The Year We Were Famous (11 page)

Just before sealing the story into an envelope addressed to Mr. Doré, I decided the story wasn't good enough and wrote a new letter with just our schedule. The next day I decided that if I couldn't get my story published where I knew someone, I'd never get it published anywhere, so I revised, re-revised, and re-re-revised. After two more days, erasing and changing until I wore holes in the paper and my
Deseret Evening News
pencil was worn down to the eraser, I finally sealed the story into an envelope and mailed it to Mr. Doré. I kept a near-final draft for myself, and copied a slightly shorter version of it in my letter to Arthur, Johnny, and William.

Three months ago, who could have imagined me—boring Clara—camping out with Indians in Utah! Even if I spent the rest of my life back in Mica Creek, I'd have memories like that night to remind me of the world outside a patch of wheat. Besides saving the farm, was that what Ma was looking for on this trip, too? For both of us?

I
WAS
lonesome for company besides Ma, so I trod the miles imagining soulful conversations with Mr. Doré. He would ask me what prompted me to strike out on this adventure and I would quote Walt Whitman's lines from "Song of the Open Road": "Afoot and light-hearted, I take to the open road, / Healthy, free, the world before me..." He would say, "Why, Whitman is my favorite poet!" and ask me if I knew that Whitman was a newsman, too.

Next, he would say I reminded him of Nellie Bly, girl reporter for the
New York World.
I would blush becomingly at the comparison. He would say, "We are truly kindred spirits," and I would agree that indeed we were.

More lonesome walking through miles of flat scrub. Counted three dead porcupines on the tracks. When I left the trail to see what ravens were squabbling about in the brush I discovered a hoofed leg protruding from a pile of dirt, loose fur, and twigs. As I turned back to rejoin Ma, I almost stepped in a pile of fly-crusted, coiled innards, then lost my breakfast.
Ish da.

"Are you all right, Clara?" Ma asked as she walked toward me.

"Just ravens cleaning up after a cougar, Ma." I took a sip of water from my canteen, swished, and spit to wash away the sour taste in my mouth. Cougars didn't like the intestines, so as soon as they bit off the belly fur and ripped open the undersides of their prey, they dragged out the intestines and piled them up out of the way so they could get at the liver. I thought about a cougar piling up my intestines for the ravens, and wondered if human liver tasted as good to them as a deer's.

We had already been carrying sticks to clear our path of snakes, but we had another reason to feel safer with stout sticks now. Between looking up at every ledge and overhanging tree limb for cougars and down around every rock for rattlers, it was a wonder I ever kept track of my feet.

We didn't pass any homesteads this whole day, so we had to sleep outside. A spindly tree didn't offer real protection against cougars, snakes, or rain, but I still preferred to sleep cozied under a pine rather than in the open scrub. We spread our ponchos over mounded brush and stretched out, alert to the sounds of the night. Every mouse scurry became a rattlesnake; every lonesome coyote howl became the vanguard of a hungry wolf pack. I finally slept—backside up, to protect my innards.

Nothing to report this week except that, in spite of having to stop for Ma to rest more often, we kept to our goal of twenty-five miles a day. I entertained myself by watching dust devils and the shifting shadows on the ground cast from clouds above, and by convincing myself that over the next rise I would discover something wondrous. It was always more miles of scrub.

Other than the occasional passing train, it was like Ma and I were the last people left on the planet.

Ma was even quieter today, smaller and wilted. I tried to perk her up with some "do you remembers," but she said she was too thirsty to talk. I couldn't let her slip into a down spell so far from home. Would new people to talk to put her starch back? I was as ruthless as Simon Legree in
Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Pushing her to walk an extra fifteen miles today—forty total—we reached Rawlins, the first place bigger than a whistle stop in one hundred and twenty miles. We checked in at the
Carbon County Journal
office and gave our story. The publisher, Mr. Friend, said he knew someone who would likely take us in tonight.

We walked out West Cedar Street to a boxy two-story house with flowered curtains in the window and knocked. The woman who opened the door was not much taller than my sister Ida, and dressed as elegantly as Ida did in her dreams. "I'm Dr. Holmes," she said with a smile, and invited us in.

I was relieved to see Ma brighten at a new face. She started talking almost faster than a body's ears could listen. Mercifully, I did not have to listen to her "why women should have the right to vote" talk again, since women had voted in Wyoming since just after the Civil War. Dr. Holmes was a champion listener.

By ten o'clock I was yawning, but Ma was still wearing a path in the rug describing—with exuberant hand gestures as well as words—Henry's death, her bout with consumption, her previous plans to save the farm, and how she was sure this walk across the country was the best idea she'd ever had. "I had to do something. I couldn't stay put and let the farm go to the sheriff's sale." Ma looked at me.

"You're right, Ma," I said. "We had to do something." At the thought of another four months to go, however, I wondered if this walk had been the right something.

Without saying another word, Ma got out her journal and began to write, as if she were alone in the room.

Dr. Holmes smiled toward me. "Want to find a breeze on the porch?"

I followed her outside and sat on the edge of the porch, leaning against one of the pillars. Dr. Holmes and I looked at the stars in friendly silence for several minutes. Then she spoke. "Your mother must have an iron constitution if she can have consumption one month and start to walk across the country the next. I never had a patient who could do that."

"You never know about Ma," I said. "For months she'll hardly sleep and wear everyone out with her projects and then she'll need to sleep a lot. After Henry died, she did have a cough, and although she said it was consumption, I thought she was just being melodramatic, or using consumption as an excuse to work through her dismals in bed. When she got up, she was in another of her whirlwind moods. She had more endurance than I did when we left Mica Creek. But she's slowing down now. I hope she can make it to New York City."

"I think you may be right—that your mother was just sad, not sick. It sounds like she just needed an excuse to stay in bed until she was ready to face the world. This walk across the country gave her a reason to get up. You say your mother has taken to bed before?" Dr. Holmes asked.

"Three times that I remember. The longest time—nearly two years—was when she fell on sidewalk the city had broken up, getting ready for repairs. She fractured her pelvis and couldn't walk again until she got the city to pay for an operation. I took over for her all of seventh and eighth grades."

Dr. Holmes shifted to lean against the other pillar. "How did you manage?"

"I stayed home from school so I could take care of Ma and the younger ones, but my school-age brothers and sisters brought my assignments home so I could study after dinner. I not only graduated from eighth grade with my class, but with first-place marks. Ma was so proud of me, she talked Pa into letting me hire out to one of her suffrage society friends in Spokane so I'd have a place to live while I went to high school in town. I was a servant, but at least I got to go on to school."

Other than the sounds of someone pumping water into a tin pail nearby, crickets, and two dogs having a conversation, the night was quiet.

"It sounds like you've been so busy taking care of everybody else that you haven't had time to think about what you want to do for yourself." Dr. Holmes patted my shoulder. "Your ma is lucky to have you, but don't let her ups and downs keep you from living your own life forever. While you're on this sabbatical, think about what you want to do next."

"I know what I want to do—write. But I also like to eat." I turned to face Dr. Holmes. "More than the farm is at stake in this walk. If we win the money, I can go to college and study writing. If we lose, I stay in Mica Creek and marry the boy next door." I slumped back against the pillar.

When she put a hand on my shoulder I straightened up again with a start.

"How can a smart young woman like you leave one of the most important decisions you'll ever make up to fate? Don't you know your own mind? You don't strike me as a young woman who would be content with Mica Creek and the world she can see from her front porch. Your ma isn't, and you must take after her."

I shook my shoulder free from her hand. "You're the first person besides Ma who ever said I was a bit like her. Most people say I'm more like my Pa." I fingered Pa's owl in my pocket. "I wish I knew for sure I could make it as a writer. Then I could stop dithering about my future and write."

Dr. Holmes leaned forward and took both my hands. "Sometimes you just have to try something and see if it works. I taught school for a year or so, and then apprenticed myself to a doctor for another year before I decided to go to medical school. I can give you one inflexible piece of advice." She made sure I was looking at her before she continued. "Don't marry to avoid making up your mind about what else to do. And learn skills to support yourself before you do anything else. One reason young men have more choices in their lives is that..."

"They don't have babies," I finished.

"Yes, that too," she said. "But what I meant to say is that men make better wages than women, so it's easier for them to save money for college. Domestic work, teaching, nursing—none of the traditional women's work pays a hill of beans. Learn to do something men get paid well for."

I withdrew my hands and held up one arm to test my muscle. "Do you know a blacksmith who needs an apprentice?"

Dr. Holmes laughed. "I was thinking of something that favored brain over brawn, but with such formidable biceps, blacksmithing might be a possibility."

Ma was asleep in the guest room when Dr. Holmes and I went back into the house. In five minutes I was beside Ma in bed, but thinking through Dr. Holmes's advice kept me awake. Ma had said I might be more like her than I thought. Now Dr. Holmes thought I favored Ma, too! What similarity between Ma and me did she see that I couldn't? We didn't have anything but our front teeth in common. She could out-talk the hawker of magic elixir, and I ran out of things to say once I stammered hello. Ma thrived on attention, being different, marching with the suffragists, tromping clear across the country, and getting her picture in the
New York World.
I would do anything to avoid attention. Her notions had her blooming fiery orange like her Austrian Copper rose, then going dormant as a stick. I was more like a pine tree, never blooming—just a steady, predictable green.

I did agree with Dr. Holmes on one thing, though. I wasn't going to let the outcome of this walk decide whether or not I would marry Erick. If I didn't want to marry Erick I wouldn't. I just had to sit down and write a letter to tell him so.

To: Miss A. J. Waterson, 95 William Street, New York City, New York

From: Helga Estby

Monthly report # 3: Fort Fred Steele, Wyoming

Miles covered, July 4—August 4: 424

Notes: Peaceful encounter with Ute Indians. Let us know as soon as possible if our previous request for extension of time due to heat stroke in the lava fields is granted.

WE were climbing into the Medicine Bow Mountains at the pace of slugs. We should have been on the far side of Nebraska by now. If Ma hadn't had to wait for the governor's signature in Boise, if she hadn't insisted on that shortcut across the lava fields, she hadn't felt the weight of the entire suffrage movement on her shoulders and wasted a day in Ogden marching with her sign ... if, if, if.

Every time I thought of how far behind we were getting I wanted to howl.

Ma would never have made it this far without me, yet it hadn't occurred to her to put my name on her
cartes de visite.
I was just "and daughter" like something else she had packed in her satchel and brought out in emergencies. Need someone shot? Need someone to drag you through the lava fields? Whip out your trusty Clara; she'll take care of it.

By the point where the tracks entered a narrow gorge, I waited for Ma to catch up. I sighed impatiently when she stopped again, smiling at the wildflowers and taking in the mountains, a backdrop for some nameless lake.

"No lollygagging!" I called out.

"Of course you're spry; you didn't have consumption all winter." Her chest rose and fell with the effort of walking uphill; maybe she wasn't lollygagging but had to rest.

"I always said you didn't have consumption, and Dr. Holmes agreed with me," I called out.

"How would she know? She wasn't in Mica Creek when I was sick."

"Humph. She said you were sad, not sick," I said.

When Ma caught up with me, she put down her satchel so she could gesture freely—one hand on her hip, one finger pointing to the middle button on my sweat-stained shirtwaist. "You don't understand what real sadness is like. After Henry died, you bustled on through your chores every single day like nothing happened. I feel things more strongly than you do."

"I feel things every bit as strongly as you do. I just don't wallow in those feelings. You have to steel yourself to do what needs doing."