New Year’s Day, my birthday, 1900
It was December again before Robert said, “Hawaii. For this Christmas.” He’d returned from his foray to various spots west and east. It was a drizzling day in Marengo, spitting snow. A warm, sandy beach sounded wonderful. I’d settled my parents’ estates and we three sisters had small amounts to invest on our own. Robert and I used our passes to book a Pullman across the continent to arrive on a steamer that sailed across the Pacific.
When it was decided we should leave Argos with my niece’s family in San Francisco to save him the strain of travel in his later years, I thought my heart would break. I made it my decision, though it had been Pard’s suggestion. The choice came after watching that dear dog play with my niece and her children and seeing his eyes clouded and knowing his time to leave this earth could not be far behind. I could not stand it if it happened while we were on the road or in Hawaii, or Alaska, or wherever our future paths might take us hither and yon. And a hotel is not the greatest playground for a large, old dog. I hugged his neck. “Goodbye, old friend. You have a good life with my niece.” He twisted and licked my neck and then we left.
I still grieved both my parents—and leaving Argos behind added to that sadness—but we were now wealthier than we’d ever been, and that was supposed to keep me always in my happy lane. It didn’t. I said as much to Robert.
“It’s natural for you to feel saddened. Your mother was dear to you.” He had gathered a cup of tea from the steward, made his way weaving with the ship’s sway as we headed to the islands. So far, seasickness had stayed away. “And Argos your good friend.”
“It’s been a year. I should be over it, don’t you think?”
He handed me the cup and saucer. Sat across from me on the divan. “Hawaii will do you good. Put sad memories of death and loss behind you. Come spring, we’ll make a splash in Spokane.”
I rather liked that image of “splashing” but wasn’t sure how that would happen. We arrived on Christmas Eve. Then on the eve of my birthday, at a hotel in Waikiki, I managed to get my dear Pard to dance with me to a ukulele playing “Auld Lang Syne.” He kissed me, held me closer without his usual brief squeeze before releasing me.
“It’s a new century and a new beginning, Dell.”
“To get you up and dancing? I guess it is.”
“No, Spokane. That’s where we’ll put down roots. I promise.”
I didn’t want to hope too much, but planting roots anywhere is an act of hope.
On our last days, after the luau and a ride to the top of a volcano and watching young dancers move their hips to festive music, we decided to go out on the ocean with one of Pard’s old comrades in the military, another railroad colonel named Stearns and his daughter. Mrs. Stearns declined to don her bathing costume and join us on a log canoe with each of us using our paddles. An outrigger would keep us from being swamped, we were told.
But that day, our boat was slammed by a twenty-foot swell, and we were dumped into the sea, hitting a coral reef before we could resurface, gasping for air. Pard hung on to me, pulling me to the upside-down boat, grabbing me when another wave tore at us. One of our native paddlers grabbed the Stearns girl and swam with her to shore while the other tried to manage the broken outrigger as the colonel, Pard, and I hung on.
I could not swim.
Pard pushed me astride the boat bottom, where I tossed up gallons of sea water. Then realizing his mistake—that neither he nor Colonel Stearns could easily cling to an overturned boat—he tried to convince me to come back into the sea.
Go back into the water? Risk that we could turn the canoe over before we sank ourselves? But Pard’s shouts of assurance, his eyes holding mine and with a belief that he would not ask me to do something menacing without the conviction of the rightness of it, gave me courage. And I left behind the security and slipped back into the sea. He held me up while the two men turned the boat over, water sloshing over the sides we clung to.
In those moments, I didn’t know if I would survive and I longed for the peace I’d found on that terrible stage ride in Colorado years before. The colonel hung on. Pard kept his arm around me and lifted me when I appeared to lose strength. Eventually, the waves took us shoreward where our young companion and her rescuer cheered us on.
Then as we seemed near to rescue, the colonel gasped. “Oh, Mrs. Strahorn! Oh, Mrs. Strahorn!” He hung in front of me. I feared he was slipping away into a warm watery grave.
“We’re almost there,” I shouted. “Hang on.” His wife paced on the shore.
“Oh, Mrs. Strahorn, I fear—” he gulped a bit of water, spit it out—“I fear . . . I am losing my suit.”
Ah, the demands of the culturally refined. “Worry not about your trousers, Colonel. I’ve seen men’s underdrawers.”
“But I don’t wear them, dear lady. All I have on is my bathing suit.”
The constant waves grabbed against his swimsuit that he didn’t dare reach to pull up for fear the waves would steal his grip on the boat.
Pard shouted, “If that’s all we lose on this voyage, we are indeed lucky, Colonel.”
I began a hysterical laughter that Pard joined in and so did the colonel. What else was there to do?
It was as close to dying as I’d come in recent years. And it did seal to my mind the shortness of life, of our responsibility to live fully, generously, and with joy. I vowed to do that and also thanked my dear husband over and over that he had kept his partner afloat. I guess he always had.
We arrived by train into Spokane, a city that had grown dramatically since we’d been there years before. A great fire had swept through the business district in 1889, but instead of it leaving ashes and shambles behind, the city grew from it, using the ash as humus. Washington was a state now. Women had the right to vote in the territory in 1883, then the Supreme Court knocked it down in 1887. But here was a city—ready to leave behind whatever it must to go forward into this new century.
In addition to the Northern Pacific and Great Northern railroads that already served the city, Pard imagined what a grand terminal Spokane would be if three other railroads were to be induced to bring their steam engines: The Milwaukee Road, the Canadian Pacific, and his dear Union Pacific. And he hoped to build that North Coast Line to link Portland to Spokane. Even while we lolled beneath the palm canopies, considered the mainland only when the mail boat arrived—or so I thought—Pard was dreaming again. He hadn’t chosen Spokane for the landscape and climate and people as I had. He had chosen it for the railroading potential.
We stayed at the Spokane House like many others new to the area, identifying a neighborhood to live in. At least I thought that was the reason we were still at the hotel after three months into the new year. He’d been busy with his schmoozing of yet more investors.
“Why don’t we find a modest home,” I said. “Get out of this hotel.”
“No, no, we’ll have a mansion when the time comes. But right now, there’s too much to do. Get involved, Dell. Suffrage is alive here. Sing your heart out.”
“I’d like to sing in my own home. Sit before a fireplace, keep my feet warm.”
Ever since Yellowstone, my toes easily numbed, as did my fingers when hit by a drop in the thermometer.
“Don’t be impatient.” He shushed me with his hand as though I was a child.
“Impatient? We finally have the resources—you say—but they can’t be spent on a home for us?”
“We don’t want to look too—immoderate. It’s all about pacing, Dell.” He pulled his shoes off, stayed sitting on the bed. “We appear wealthy because of our careful management. That draws investors. After we’ve moved things along, friends see others comfortable with me and my business acumen, we make our splash with a lavish mansion where you serve people, make them comfortable for when I close the big deals. But for now . . .” He patted my hand as though I were a pup. “Pacing.”
Something inside derailed me from my happy track. “Pacing? Have I not pace
d my entire life at your beck and call?” I’d never asserted myself, allowing Robert to make all the decisions while I niggled along beside him or worse, behind him. It was a lightning bolt: I suddenly knew. We weren’t “Pardners.” My heart pounded. Maybe if I had been involved with the canal company at Caldwell we could have stayed. Maybe if I’d stood firm, we’d be raising twins now. Robert put Robert first. He was a friendly snake oil salesman who dealt in land and railroads instead of elixirs and oils. Why hadn’t I seen that before?
“You . . . you’re selfish, Robert. If you treated your railroad partners as you do me, keeping them in the dark about things, always putting yourself first, why would they stay with you?”
He blinked. “Well, I . . . keep them apprised. I accede to their wishes now and then as a partner must. I didn’t think I deprived you of that courtesy, Dell. We’ve been through everything together.”
“It’s difficult to negotiate as ‘pardners’ if someone is walking in front of you on the path. That’s hardly together. It’s rather an independent trek even if the one in front occasionally looks behind to see if the follower has fallen.” I pulled a shawl around my shoulders.
“Where are you going? It’s nearly midnight.”
“Going for a walk. Alone. If I fall, I know how to pick myself up.”
He didn’t follow me and the walk near the falls with its pounding splash gave me time to calm and reminded me of our overturned boat in the crushing waves. I had believed myself safe atop the water-slogged canoe but had to trust Robert’s view that I was not. I had accomplished that leap of faith believing in my Pard, though not yet mastered it. Pastor Boone would say that is the journey we’re on in life: knowing when to trust another on the path with us as we “find our way clear” to God’s direction, living fully in life. So what was my life’s work? I hadn’t yet found it. And that wasn’t Robert’s fault.
From Fifteen Thousand Miles by Stage, vol. 2, by Carrie Adell Strahorn (page 268)
An old Squaw called “Old Mary” was said to carry one hundred twenty years . . . was too old to fish. But she used often to climb the mountains for berries and was an active element of life wherever she went.
32
Rent by the West
I am ever so grateful that my own family ties with my sisters stay strong. And yes, with Pard too, though I came to understand that while he adores me, buys me jewels and gems, takes my literary advice, marvels when I “hold a room” while he stands quietly by the fireplace, watching, is proud of me and loves me, his adoration does not extend to meeting my greatest desires: a home of my own, having a family. I live with those uncertainties and losses and do my best to not subtly hold him accountable for the lack in my life. We are responsible for who we are and what we become. We must know what matters and have the courage to act on that. Oh, I understand circumstances intervene, but it is how we respond to those circumstances that marks our character, that decides if we will pursue a desire or let it drift out to sea.
May 30, 1900
If you should happen upon a census record of 1900, you might imagine a conundrum. The census taker came in June to the hotel in Spokane and recorded Robert and me as living there. Robert was home at the time and he answered the questions. But I appear on another census document as “Carrie Strahorn, head of household.”
I had my trunks sent up by the hotel manager the morning after our conversation about our need to pace ourselves and thus wait yet longer for a home. Robert noticed the trunks being packed.
“Please. Reconsider, Dell.” His pleading had no effect on the deliberateness of my sorting. Of course, he had no idea. I’d never told him how I felt, not really, and I couldn’t find the words this time either, beyond what I had already said. I knew I needed to use that railroad pass and leave. I wasn’t certain where I’d end up. I wasn’t going to walk across the continent like that Norwegian mother and daughter, that was certain.
But I needed time. Those ties that had bound us had frayed through the years of Omaha, Denver, Hailey, Caldwell, Fairhaven, Boston, years when we lived together, shared meals, loved each other, though at a distance as the years ensued. I nursed him, we spoke of inane things like his clients and my voice instructor’s idiosyncrasies. We had grand memories, but we’d passed each other in the night. Maybe it was our near death in Hawaii that put me on a trajectory away from the wealth we’d accumulated and more toward what any of it meant.
I didn’t blame him for the emptiness I felt. That emptiness was of my doing. He was a child in a toy shop with his railroads while I . . . I stood outside with my face pressed against the proverbial window, wishing I had something I loved as much. Not anymore.
His eyes were shiny as tumbled black onyx. His total inability to grasp how much I wanted at last to have a home of my own as the only motherly thing left to me became too much.
“Where will you go? Back to Hattie’s, I suppose.” He crossed his arms over his chest, assumed my sisters would draw me in. “Illinois will be splendid this time of year. Hot. Humid. Bugs.”
“Don’t you malign my Illinois bugs,” I said. “They have fireflies in Marengo, something this West doesn’t have.” I’m defending bugs?
He took my hands, held them. “Just tell me you’ll come back.”
“Let me go, Robert.”
“But you’ll return?”
His angst was palpable, it felt like a too-tight corset over my chest. I could so easily nurture him as I always did, but this time, I couldn’t. But I could lessen his pain’s intensity.
“I’m going to Caldwell.”
“Caldwell? Oh. Certainly. Caldwell.” He stepped away from me, ran his hands through his still-thick hair. His hat line marked his forehead. “Visit some friends there. Stay at the hotel.”
“I intend to purchase a house. A modest one, of course.”
He blinked but recovered quickly. “Of course, yes, a good investment. I’ll have money ordered to the bank. Just telegraph me. Or call.”
“My parents remembered me in their will. I need to do this on my own.”
“Oh, Carrie, what are you doing to me?” He actually pulled at his hair.
“I’m doing nothing to you, Robert. I’m doing something for myself.”
I left the trunk I’d been packing and sat on the divan in our hotel rooms. “Come here.” I patted the seat next to me and he flopped onto it. “I don’t know how to explain it, but I have to go where I once felt both excited about something larger than myself that I had a part in, and where I overcame a great loss. To remind myself that I can.”
He frowned. “A great loss? Oh, having to sell the canal company. That was tragic.”
Tears burned behind my eyes.
I patted his hand and stood. “Time to finish up.” I used my most cheery voice. I looked at my breast-pin watch. The violet traveling suit would do, though the cuffs were frayed. “Don’t you have an appointment with someone about an electric and water system of some kind?”
He stood, scratched frantically at his vest, found his watch fob and opened the case. I’d given it to him for our fifteenth wedding anniversary. Will he forgo the meeting? “Yes, you’re right as usual. Look, I’ll have the carriage brought around to take you to the depot.”
“You’re so generous, Robert.”
He frowned but remained silent, missing my sarcasm, which was good because I didn’t really want to continue in that vein. My intention was to go forward, not only leave him behind.
“Let me know as soon as you’re there, what you need. I can visit—”
“No. Please. I want time alone. Not with you, nor my sisters.”
“I’ll miss you, Dell. You know that.”
“You’ll do fine as you have a dozen times when we’ve been separated.”
“But those were me leaving you so that I could write or make a deal. Did I tell you that I’ve got interest in a gold mine in Sumpter, Oregon? Investors. I’m investing there.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Fairhaven. That’s it, isn’t it? You’re still mad about what happened. Maybe I did exaggerate with those drawings showing lumber mills and railway approaches and smokestacks where there were only docks and forest.”
I patted his arm. “It’s been our way, priming the pump for dreamers to quench their thirsts. But bitter water sometimes shows up where fresh is intended.” I could grow all nostalgic in a minute, but so could my Pard, especially if the subject of development came up. He had his way of avoiding pain too.
“I’m off.” I left him and our rooms, told the hotel porter to please bring down my trunks. I took the carriage to the depot and boarded the train. I was strong and certain. Every journey must begin there.
Once I stepped off the train in Caldwell, the emptiness came back; not a panic exactly, but a what have I done? ache formed in my stomach. I’d never lived on my own, not ever. I swallowed away the discomfort. I was here. I could do what I wanted, which was to check into the hotel and then walk out to our cottage in Sunnyside, see how many of the trees had made it; visit the Presbyterian church and check on the progress of the College of Idaho, of which Reverend Boone now served as president. I’d visit the cemetery to see if I recognized any new names.
“Dell Strahorn, I’m so glad I got here before you went off to the hotel.” It was Carrie Blatchley, breathless. “Here, let James secure your trunks.” She signaled a man in a uniform, who tapped his fingers to his cap. She leaned into me. “I know, we’re getting fancy in Caldwell having chauffeurs in uniform, and electric street cars and all. It’s kind of fun.” She hugged me. “It’s been too long. How are you?”
“I . . . how did you know?”
“Robert telephoned. He said you were coming for a visit. We are delighted. You should have let us know. Annie will be pleased to see you too. The Boones live right next door, you know. You’ll stay with us, of course.”