“Do I still have a job?” I asked.
“Of course,” they both said in unison.
“Then for now, I’ll put the money in the bank.”
“A wise choice,” Olea said. “In the long run, I wouldn’t invest in anything that doesn’t stir your passions.”
“Passions?” I said. What did passion have to do with money?
“Well, yes. Otherwise the work involved becomes a drudgery, something you’re required to do each day to pay the bills. Meeting obligations is required, of course, but you don’t want it to consume you. Our fur business has had good years and bad, but we’ve always loved the fashion part, the shows where new items are modeled, seeing happy looks on people’s faces when they don those coats. Passion allows you to see through the mists of disappointment or failures. Earn a little less but have work you enjoy. That’s my motto. Money isn’t the most fulfilling thing one can work for, Clara.”
“Having money isn’t the most fulfilling thing at all,” Louise said. “But you’ll discover that in time, now that you have it.”
I let a few weeks pass before making a trip to the farm where Olaf worked. I was taking a chance, I knew. I didn’t want to put Olaf in a difficult position, but I thought he might understand why I’d chosen to stay and work for the women rather than move with the family to Aunt Hannah’s in Spokane. Maybe he’d understand that I owed the women, for putting me through school. He might accept the money and go to school himself. That was my hope when I approached him as he and several other men walked from the field toward the house. I’d arrived at lunchtime.
Olaf stopped short, frowned when he recognized me, and I wondered if he’d turn back. Could he really be displeased to see me? He didn’t reach to hug me, but then, it was a public place. He soon smiled, enough encouragement. I stepped forward.
His fellow workers teased him when I approached, and they pretended not to believe him when he said, “She’s my sister.”
“Introduce me then,” a large blond bloke of a man said.
Olaf hesitated, then said, “Clara Estby. Meet Erik Elstad. My boss’s son.”
“Miss Estby,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.” He had a grin that he knew charmed.
“Likewise,” I curtsied, gave him a cool nod before turning to Olaf. “Is there somewhere we can talk?”
He took my elbow and we headed toward the haystacks, leaving Erik Elstad shouting, “You’ll be back.”
“He’s pretty taken with himself,” I said.
“And he’s taken a fair number of girls too,” Olaf said.
“So that’s why you didn’t want to introduce us.”
“He sees women as conquests,” he said. “You don’t need to be one. You have to be careful, Clara. Men can be such dolts. I have my lunch,” he said. “Care to share it?”
I let his words sink in. “I brought an apple along, thanks.”
He swept an area with his foot so we could sit in the shade of the haystack. We sat side by side and leaned against it, the scratchy hay barely poking at my short jacket. I didn’t remove my hat, knowing the humidity would have flattened my hair into a drenched-cat look.
“Was the foreclosure awful?” I said.
He shrugged. “The auction was worse. But it’s done now, all over. Someone else bought the farm for a pittance.”
“How’s Mama?” I asked.
He shrugged. “She pretty much lets Aunt Hannah and Ida tell her what to do. I hope when Papa builds the house he wants and she gets her own home again that she’ll be better.”
“Papa is going to build a house?”
“He got a carpenter’s job and he’s doing well. I think they’re all doing better without the weight of that farm, though I’d never say that in front of them.”
“No,” I agreed.
“Ida’s got a job as a domestic. Arthur’s looking for carpentry work too. With what I send them added to their income, they’ll be able to build soon enough and move out of Aunt Hannah’s house. How are you doing?”
“Good. I’m doing good,” I said. I didn’t tell him of the nights I cried myself to sleep feeling separate and alone. “Olaf, would you go to school if I paid your way?”
He looked startled. “Pay my way? Why don’t you go yourself?”
“I finished my coursework at Blair and I have a job. The bookkeeping I do for the women is satisfying. I don’t think having a degree would help me find a better job than the one I have.” I pulled a strand of grass hay from the stack and chewed on it. “They wouldn’t take the money back,” I said. “I’m to invest it. And I want to invest in you.”
Olaf stared off toward the fields, and the laughter of the other workers rose up now and then. He drank cold coffee from a jar, then set it next to him.
“I need to send money to Mama and Papa,” he said. “They count on it.”
“I could send it to you for them. They wouldn’t even have to know it came from me.”
“Clara …”
“Or that you were even in school. You could go to the university and—”
“If they ever found out, they wouldn’t talk to me,” he said. “I don’t think I could. You’re stronger than I am, Clara. Stronger than any of us. You’ll do all right out there on your own, but me.”
“You work away from home now. You’re hardly ever there. The university would give you a chance to do what you’ve always wanted to do—have a profession, not be tied to the seasons.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the seasons, Clara.”
“Oh, I know that. I love the land as much as you do. I only meant you’d have a chance to operate a farm on your own if you wanted. I could even buy a ranch for you,” I said. I hadn’t thought of it before, but why not?
“I like working for other people, helping Mama and Papa when I can. Even if I marry one day, I can’t see myself holding up under the pressure of being my own boss. I’ve seen what Mama and Papa went through. I’d rent.”
His view was yet another indication of how different I really was from the Estby family.
“You have money now, Clara. Do something good with it.”
“I’m trying to, but you won’t take it.”
He grinned. “Then do something you never imagined you’d be able to do.”
“Help you. Help my family. That’s all I ever wanted, and look where it’s gotten me.”
A terrible sadness crossed his face, and I knew he couldn’t agree to anything I offered. The money was tainted by its history, by the consequences he’d endure if he accepted anything from his ostracized sister.
“I’m a coward, Clara. If I took the risk of having my own farm and failed, I’d have lost your money, and for what?”
“But what’s the point of having a dream if you don’t take a chance to accomplish it?”
He shrugged. “They’d never forgive me if they found out I let you talk me into something.”
“I’m not trying to talk you into anything.” I bristled. I didn’t want to be angry with my brother, but I could feel the palms of my hands grow wet, heard my heart thumping louder in my chest. “I’m offering you a chance.” Didn’t he have an ounce of Mama’s fighting blood in him—the blood that made her take a chance even though we failed in the end?
“I can’t take it,” he said. “It’s too big a risk.”
He’d chosen too.
I stood, brushed off my skirt, picked up my reticule, and wrapped the string around my wrist. I adjusted my hat.
“Maybe I can still write to you,” I said. “Or will that be too risky?”
“Clara. Of course, write. Send it here. I’ll let you know if I leave and take another job.”
“I wouldn’t want to get you in trouble with Mama and Papa,” I said.
His eyes had the sad look of Sailor when I’d sent him home, wouldn’t let him follow me.
“At least you talk to me,” I said.
“Always,” he said. “I always will.”
I was connected to one member of my
family. His would have to be the thread I hung on to.
TWENTY-NINE
Exploration
I walked in a daze through the Blair College graduation ceremony, looked into the crowd for a familiar Estby face. None appeared. Olea and Louise applauded when I accepted my certificate, and we lunched at a nice restaurant in Spokane. The rest of the summer, I worked for the women, tried not to think of how alone I felt. Olaf was right about one thing: I wasn’t doing anything differently than what I’d done before, even though I now had resources. Squashed dreams came in my size too. Was I as afraid to fail as Olaf was? Or worse, maybe I was in love with the idea of money, and now that I had some, I just wanted to keep it.
In September Olea announced: “You’ve moped around enough. We’re going to make a trip.”
“I love traveling,” Louise said. She actually clapped her hands.
“There’s nothing that requires our presence in Spokane, is there, Louise?”
“Where are we off to?” Louise asked.
“We’ve hardly been anywhere in Washington State,” Olea said. “It’s time we got more acquainted with where we live.”
“You’ll come along, Clara,” Olea directed.
I could have resisted, agreed to remain behind, but for what? Hoping my family would contact me? Just to say that I’d decided on my own? “Why not?” I said. “We’re a … team.” I hesitated to use the word family. Our relationship was still very much that of employer and employee. Traveling with them might answer my daily question of what I should do with my life. I was, after all, Clara Doré trying to hear the words of Isaiah: “This is the way, walk ye in it.”
We made preparations, closed up the house, hired a local man to rake the leaves. He’d build a fire to warm the house if it turned cold during the weeks we’d be gone. He’d also forward our mail to Seattle, where Olea said we’d spend a few weeks in that “marvelous city.”
I packed my bank-books and a little cash, stuffing them into a waist purse I’d made so any cash I carried would be on my person. The belt felt tight but not restrictive. I wasn’t going to risk a robbery again. My stomach knotted when I thought of how the money I had now would have helped us back then, and I wondered about Olea and Louise’s part in all that. We’d have been home, and maybe Bertha and Johnny … No. If I thought of that, I’d have to reconsider my stepfather’s words that the funds I had were dirty. Money was just money.
“Have you got Lucy?” Louise called out as the cab came to pick us up.
“In her basket,” I shouted. “On my arm. Hurry along or we’ll miss the train.” Having the cat on this trip wasn’t my idea, but I accommodated.
Louise waddled out, one hand holding her hat, the other my curling iron. “You forgot to pack this,” she said, breathless. “It was still on the stove.”
“Clara wouldn’t want to be without that,” Olea said. “She can’t keep her hat on the entire trip.”
“That I can’t,” I said.
They knew me well. I guess in time we reveal our most intimate selves even to assumed family members, whether we realize it or not.
We headed west, the train rumbling through little towns with names like Reardan and Wilbur, wheat-farming communities. I had time to think. The one thing I knew for sure is that I didn’t want to undertake an investment scheme without safeguards in place. I wouldn’t repeat my mother’s mistake in not renegotiating the terms when things went sour with my ankle, then continuing to take side trips that delayed us further. Maybe she really did believe we could make it in time; maybe she trusted that, like Jonah and the whale, all things were possible.
What I needed to do was gather sound information and then honestly assess it and my own capabilities. I would look at the world through the eyes of an investor, not a flighty woman caught up in emotional demands of rescuing a farm. I wouldn’t let that kind of emotion shade my thinking.
At Coulee City, a town about fifty miles west of Spokane, we spent the night at the Grand Hotel. In the morning, we hired a cab to visit the local attractions. The landscape was unlike any I’d ever seen, with high bare ridges. Beyond these were pools of water, shiny lakes really, reflecting white clouds in their mirrored surfaces. A local soul told us the lakes and landscape were the result of a huge prehistoric flood that gouged out this wide coulee. Olea scoffed at that and said there was no evidence of such an event. I didn’t really care. I found the landscape exotic.
A single road worked its way east and west across the coulee, which ran from the Canadian provinces almost to Oregon. Through it, cattle were driven to high country pastures in the summer, then returned to winter in the wide, flat plain that looked to me like a riverbed. The railroad followed the same opening. Looking over the side of the high ridges reminded me of the Dale Creek trestle, though this canyon was much wider and deeper. I still had the dizzy feeling as I looked down.
“Isn’t this an amazing sight?” Louise said.
“Such ruggedness only a few hours from the rolling Palouse Hills. You wouldn’t even think they were in the same country, let alone the same state,” I said.
I liked the dry heat of this coulee and thought the land would be rich and fertile with enough rainfall each year. It felt like a good place to me, but there weren’t many people here, and most who were served the local ranchers. What was there to invest in?
The central part of the state cast a vast view of things. Fewer wooded areas flew past the train windows, and on the slow uphill grades, we watched vistas of deer and even elk herds disappear down deep ravines that bled into plateaus. Here, enterprising pioneers planted orchards. Farming. That’s what people did in Washington State from east to west. It was likely my best bet.
I wanted to treat this trip as strictly business, but I found myself watching Olea and Louise as we traveled. Both seemed to enjoy meeting new people. Louise especially began conversations with strangers no matter where we were. I could have traveled the entire state without meeting anyone, my nose in a book or daydreaming through the windows or watching people from the corners of my eyes without presenting myself as interested in their doings. Louise, however, had other plans. It seemed she’d talk with any young man not attached to a female and then lead him to me for an introduction.
“I’ll find my own fellow,” I told her as we prepared for bed one night in our sleeping car. The train crawled slowly through the mountains, and the sway of it had calmed so I could brush my teeth without hanging on to the door to steady myself.
“I know that,” Louise said. “But you’re so shy. They have no way of knowing if you’re interested.”
“Because I’m not,” I said.
“I can’t understand why. You’re what, twenty-four years old?”
“I’ll be twenty-five,” I corrected.
“The perfect age for marriage.”
“Marriage is not an investment that’s of interest to me,” I said. Relationships couldn’t be researched, checked for possible flaws and errors, and assessed for probable risk—all requirements of good investments if my Blair Business College professors were to be believed.
“Love can’t be managed like a bank account, Clara,” she told me.
“How else does it earn interest?” I said.
She looked at me, then smiled. “You’re teasing me. But I’ll tell you how love earns interest: two people have to make a deposit, pay attention, make adjustments over time. Then they see a return on what they’ve invested, a return that sustains them as they grow older. It might be closer to finance than you realize.”
“You never married,” I said.
“Not because I didn’t want to,” Louise said.
“Why not find another love?”
She looked thoughtful as she sat on the lower bunk, her head bent low. “If that door appeared, I’d open it. But I’ve been blessed with a great friendship in Olea … and now you. My Ladies Aid Society gives me reasons to knit baby booties for young mothers and hear about their children’s lives and even help a li
ttle when I can. It’s a full life, Clara. By God’s grace that’s been enough.”
“Maybe it’s enough for me too,” I said, “being with the two of you, having work.”
“No. There’s an emptiness in you,” she said. She wagged her finger at me. “I can see it in the way you hold back.”
She was right, and her knowing me like that frightened me, until I realized she also didn’t know what might fill me up. Until I knew, she’d keep trying by plying me with special cakes and cookies and introducing me to young men. I guess that was love too.
In view of Mount Rainier with its majestic white cap, we chugged into Seattle. The town bustled with its ferries, which were needed to get from here to there across saltwater sounds to freshwater lakes. It was a town anxious to become a city no longer defined only by timber but by other kinds of commerce, including ship building, a railroad terminus, fishing fleets, and service to the Klondike gold fields. “Maybe I could stake a prospector,” I said as we watched a mule string board a boat headed north. We ate a leisurely lunch near a busy wharf on the harbor.
“That would be a low-risk investment,” Olea mocked.
“But a romantic one,” Louise added. “Nearly everyone in the gold fields are men. Well, except for … entertainers.”
“I wouldn’t go there myself,” I said. “I’d have my own agent, like you have Franklin Doré.”
“It’s too bad we’re here in the fall,” Olea sighed. “The largest fur auction on the West Coast is held here in February. Seattle Fur Exchange. We don’t usually buy through them, with our business primarily in the East. Franklin attends the auctions in Canada. But it would be fun to see how they operate here, what sorts of pelts predominate. I know they charge a four percent commission on lots of over a thousand dollars. Five percent on smaller lots.”
“You’ve done well in the business,” I commented.
“We’ve had our ups and downs, as you know,” Olea agreed.