It’s a hard thing for a woman to admit she doesn’t please her man.
That thought slapped me in the face the first time I smelled sweet perfume on William’s shirt. It had to be a mistake, I convinced myself. If I didn’t know better, I’d think this was the smell of a saloon girl, but there were no saloons in Dry Kansas, at least none that were legal. And even if there was a secret saloon, certainly he’d have nothing to do with a saloon girl. Maybe he was playing poker and some girl was hanging around the table and her smell got on him and that was all it was. I remember I washed that shirt as fast as I could. But then there was the second time and the third and a woman can only ignore the truth for so long before she has to admit her husband is two-timing her.
I’ll never forget Sunday morning, April 22, 1883.
I’d decided it was time to put my foot down when he finally rode up on Sterling, leaving him hitched outside. He staggered in, smellin’ of that cheap perfume. I stood up from my rocker and with all my courage, I spit out the speech I’d been practicing for hours.
“William Pickell, that’s enough. I won’t have you coming home drunk and smellin’ of another woman and I want this to stop right now.”
In my mind, I thought he’d hang his head and promise it would never happen again. I saw him ashamed of how he’d done me wrong. Then it would be over and we’d live the happy life I wanted to be ahead of us.
But he didn’t hang his head and he promised nothing. Instead he grabbed his horsewhip and tried to hit me. I don’t know what got into me, but this was one Sunday I wasn’t going to be hit. I pushed him back and wrenched the whip out of his hands. The tussle got him off balance and he fell to the floor.
“You hit me for the last time, William Pickell,” I spat down at him. “I’ve been a good wife to you and it isn’t enough for you. But I’ve had all I can take of you.”
He grabbed up for the whip, but I was faster, being sober and upright. He snickered when he missed it, and I thought it was the ugliest laugh I’d ever heard. “Drop my horsewhip right now, do you hear me, bitch?” he screamed. Pretty haughty words for a man sprawled on my clean kitchen floor. It wasn’t his demand that made me react. It was the use of that awful b-word again. I looked at him a second, thinking how foolish he was if he thought I’d drop the whip so he could pick it up and use it on me.
That’s when I pulled my arm straight back. With all the might I had, I let that whip slap his shoulder. I am ashamed to admit how good it felt.
I don’t remember coiling my arm up again, but I did it almost automatically, and this time the leather strap raised a red mark on his cheek. When he cried out in pain, I thought it was about time he felt the hurt I’d been feeling all this time. And then I snapped the whip one more time as he threw his arms over his head and I said in a strong, clear voice, “That’s for calling me that name.”
I turned and walked out of our cabin, grabbing my shawl, taking the whip with me. I was still clutching it when I rode up on Sterling to my Ma and Pa’s cabin. Ma was just getting her Sunday fire going and she took one look at me and pulled me into her arms. I knew I had to tell her and Pa everything, but the first thing was, “I’m not going back. I know it’s not our way, but I’m divorcing William Pickell.”
Ma closed her eyes as I told the story, as though she could shut out such shocking news. Pa looked at me with a fire that said he wanted to horsewhip William himself. But I also saw the disapproving look they shared when I announced the divorce. This wasn’t a word you heard very often, almost never, actually, because that wasn’t our way. You married carefully because you were married for life, and I had believed that until this morning. But I sure didn’t believe it anymore.
By now, my brothers and sisters had gathered and Pa didn’t even have to turn around to tell his sons, “I want you boys to leave this alone.” I could see John was already whipping up his anger. “I mean it,” Pa added, and made the boys promise they wouldn’t go over and beat the hell out of William Pickell. The girls were all crying, especially little Mary, and Annie had this look like this was the worst news she had ever heard.
Ma insisted I go up to my old bed in the loft, and although I protested that I should help her make breakfast, she wouldn’t hear of it. I was awful glad because I’d been up all night and I was so tired I could hardly see. I slept through that whole day and when I woke up it was laundry day and everyone was busy.
Ma asked if I’d make the soda bread. I took down the green crock she always used and was kneading when she came in and stood next to me. “How bad was it?” she asked, and all I could choke out was that it was real bad.
I stayed at Ma and Pa’s the next year, like I’d never left.
William came by again and again, demanding I come home, but my Pa or one of my brothers always stood in the doorway and sent him away. The boys and Annie went out to our cabin to get my things—William stood there to be sure they took nothing but my clothes and bonnet. I don’t know what ever happened to the quilt I’d started piecing, but it didn’t come back with them and it wasn’t worth a second trip because I can always start a new quilt.
I knew Ma understood why I’d never go back, but I think Pa hoped this would blow over and things would go back to normal.
The day I burned my wedding dress put an end to all the fantasies that I’d go back to William.
I did all the preparations up in the loft at night, so nobody could try to stop me. I cut off the nineteen buttons—buttons are too precious to waste under any circumstance, so I saved them for my sisters. I ripped the dress into pieces. That pretty dress was nothing but a mound of fraying ripped cloth by the time I was done. One Tuesday, a month after I’d come home, I carried the pieces down in my apron and threw them on the burning trash pile. At first Ma didn’t realize what I was burning, and when she saw, she wailed, “Oh Ellen, that’s such a waste!”
I gave her a look. “There is no chance a woman will ever go back to a bad husband after she’s burned her wedding dress.” And I bet that’s exactly what she told Pa, because he never mentioned me going back again.
Most of our neighbors weren’t too happy with me, and I overheard more than one person scolding my Ma.
“She made her bed and she’s got to lie in it.”
“If girls could just leave their husbands because there’s a bad patch, where would we be?”
“It isn’t right for a woman to divorce a man. That doesn’t happen in these parts, you know.”
I was real proud of Ma when she stood up for me: “Ellen is a good girl and she has good reasons.” Ma said those words in a voice that was sharp enough to stop the busybodies in their tracks. But still, when we went to church, I could feel them looking at me and whispering behind my back like I wasn’t a good wife that didn’t honor her vows. I wondered if some of those women weren’t wishing they could escape like I did.
That next New Year’s Eve, Pa gathered us to celebrate Hogmanay, like he always did. This was the one custom he kept from his people—he said his Ma always favored it. She told her boys she hoped they’d sing it in their own homes and to always remember it came from a Scotsman’s poem long ago.
Pa told us that you’d normally celebrate at midnight as the new year came in, but that wasn’t for us. “Farmers are never up at midnight unless a cow’s in trouble with a new calf,” he joked, so we did it after supper. We stood in a circle, holding hands and sang the song from the Old Country that Pa taught us. “Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And never brought to mind? Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And auld lang syne?”
The girls favored the chorus: “For auld lang syne, my dear, For auld lang syne. We’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet, For auld lang syne.
The boys liked the last verse best because it was about friends having a good-will drink together and that sounded manly to them. And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere! And gie’s a hand o’ thine! And we’ll tak a
right guide-willy waught, For auld lang syne.”
Pa always choked up when he got to the verse about being so far away from a friend, and I suspected he sang this one for the family that had turned their backs on him and Ma. “We twa hae paid’d i’ the burn, frae morning sun till dine; But seas between us braid hae roar’d sin auld lang syne.”
***
It was a Thursday in February when John was sent to Red Cloud for supplies and I insisted on going along. I quickly filled Ma’s order from the Mercantile, and while my brother was still at the feed lot, I ran over to the courthouse.
A very sturdy-looking woman was sitting at a desk, her spectacles perched on the top of her head. “I want a divorce,” I told her, and she just looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language. “Is there something I have to fill out?” That brought her back to the moment.
“Yes, there’s a dissolution of marriage form,” she said, “but I’ve never handed one out before. I’m not even sure we have one.” She still sat there, looking at me curiously, and I wasn’t moving and finally, she said, “But I could go look,” and I thanked her and she went into a big cabinet at the back of the room. It took her a couple minutes of digging until she finally announced, “Here it is!” like she’d found a missing treasure. And for me, it was. Here was the first legal paper I’d ever sign on my own and it was a paper most women in the entire country would never consider signing.
I filled it out and the whole time this clerk kept looking at me, but when I met her eyes, I didn’t see a harsh judgment. I saw the kind of woman who’d never allow a man a second hit, and when I smiled at her, she smiled back like a loving sister.
“And I need to see the judge,” I told her after the paper was signed and stamped so it was officially entered. She didn’t even question me, but went to the door and knocked gently. She walked into the judge’s fine-looking office and laid the form on his desk and told him someone wanted to see him. I was lucky he was in and even luckier that he was my Pa’s friend who had married us.
There was a shocked look on his face as he read the form and then looked at me with eyes that said, “Ellen, this just can’t be.”
I ignored the look and went straight to my point: “I have to ask you something special that isn’t on the form. I want my maiden name back. I don’t want to be Ellen Pickell anymore. I want to be Ellen Watson again.”
I could just tell he was primed to give me a lecture against divorce, but my request stopped him in his tracks. “But Ellen, your legal name is Pickell now and even if you divorce him, it’s still Pickell.”
I straightened up my back for courage and told it to him straight: “Judge, he wasn’t a good man. I thought I was marrying a man like my Pa, but he wasn’t. I can’t honor a bad man by carrying his name. I want to honor a good man by carrying his.” By his reaction, I knew it was a powerful argument.
“Did he mistreat you?”
“Yes.”
I knew he wanted more but that was all I cared to share.
“There’s no way you two can fix this?”
“No. No sir.”
He took a minute to consider all this and then added in his own handwriting that upon the dissolution of marriage, I would resume the Watson name.
I walked out of that courthouse a happy woman for the first time in a long time. I pressed my hands against my heart and beamed, like I’d just gotten the best Valentine’s present ever.
It was February 14, 1884.
Chapter Six—My Train to a New Life
I kept looking at the ticket as my brother, John, paced the platform. “Miss E. Watson. One-way. Cheyenne, Wyoming Territory.”
“Don’t lose that,” my brother yelled over, as if I’d be careless with my ticket to a new life.
It was March 17, 1885.
“You know, these tracks aren’t even twenty years old.” He was reading a story about the railroad tacked on the wall. “But they say the cars are borrowed from the East. Bet they’re old.”
Those cars could have come from a Red Cloud shed and been nothing but two boards nailed together and I would have thought them beautiful. As it was, they were real rail cars—not the fancy ones toward the front—but just fine, as far as I was concerned.
John helped me to my seat.
“The floor is dirty and it has cracks so big, you can see the ground underneath,” he complained, but I didn’t care.
“The windows are grimy, you can hardly see out of them.” But I saw that he was wrong. I could see out just fine.
“Do these cars jostle a lot?” he asked the couple in the seats across from mine.
The woman with the big hat said, “Well, let me just say, when we’re underway, if you try to hold a tin cup full of water, it will all slosh out.”
John gave me the I-told-you-so look. “I’m not going to hold a tin cup full of water,” I told him. He had to smile at that.
“There’s not a bit of upholstery on your seat. You’re going to have a rough ride.”
I hadn’t expected a plush couch for my trip. Seat No. 19 was a wooden bench and it was a fine wooden bench.
From the moment we’d arrived at the Union Pacific station in Red Cloud for the 10:12 a.m. train, John had been trying to convince me to turn back. But there was no way. I was moving on. I was on an adventure. I was wearing my Pa’s name and there’d be nobody to know any difference.
My trunk was safely stowed in the freight car and I carried a valise of gray and pink velvet that Ma had traded for making two men’s shirts—perhaps her finest shirts ever. It was the prettiest valise I have ever seen.
It was a fine new thing for my fine new life. And my new name.
“I want to be called Ella from now on,” I announced to my family soon after I came back from the courthouse. Mother understood instantly and agreed Ella was a fitting nickname for her grown daughter, just as Franny had so fit me when I was a child. “I know I’ll sign legal with Ellen, but I like the sound of Ella,” I explained to Pa. And then I told him the judge had agreed I could have my maiden name back. I think that pleased my Pa.
So now I was Ella Watson, except when Ma or Pa had something very important to say and then, as always, they reverted to my Christian name.
“Ellen, you can’t be serious.” That was Pa when I first mentioned my plans to go west.
“Women don’t go west alone, child. If your Ma and I were going, sure you could come along, or if you brothers were moving or…[I could tell he thought better of mentioning the prospect of following a husband]…but you can’t just go yourself. Ellen, that’s no place for a woman on her own.”
My family was unanimous in trying to dissuade me.
“Ella, there’s still savages out there,” Franny cried, as though this were still the 1870s.
“Ella, what about train robbers? You don’t want to be killed by train robbers,” argued Andrew, as though Jesse James were still alive.
“Ella, most of those places aren’t even states,” John scolded, as though Kansas hadn’t once been a territory itself.
“Ellen, it isn’t proper,” Pa kept repeating, as though nothing was proper for a woman but staying home and clinging to a man.
But I held firm. None of them knew this plan had been in the works for months. Ever since Old Man Stone came home from his trip to Denver with that railroad brochure.
Not long after I filed for divorce, I knew it was time to move on. But moving on in Kansas didn’t offer much. I wasn’t from a family that owned a business that would give me a job and I wasn’t educated enough to teach school, which was about the only other work women were allowed. But I did know everything about cooking and cleaning and so when Jacob Stone put out the word he was looking for a housekeeper, I jumped at the opportunity.
It was an easy job, taking care of a three-room house and one old farmer. With no children underfoot, once you clea
ned, it stayed clean. Mr. Stone liked the same meals day in and out—flapjacks and fried ham with buttermilk biscuits for breakfast; beef stew and leftover biscuits for dinner; steak and boiled potatoes for supper. I never needed to slaughter and pluck chickens because, as Mr. Stone told me the first day, “I’m no friend to chicken.”
I broke up the culinary boredom with my wonderful pies and he loved every kind I made. Since the cooking and housework were easy, I joined Mr. Stone in the barn and the fields and he was impressed I already knew so much. He bragged in town that in Ella Watson, he not only got a good housekeeper, but a good handyman, too.
I’d been with him two months when he took the train to Denver to visit his ailing sister, and in the ten days he was gone, I realized something important—I was caring for this house and that barn and those fields all on my own. I had the strength and stamina to do it, since I’ve always been on friendly terms with hard work. I realized there was a joy to this work as though it were your own home and your own land. When my bone-tired body climbed into bed at night, there was a satisfaction to knowing a good day’s work had been done and tomorrow was another day.
Until then, I had never been alone a day in my life. I’d never slept alone in a cabin without my mother or a sister next door. I’d never watered the stock or worked a field without my father or brother nearby. I’d never cooked a meal with no one but myself to eat it. I’d gone from my father’s home to my husband’s home and now to Mr. Stone’s home. Years later, it would strike me that if he hadn’t gone on that trip, I’d never have realized the possibility of a home of my own.
“I brought you this,” Mr. Stone said sheepishly when he returned from his trip with a package wrapped in brown paper and held together, not with plain string, but with ribbons. “My sister said she thought you’d favor this soap—it’s her favorite.” I was moved that he’d think to bring me anything, and I loved the lavender smell of the cake that came in such a pretty package.
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