The Year We Were Famous (20 page)

"Do you have any idea what Ma and I went through to get here, day after day?" I stared at Miss Waterson with the intensity of a Colorado rattler.

I plopped on the floor and hoisted my right foot over my left knee. "
Ish da, ish da,
" I muttered as my hands, shaking with cold and rage, fumbled with my bootlaces.

"Clara..." For the first time on this trip, it was Ma who looked embarrassed by something I was doing.

I ignored her as I jerked loose sections of my worn laces from the eyelets and flung each shredded remnant toward Miss Waterson's desk. I yanked down the tongue of my boot and winced as I eased the boot past my swollen ankle. I peeled off two layers of socks, leaned back on my hands, and held up my battered foot.

"Look at this foot. How many miles a day do you walk? Two miles, three? When we weren't working for the next pair of boots, we walked twenty-five, thirty, fifty miles a day, sometimes with no food, day after day, for two hundred and thirty-two days." I jabbed my foot toward Miss Waterson, daring her to ignore the missing toenails, purple-splotched ankle, and horse-hoof calluses.

I pointed back at Ma, still slumped in the chair. "Ma left seven children at home for nearly eight months to earn that ten thousand dollars. We were counting on that money to save the farm! She has ruined her health, and baby Lillian and little William may not even remember their Ma by the time we get home."

Miss Waterson glanced at my mangled foot. "Don't blame all your troubles on me," she said. "I didn't make your mother set up this wager. I just agreed to it and made sure she kept to the stipulations she established herself." She looked anywhere but my eyes.

I scooped up the ten dollars from her desk, slipped my laceless boot back on, hobbled over to Ma, and half carried her down the stairs, muttering every epithet I could think of. "Execrable scoundrel. Boil-covered blackguard. Fork-tongued fiend."

W
E PASSED
the post office on the way back toward the World Building. Ma's satchel was stolen; we were denied the money we'd earned—yes, earned—by walking nearly four thousand miles, I felt like screaming, but the post office was no place for a tantrum. During the hour I had to wait in line for our mail, I couldn't help muttering angrily to myself. Other customers kept their distance. Ma did, too. She leaned against the wall near the door, well out of my range.

I put the letters in the pocket inside my coat, and as we left the post office I switched my satchel to the hand closest to Ma. "Keep your hand on it, too, Ma."

She didn't speak, but I felt her hand snug up against mine on the handle. No thief would get our remaining worldly goods.

We continued on up Fulton to Broadway, where it joined Park Row. There in an imperial line were the buildings that housed offices for the
New York Times, Tribune, Herald, Sun,
and the
New York World.
Millions of words, every day, originated in those very buildings and were shipped all over the world. Nellie Bly, girl reporter, might have walked this very sidewalk on the way to work. Ma's footsteps continued to slow. I pulled on the satchel to keep her moving. At least it would be warm inside.

I expected to see a bustling newsroom when we opened the door to the New York World building, but the main floor was just a lobby, surrounded by business offices. We stood for a moment, irresolute. With more confidence than I felt, I pointed toward six uniformed men standing at attention in front of a row of elevators and said, "Come on, Ma. One of those men will know where to go."

An operator ushered us into a paneled elevator and shut the doors. I could hardly breathe as I watched the floor indicator edge toward twelve. We lurched as the elevator halted, then jerked as he pulsed the lever through the last five inches to line up with the floor. Then he opened the grill and outer doors and offered a white-gloved hand to escort Ma across the threshold.

The men in the newsroom seemed more interested in swapping jokes, spitting tobacco, and imbibing who knew what from various bottles littering the desks than finding out who had just walked through their doors, but I was still riled up about how Miss Waterson had treated us and wanted someone to listen. I pried the satchel out of Ma's hands and let it drop with a
thunk
on the nearest desk. No one paid any attention. I clapped my hands like a schoolmistress calling a rowdy class to order. "Who wants a good story?" I called.

One reporter broke away from his cronies and strolled toward us. "What's the scoop?"

"My mother and I have just walked from Spokane, Washington, to New York City, and as soon as we got here we were robbed, and then the woman who promised us ten thousand dollars if we made it here refused us the money with the excuse that we were thirteen hours late!"

"So you're those women walkers," he said. "Didn't we run your picture when you just started out?" He ushered us into a glass-walled office out of the fray. "Nobody here thought you'd make it."

A year ago I wouldn't have believed we could do it, either.

He leaned out of the office. "Hey, somebody get Fineman!" he called.

"I'm Bill Lankowski," he said, turning back to us as we collapsed into chairs. He borrowed a notebook from the desk he had appropriated, propped himself against a wall, and scribbled frantically as I started to tell him everything that had happened in the last eight months since the
World
printed the first article about us.

I'd half dragged Ma from Miss Waterson's office to the newsroom, but Mr. Lankowski's attention began to infuse her with her old energy. She broke in to explain how she hoped our feat would demonstrate the resourcefulness and strength of women, and how passionately she supported women's suffrage.

He was more interested in the sixteen pairs of boots we'd each worn out, and whether I'd ever had to use my gun. Seeing that he wanted adventure and not politics, we recounted the time we had escaped jail in La Grande; how a penknife and scrap of rope had saved Ma's life in a flash flood; how we'd survived a blizzard in the Blues and the lava fields in Idaho; and how we'd camped with Indians and sipped tea with President-Elect McKinley and his wife.

We had done the walking, all eight million steps. But we hadn't done it unaided. I couldn't even remember the faces of everyone who had taken us in for a night, fed us, let us wash, left water by the tracks for us.

Ma was just relating how Miss Waterson had refused to pay us the ten thousand dollars, and how a ruffian had stolen her satchel when her voice faltered. Then, as if someone wound her spring again, she regained momentum. "Mr. Lankowski, my daughter and I haven't eaten in days and we walked fifty miles in a blizzard after being given bad directions. If we don't get something to eat and a place to stay tonight, we're going to expire right here." She slumped in her chair and sighed. How many times had I cringed as Ma shamelessly finagled our next bed or meal? This time I was grateful. Mr. Lankowski fetched two cups of water and gathered morsels from the plates and bowls of snacks scattered around the outer workroom.

Popcorn, pretzels, pickles, and peanuts were a bad combination. After a few bites I pushed my plate away and watched the sketch artist, Mr. Fineman, arrange his sketchpad, ink, and pens on the desk. After conferring with Mr. Lankowski, he asked us to stand and look in the same direction while I held out my gun.

"I don't want millions of people to see me as a desperado," I said.

"How about extending one arm, then, as if pointing something out to your mother?" he said.

A few minutes later, Mr. Fineman put down his pen. "Got it," he said.

I dropped my arm and stepped over to his sketchpad to see if his portrait flattered me. "You can't do that," I sputtered, jabbing a finger at the daggers and pistols he'd put in both Ma's hands and mine.

Before I could complain about how he had turned a penknife into pirate daggers and one small pistol into two six-guns, Mr. Fineman gathered his supplies and scuttled off to have his sketch engraved for tomorrow's paper.

Mr. Lankowski shrugged apologetically. "Guns and daggers sell newspapers," he said. "Here, I'll make it up to you." He beckoned us to follow, selected a key from a hook, and led us down the back stairwell to the eleventh floor. "I'm sure Mr. Pulitzer wouldn't want the subjects of my story to sleep in the snow," he said, looking over his shoulder.

He opened one of the doors in a long hallway and led us into a combination apartment and office. "It's one of the rooms we camp out in when we're working late on assignment, but even Scrooge wouldn't expect us all to work late over Christmas. I'll tell the caretaker you'll be here a couple days."

After demonstrating the lights and gas ring for tea, he gave us leave to use paper and stamps from the desk and eat any food we found in the cupboard. Just as he opened the door to leave, he turned. "Most important," he said, blushing slightly and pointing down the hall. "Convenience and bathing tub on the left. It's the door with no room number." The door almost closed, then popped open again. "And Merry Christmas!"

The door closed with a click and we were alone in New York City.

W
ITHOUT
the distractions of Miss Waterson and the newsroom, I was acutely aware of my throbbing ankle. I could feel every heartbeat in it, and I should have taken a chair and put my feet up, but I was too restless to sit. I limped around the room, poking into every drawer and cupboard like a curious cat. The dresser held a clean set of men's underdrawers, laundered shirt, and fresh collar. The cupboard by the sink had tinned soup, tea, soda crackers, half a loaf of hard bread that had not yet turned green, and a few dishes. A typing machine perched on the desk; the drawer below had paper, envelopes, stamps, a ruler, and paper clips.

Eleven floors above the street and all its sounds, the apartment seemed unnaturally quiet.

Then my anger at Miss Waterson erupted again, and I hurled my hat toward the bed. "I thought Miss Waterson was a friend of one of your suffrage society women! No friend would treat us the way Miss Waterson did."

Ma swallowed and crossed her fists protectively against her chest. "Miss Waterson wasn't—exactly—a friend of one of my Spokane friends. One woman in my group did suggest getting a publisher to sponsor the walk, though. So I wrote with my plan to a few publishers, and Miss Waterson took me up on it."

"A few?"

"A dozen or so. Maybe more." Ma averted her eyes.

I thought of all the stamps and paper Ma had gone through this spring. "How many more?" I raised my eyebrows and waited for the real number.

Ma sighed a put-upon sigh. "All the publishers listed in the New York City telephone directory."

I looked to the ceiling for divinely inspired forbearance. "You risked our lives on a bet with the only person in New York City willing to take you up on it? Miss Waterson had nothing to lose. If we won, she'd just admit she didn't have the money. If we lost—which she was sure we would—she'd still have publicity for the book you two would write and you'd both get rich."

I scooped up Miss Waterson's money from my pocket and flung it on the bed. "There's no helping fools and idiots!" I counted myself among that number. All we had to show for seven months and eighteen days on the road was ten dollars—part of it in nickels and dimes—and my five-dollar check from Street and Smith. In April I had had thirty-seven dollars and forty-eight cents in my college fund. That left us twenty-two dollars and forty-eight cents behind where we started.

While Ma wilted down on the bed, I plopped down on the straight chair by the desk. Easing my boot over my swollen ankle, I set off throbbing I could feel from my toenails to my eyeballs. Still sitting, I struggled out of my overcoat, heavy with melted snow, and draped it behind me, over the back of my chair. I knew Ma sometimes believed in her fancies so hard that they became true—for her. At least until times like now, when her fancies collided with reality. Why hadn't I questioned her more about Miss Waterson and how the bet came about before we left? Maybe I had wanted to believe her fancies, too.

Perhaps there was good news in the mail. I fished our letters out of my inside coat pocket and hobbled over to the bed to place Pa's letter, along with those from my brothers and sisters, on Ma's lap. I poked at the money on the bed. Maybe some other publisher in New York would pay us enough for our story to get us back home and save the farm.

I had letters from Charles Doré and Erick Iverson, but I didn't want to know what either of them had to say. Mr. Doré was just probably writing to tell me when he was going to marry Miss Ernestine. Erick would be writing to say he'd been smitten by sister Ida's cherry pies and decided to marry her if he couldn't have me.
Uff da!
I tossed both letters on the bed. I wasn't going to be like a woman trapped in a Jane Austen novel, preoccupied only with who was going to marry whom.

By now, Ma had crawled under the blankets and propped herself up against the headboard and pillows so she could stare out the window. Blue bruiselike circles had blossomed under her eyes again. I crawled in with her and stretched one arm around her shoulders. As the foot trod we were nearly four thousand miles from home, and Christmas was the day after tomorrow.

As I leaned my head against hers, I was reminded of the night we'd spent on the ledge above the flood, wrapped around each other. We had survived the flood, and we would survive New York City. For a night or two, we had a bed, blankets, and food. Compared to what else we'd been through this year, this room was luxury.

As I squeezed Ma's shoulder, she roused herself. "I'm sorry, Clara." Her voice was as raspy as it had been after three days in the lava fields. "After all this we'll go home empty-handed. We'll still lose the farm ... Were we wrong to go?"

In my usual mugwumping way, I had a thousand reasons to say yes but at least a reason or two to say no. My stomach cramped. I needed food to settle my stomach. "Let's eat. Then we'll talk." I slid out of bed and opened the tin of soup, found a pan, and lit the gas ring. While the soup heated, I limped over to the desk and slid the typewriter over to make room for bowls, spoons, and a plate of crackers. I propped the letters up on the paper carriage on the typewriter. For Ma's sake, I hoped at least some of it was good news.