Bleeding Kansas (42 page)

F
ROM
P
ASTOR
A
LBRIGHT'S
S
ERMON

“Oh, yeah, mothers always come back for their children, don't they?” Elaine Logan muttered. “Pious hypocrite. As bad as all the other Christians. ‘Whited sepulchers,' just like the Bible says.”

Her voice carried to the people in the pews closest to her. One or two giggled, but most of them shifted uneasily in their seats, not wanting to be near someone who was unstable but mindful as Christians that it was their duty to love and respond to her.

Elaine had hitched a ride into town with Jim and Lara Grellier. When they saw Elaine waving her arms at the crossroads, her face sullen, Lara had urged Jim to drive right on past—certainly, his own inclination as well. But he saw Arnie's truck approaching from the Schapen farm: Myra, Robbie, and Arnie on their way to Salvation Bible. If they picked up Elaine, she might well tell them everything she knew about Jim, and then he'd supplant news of the miracle heifer on Myra's website. He told Lara to climb into the back and let Elaine have the passenger's seat.

“Farmer Jones, Farmer Jones,” Elaine crooned as she hoisted herself onto the running board. “So you do know how to treat a lady. And is this Mrs. Jones?”

“No! I'm his daughter, and his name isn't Jones,” Lara cried, angry with Jim and disgusted by Elaine, whose breath smelt sour. How could Gina stand to have someone so foul on the premises?

“‘All the animals are very hungry, but where is Farmer Jones?'” Elaine quoted from the children's book. “Why, he's rolling in the hay, just like his lovely daughter, isn't that right? All those old tales, they knew what they were talking about.”

When books said a character's “head swam,” it was the literal truth, Lara realized. Shame and anger nearly suffocated her, and the gray fields disappeared in a hazy mist in front of her eyes.

“If you weren't such a drunk, you wouldn't make up stuff and start telling people it was true,” Lara said.

“You're so pure, like all good Christians, where what you say matters more than what you do. But something is happening, and
I
know what it is, don't I, Mr. Jones?”

“Where do you want me to drop you?” Jim asked hastily, as embarrassed as Lara and therefore not paying attention to Elaine's revelations about his daughter.

Elaine said she'd get out wherever they stopped, so they drove her to the church with them. Jim lost track of her then: he wandered into the church hall for a cup of coffee while Lara went off to Rachel Carmody's Sunday school class with Kimberly Ropes.

Jim assumed that Elaine had taken off, but between Sunday school and church she popped up again. He was talking to Rachel at the back of the nave when Elaine rolled in from the porch. She'd found someone to give her a drink in the last forty-five minutes, or maybe she kept a bottle in the cloth bag she carried that proclaimed, in faded letters,
WOMEN'S LIBERATION UNION.

“I'll be your chaperone, Rachel.” Elaine leered. “You don't want to be alone with Farmer Jones. He's a bold man, the farmer. And his daughter's just as bad.”

Rachel and Jim both flushed. Jim remembered Elaine's earlier crack about Rachel being in love with him. Surely, that couldn't be true? Rachel was such a solid, reliable woman. Jim couldn't imagine that she'd indulge in a foolish fantasy about a married man—forgetting for a moment that that same married man had a foolish fantasy about a different unmarried woman.

Fortunately, other members of the congregation were coming in to worship, asking Jim about Susan, talking to Rachel about parish matters. The organ began to play the voluntary. Jim wasn't sure how it happened, perhaps through Elaine's maneuvering, but he found himself wedged in a pew with Rachel and Elaine. Lara was sitting farther back, with a group of other teens from Sunday school. At least she was doing better, that was one comfort, to see her with her old friends again.

“Now you two can be cozy together, and I'll watch over you,” Elaine said, breathing gin over them.

As the service progressed, Elaine became more sullen and more belligerent. At first, she grumbled about bad mothers, and then how Jim was a whited sepulcher, but when Pastor Albright spoke about the red heifer and how to think about the prophecies in Revelation Elaine's grievances turned to Arnie.

“He thinks he's the boss of everyone. He's not the boss of me, not him, and not his murdering mother. They'll be sorry. They think I'm not good enough for their calf, they'll see if that calf is good enough for them.
Them that takes cakes / Which the Parsee-man bakes / Makes dreadful mistakes.
High and mighty Sheriff Arnie will see, just you watch!”

At that point, Elaine became so loud that Rachel tried to get her to leave the service. Elaine stood and shouted, “You call yourselves Christians, but you can't wait for the service to end so you can go on with your gossip and your fucking and your drinking. I'm saying out loud what you're thinking, so you want to throw me out. Well, I'm not going!”

Congregation and minister were momentarily silent, then he said, “We acknowledge that we are less inclusive than we are called to be. We acknowledge that we sometimes find it difficult to accept the gifts that others bring. Lord, teach us to accept the words this woman brings as gifts, and to learn from them. As all our gifts come from you, help us to give back to you that which you have loaned to us.”

The congregation took this as an invitation for the offering. Servers leaped up with collection plates, and the organist began a prelude to the offertory anthem at such a volume that Elaine found herself drowned out. Uttering general curses against Rachel, Jim, Arnie, and all Christians everywhere, Elaine strode out of church as fast as her bulk allowed.

Of course, her outburst was the subject of conversation at the coffee hour. Since Rachel and Jim seemed to be the pair attached to Elaine, they found themselves called on as experts by everyone who wanted to discuss the situation, until Jim, exhausted by the ordeal, grabbed Lara and fled with her to the House of Pancakes.

The next day, when he came to school to collect Lara, Jim sought out Rachel in the teachers' lounge first. He apologized for leaving her in the middle of the coffee hour.

She smiled. “I don't have your allergy to conversation—or what you always call gossip. Elaine's situation is troubling, though. I'm glad Gina Haring is offering her a home, but if Gina moves back to New York I don't know what we'll do with Elaine. She's such a strange mix, too. The things she knows or half knows, like quoting from Kipling's
Just So Stories.
”

Jim shook his head, puzzled, so Rachel said, “Those lines about
‘cakes / Which the Parsee-man bakes'
—that's from Kipling. She was clearly an educated woman before she became, well, what she is today.”

Jim thought of the transcript he'd seen in Gina's study. “Yes, I guess she was.”

Rachel smiled at him. “As long as you're here on school property, Jim, let's do a little school business. Lara is performing better in most of her classes, but her work in biology and Spanish is very marginal, and the rest of her work is only at a C level. Except for social studies, where she's doing a major report on Iraq—history, religion, the works.”

Jim was startled. Lara hadn't said a word to him about it.

“She seems happier these days,” Rachel added. “Which is good. But I'd like to see her putting the muscle into her work that she gave it last year. And I don't want any F's or D's on her permanent record, so maybe it's time for another fatherly chat. I did try talking to Susan about this last week, but she didn't seem interested. I'm afraid it's all falling on you.”

Jim looked around the lounge to see how many people were in earshot. “I—Lara's spending a lot of time with one of the boys in her class. She's been grounded for two weeks—this is the start of her second week—so I was hoping she'd pay more attention to her schoolwork.”

“Do you know who the boy is?”

Jim leaned forward and whispered Robbie's name, so that no eavesdropper could pick it up and spread it around.

Rachel nodded. “That would have been my guess. I understand why he wouldn't be your first choice, but he's a good kid, even a good student, not like Junior. Melissa Austin—she's in charge of the music program—she thinks he's a pretty good musician, too. We all imagine Mr. Schapen is an ogre, but he's supported Robbie's music, even buying him a good guitar and seeing he has the lessons he needs.”

Jim was surprised—he wouldn't have expected that of Arnie—just one more proof of how wrong it was to sit in judgment of your neighbors. “Maybe that's why Lulu's started playing her trumpet again.”

Right after Susan's hospitalization, she'd thrown it down the cellar stairs, saying she never wanted to see it again. Jim had retrieved it and put it in her room. Three weeks ago, she'd started practicing—she was at band rehearsal right now. He left Rachel to listen to his daughter play.

On his way to the music room, he ran into Blitz, who was doing his winter stint for the school board. They talked for a couple of minutes, about the winter wheat, about when Blitz might come look at the planter, which hadn't spread evenly when Jim was putting in the crop, and then Rachel emerged, and Blitz's face lit up. Rachel smiled, too, not with Blitz's warmth but friendly enough, Jim saw.

Jim felt let down, then laughed at himself. “Serve you right, you old porker,” he said under his breath. “You wanted Elaine to be wrong about Rachel being in love with you, then you wanted her to be right. You want a harem, boy, become a Mormon. Otherwise, stay loyal to the one wife you've got.”

On the drive home, he talked to Lara about her school performance. “I'm happy that you're paying better attention, baby, although I wish you were working up to your real abilities. Rachel—Ms. Carmody—says you're doing outstanding work on some report you're preparing on Iraq, which proves that you can do better. I don't want to nag. I know you're having a tough time, between losing Chip and the way your mom's acting, but I can't have you failing any courses. Will you buckle down in science and Spanish?”

She was looking out the window, not at him, but she nodded grudgingly.

“Maybe next semester you'll feel like picking up the reins again, hmm? I don't want you to wreck your chance for a college education, Lulu. You have the brains to go to a good school.” He paused, then said, “You and Robbie Schapen still seeing each other?”

She gasped, then whispered, “Sort of.”

“And you're being careful?”

About sex? About stirring up talk in the valley? The unspoken end of the sentence. He looked over at her. Her head was bent down, so that her brown curls fell forward, exposing the long white line of her neck. She looked so fragile that he could hardly stand it. He repeated the question until she gave him back a muffled assurance.

August 29, 1863

My dearest Mother,

How can I find the words to recount our horrors? I sit among the charred ruins of my home, my children clutching my skirts and crying. They want their papa. They look for him on the road, but he will never come home again.

All last week, the air was hot and still, as if the prairie itself were Nebuchadnezzar's furnace, seeking to burn us to a cinder. The corn shimmered under the sun, so that from the doorway of the house my eyes were nigh blinded by the glare, and I fancied myself standing outside Grandmother Peabody's neat frame dwelling in Lynn, shading my eyes from the sun striking the green waters of the Atlantic.

Oh, Mother, if you knew the ravages of my guilt in the midst of my grief! How many times did I let the sun go down on my anger with M. Grellier. His noble ideals were too great to be encompassed in the body of a farmer. When he set off for his school, how I did inveigh for his leaving me alone to deal with the homestead and the children. When he was going on an errand of special grace, instead of praising him I whined as if I were Baby, grizzling over her new teeth.

How my shame at my harsh words now threatens to strike me to the ground. Why did I not rejoice in my good fortune, to be married to a man of such lofty principles? Instead, I cried out bitterly. I had broke the sod alone, save for the help of our kind neighbor, Mr. Schapen. I had planted and harvested nigh on my own for eight years. Now, when blackbirds threatened the crop, could he not stay?

No, he replied, in his patient way. For this hot weather means that the freedmen, who have lately moved into our free state of Kansas from Missouri, escaping the vile slavery under which they toiled, are free from their labors—for you must know that many hire themselves out as farmhands to earn money for purchasing a stake of their own. And as many are eager to learn to read and write, my husband must needs teach them. The school meets—met—close to the homes where the freedmen and their families live, some fifteen miles distant, and M. Grellier deemed it kindest to our horse not to drive him back and forth in this dreadful heat each day but to bunk with one of the freedmen.

On the morning of 21 August, the children and I slept badly on account of the heat. All the windows, covered by mosquito netting, stood open, as I prayed for some stirring in the wet heavy air. Around four in the morning, the clopping of many horses on the main road, which is a scant half mile south of our homestead, roused me. I stole out of the house and saw, against the predawn sky, the silhouette of many men on horseback. I feared at once that it was the demon Quantrill, who had vowed to raze the town of Lawrence, out of his hatred toward us for making Kansas a free state.

Scarce knowing what I did, I flung on a few garments. Helen and Nathaniel I dragged wailing to the cellar and told they must make no sound, that they must answer to no voice but Mother's. Tucking Baby under my arm, I raced on foot to rouse our neighbors, first the Schapens, then the Fremantles. Mr. Schapen rode to the town as fast as he could to sound an alarm, but, alas, he arrived too late. They had already begun their rapine—burning, slaughtering—oh, the murder of Judge Carpenter while his wife lay covering his wounded body with her own! They lifted her arms and shot him in the head. God, have you no mercy? And yet she had this mercy, that she was with her husband as his soul left this world.

All day Friday, the children and I huddled in our cellar. As the rebels returned drunk on that which makes men madder than all the rum in the Indies—drunk on the blood of their fellow men—we heard them yelling and carousing. They came into our yard—even now I can hardly write for the shaking that fills my entire body! I lay across Baby to smother her cries, nigh suffocating her, while Helen and Nathaniel shivered under my shawl, frozen so by fear that the thermometer might stand at 120 degrees and not warm them. The Ruffians, laughing the whole time, set fire to our house, my little house that took five years' hard work to build.

When we finally rose from our hiding place, our house lay in cinders around us. We had naught but the few things I had brought to the cellar in my old tin trunk. Our only blessing was that Blossom and her calf had escaped notice, for the corn where I hid them is now eight feet high. The smoke and turmoil distressed her sadly, and she gives little milk, but enough that my babes have something for their evening meal.

By and by, Mr. Schapen and his mother came to see how we fared. The reports were of the gravest, he said, many slaughtered, many Negroes murdered. Did I have the strength to go with him? When Mrs. Schapen offered to take the little ones home with her—their homestead had escaped the rebels' attentions—I said I must see for myself.

We arrived at my husband's school in a few hours' time, hours in which we passed through such scenes of destruction, fires still smoldering, bodies lying in ditches! I pray your eyes never look on such terrible sights. And there, just outside the shanty walls, lay my husband's body, among those of the men whose children he had gone to teach. Their wives and babes stood round, as desolate as I—more, for they must needs witness these cold-blooded murders. We fell into one another's arms, sobbing and praying. One woman begged for my pardon for bringing my husband into harm's way, and those were the only words that could possibly have brought me strength.

“It is what we came into Kansas to do,” replied I. Not to be murdered, to be sure, but we were called by God to take up His yoke, the yoke that our countrymen had laid on the bondsman, and we were to count no cost. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” The heroes of Shiloh and of Gettysburg played their noble roles in the conflict that consumes our nation, but my children's father was a greater hero still, for he laid down his life for his friends.

I can write no more, dearest Mother. Don't fear for our safety, for our good neighbors watch over us.

Ever your loving daughter,
Abigail Comfort Grellier