Then a sharp, shrill voice piped up from the wagon tongue saying: “If this is Strahorn’s paradise, as his book calls it, I just wish he had to live in it, that’s all, but I wish I was back in Missouri whar we ’uns come from,” and then she burst into tears. She did not know that the man “what write the book” was enclosed in that stage-coach, or she might have said more.
10
The Elasticity of Love
I consider myself still youthful and that we have time yet to begin a family. I must not dwell on this but instead find other avenues to nurture that part of me that longs to mother. We are too far flung for me to spoil Christina, my niece, and Robert’s brothers are equally spread across the country, so we have little contact with them or their fine children. I could teach, perhaps. But we travel so much. Maybe I could write children’s stories of the West. None would take the place of telling stories to a child of my own. Our own. There I am again, longing for what is not in my present life. Such suffering sucks out vitality and I must not let that happen. Where is that happy lane that seemed so easy to stay inside of? At least when I’m with my family, I feel at home.
December 27, 1878
In the year of our marriage, I had learned to unravel the hurts of words spoken in haste, or sometimes a dismissiveness Robert could give, especially when he was pulling his notes together and found any interruption difficult to manage. I felt shuttled off, or worse, it might take long seconds before he acted as though he even heard me, so engaged was he in his work. I envied that. And the usual tricks I’d developed as a middle child to manage the “green sickness,” as Shakespeare called it, of an excelling older sister or a beautiful younger one, both who nevertheless got our parents’ attentions more easily than I did, eluded me. I had enjoyed walking at a good pace through our old Marengo park, sitting beneath sumac and oak, expressing frustration to a Being I believed loved me despite my complaints. Or I could sometimes ride out on manicured paths atop good horseflesh from a nearby stable. But singing with a regular choir—which always gave me new sustenance—escaped me in Montana despite good, sound people and a landscape worthy of singing about.
We spent days on the stagecoach—and nights. Even in small places like Butte or Deer Lodge, there’d be meetings, trips to interesting sites, but as a lady I had to be as though handing out calling cards, always alert, smiling, gracious, lest I upset a city father or two. Or their wives. I had no friends, really. Always wondering if those who invited me to tea in fact were courting favor with my husband. When Robert wanted me to plan a salon, I knew that was exactly what he intended: to influence, cajole, even manipulate.
Once Robert came upon a stage stop where the proprietor had a copy of his book. He bravely asked him if the tome was worth reading. The man said it was a great book by a feller who’s “got ’em all skinned on drawing the long bow.” Robert knew what he meant and asked for a bit of clarification, wondering if the man thought his descriptions or numbers were deceptive. He was told that there wasn’t a single “gol darned lie,” but that the writer had the “darndest way of telling truth of any man you ever saw.”
Would the man describe a con artist the same way? Robert invited people to find their dreams in the West, at the behest of the railroad. Hyperbole? A bit, but with good intentions.
Speaking of intentions, I have the best of such in writing to my family of my happy-lane moments, leaving out the painful ones.
Mary, my sister, suggested as much when we returned to Marengo for Christmas that year. We were in the dining room having a late breakfast, the others having gone off for final Christmas shopping.
“Are you happy?”
“Who couldn’t be happy? The townspeople treat me like royalty. We get the best rooms in the hotels, and one town father even gave us a room in their own home for whenever we’re there. That saves on expenses for the railroad, which makes Robert look better and keeps them happy about the extra expense of his traveling companion.”
“But what do you do all day?” Christina, now a toddler, fed herself from her high chair while her mother chattered with me. A silver spoon pounded the tray now and then.
“What ladies do. I have my toilet, though it’s abbreviated as we often leave at a moment’s notice. I read to people if the town has a hospital. I do laundry unless the Chinese chambermen are available. Such efficient men they are.”
“Men do the laundry?”
“You’re deprived of the ways of the West, my sister. The Chinese lay rail lines, dig in mines, cook, do laundry, sleep in colonies separate from others, and they send all their money home to family. Those old miners have no regard for washing their own pants. And, I’ve watched in the laundry houses: those stiff pants are often dusted with gold that those Chinese brush into a tin. It wouldn’t surprise me if some of them are millionaires.”
“Surely not.”
“Surely yes. I even considered taking it up.”
My sister laughed at that. “Have you had to do the wash?”
I shook my head. “Now and then, but I always secure the help of local women, or the chambermen, so I’m not hauling heavy tubs of water.”
“And, is there a little Strahorn in the future? You won’t be hauling tubs of water then for sure.”
“Not yet,” I chirped. “We have had a fair number of nights when I shared a room with more than Robert.”
“You didn’t.”
“I did.” I pressed the loose tea, squeezing out the leaves. “Some of the places we stay in are built with green lumber, and as they dry, there are gaps between the boards that separate the rooms and us from the outdoors. I tack my linens up for privacy and hope no gust of wind unveils my unmentionables while still on me.”
“You ought to write these things down, Carrie. Like the letters you send us that we read in the evening as a kind of respite for our days. Charming all the way, though I do wonder what you’re not telling us. Do you keep a diary?”
“Robert’s the writer in the family. His New North West is well received and he’s also published a paper on Montana. It’s for sale in time for Christmas.”
She didn’t notice my avoidance of the diary question. I didn’t want others to know what I might be writing down to draw upon later for a memoir one day, perhaps.
“Nothing personal to your Pard, but I find his books dry,” she continued. “Willie does too, but he finishes them. And they have gotten better with a little more life to the statistics.”
“I’ve encouraged him to add a few illustrative vignettes.”
“Yes, that’s likely what makes them more readable.”
Christina pounded her bowl on the tray.
“Youth needs attention at regular intervals,” I said. “May I lift her out?”
“Of course. Carrie . . .” My sister hesitated then, as Christina sat on my lap playing with the strand of pearls I wore. “I’ve gotten something published.”
“Mary, that’s wonderful! Now who’s been holding back. Why didn’t you say?”
“I didn’t want you to feel badly. It’s a short piece, about a small business run by a woman here in Marengo. Human interest, they call them. The Tribune picked it up from our little paper, giving it a wider distribution.”
“I’m proud of you, I truly am.”
“You don’t feel badly that I’ve published, do you? You did so much better in composition classes than I did.”
“I’m more envious that you have Christina here.” I took my pearls off and draped them over my niece’s head. She slipped off my lap to look in the mirror.
“Someday you’ll have a family.”
“I hope so, though traveling right now with an infant would be a strain.” I remembered the family at Inspiration Pass. I would stay home rather than put my child in that kind of peril, but then one never knew what the weather and landscape might conspire to do. Tornadoes plowed through Illinois with some regularity, so having a roof over one’s head in the midst of a city didn’t necessarily protect one’s family eithe
r.
I was happy for my sister, but there was also a little twinge of green envy, not jade so much as olive. “At least I can sing better than you can,” I teased.
“No contest there.” She stood to take Christina’s dish to the sink while the old Labrador eased in from the other room to lick up the cracker crumbs. I scratched the dog’s graying head.
“Did I tell you I encountered one of Daddy’s old patients, way out in the wilds of the Idaho Territory? We had to travel through some rough country with the Bannock war going on. At this remote stage stop, this man approached and said he was one of ‘ol’ Doc Green’s patients’ and he recognized me. Isn’t that something? It made me terribly homesick.”
“You’re here now and I’m so grateful.” She hugged me and I felt tears press against my eyes.
“Let’s go into Chicago with Robert tomorrow.” I lifted my voice to its happiest timbre. “While he’s at his publisher’s, we can visit some of the shops. That’s the one thing I’m totally deprived of, though Helena and Omaha both have some fine stores. It takes a long time for the fashions to catch up to them.”
“I don’t mean to be obtuse, but where do you wear the latest fashions?”
I laughed and relished the telling. “They hold fetes for us, dances, dinners. I have to look the part. They know why we’re there, promoting the railroad, and the newspapers follow our every move like Hansel and Gretel, hoping the railroad tracks will soon be in their region. There are articles like ‘WH Todd and wife’—they never name the women—‘of Benton, accompanied Mr. and Mrs. Strahorn to the grand hotel reception.’ Things like that. Or this article: ‘The trip to Yellowstone National Park has been postponed and the Strahorns travel on to Butte next week.’ That lets the next town know we’re coming. They can line up the dignitaries to glad-hand Robert about the railroad. I sometimes think I can hear them whispering at every turn, ‘Bring it here, bring it here, bring it here.’ Like the chugging of the steam engine itself.”
“You were going to Yellowstone? Oh my goodness.”
“If the war ever stops and we’re still around when the survey party enters. We’ve been invited.”
“That’s a first for a Green sister.”
“What is?” Our father entered the kitchen. His office was located through a separate entrance into the house.
“Carrie gets to go to Yellowstone.”
“When it’s safe.” I didn’t want him worrying.
“That sounds like a fine trip, Carrie.” He moved to fix himself coffee.
“Of course, you won’t go if you’re with child, will you?” Mary asked.
“I do see a fair number of pioneering women riding like their men, astride, with rifles in the scabbards and burgeoning bellies, and no one bats an eye in the West,” I told her.
My father frowned. “You’re surely not counting on children, are you, Carrie?”
Mary said, “Why wouldn’t she, Daddy?”
“Do you know something I don’t know?” I kept my voice light as a feather, but my heart beat like a racing metronome. Sometimes our hearts know things before our heads can react.
“Well, I, uh, Robert . . . that is, uh. Oh my. I thought—” He cleared his throat. “Robert had mumps. During one of those terrible Sioux campaigns. He nearly died. I don’t think . . . that is, orchitis is a condition that, well, it would be unlikely that he could . . . I thought you knew.”
From Fifteen Thousand Miles by Stage, vol. 1, by Carrie Adell Strahorn (page 64)
Youth is often deeply hurt, but so elastic that it bounds back into happy line again with very little encouragement.
11
Baby Steps Forward
At least I was surrounded by the safety of family when I got the news of Robert’s condition. Mumps! Infertility from mumps isn’t certain, of course. There are miracles. It’s the absence of Robert’s telling me that hurts. I can hardly write of it here, the fracture in the possibility of the joys of motherhood so deep. I can make excuses for him—he didn’t want to assume we couldn’t conceive; didn’t want to bring up an issue needlessly. Still.
December 28, 1878
The joys of motherhood” had in that moment of my father’s words slipped into sorrow. Mary put her arms around me, held me. “I’m so sorry.”
“I’ll . . . I’ll be fine. There’s nothing certain, is there, Daddy?”
“Well—”
“I’m sure Robert didn’t mention it because he didn’t want me to be discouraged. He adores me.”
“Yes, he does.”
“I . . . I think I want to be alone now.”
I excused myself and went up to my old room that was now the bedroom that Robert and I occupied. I wanted to be by myself and had forgotten that he would be there, at my desk.
Upon hearing me come in, he spoke without looking up. “Wait just a moment, Dell, while I finish this section.”
A moment could mean anywhere from five minutes to two hours when Robert was writing. I didn’t respond. I sat myself up on my old bed, pillows behind my head, and stared forward. Oak branches scraped against the window and a rainbow formed from the sunlight, reflecting against the cut-glass vase on the dresser. After waiting ten minutes or so, I left. He never heard me leave. At the front door, I donned my rubber boots, muffler, and hood, threw my cape over my shoulders, and opened the outside door.
“I’ll go with you.” Mary set her crocheting aside and stood as I held the door against the cold. “Mother and Hattie are back. They can watch Christina.”
“I’d rather go alone.”
She stopped and the old lab, Casey, bumped right into her.
“I’ll take Casey if he wants to go.”
“He always wants to go. You’re sure being alone is a good idea? Where’s Robert?”
“Working on his book. I’m fine,” I lied. “Please.”
She nodded assent.
“Come on, Casey. Let’s see if we can find a rabbit in the snow.”
I knew I needed to speak to Robert. First, I’d gather information from my father’s medical books. We could visit specialists, of course. But the greatest pain came from Robert’s not sharing. When I didn’t conceive and wondered out loud what was wrong with me, he’d remained silent. That’s not true. He had held me and told me not to worry, that we’d have a fine, full life until that time arrived. Perhaps he didn’t know that infertility could happen. Yes, I wanted to name his betrayal ignorance, not willful omission.
Casey left the path shoveled by the good citizens of Marengo, and I followed his footprints in the light snow. He searched for rabbits, I thought, or maybe he wanted to see different terrain, since this was the route my mother often walked him. We were both on new paths. All the visions I had of seeing myself with child, carrying an infant in my arms, juggling marriage and parenthood—all I had imagined drifted away like feathers on a windy day. No substance to them at all.
Jingle bells rang on the carriages going by. Laughter whispered into the dusk, and I felt such longing I thought my heart would break. I stopped, leaned my back against an oak, my cape so thick I couldn’t feel the bark. The cold air stung my cheeks and made me stay in that moment rather than morosely sinking into self-pity. The dog stopped suddenly, turned, then limped back toward me. “You’re better at noticing my movements than Robert is.” I scratched his head again. “Maybe I’ll get a dog. Except dogs would be even more difficult to travel with than a child. Come on, let’s head back.”
The gas lighter approached, lifted his long-handled starter to the lanterns, and light burst onto the path. He tipped his hat and went on down the street, illuminating as he went.
Casey barked then, and I looked up. In the distance, I saw a man whose gait I knew was Robert’s. He walked fast and then started to wave and I could see his eyes above the scarf that wound around his chin and nose. “Dell!” I waved back and as he reached me, breathless, he said, “I’m so sorry. Your father told me. I—I have no words.”
“Did you know tha
t mumps could cause infertility? Did you keep it from me?”
“Only out of my own fear. I didn’t know until after we married how incredibly important it was for you, for us, to have children. I should have. I’m dense. I’m really dense.”
“You are that.”
“But I remembered when . . .” He hesitated. “When Carrie was ill, I remember you telling her she’d get better and that, yes, she might not be able to have children but that that wasn’t the end of the world. There were lots of orphaned children who need help. Lots of babies whose mothers or fathers couldn’t keep them. You made such a convincing case that I thought that, well—”
“I was encouraging a sick woman, Robert.”
“But didn’t you mean what you said?”
“Then, yes. For her. And perhaps I will again, for me, but it is a blow.”
He put his elbow through mine, making sure my gloved hand didn’t pull out of the muff. “I’ll work a lifetime to make it up to you, I will. Anything you want. Anything.”
“Right now I want to go home, and when you leave for Omaha on the train, I want to be with you and not left behind like last Christmas.”
“Consider it done.”
He held me then as we stood beneath the lantern light. But something had changed. I saw a crossroads and how I dealt with it I knew would make a difference for our entire lives. The youthful wound was deep, but I remembered a word in my father’s medical book—incarn. It meant to grow new flesh. That’s what I’d have to do now and hope that every time I saw a child, it wouldn’t reopen this wound.
After Christmas, we stayed in an Omaha hotel a few months, then moved on to Denver, where Robert’s latest published article raised talk of immigration. It was that “army conquering a wilderness as it follows the trail of the pioneer” that made me wonder if the needs of those many people could make me forget my hopes of motherhood in the more traditional sense.
“I didn’t expect my work to be controversial.” Robert held the Denver Rocky newspaper in his hand while I packed us for the wilds of Idaho, Robert’s new data-gathering site. The Union Pacific wanted another pamphlet on that area. The Montana Territorial government had allocated money for more copies of Robert’s book about Montana, and there was much discussion about the good and bad of luring so many “tenderfoots” west.