The Year We Were Famous (2 page)

"Do you think anyone would pay to hear us sing? They wouldn't even let us in the choir." Mica Creek Lutheran had put out a call for new members after their first soprano, Maija Bagnold, died, but they hadn't been desperate enough to take us. My voice wasn't any better than Ma's, but at least my ear was keen enough to know we were always at least a quarter tone off true.

Ma started scrubbing at a stubborn sooty spot above the stove. She looked down as she wrung out her rag again. "How about shooting, like Annie Oakley in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show? I could make the costumes and you could do the shooting." I looked up from mopping the drips on the floor in time to catch Ma's grin. This time she flicked a few drops of water down at me on purpose.

I wiped my face with one sleeve. "I'm sure your costumes would be spectacular, but you know I can't hit the broad side of a hay wagon at five paces. Be serious—we have to come up with something."

"We have months to think of something. It'll come to us. How about writing? It can't be that hard to write a book. Whenever you can't think of the right word you can look in
Roget's Thesaurus,
and you have an editor to correct your commas and spelling."

Just one book like
Little Women
or
Black Beauty
would pay our bills, but writing was just as ridiculous a suggestion as finding gold in Colorado or learning to shoot as well as Annie Oakley. I still winced to remember what my freshman English teacher had written across the top of my first story: "Good spelling. Lacks poetic imagination." When the books I wrote someday sold thousands of copies, I'd prove that teacher wrong, but I couldn't learn enough about writing in time to do any good.

Ma filled the silence with more singing as she scrubbed. Periodically, Lilly would come into the kitchen to check on us, and I'd find something else to amuse her, like Ma's button jar or the box of alphabet blocks Pa had made that had passed to each child in turn.

We took a break at noon when Pa came in with Billy, but the two of them went back out to the barn as soon as they had eaten. If he kept on polishing the tines on the cultivator they'd be worn down to stubs before spring. After Ma put Lilly down for a nap on the big bed in her room, we were ready to scrub again.

When she had finished the ceiling, she pulled every pot, pan, and bowl out of the Hoosier cabinet and stacked them on the table so she could empty the flour and sugar bins into them. In the process, fine flour dust settled onto the damp floor, turning to paste. I continued following along behind her, sweeping and wiping down. We sometimes called these Ma's whirlwind moods, and for good reason.

When the kitchen door opened again, I didn't look up until I heard Erick's voice. "
Hei,
Mrs. Estby ... Clara," he said.

I bolted up from my hands and knees where I'd been scrubbing soot and floury goo from around the legs of the wood stove. "
Hei,
Erick." I flushed—from embarrassment as well as exertion. My apron was damp and smudged in a band at knee-level from kneeling on a wet floor, the cuffs of my chore dress were sopping with scrub water, and the constant steam from the copper kettle had put a sheen of perspiration on my face and plastered loose strands of hair to my forehead and cheeks. Even my best was not very good, and I was not at my best.

Erick swiped off his cap. "I did knock," he said.

Ma wiped her hands on her apron. "I guess we were making too much racket with our pots and pails to hear it. Come on in."

Erick closed the door behind him. "I came over to see if I could help with anything and found Mr. Estby in the barn. He said you were up today, Mrs. Estby, and I thought I'd drop in and tell you how happy we all are to hear it. You've all been through some rough times..." Here he paused, fixing me with a lambent gaze.

"Clara, excuse my rudeness," he said, "but did you know your whole face is covered with flour?" He reached one finger toward my cheek, as if to write his name there, and I drew back.

"Sorry," he said as he looked at the flour bins draining by the sink, at the ladder, and back to me. "Well, I can see this isn't the time for a social call." He nodded toward Ma. "I'll be sure to tell my mother that you've got your starch back."

"You tell your mother
hei
for me, and I'll see you all at church," Ma said.

As soon as Erick backed out of the door, Ma returned to scrubbing down the Hoosier cabinet. "That Erick, there's a catch for you," Ma said.

"I wouldn't want a man I had to catch," I said.

"If you were chasing him, I don't think Erick would run very fast," Ma said.

I went to the sink to wash my face and scrub the stains from my cuffs. I had known Erick since I was ten, when we moved from the sod house in Minnesota to the farm next to his family's place. When we met, Erick answered my smile with a grin that showed off those perfect teeth of his. "I think I'll call you Rabbit," he said. Ever since then I had smiled with my mouth shut.

Ma still hummed while she worked, but she was so far off-key that the tune was hard to identify. I finally made a guess—more by rhythm than by the melody. "Is that 'Nelly Bly'?"

Ma acted offended that I had to ask. "Can't you tell?" she said, and started singing the words:

Nelly Bly! Nelly Bly! Bring the broom along.
We'll sweep the kitchen clean, my dear,
And have a little song.

"I wish I could be like the real Nellie Bly," I said. "Imagine the
New York World
paying her to go clear around the world." Nellie Bly had started her trek two weeks before my eleventh birthday in 1889 and finished seventy-two days, six hours, eleven minutes, and fourteen seconds later in January 1890. I'd kept a scrapbook of all the articles she wrote and even cut my bangs—which I still wore—to look more like her.

"Nellie Bly had it easy," Ma said. "She had a special train take her from New Jersey to California, and the newspapers bought her tickets for ships across the Pacific and Atlantic."

She put down her cleaning cloth and stared out the window, as if seeing something besides the orchard and the wheat fields. "What if a woman—without any help—walked on her own two feet clear across the country? Do you suppose the
New York World
would pay me to do that?"

"Anyone can walk," she said. Her face glowed, and not just from the late-afternoon sun streaming through the kitchen window. "But what if I walked farther than any woman has walked alone before? I'm going to write the
New York World
and see if they will pay me to do it, like they did Nellie Bly."

A month ago, Ma could hardly make it from her bed to the outhouse without me wrapping one arm around her waist to support her. How could she hope to walk clear across the country?

She sighed when she saw my dubious expression. "I know, it won't be that simple. But I have to try something, don't I?"

Ma pulled me down to a chair and kneeled before me. "We cannot lose this farm, Clara. With land, you can grow your own food and have your own hens and milk cow. We're poor here, but at least we eat."

"You don't need to tell me that, Ma. I know."

Ma was finally facing facts, but walking across the country wasn't the most sensible way to raise money. The fire in Ma's eyes was so hot, I had to look away for a moment before I spoke. "I suppose you mean for me to stay home another year while you tromp off across the country," I said.

"I'd be walking for you as well as the farm," she said. "If I come back with a satchel full of money, you won't have to work your way through college. You can just sit under the maple trees and discuss Shakespeare and the meaning of life..." Ma's voice trailed off. Her unfocused eyes seemed to be looking back to a past that did not include getting married at fifteen.

"How long do you think you'd be gone?" I said. Even my bones felt limp.

Ma looked at the clean ceiling, her lips moving in silent calculation. "Six or seven months. I'd be home well before Christmas."

"Won't Pa—won't everyone—say your place is here, Ma? With your family? If someone makes the walk, shouldn't it be me?"

Ma ran her hand gently along my arm. "Clara, you're a good daughter, but you're not much of a showman. To generate enough hoopla to make it worth someone's money, I'll have to talk up the trip with every newspaper reporter between Mica Creek and New York City. Maybe meet governors and mayors as I pass through. This enterprise is not a project for a hide-your-light-under-a-bushel person."

Ma was right. Just the thought of talking to all those strangers made me itch. I didn't want to look at Ma. If she really did go on her walk, I would be stuck here in Mica Creek for the best part of another year, taking over for her. Again.

I
WAS
as jumpy as a colt smelling cougar scat. It was clear that walking across the country wasn't just a daydream; Ma was putting her daydream into action. She started by writing letters. Letters to her Spokane suffrage friends, companies in New York, railroads, and governors of every state from Washington to New York. She even wrote to William Jennings Bryan and William McKinley, who were both running for president. She spent all her egg money on stamps and stationery, and Pa was so relieved to have her out of bed that he humored her by taking her letters to the post office, seven miles away in Rockford.

One night after the other children were in bed and I'd just finished cleaning up the kitchen, I overheard Ma and Pa discussing something in their bedroom. I could tell from the inflections that they were arguing—but about what? In the shadow of the wood stove, I held my breath and pricked my ears.

"
Nei,
" Pa said. "
Nei
." Pa was lean, but he was not light on his feet. Even without his boots on, each footstep connected with the floor in a solid thump as he crossed the bedroom.

I crept toward the door.

"
Ja,
" Ma said. "It's the only way to save the farm."

My heart fluttered. Had she found someone to sponsor her walk? She wouldn't go if Pa firmly forbade it, though. Would she? I slid cautiously toward the door.

"If we're meant to have the farm, we'll have it," Pa said. "You shouldn't risk your life tromping clear across the country on this stunt."

"God gave us brains and expects us to use them instead of just wringing our hands and saying if it's meant to be, it will be. Besides, it's not a stunt; it's a mission, Mr. Estby." I could picture Ma crossing her arms in front of her chest and setting her mouth in a determined line.

"How about Lilly," Pa said. "She's still a baby. And William and Johnny and Bertha ... they need their mother even more than they need the farm."

"We can't let the farm go after all the work we've put into it." Now it was Ma's footsteps I heard crisscrossing the room. Her pacing halted and she spoke again. "And this house! You put every nail in it yourself. How could you bear to let anyone else live in it?"

"But you've been in bed with consumption for months," Pa said. "You can't possibly make it across the country. I wouldn't sleep the whole time you were gone for worrying about you." Pa paused. "I'd rather lose the farm than my wife."

"Fresh air and exercise are the best cures for consumption," Ma said. "I can take care of myself."

I doubted it. She was thirty-five years old and had borne ten children, counting the one who died as a baby and Henry. She might have prodigious energy today, but that usually didn't last. She didn't have the stamina to walk day after day clear to New York. If anyone went, it should be me.

I was listening so intently for what Pa said next, and thinking of more reasons I should walk instead of Ma, that I jumped when something touched my leg. It was Marmee, wanting to be let out. I picked her up to keep her from meowing. "Just a minute," I whispered.

"What if you get hurt in the middle of nowhere and there's no one to help?" Pa went on. "You could die in the middle of the plains and I wouldn't even know where to look for your body."

"I'll follow the railroad lines so I'll never be far from help, and I'll leave a clear trail by checking in at every newspaper office I pass. I'll make you a copy of the map I mean to follow."

Pa sighed. "Maybe Olaf could go with you."

"I can't take a man with me. That's the whole point—that a woman can make it clear across the country on her own, without a man's help."

Unfortunately that was the last thing I got to hear. Some of the pesky hairs Marmee had shed on my face found their way into my nose. I snorted gently, then dropped the cat and pinched my nose to muffle the sneeze.
Uff da!

The voices stopped and Ma flung open the bedroom door. "
Fi da,
Clara! Why aren't you in bed by now?"

"Marmee wanted out," I said. It was the truth, at least partly.

Ma glanced around the room, as if looking for Marmee to confirm my excuse. The cat was waiting by the door. "
Ja,
well. Let her out. Then off to bed." She put her hands on her hips to show she meant what she said, and watched to make sure I went all the way up the stairs. I did go to the bedroom, but I didn't sleep. Would Pa talk her out of the trip? If Pa won the argument, it would be a first. After a point he didn't argue, but he still often got his way in the manner a dog herds sheep: by blocking every direction a sheep takes until it has no choice but to go the way the dog wants it to.

As soon as I heard Pa get up the next morning, I slipped to the kitchen barefoot to start the fire and boil Pa's coffee. By the time he was back from the barn, I had a cup waiting for him.

Pa had been nearly twice Ma's age when they married; he looked even older this morning. His thinning hair was all cowlicks, and the creases at the edges of his pale blue eyes had deepened overnight. The thin, straight nose and elegant cheekbones Ida and Bertha had been fortunate enough to inherit now made him look wan and pinched.

Glancing toward the bedroom where Ma was still asleep, I half whispered. "Pa, you aren't going to let Ma go, are you?"