however, not to read any further.

Morton now appeared beside me, startling me. He wore a friendly smile; his face was smudged with black, as were his fingers, and he had a pencil over his ear. He said, "Well, now, son, you’re a stranger here. Are you lookin’ for something?"

Without my even planning it, a low, breaking, breathy voice came out of me, almost a whisper. I said, "I’m looking for a job."

"Speak up, son."

"Well, sir, I can’t, sir. As a child, I was the victim of an accident. This is the best I can do." Morton looked instantly sympathetic, so I embroidered a bit by putting my hand on my throat. "Drank something caustic, sir. I was two. Back in Palmyra."

"What are you doing in Kansas City, son?"

"Making my way, sir," I whispered. "Got to do the best I can, you know."

"What’s your name, son?"

"Lyman Arquette, sir."

"Well, why don’t you sit yourself down over there, out of the way, and I’ll talk to you later, after the place clears out a bit."

I picked up my bag and strolled over to the designated chair, which was next to a cold stove. There I sat down, leaned back, and put my feet up on the stove, as I’d seen western men do all my life. It was a remarkably comfortable posture.

It was also a good spot for eavesdropping, and my hearing was all the keener for the danger I felt myself to be in. It was more exciting than anything else, and one thing I discovered about myself was that as a man, or boy, I was bolder and more reckless than I’d been as a woman. What might have paralyzed me in the past now stimulated me. Not three feet away, one armed man (rifle, two pistols, two long knives) was saying to another armed man (two rifles, no pistols, one knife), "An’t begun to do this right, and that’s a fact. You got to treat these G— d— abolitionists the way they done them Cherokee Indians down where I come from. One day, you just go in and rout ’em out of there, and you make ’em move on, and you kill the ones that lag behind. It an’t purty, but lots o’ necessary doin’s an’t purty at all. What truly an’t purty is the way all this stuff lingers until you lose in the end."

"Shoulda struck when the strikin’ was good, you ask me. We had ’em out here, far from everywhere, before all them scribblers got out here, and we coulda done what we wanted to ’em, but of course them cooler heads prevailed. Now lookit us!"

"You never spoke a truer word, Loomis."

They shook their heads in anguish.

Some of the talk was of making money. One man (two pistols, no knives) declared, "It may not look like it to you, Jacks, but this area is finished. California is finished. Texas is finished. Mark me, ’cause I’m telling you something you need to know. If you see wagons, then that area is just finished. It just is. If there are wagons, then you’re too late."

Jacks (one pistol, one rifle, one knife) shook his head. "You an’t payin’ attention to the two stages, Dixon. I told you before, there’s two separate stages, and you can make a bundle in each. Just because the first stage, what I call the speculatin’ stage, is over don’t mean you can’t make a pile. During the growth stage, as I call it, you got to have the imagination to refine your appeal. You got to be sellin’ somethin’ someone wants. It an’t like durin’ the speculatin’ stage when everybody wants the same thing, which is land. Durin’ the growth stage, folks all want different things. It’s a better man who makes his money then, and to my mind, he makes better money, both more of it and more righteous money, I think. But an’t too many share my opinion on that."

"Kansas is done, Nebraska is done."

"Well, where an’t done, then, d— it?" exclaimed Jacks.

"When I know that, you won’t see me round here no more. You ask where I’ve gone, and then you come on behind me with your growth stage, haw haw!"

Neither man looked as though he had made any money in either stage.

Not every conversation was philosophical, like these. I heard that a Mrs. Cook had borne twins, that a Bill had fallen into the river overnight and drowned not ten feet from shore (drunk), that the price of hemp was falling, that I could get a pair of Arkansas mules for sixty dollars and a pair of Missouri mules for eighty, that the steamboat Harvey Mack had blown up downriver, near Hermann, and ten lives had been lost, that according to the Indians, every day in August was going to be a hundred degrees or over, and that a two-headed lamb had been born near Blue Springs and had lived a week, long enough for the farmer in question to find an artist, who had done an engraving of the animal and the farmer, and the farmer now wanted five dollars from Mr. Morton to run the picture in the paper.

I heard Mr. Morton say, ’Just did a two-headed lamb in November. Can’t do one of them more than once a year, that’s my editorial policy."

"But this lamb lived four days longer than that one!" exclaimed the farmer.

"And my sister got married to a man who had a wagon and a pair of mules, and then another man came along who had two wagons and two pairs of mules, but she didn’t get to change her mind, did she?"

The farmer went away disappointed.

I thought if I sat there long enough, I would hear mention of those who had killed Thomas.

Of course, the office wasn’t only a place of gossip; it was also a place of work—Mr. Morton and his assistants setting type, doing things with the presses, bringing in paper and doing something with that; but they were more or less hidden from me by my hat and a corner in the wall. Almost no one spoke to me. When someone did greet me, I nodded and whispered, "Good day," in return. In the early afternoon, I slipped away for a bit. I saw that maintaining my masquerade put me on the stretch in more ways than one, and I needed to find a quiet spot and take a break. I came back in the late afternoon. It was almost suppertime, and I was trying not to pay any attention to the fact that I was intensely hungry. In my wanderings and explorations, I’d ascertained that breakfast was, in general, cheaper than dinner or supper, and I thought that if I got myself on a breakfast regimen, my money would go farther.

When I came back, the office had pretty much cleared out. Only Mr. Morton and two of his employees were present, and Mr. Morton saw me before I could back out the door and get down the stairs. "Arquette!" he called.

I stopped dead.

"Now, son." He looked at me quizzically.

I whispered, "Yes?"

"You say you’re an educated boy, you can read and write and all that?"

"Yessir."

"Write me something."