“No,” I croaked. Clearing my voice I said, “I’m … I’m leaving. On a trip. I won’t be here for a time. Maybe never again.” I hoped he’d look sad at my parting.
“Nonsense,” he said. He looked behind me, toward the Stapleton home. I turned to look too, leaning out from behind the tree. Leafed out, the branches blocked a view of the window that his mother might look through if she still ruled in the parlor. He moved closer, smiled, and I pressed my back against the tree trunk, the bark scratchy and firm against my thin jacket. He checked the house again, then stared into my eyes. He leaned an arm over me, resting it on the tree, and with his other hand, he lifted my chin. So very close. “You’ll be back. Trips don’t last forever.”
“This one will take seven months at least,” I said. I swallowed, relishing his closeness, fearing it. He touched the back of his finger to my cheek, stroking gently, then to my neck, where blood pounded. His touch felt like lightning crackling in a summer storm. He left his hand there, my veins disclosing the secrets of my heart. “Your mother will fill you in, I’m certain of that,” I said. I wanted him to move his hand, and yet I didn’t. “She thinks the trip a foolish one. So do I.”
“Don’t let Mother frighten you,” he said. “I’ve read about it, your journey. You’re … brave, Clara. I wish I’d known of your adventurous streak.”
I hadn’t thought of bravery or being adventurous, only that I was obedient. His gaze caused my mouth to dry up like creeks in autumn.
He leaned away then, removed his fingers from my throat, empty cool air replacing them.
“Well, I shall miss our little chats,” he said.
“I could write,” I whispered. “Send a postcard.”
He shook his head. “Mother always checks the mail first.”
“Maybe I could send letters to one of your friend’s addresses?”
He smiled, touched my soft curls as though they might break, wrapped one around his finger. “Write and keep them, and when you return, perhaps you can hand them to me in person. We can … have lunch together.”
“All right,” I said. He invited me to lunch. “They’ll be my diary.” He returned his hat, picked up his case. “You could write to me,” I said. “The newspapers along the way will receive our mail and—”
“It wouldn’t be wise for a Stapleton to send messages to a newspaper,” he said. “Possible publicity, you know. Bad for my father’s bank.”
“I suppose … not.” I lowered my eyes. I’d embarrassed myself with such a suggestion.
“You write things down, Clara.” He sounded like one of my teachers indulging my enthusiasm for a subject unrelated to their classes. He stood in front of me, both hands on his briefcase. I no longer needed to lean back into the tree. “You can tell me all about it when you return.” He moved toward my face then and I thought that, yes, he might kiss me. Instead, he simply whispered, “Good-bye, dear Clara. I wish you well.”
He’d stepped around me, leaving confusion and the scent of his cologne in his wake.
I wiped my eyes of the onions. I didn’t tell Mama that part, only that Forest Stapleton was a gentleman and I’d be writing to him instead of keeping a journal. She took that to be that I had wedding thoughts, for heaven’s sake.
“There’ll be little time for writing and such,” my mother informed me. “We must make twenty-nine miles a day to finish on time.”
I gasped. “That’s walking from Spokane to Rockford. Every day.”
“Every day. Oh, don’t look so glum. A woman can do anything for a day.”
“Hurry Ida and the children along,” Mama said. “No sense eating these cold.” She started to sing a Norwegian festival song. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that she sang out of tune.
My siblings’ timing proved impeccable. Ida joined us in the kitchen first. My father and Olaf entered from the barn, taking cooled milk from the icebox and replacing it with fresh warm liquid. The middle-age children, Arthur and Bertha, rumbled down the stairs and gathered round the table that Ida and I finished setting. My brothers filled in the bench where Henry once sat, but they couldn’t fill in the space he left in our hearts.
Bertha wiped her eyes with her fingers as she sat, waiting for the signal to begin. She’d been called home from the Rutters’ for this weekend. She scanned the table with the stack of pancakes, little dishes of jams and jellies, fresh-baked rolls promising to be soft and chewy. “It feels like a birthday party with Mama singing. All we need is a cake.”
“Do you remember when I made that cake for your birthday?” Ida asked Bertha.
“When Mama visited her mother? In Wisconsin?”
Ida nodded. “I was your mother for then.”
Actually, I’d taken care of the children while Mama was gone those two months, walking across Minnesota and Wisconsin. I didn’t need to steal Ida’s thunder; she’d be drenched by the end of this meal anyway.
“We had a big cake, Clara. Papa rode to Mica Creek, to Schwartz’s store, but they had no soda, so he had to ride all the way to Rockford to get it so Ida could make my cake.”
“She knows the story,” Olaf told her. He arched one of his seventeen-year-old lanky legs over the back of the chair and sat down, reaching for a slice of the bacon our mother set on the table. Ida rolled her eyes as he said, “We all know the story.”
I knew it but still felt left out. At the time I’d been working on a neighboring farm while they all shared this pleasure.
“Now I make cakes for the Rutters,” Bertha said and she wrinkled her nose at her brother. Bertha reached for a potato pancake.
“You wait for grace,” I cautioned.
“You weren’t here for the party. And neither was Mama,” Bertha said, “so I have to tell you the story.” Her blond hair hung in braids and she smiled.
“Hedvig, fill your plate,” my mother said as she poured the milk. “But wait to say grace.”
“My name is Bertha, Mama. It’s more American.”
“Nothing wrong with Norwegian,” Ida said. She refilled our brothers’ coffee cups, brought a small amount of sugar, and set it in front of Papa.
“Silence,” Papa said. “We pray over the food, then you eat your potet without chatter.”
We all sat now, except for the little children, who still slept. All bowed our heads in silence while Papa prayed in English. Then the sounds of forks on ironstone interrupted while the occasional “please pass” and mange takk, a Norwegian thank-you, punctuated the rest of the meal.
As we finished, the younger children skipped downstairs in their nightclothes, and Ida and I assisted with their dressing. Even though it was May 1, the air felt chilly and I imagine the stove was a welcome comfort to their birdlike legs and slender little bodies. They sat at the table while I served them hot rommergrot, pouring milk on the creamy porridge I’d begun to prepare as soon as I heard their feet on the floor above us. Johnny, William—Billy, we called him—and Lillian ate silently as Mama stood at the end of the table.
She looked at me and a shiver went through me. What she was about to tell the little ones would change their lives forever. Mine too.
“You older children know we are facing a difficult time,” Mama began. “Your papa’s injury makes it difficult for him to work, and the world now makes it hard for people to find jobs doing carpenter work even if he could do more. No one builds in either Rockford or Spokane. The farm feeds us, and that is why Olaf comes home so often. Now he works two places, Spokane and for the family.”
“He got sick,” Bertha piped up. “He came home so you could make him well.”
“Yes. He had diphtheria but now he’s better. He is a big help on this farm, and the farm is very important. So important that we must find a way to pay what is due. This year, even the ten percent interest on our loan is playing hide-and-seek with us. So it is very important that we keep the farm from foreclosure. Very important.”
“What’s four closure?” eight-year-old Johnny asked. “Is there a five c
losure?”
“It means we need to pay back money we don’t have,” I told him. I touched his blond hair with my hand. “They will take the farm instead of money.”
His eyes were big and round, but I only spoke the truth.
“Where would we go if we lost the farm?” Bertha asked.
“It will work out,” Papa said. “It always has. What your mother proposes is not necessary. We could live with my sister if needed.”
The boys looked at each other. Our parents were disagreeing in front of them, an event as rare as snow in July.
“Not this time,” Mama said.
I looked at my father. His eyes drooped. It must be difficult for him to have his wife talking about finances, something a Norwegian man usually took care of, saw it as his duty, not his wife’s.
“Without the farm we cannot sustain our family,” my mother insisted. “I’ve found the help.” She spoke to the children now, turning her back on my father. “Sponsors, wealthy women, will pay us ten thousand dollars if we can walk from Spokane to New York within a certain time.”
“Ti tusen dollar,” Ida whispered. She was shorter than I, slender, with perfect gold hair braided in a crown at the top of her head. She sank back into her chair.
“Why would anyone pay that?” Bertha asked.
“Where is New York?” Arthur asked. “Can I walk there too?”
“No. It’s too far away and you’re too young. And to answer Bertha: for a fashion campaign, to show off the new reform skirts that women can wear when we bicycle or go on a picnic, without having to wear corsets.” Olaf raised his blond eyebrows at our mother. She said, “Nothing risqué. Goodness, no. Legs all covered by stockings or boots or skirt. But it will show that women are strong, that we are more capable than men give us credit for. Imagine, earning our way across the continent.”
“If you finish the walk,” my father said. “Unharmed. The danger does not go away because you tell us so.” The little ones had stopped eating their rommergrot and watched, heads turning back and forth as each parent spoke.
“We’ve been given this great opportunity. God will be with us in the danger, and walking thirty-five hundred miles will prove a woman’s endurance.”
“But not so much her sound judgment,” my father said.
I agreed with him, for all the good it did either of us.
“I’m so sorry, Ida,” I said. My sister sobbed as we slopped the pigs in the pig shed, their grunting and squealing loud enough that we had to raise our voices even to share a confidence. “I wouldn’t go at all except that Mama needs a companion.”
“If you refused, maybe she wouldn’t go,” Ida cried.
“Mama never changes her mind. You know that. She’d go on alone or get someone else to go with her, and none of us would know what was happening.”
“I hated it when she went to Wisconsin to help Bestemor when Bestefar died,” Ida said.
“Her mother needed her.”
“Ja, I remember,” she said, then mocked Mama. “ ‘You had your father here and Clara and each other, much more than Bestemor had in her time of grief.’ ” Anger seasoned Ida’s tone. “What if one of the children gets sick?” Ida said. She set the bucket down and turned to me. “What’ll I do if—?”
“Papa is here. You’re not alone,” I said. She was more frightened than angry; I could see it in her face. “The big medicine book is in the kitchen. Neighbors will help.” But I knew what she feared. Accidents happened. Diphtheria sneaked into a household and ravaged it. Fires burned houses down. “You’ll be proud that you kept the family fed.” I didn’t tell her how the days dragged like a weighted iron attached to my foot when Mama had been gone before. There’d been another feeling then too: emptiness. No, empty wasn’t the right word either. My mother was our anchor, and when she left, even for short periods, I felt adrift.
“What is it about her that makes Mama go like that?” Ida said. “Why can’t she be a good wife like Olga Siverson or Nora Olson? They never go anywhere. Do we make Mama want to leave us?”
“No,” I said, though uncertain. “No. This is Mama’s way of being a good mother. We have to be good children and do our part.”
Ida wiped her face with her apron. “Aren’t you afraid of walking that far?”
“Yes, I am. But I’m more … mad, that I have to leave my job and maybe.” I decided not to tell her about Forest.
Ida’s lips quivered. “I’m really scared she won’t come back this time.”
“No. Don’t worry about that. I’ll bring her back. There’s no sense putting your worries in a wheelbarrow,” I said.
“It’s heavy enough as it is,” Ida said with me. We both smiled at one of Mama’s sayings. Ida sighed. “I guess it’s going to happen and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“At least I won’t have to wear a corset after Salt Lake City,” I said.
“You’re so like Mama,” she said, “finding the good in a bad.”
FIVE
Mighty Fortress
According to the contract that I never did get to see, we had to start from Spokane. So on May 5, 1896, we rode the Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company line to the Spokane terminal, walked to the Spokane Daily Chronicle to verify our presence, and then walked the twenty-eight miles from Spokane, home to the farm on Mica Creek. We spent our first night of the journey in our own beds. I dreaded the good-byes in the morning.
I walked out onto the porch with my parents there, Mama saying, “We cannot lose the farm, Ole. We can’t.”
“A man is the head,” he said lamely.
“Maybe in Norway. But we are here now. We decide together.”
He snorted at that, and I made a noise to alert them to my presence.
Mama turned but didn’t acknowledge me. Instead she left the porch, walking toward Olaf. My brother brought the horses from the barn, and as she patted the animals’ rumps, a puff of dust rose up. I followed her out. She told Olaf how good they looked as he brought them up beside the pig shed. Olaf hugged Mama with one arm, holding the harness in the other. “Godspeed, Mama,” he said. “Write to us.”
“You know I will,” she said. She brushed the blond hair from his forehead. “You’re well,” she said. “You are.”
He nodded. “I’m strong as an ox.” He flexed the muscles of one arm. “I’ll look after Papa, make sure he doesn’t reinjure himself.”
“That’s good. Take care of yourself too, my son.” Olaf nodded, checked a ring on the harness. I thought he avoided her eyes so that she might not see his tears or maybe how her kind words affected him.
“Don’t go driving anyone while we’re gone,” I teased. He smiled. I wasn’t sure he’d ever courted a girl, though he had lagged behind with Mary Larsen while walking back from church once or twice. “The little ones will tattle on you.”
“Don’t you either,” he said.
“Tattle? Or drive with someone?”
“Both.” He grinned. I hugged him. We had our secrets, the two of us, trouble we’d gotten into as children, wasting precious time in the fields telling stories instead of working, things we thought about farming and our futures. We looked as different as night from day, he so blond and muscular, me so dark and lean. The horses stomped their impatience and Olaf took the signal to nod to Mama, then spoke to the horses and flicked the reins across their rumps. He jerked behind them with the harness trailing until they reached the field and could hitch up the plow.
Bertha ran out of the house as we moved back toward it. She carried two hard-boiled eggs. “For your lunch, Mama,” she said. “And yours, Clara.”
“A good idea!” Mama said as we returned to the porch where our leather grips sat waiting. “You’re so thoughtful, Bertha.”
“It was Arthur’s idea. He said we should boil them.” Arthur stood off to the side patting the dog’s head. Sailor panted. I wished that dog was going with us.
“Then we thank you both.” Mama pulled Arthur forward, kissed his face, Bertha?
??s forehead. I took the eggs and put them in my grip.
Johnny pushed his head between his siblings and wrapped his arms around Mama’s neck. Then he came to hug me and whispered, “Bring me back a New York frog. It will jump higher than Arthur’s from Mica Creek.”
“I’ll look for the very best,” I whispered back.
“You be a good boy for Ida and your papa, all right?” Mama said, tapping him on the shoulder. Johnny nodded. His lower lip quivered. She pulled him into her skirts, held his arms as he lowered his head into her side. The two stood rocking side to side until four-year-old Billy cuddled close.
Mama started to lift him, but Billy said, “I’m too big for you to carry.”
“So I can’t put you into my little case and take you with me?”
I winced at her mistake.
His eyes grew large. “Yes, take me! I’ll climb right inside!” He wiggled free, pulled at her grip, which weighed less than he had at birth.
She opened the bag, snapped the frame and handle back, and it stood open, wide like a jaw. He peered inside as she squatted beside him. “You are too big, son,” she said. “See?”
“You need the lantern,” he agreed. “If I go, you won’t have room for light.”
“That’s right. And we need the light very much.”
“All right,” he said and stepped back. “I’ll stay here.”
Lillian waddled over and wove her sticky fingers into Mama’s hair. In the seven months we’d be gone, Lillian would change the most. Lillian’s blond hair, soft as peach fuzz, glistened in the sunrise.
“Mama go?”
“Soon.” Mama kissed her head, squeezed her, then handed the baby to me, her eyes moist.
The smell of Lillian’s hair and the smoothness of her face against my cheek closed my throat. How can she leave them? How can I leave them?
“I have a surprise for you, Lillian,” Mama said. She sniffed, then handed my sister a piece of Hardanger lace shaped like a heart, one Mama had stitched herself. She pulled a small pair of scissors from her pocket and cut the heart in two. “You keep this half of my heart. Keep it safe for everyone to have now and then. Put it under your pillow, then maybe Johnny’s, then the rest. A different pillow each night.”