The Year We Were Famous (10 page)

I turned to wave. The sun had caught his hair, turning it to incandescent copper.

We walked up one flight of stairs and toward the south end of the arcade to Miss Lulu Jones's shop. With good reason, she was reluctant to have us try on our new clothes before we had bathed, so she led us to her nearby apartment, where we both bathed and washed our hair. I was mortified at the black ring I left in her tub.

After braiding each other's damp hair, we walked back to the shop, where we changed into the bicycle costumes we would model tomorrow. In the dressing room, I ran my rough fingers over the Pluette storm serge of the midcalf skirt. According to the tag, it was the same smooth, tightly woven wool used in English ladies' riding habits. I took off my battered hat, which I planned to feed to the first goat I saw. In its place, I set a crisp straw boater with a black grosgrain ribbon hatband. Looking in the mirror, I was pleased. No frippery, just well-tailored simplicity. Fine-knit stockings with no holes, new chemise and shorter petticoat, kid boots instead of men's work shoes. It was the very thing Jo March would have chosen to wear if
Little Women
had been set in today's time instead of the Civil War. It was the very thing Nellie Bly would wear to interview the president. It was exactly what I wished I had been wearing when I had met Mr. Doré.

I stepped back from the mirror. If I squinted, the mosquito bites were hardly noticeable. I tried fluttering my eyelashes like my sister Ida, but I just looked like I had a train cinder in my eye.

By noon I was too faint to eat. My serge jacket looked smart, but it was too hot for this weather. I patted the film of moisture from my forehead and wiped my palms on my handkerchief to avoid spoiling my skirt.

I scanned the audience for Mr. Doré's face as I reluctantly mounted the steps to the stage. Miss Jones introduced us as "those valiant women walkers" and Ma explained anew why she felt this was her last chance to save the farm and prove that women were intelligent, resourceful, and deserved the vote in every state, following Utah's good example.

Once her own agenda was satisfied, she launched enthusiastically into her endorsement for clothing developed for the New Woman. She described how much she would have appreciated walking in shorter bicycle skirts that were inches above the mud. She praised the new Ferris Bicycle Corset and Nazareth Waists with elastic strips that allowed a woman to get a full breath. She could have been a revival preacher or Lydia Pinkham's tonic salesman.

My attention was diverted from Ma when Mr. Doré whooshed in from one of the side streets and leaned his bicycle against a building. He raised his notebook in a salute. I watched—trying not to look as if I were watching—as he sidled through the standing listeners to a point directly in front of me.

Mr. Doré wrote down Ma's answers to each question from the audience. Each time he looked expectantly toward me, waiting for me to say something, I had to look away. I had complained about Ma getting all the credit for this walk, but now, with a chance to get some notice, I hoped I could avoid opening my mouth.

Finally, a young woman directed a question my way and I had to speak: "Miss Estby, what did you pack to take with you?"

I inhaled as deeply as my corset would allow and flicked my eyes toward Mr. Doré, who smiled encouragingly and held his notebook and pencil at the ready.

"Well," I said, "I packed emergency things first, like a first-aid kit, canteen, and matches. Pa thought we should take a gun with us, so I packed a pistol and bullets." I swallowed as I remembered the scratch of Pa's mustache on my cheek as he leaned low behind me to show me how to line up the sights and squeeze the trigger.

"Pa taught me how to shoot," I said. "And my brother Arthur helped me practice." Mr. Doré wrote down a word or two on his notepad and looked up to see what I would say next. My mind was an untidy storeroom with facts jumbled together in no logical order. Pa's teaching me to shoot was not even what she asked about. Oh,
ish da, ish da!

Ma apparently couldn't stand my dithering and gave up the struggle to keep silent. "We compared our lists of what each would take and packed very scientifically." She succinctly listed what each of us had packed, making it sound like she was the organized one. I noticed a few gasps from women in the audience when she said we didn't have room in our satchels for a change of clothes.

Finally Ma stopped talking and Miss Jones stood to thank us and to let everyone know that everything we were wearing had come from the shops right there in the Brooks Arcade.

A group of women greeted us at the bottom of the stairs to get Ma's autograph and ask more questions. Ma glowed with all the attention.

I was gratified to have three or four women ask me for my autograph, although one of the women held her autograph book and pen toward me gingerly, as if she wanted my autograph but not the vermin I might be harboring after two months on the road.

After everyone in the audience had drifted away to look at the bicycles on display or investigate the shops, Mr. Doré approached us. "You had quite a turnout," he said.

"After they found out they wouldn't get clean clothes every day, there wasn't a one who would join us, though," I said.

"I'd join you if I could."

Perhaps daydreaming of the open road, he flushed, then sighed and put his notepad and pencil in his jacket pocket. "So," he said, turning to Ma and nodding toward his shiny black bicycle, "would you like to try out your bicycle skirt on my new Columbia?" He asked Ma, but his smile strayed back to my face as he spoke.

Ma tucked another handful of change she'd raised by selling
cartes de visite
with our pictures on them into her satchel before she spoke. "I'm too old to make a fool of myself in front of all these people," she said. (If he believed that, he was not as smart as he looked.) "Let Clara try." She put one hand on her hip and shook her head as I followed Mr. Doré toward his bicycle.

I had observed other people riding bicycles and feigned confidence as I lifted my skirts to swing my right leg over the bar, perch on the seat, and position my feet on the pedals.

"It's easier if you start with the right pedal up," Mr. Doré said, and supported the bicycle with one hand over mine on the handlebars and the other, alarmingly, on the back of the very bicycle seat I occupied. He pushed gently until the right pedal rotated to the top. "Pump! Right foot down."

I pushed down, and the bicycle wobbled forward.

"It's like jumping off the shed roof," he said. "You can't do it slowly. Build up speed and you won't wobble."

I was terrified, but willing to jump off the top of the highest barn roof into a burning haystack if it would improve Mr. Doré's opinion of me. I pumped furiously, and by some magic I did not fall. I could hear his breathing as he ran along beside me, ready to save his bicycle if I faltered.

As we approached a four-story brick building that blocked the end of the street, he said with surprising calm, "Turn the handlebars now, and slow down."

"Which way?" I said. My voice was not calm.

"Either, just do it!"

I jerked the handlebars first one way, then the other in indecision and stopped pedaling in a panic. Only Mr. Doré's good reflexes prevented my momentum from crashing my face into the brick wall and getting more than the tiniest nick on the front fender of Mr. Doré's new Columbia bicycle. As his hands darted out to catch the bicycle, our heads bumped and I felt his cheek brush mine. I swung off the seat, not taking time to think that by swinging off on the left I would be very nearly occupying the same space as Mr. Doré. For an instant, we stood barely an inch apart before I stepped awkwardly backward.

Mr. Doré grinned, and I noticed for the first time that his incisors were slightly slanted into a space too small for them. "How was your ride, Miss Estby?" he said.

I looked straight into his gold-flecked eyes and matched my grin to his. "Brilliant," I said.

A
S WE
backtracked to Ogden to where the Union Pacific track headed east through the Wasatch Range, I imagined what it would be like to ride a bicycle instead of walking across the plains ahead. I would pedal so fast, I'd create my own wind. I'd suck in air in hungry gusts as my hair streamed out behind. The miles would fall behind me as in a dream.

As long as I was imagining, I wondered what it would be like to have Mr. Doré on a bicycle beside me. Would we laugh together as a hare darted back and forth across our trail, then pretended to hide behind a bush before darting out to race us again? Would we be content to watch the rising sun in silence as we pedaled eastward, or would he need to offer a steady commentary on it, like Ma?

I tried to remember and decode his every word and gesture. Had he let me ride his bicycle because he thought I was a child to be amused? Or had he used his bicycle as an excuse to be near me? Had his cheek brushed mine by accident? Or on purpose?

At least once an hour I twirled, admiring the graceful swirl of my shorter gored skirt. Was the lightness I felt from less fabric around the ankles, or my skin's memory of his touch?

I tried to remember Erick Iverson's face. Although I had known him since I was ten years old, all I could bring to mind was a bland oval face with thinning fair hair, bowl cut by his sister Alma. He was just one of the Iverson brothers: too loud, all elbows and big feet; a good farmer with curiosity limited to soil, grain types, insects that damaged grains, farm equipment, and weather. The thought of him did not make my chest swell like a bellows. The thought of him did not put a Mona Lisa smile on my face. Not like Charles.

Silently I said his Christian name the French way, as he did.
Shahrl.
My mouth puckered halfway to a kiss to pronounce the soft
Ch.
In the imaginings that made the time flow faster than a river after rain, he was always Charles, and I was his Clara.

Dear Mr. Doré,

My mother and I neglected to tell you the particulars of our schedule for the remainder of our journey. Should you need to contact us for details of subsequent portions of our travels, please send a letter care of general delivery in the following cities where we will check for mail on approximately these dates:

Denver—September 1

Omaha—October 1

Chicago—October 25

Pittsburgh—November 9

New York—November 30 (We may have a five-day extension to December 5.)

To prove that I have been following your advice to write, not just talk about writing, I have also enclosed an account of our encounter with the Ute Indians, which may be of interest to your readers. If your paper publishes my account, would you send me a copy?

Sincerely,
Miss Clara Estby

P.S. I hope you were able to repair the scratch I put on your bicycle fender when I wobbled into the bricks on the wall of the arcade.

P.P.S. Ma had a chance to trade me to a Ute brave for three horses, but she decided to keep me.

P.P.P.S. I wrote the story with the
Deseret Evening News
pencil you gave me.

Women Walkers among the Indians
Being a first-person account of a
peaceful encounter with the Indians of Utah
Submitted by Clara Estby, transcontinental pedestrian

By the time we reached Utah, Ma and I had been walking over two months and covered nine hundred and eleven miles. I had already worn out four pairs of shoes. Unfortunately, I had only one pair of feet, and they had to last me until New York City.

One day in mid-July, midway between Ogden and the border to Wyoming, I had the feeling Ma and I were not alone. As I slowly scanned the horizon for anything alive in all those lonesome miles of stone and sagebrush, my eye caught movement to the left. Three long-haired men on horseback galloped from behind a tall red butte a dozen yards out and reined to a stop so close to us that we could count the whiskers on each horse's muzzle.

I was no stranger to Indians. My mother and I had crossed the entire Umatilla Reservation on foot. But on the reservation we were never far from help. Here we had passed no settlement, white or Indian, for miles, and who knew what these braves intended? One Indian said something in his ancient language and rode away to the southeast. When the other two slid from their horses and grabbed my mother and me by our hands, my throat hurt from holding back a scream.

What were they trying to tell us? They gestured repeatedly in the direction their leader had ridden, then
remounted and gestured again, urging us to follow them. f they had meant us harm, they would have tied us up and thrown us over their saddles; since they had left us free to walk on our own, dared we to think their motives were good?

"
What do you think, Clara?" Ma asked.

"
I don't think we have much choice," I said. "We can't outrun their horses. Let's hope your guardian angel is looking out for us today
"

Like addle-headed, reluctant sheep, we let ourselves be herded, with great trepidation. After less than an hour, we reached their camp of seven huts made of brush over sapling frames. The two Indians slid off their horses and nudged us toward a cluster of women and children. As I inhaled the aroma of roasting meat, I was reminded that Ma and I hadn't eaten since breakfast, at least twenty-five miles of walking ago. I hoped they'd share.

One small girl summoned the courage to leave her mother's side and approach me. At first she just stared, one finger in her mouth, glints of firelight in her dark eyes. Such a little Indian, not much older than my little sister Lillian at home, was not frightening. I started breathing normally again as I kneeled beside her. "Hello,"I whispered. "My name is Clara
"

After looking toward her mother for reassurance, the girl touched my bangs, which I'd turned in tight corkscrews that morning with my mother's curling iron. My stomach rumbled. Would a demonstration of the iron be sufficient trade for dinner?

Ma stood over us, smiling down at the child's curiosity. I looked up. "Ma, do you think they'd like to see your curling iron?
"

She opened her bag to find her iron, and handed it to the woman who appeared to be the mother of the little girl. At the sight of the iron, several men drifted closer to take a look. Soon Ma's curling iron was making a circuit around the campfire. As it was passed from hand to hand for inspection, one boy used it as a toy gun. An older man put his finger in the space meant for a lock of hair and closed the clamp. He opened and shut the clamp again, trying to fathom its use. Then he passed it on.

When the iron reached my mother, she caught a loose strand of her hair and wound it until it was close to the scalp. When she released the strand, the hair fell straight. The Indians were not impressed. For a real demonstration the iron would have to be hot.

She ceremoniously approached the fire, holding the curling iron in front of her in outstretched hands like a consecrated offering. She kneeled to place the rod near the edge of the fire and stood as she waited for the iron to heat. When she leaned over the fire and spit lightly on the curling iron, the bead of water sizzled and evaporated immediately; the iron was ready. She picked up the curling iron by the wood handle and drew it slowly back and forth in front of her, as if to bless—or cast a spell on—the crowd of Indians watching her. She summoned me to her.

A laugh bubbled in my chest, but I didn't want to spoil her solemn ritual, so I fought off my smile as
she selected a strand of hair from the side of my face. She placed her left hand between the rod and my face as she rolled my hair, like she had when I was a child, making sure that if I fidgeted, the hot iron would burn her fingers and not my cheek. Looking sideways, I saw her hands just an inch away. At home she had pushed back her cuticles and rubbed in lotion every night. Now her nails were ragged, and windblown grit had tattooed fine lines in the folds across each knuckle.

She eased the rod from the coil of my hair and stood back so everyone could see the straw-colored corkscrew dangling along my cheek. While the iron was still hot, she made a matching ringlet on the other side of my face. I held my arms slightly away from my body and turned slowly in the firelight, like a mannequin, so everyone could see. I closed my eyes, feeling the heat of the fire first on one side, then the other.

My mother was in great demand as a hairstylist for the rest of the evening, as women, children, and even a man or two lined up for curls in her fireside salon. The Indians I had been so afraid of two hours ago shared their food and fire with us. I wondered how long those three men had followed us earlier in the day before deciding we might appreciate their help.