“Taking on another woman’s children isn’t creative either.”
His words stung more than I’d thought they could. “I think it is. I watch your brothers grow their families. I see the joy in my sister’s face when she speaks of Christina, of George. I—I miss that. And I always thought we’d, you know, one day have children or take in an orphan. There’s nothing wrong with raising another’s child. It’s a gift we can give. You’re generous. I don’t understand why we don’t?”
“I’m selfish about that, I guess you could say. I don’t want to share you with a child. Or two.” He smiled at me.
A fury rose inside me. “Don’t want to share me with a child? You share me with publishers. You share me with the railroad, with the land company, with the canal company, the shorthorns, with the towns we—”
He stood and pressed his hands to my shoulders. “Carrie.”
But the tears came and he took the brush from my hands, pulled me to him. “You’re creating a church. That’ll be your offspring.”
“But I see the way clear . . . to having children. It’s my greatest desire.”
“I don’t see my way clear. That’s the difference. I promised you a full life, Dell. And if we have a child of our own, fully of the two of us, I will love that child, you know that. But not of another’s loins. I offer you something different.”
“But what if I want this?”
“We can’t have everything we want. Desires aren’t a right. And when they conflict, well . . .” He shrugged. “One has to give in.”
And pray that the one who gives in does not carry a stage-load full of animosity while dealing with her grief.
In the morning, Mrs. Bunting with her babbies and two other children waited outside our gate in a wagon. My mother was up early and she invited them forward and they stood on the porch when Delia delivered her croissants. She gave a few to the Buntings’ older children. They ate quietly to the swish-swish-swish of the windmill bringing up water for the tank that nurtured our trees.
“I brought the older ones, to witness,” Mrs. Bunting said to me when I came out onto the porch. Robert stood behind me but he did not touch me nor offer physical support of any kind. “So’s they’ll know where they little sisters live.”
“Mrs. Bunting,” Robert said. “They are beautiful girls. But we cannot take them from you. Children thrive when they are with their parents who meet their needs, the parents from whom they were birthed. Mrs. Strahorn and I appreciate your offerings, your kindnesses in imagining that we could raise your daughters better than you and your husband can.”
She pushed Kate at me and I took her, the warmth sinking into my arms, the smell of her sweet as roses. Those big blue eyes, staring. I imagined myself reading to her, watching her grow up to be a kind, loving child.
“Dell—”
I made mouth sounds that brought a hesitant smile on the child’s face.
Robert paused. “They’d only have each other with us and always feel left out of your large and loving family. We couldn’t do that to them. We couldn’t.”
She looked not at him but at me—their mother, searching for the best way for them. I handed the baby back, the scent of her powder lingered on my bodice ruffles.
Mrs. Bunting said nothing and left.
But she was back every single morning. For a week. Robert gave the same speech, adding once that he had dispatched a cow to their farm and arranged for canal fees for a year to be covered for their crops. I suppose he thought money was the best offering.
On the last morning, she and her witnesses came later, after Robert had left. I stepped out onto the porch, arms clasped around me as though I felt cold. “You can see that I would . . . but my husband. I’m so sorry. Please, stop coming. It—it hurts too much.”
She sighed. “Aye. I know. We women surrender, don’t we?”
I wondered at that moment if her morning visits had been a yielding to her husband and not a desire of her own at all. “Yes, we surrender. We try to find the heart in what they want and let go of what we want, hoping not to carry sadness too long nor deep.”
“If ye went against him, would he forgive ye in time?”
I reached out to fondle Kambree’s fingers, slender as new carrots. She would play the violin one day if allowed lessons. “I honestly don’t know,” I said. I lacked the courage to find out.
The next morning, without seeing them, felt like dying to me. The hot morning air suffocated and even the birdsong didn’t lift my spirits. I admired Mrs. Bunting for being willing to give up her flesh and blood because she thought it would better their lives and those of her remaining children. Her husband never joined her. His pride? Who knew?
I imagined in their later years, Kate and Kambree would hear the story of how their parents almost left them with a couple who had no children. The story would be more vivid with the witnesses’ recall. Kate might remember that they were going to leave Kambree; and Kambree’s story would be that it was Kate who was almost left behind. Neither would imagine they would be the child chosen to live with the pain of knowing she’d been given away.
“Your enthusiasm falters.” It was after the concert fund-raiser and Hester Brown was sensitive to my mood. We hung our Monday-morning laundry. “I’m so sorry.” She stopped her work and held me as I wiped my eyes.
Yes, I shared my sorrow with a friend. All those founding Presbyterian women.
“Oh, Adell.” Mattie Meacham had taken to calling me that rather than plain Dell. I didn’t correct her. “How very hard for you. I remember how I ached when my Harvey died and I knew I’d never marry again. Nor have a baby of my own.”
The others patted my shoulder. I felt awkward receiving sympathy, having rarely exposed my sadness to these women or anyone outside my family. I was surprised at their compassion. I’m not sure why I should have been. Women have a way of knowing what another needs. Some of us struggle with receiving kindness.
“You could decide on your own. Sometimes Mr. Little puffs all up about a thing, and when I do it anyway, he comes along.”
“The addition of two children . . .” Marvel shook her head. “My Mr. Gibson would leave me if I’d done that.”
“I doubt Robert would go away,” I said.
“But are you leaving him, in your spirit?” Carrie Gwinn took my hand in hers. I’d come to appreciate the young woman. “To deny so great a desire, I fear it will leave a hole in your heart.”
“You’ll have to be careful and not allow your grief to build a fence around yourself,” Flora Little offered. “When your husband won’t allow you the one thing you want more than anything else . . . a child . . . we can become unwitting punishers.”
“And that’s not like you, Dell. You’re too generous, too forgiving for that,” Mrs. Meacham said.
Was I generous? Forgiving? I looked around the room at these women. Courageous pioneers who lived with accommodation daily. Was I giving up the one thing I truly wanted in life? Was being a mother what I desired more than anything else? At the price of straining my marriage?
Apparently not. Because I did not take the risk of a lifetime and bring those babies home with me and tell Robert he must simply adjust. I could have done it. I have always wondered why I didn’t.
From Fifteen Thousand Miles by Stage, vol. 2, by Carrie Adell Strahorn (page 151)
And surely parents never tried more persistently to dispose of their offspring, in a week of untiring effort.
28
The Way Be Clear
The church became the child I longed for, and the ups and downs of those final days of either having one or letting it go—as a mother must her child—proved the keeping of my sanity that following year. That and Argos and the stage and railroad pass that could take me anywhere I wanted to escape to.
September 12, 1887
I invited my sister Hattie to come out, and off we traveled with those railroad passes, for a day trip or a fortnight. Yet it always improved my spirits to return to the
work I felt called to do in Caldwell—building up that church. I didn’t want to think about what would happen when that task was accomplished—nor if we failed.
Besides, I missed Argos when Hattie and I traveled. Yes, I now had a dog. My father had sent the pedigreed wolfhound to me. Not a bulldog.
Argos arrived by train and must have been nurtured along the way by a tramp or two riding in the freight car, because he loved tramps! Maybe the smell of them was more interesting than the men in suits and uniforms that he growled at, taking him a time to warm up to Robert, which secretly tickled me before I sought forgiveness.
Argos loved me at first sight and I him. Dark, long, silky fur, firm shoulders, he stood tall for a year-old dog. I could touch his head when he leaned into my legs and I never feared a knock on the door after Argos came. And as with Homer’s Argos in the Odyssey, he always recognized me no matter how long I’d been away.
“B-flat.” I taught him that command to lie down.
“Shouldn’t it be ‘Down’? I think that’s the preferred dog command.” Pard added his point of view.
“I’m a musician,” I reminded him. “B-flat works fine.”
I was pleased my father took it upon himself to have the dog delivered, already house-trained and wanting to learn new commands. But I would have preferred my breed of choice. The men in my life simply refused to hear what it was I preferred. And I let them.
The church work kept me sane that fall and winter. I threw myself into fund-raising after my parents and the Bunting twins were no longer daily greetings. I did listen for snippets of the twins’ family stories. Mostly, hard work was what I heard about and that Mrs. Bunting’s last delivery had gone well. I sent money and a little knitted jacket I asked Hester to make or find through her millinery contacts. Like Robert, I’d succumbed to cash and a little treasure to salve my guilt for not doing more.
Our small committee grew; we had grand support from merchants. A glitch or two threatened to take us off our rails. Another pastor had come to Caldwell, a Methodist who was Delia Gwinn’s father-in-law, Carrie’s father. He operated a house of worship in Caldwell with a different tradition than the Presbyterians. Montie, his son, and Carrie, his daughter, were active in our Presbyterian activities and he was not happy. One can understand why a father would want his own offspring to work in his church and not for another’s. But Carrie loved to sing and had a voice like an angel at our concerts we put on, which proved our biggest fund-raiser. And Montie, that early merchant in Caldwell, offered prizes of different values, from washboards to baby carriages, for our numerous raffles and cake-walk events.
I was sensitive to a family spat and didn’t want to add to that minister’s distress, but I was driven at that time in my life, driven to get that church funded and built so we could at last seek a pastor. Work, I found, is a good healer.
Carrie represented how young people added not only hands to our efforts but a joyousness that cannot be replaced by any other elixir than basking in the vitality and passion of youth. I vowed that summer that I would always find a way to be around children and young men and women, even if none ever called me mother. If I could claim none as my own, I would claim all as mine, so in addition to the church, I began paying attention to public instruction. Those years of the second half of the 1880s, I also spent time watching young sporting teams that Pard sponsored. And I invited my nieces and nephews for extended visits and spoiled them rotten when they came.
But it was the work that kept me on the straight and narrow. Work raising funds. Work singing, putting on concerts. And I always knew I could disappear with those railroad passes. Having an escape, though perhaps a sign of not being fully committed, is also a balm to a broken heart.
Within two years, Carrie Gwinn had married Henry Blatchley, a Presbyterian to the core, though they’d married in the Methodist church in Boise. Her father officiated. Henry was a great contributor to the cause—and we finally had $500 in the bank and enough to let the contract for the building. “Let’s build until the money runs out,” Hester Brown suggested. And that’s what the committee of women decided.
What a great day that was when we broke ground. We held a party and served food and children ate ice cream, their faces messed with glee.
With the building under construction, we felt that we could approach the Home Mission Society of New York for assistance now and to seek a pastor.
“I wonder if we shouldn’t wait until the building is up before asking?” Marvel Gibson looked up from her copious notes and adjusted her glasses. It was at one of our Monday meetings. “What if they happen to have a young minister ready and then he arrives and sees what little we have to show? Just the bones of a structure. He might get right back on that train.”
“We agreed we’d make the request when we started to build,” Mattie Meacham said. I always admired that she knew her limits and let another take over as treasurer without regret. She knitted enough shawls for sale at the fair to more than make up for her disappearance as a board officer.
“But we have new information now,” Marvel continued. “It’s alright to change our route if we get new facts to better set our course.”
Carrie opined that a young pastor might like to have a say in how his new church building was framed.
“All Presbyterian churches are built alike,” I said. “They have acceptable plans everyone follows.” Argos moaned beneath the table.
“Is that a commentary by your dog?” Hester said. We laughed.
“It could be. There are some polity issues with the Presbyterians that can be quite irksome about doing anything truly inventive. We’ll have to put our creativity into the furnishings, considering the new pastor’s wishes, of course. B-flat,” I told Argos when he started to get up.
“Maybe he’ll be single.” Ida Waters teased. She was a new recruit. “And wanting the advice of a young congregant.”
“Aren’t you spoken for?” Carrie’s blonde curls bobbed on her cheeks.
“Who is the lucky fellow?” Hester asked.
“Jacob Wilson, the blacksmith on Cedar Street.”
“Ah. That handsome young man with the massive arms.” Flora Little winked.
“Have you been ogling youth, Mrs. Little?” Carrie teased.
“Nothing wrong with eye-grazing. I love looking at lively young men. Carrie does too, I can tell.”
“We have work to do ladies.” I sang out my directive.
“Will there be a wedding soon, Ida?”
“After we get a pastor.”
“Let’s hurry that along then,” I said. “Now, is it agreed we’ll send the letter to the Home Mission Society of New York? Do I have a motion to that effect?” I got it, a second, no more discussion, and the motion was passed. Marvel Gibson recorded the decision. I drafted the letter that we sent out the following week.
Hammering could be heard as the building rose from the desert land. Another contractor dug a well, not too deep, and the workmen had a hand pump then for refreshment and to ease their thirst. We women had water for our plantings that we put out as soon as we knew the layout of the structure. We’d show the new pastor how we cared for this church from the first moment he stepped from the train. We were imagining something into being. That’s quite an achievement.
Life went on while we awaited word, believing we had plenty of time to finish the building and keep raising funds. Faith institutions could move as slowly as sloths.
The structure was nearly completed (though not yet painted) and windows were ordered (but the openings boarded over). Nothing was finished inside when we received a letter stating that William Judson Boone, a recent graduate of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, and his young bride would come out to see if they would accept the call.
Oh, what joy we shared with that announcement. Even Argos howled his delight as I danced around Pard, the letter in hand.
“When does he get here, Dell?” Pard asked.
“It says within the week. We won’t be
ready. Whoever knew the Presbyterians to act so swiftly?” I looked out our window toward the direction of our unfinished structure. I couldn’t see it from our home, but I saw it in my mind’s eye. Building only on weekends took time.
“Maybe we can gather up a few extra men,” Robert said. “Try to get it painted.” He hadn’t lifted a hammer himself, but he had garnered financial support for our cause and was a vocal supporter.
“He’ll be answering God’s call, not ours. He’ll have to see that ‘the way be clear’ for him to stay. Oh.” I read further. “Oh no. They’re going to spend the first night with Reverend Barton. In Boise. ‘To consult.’”
“If Boise gets a hold of him, they’ll warp that young man’s mind about our Caldwell,” Robert said.
Robert wasn’t pained by the death threats of Boise enthusiasts, but he did see city-to-city competition for what it was and how devastating it could be. I still smarted from those numerous threats years before. Steam from the fuming Boise fathers could still be seen for miles after the railroad bypassed them, and now they’d have the new pastor in their clutches and might well pay us back in a most painful way.
Our new, fresh, young, innocent recruit would take his bride for a night or two in Boise. I could only pray that the Holy Spirit would speak to Reverend Barton and bid him break with the animosity between towns. The Reverend’s constant harping that our efforts would amount to nothing, that no church should grow from the people upward but must come from the holy presbytery down, when the “way be clear” had been a constant complaint throughout our fund-raising efforts. I so wanted him to give Caldwell and especially our committee’s efforts a fair hearing.
After two days of hearing nothing, I telegraphed Reverend Barton, asking when young Mr. Boone and his lovely wife would be arriving in Caldwell, as we planned a reception for them and did want to be amply prepared. He wrote back that he would telegraph in a few days, as the two needed time to acclimate to this western climate.