"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.
CHAPTER 3
MA WRITES LETTERS
March 20, 1896
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?"
Pa put both elbows on the table and cradled his cup in his hands. He bent his head to take a sip. "You don't know your Ma if you think I can talk her out of anything she has her mind set on. She's found someone to take her up on this walking idea, and she's so hepped up on this notion that nothing short of tethering her to the bedpost would keep her home."
"I'm sorry, Pa. This whole thing is partly my fault. We were trying to think of ways to save the farm and I started mooning about wanting to be like Nellie Bly and seeing the world, and that sparked her idea of walking across the country."
"So you'd like to be like Nellie Bly?"
"I'd never be crazy enough to walk clear across the country by myself." I meant what I said when I said it, but just the words triggered daydreams of writing stories as I went from town to town, and of people from coast to coast reading about my adventures.
Pa tilted his head quizzically, and I regained my common sense.
"Of course I wouldn't do it, and Ma shouldn't try it, either," I said. "She could break a leg."
"I know." Pa bent his head for another sip.
"She could have another of her dismal spells, and she'd have no one with her who understood her and her moods."
"I know." Pa sighed.
I wondered if Ma would get to see the site of the Chicago World's Fair, if she'd meet Indians, or see buffalo on the Great Plains. My head was so far away from the kitchen in Mica Creek that I missed what Pa said next. "I'm sorry—what?"
Pa leaned forward, glancing at the bedroom door to make sure Ma wasn't up yet. "I said, since I can't talk Ma out of it, would you be willing to go with her?"
Maybe when I'd said she shouldn't be so far from home without someone to help her he thought I had been hinting that I should go with her. I had fantasized about traveling across the country before, but I had never imagined walking every step of the way with Ma. It was Ma as well as Mica Creek that I wanted to get away from while I figured out my life. And I knew the difference between fantasies and real life. In fantasies, your heart thrilled to feel the ground shake at the thunder of a hundred wild horses. In real life, your heart, lungs, and everything else got mashed as a hundred stampeding horses spooked and trampled you. Walking the twenty-five miles home, as I had on long weekends when I attended high school in Spokane, took nearly all day, but then I could tend my blisters and rest. To get from here to New York, I'd have to get up, blisters or no, and walk twenty-five miles again the next day, and the next day, and the next..."For seven months?"
"I doubt that you'll be gone seven months. You know how she gets with her notions. She will probably burn out before she gets to Walla Walla and you'll both be back before harvest. I just want to have someone with her, to make sure she gets back home."
"Who would take care of Billy and Lilly and all of the others if both of us go?"
"Ida's old enough to look after them."
"She's only fourteen," I said.
"You were only twelve when Ma broke her pelvis and you took over for her."
The blood pounded at my temples. I wasn't a flibbertigibbet who could blithely agree to walk across the whole country like it was just tripping over to the next farm. And I wasn't crazy. I knew this walk would be harder than Ma expected. Could Ma hold on to the energy she had now for seven months?
Pa said, "If you're worried about Erick, I don't think you need to be. He'll still be waiting for you when you get back." He smiled reassuringly.
"Pa, I know you like Erick, and I like him, too. But I don't want to get married—not now. I want to see more of the world."
"Here's your chance then!" Pa looked at me expectantly.
I closed my eyes.
"Yes or no, Clara. Stop mugwumping and get off the fence."
I restrained my half smile as I thought of what the girls at Lewis and Clark High School would think when they found out I was walking all the way to New York City. I had been Cinderella Clara, the one who had to hire out as a domestic to have a place to live while I went to school. I had been the skittery country mouse, too timid to look anyone in the eye. If I went with Ma, I might become famous, right along with her.
This would be my year abroad, my year to turn the old Clara into someone bold, someone with newfound talents, strengths, and purpose in life. Those uppity girls from Lewis and Clark would read about me in the papers and say, "Oh, yes! I knew Clara Estby from school. She was a quiet one, but deep. I always knew she'd surprise us someday."
I opened my eyes and did not restrain my smile. "Ja," I said, "if you think I should."
When we heard Ma's rustling from the bedroom, Pa and I looked toward the door.
He smiled; at least I think he did. His bushy, reddish-brown mustache all but covered up his mouth. "You're a good girl, Clara," he said. "I know it's asking a lot, dealing with Ma by yourself away from home. I doubt if you'll really have to go the whole way."
He raised his cup toward me in thanks. "Tak," he said. "Pretend to be surprised when Ma asks you to go with her."
My mouth gaped open as I watched Pa go back out to the barn. What had I gotten myself into?
A week later, when Ma received a letter from New York, I found out.
Note to Mrs. Helga Estby: Per your instructions, I have added 'and her daughter' to Clause 2. Miss A. J. Waterson
Contract between Waterson Press and Mrs. H. Estby
The walk from Washington State to New York City shall be completed by November 30, 1896, although by mutual agreement this time may be extended in case of unpreventable delays such as illness.
Mrs. Esthy and her daughter will start their trip with no more than $5.00 apiece and they must earn additional money as needed for food, lodging, and replacing shoes and clothing.
Mrs. Esthy must document her trip by granting interviews and obtaining signatures of governors, mayors, or other notables along her route. She must also submit monthly logs of miles walked.
Mrs. Estby will not divulge the name of the party with whom she has made this contract, who wishes to remain anonymous until Mrs. Estby has completed the book based on her travels and it is published.
In return for meeting all these conditions, I, A.J. Waterson, will award to Helga Estby the sum of $10,000 a
s an advance against the proceeds of lecture fees and the sale of her book.
CHAPTER 4
PACKING UP
WHO is Miss A. J. Waterson?" I asked, poking one finger at her signature. "I've never heard of Waterson Press."
Ma shrugged and averted her eyes from mine. "Well, I don't know Miss Waterson personally, of course. But one of my suffrage society friends suggested a New York publisher. You just have to let enough people know what /C) you want, and someone will know someone "who can help you. That's part of hoopla—something you could use a little more of yourself."
I was too distracted to take offense at Ma's criticism. My hands holding the contract trembled; my heart forgot to beat. We were really going to do it.
In a whirlwind of activity, Ma took care of the hoopla and I took care of the details. She talked the husband of another of her Spokane friends into taking our picture so we'd have copies to send to the newspapers and sell along the way. She also talked him into printing two hundred postcard-size calling cards, or—as she airily called them—cartes de visite. They read:
Mrs. H. Estby and daughter,
Pedestrians. Spokane to New York.
I didn't rate my own name on the cards.
She sent a copy of our photograph to the New York World, along with a letter explaining her desperation to save the farm and her passionate support of women's suffrage. A week later, she received a large envelope in reply. The editor had ignored Ma's letter entirely. His article made us sound like two adventuresses out on a foolish lark:
Mrs. H. Estby and her daughter of Spokane, Washington, have announced their intention to walk from that distant city to New York. They expect to break all records in the line of pedestrianism and will travel rapidly, with very light equipment. They intend to write up their adventures afterwards if they survive the experiment.
—New York World Sunday Magazine,
April 26, 1896, [>
The Year We Were Famous Page 2
