William

Lawrence, Kansas, November 1854

 

 

 

You are sleeping on a grass-stuffed pallet under a pile of buffalo robes: your mouth slightly open, your head turned to one side, your hair spread out on the pillow like a golden net. I want to walk over to you, bury my face in your hair, smell the sweetness of it, kiss you awake, and plead with you to take better care of yourself, but I can no more control you than I can control the wind that blows across Kansas tonight like the breath of an angry god.

It’s a cold wind that smells of snow. Winter is arriving. I want to keep you warm and safe, but you will have none of it. You’re the same wild girl I knew when I was a boy—just as stubborn, just as unpredictable.

You insisted on working side by side with me as we built our house. You lifted boards out of the wagon and nailed them to the studs, cut grass and tied it into bundles so we could thatch the roof, then climbed up on the roof and helped me with the thatching. When the walls were up, you mixed up a paste from flour and water and papered the inside with old copies of The Herald of Freedom and The Kansas Free State, joking that this abolitionist wallpaper would not only keep out the wind but give us something to read on long winter nights.

Even after we bought a stove, you refused to sit in front of it knitting baby clothes. Instead, you cut up one of your dresses and sewed the curtains that hang at our windows, braided a rag rug for our floor, made a broom out of prairie grass, searched out herbs and traded them for buckets and books and butter molds. One day while I was out tending to a patient, you put up shelves for my medical texts. Then you began to study them.

You have a talent for healing. Already you’ve learned how to set dislocated shoulders, splint broken limbs, and pick buckshot out of human flesh. You are amazing, my love. You never stop working. I admire your energy, yet sometimes I’m afraid it’s fueled by fear. You tell me you will not lose this baby as you lost Willa, that you carry the child high, that you are healthy and in love and that our love will protect you. I wish I believed this, but tonight when I look at you, I feel such a grasping in my throat that I can hardly breathe. I have seen too many women die in childbirth to believe anything short of divine grace can protect them, and I am not sure I believe in divine grace.

Do you? I can’t tell. You go to church every Sunday and sing the hymns as loudly as anyone, but I think that you mostly do it to defy public opinion. You and I are a scandal. Only Mrs. Crane comes to visit you, and even men occasionally cross to the other side of the street when they see us coming.

Dearest Carrie, I’m afraid for you. Lawrence is an abolitionist town surrounded by slavers who would like to see it burned to the ground. Trouble is coming; it’s simply a matter of time. I know that when the raiders attack, you’ll insist on putting yourself at risk. I can’t forbid you to do this. I can’t nail up the windows and doors and imprison you. If I tried, you’d simply escape, and I’d never try.

I’ve known you too long to underestimate you. You’ll always do what you want to do. You always have. But take care of yourself, I beg you. I lost you once. I couldn’t bear to lose you again.