Not far from Denver, a man approached as though he had news, hailing us. “Women walkers,” he said. We stopped to greet him, and before Mama could show him a photograph to sell, he grabbed the grip that held our money and possessions, save the pepper-box pistol I kept in my pocket.
“Give that back!” she shouted.
“Stupid women,” he snarled. “Tramps. You’re asking for this.”
His need to condemn us before running gave me time to get my pistol out. I stepped forward and pulled the trigger, purposefully shooting past his head.
He screamed and Mama grabbed for the grip, swung it from him.
My heart pounded, but I’d acted, done what was necessary. We couldn’t afford to lose our grip. My letters to Forest were in there, all the signatures. Evidence of our accomplishment, which the sponsors would want.
“Now skedaddle,” Mama said. “Perhaps learn to avoid attacking women.” She had her revolver out now. “You’ll walk before us into Denver, and we’ll drop you off at the police station or maybe the governor’s mansion when we get His Honor Mr. McIntire’s signature.”
But as we approached the rail house, we lost our robber when he dodged behind a rail car. I was too tired to chase after him; Mama didn’t either.
“You did well to scare him, Clara, and you’ll notice I didn’t shoot him. It would have delayed us. And for the record, it was your quick thinking and our teamwork that caught him,” Mama said. “Not any well-laid plan.”
In Denver, Mama was granted her speaking engagement. She spoke at a large hall filled with big-hatted women, a few wearing reform dresses like the ones we wore, but most dressed in long skirts with light summer jackets for the late-afternoon heat. Feathers shifted with round fans bearing advertisements for products like Coca-Cola and politicians like William Jennings Bryan. At the auditorium door, I sold pictures of us, which kept us out of the laundry houses to earn our next dollars. It also kept me out of the limelight, something I truly wanted to avoid.
Mama looked magnificent on that stage, burgundy curtains behind her. She told her stories of the mines, of crossing the trestle, and included the latest adventure with the would-be robber. She wove in local stories such as the upcoming elections and chastised Colorado women, who had given up their right to vote a few years ago, urging them to get it back. She acted out the events and made people laugh and cheer and applaud. I’d never seen this side of her. I was nothing like her, nothing. She was magnificent.
She ended by speaking of our family, how she was walking not just to prove a woman’s strength but to keep her family together, acting out in her way what every woman in America did by cooking, cleaning, taking in wash, putting in gardens, canning peaches and pears—all the little things that go unnoticed, she said, but were critical for life, for family. All for family.
Women had tears in their eyes and I did too. She hadn’t mentioned the money, and I was glad of that. And proud of her performing. I liked how happy she looked.
“My family is my compass,” she said, “giving me direction, telling me how to find my way home.”
A man in the back yelled out, “Your husband should have kept that compass for himself and kept you home with it!”
A murmur rose from the women and the few other men as necks craned to see who had spoken. My mother’s face grew pink.
“Only a strong man would not be threatened by a strong wife,” I said loud enough for my mother to hear from the stage.
“My daughter,” my mother said, and the crowd began to applaud, drowning out the heckler’s retort.
We walked back to our hotel, each of us in thought.
“Clara?”
“Yes, Mama?”
“Oh, never mind. Just Clara.” She held my hand, swinging it as though we were children playing. “I’m so glad you came with me on this journey. Every good adventure deserves to be shared. Aren’t you a little bit pleased we’ve come this far?”
“I guess,” I said and realized I meant it. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel put-upon. I felt hopeful.
Coming down the steps the next morning from our hotel room, which had been provided by one of the suffragettes of Denver, I stumbled and fell. Pain seared through my ankle like an ice pick pierced into bone.
“You didn’t break it, did you?” Mama asked. She squatted down.
“No.” I gasped, taking in the sharp stabs that radiated all around my right foot.
“Let’s get you into the room and take that shoe off,” Mama said. “I’ll get ice to keep the swelling down.”
“I’m sorry, Mama. I just—”
“Not your fault. I think I see a loose carpet tack. It tripped you up. I’ll have words with the management.”
“No, I—”
“Let’s get you up on the bed.” She helped me hobble upstairs, then pulled out pillows, which I gingerly set my foot on. My ankle throbbed with my toes pointed upward. Oh, how it hurt!
She unhooked the shoe quickly, tugged at it gently, but the movement still brought tears to my eyes. I sat up on my elbows to look. It already swelled, as big as a bedpost.
I flopped back on the bed. I should never let myself be happy or hopeful. There was always another shoe to drop, and it most likely would drop on me.
FOURTEEN
Negotiations
I’ll telegraph the sponsors,” Mama said. “We’ve got to get an extension. They gave us one for your sickness. Surely a sprained ankle qualifies. You need time to heal. I’ll speak to the hotel manager too.”
“Please, Mama. No talk of lawsuits. We don’t have time.”
“Ja, you’re right about that, but they’re negligent. That carpet wasn’t tacked down.”
“Don’t … don’t bring attention, please.”
Mama looked at me, a frown on her face. “I’ll simply tell the manager that I’ll need work, as we must remain. Any meals or other accoutrements their fine establishment cares to offer will be mentioned when I speak to the newspaper.”
“You have to go to the newspaper about this?”
“Clara. We are here. Now. On this journey. We do what we must and adapt. That’s what an Estby—”
“—does. But I’m not.”
She sighed. “I’ve work to find.”
Mama did go to the newspaper to advertise another presentation. She added to her performance the benefits of walking, how she’d been strengthened despite her accident four years previous.
“You talked about your broken pelvis?” I couldn’t believe it when she rehashed the evening. I couldn’t attend. I spent my time writing letters and making sketches from memory, and I worked on a design of my own.
“No. I wasn’t specific. You wouldn’t have been embarrassed.” She held the quarter heart of Hardanger lace in her hands, moving it between her graceful fingers. “But there are proposed laws in states east of here to prevent women’s ‘walking exhibitions.’ I might not be able to speak about what we’re doing. I just learned that. The intention is to protect us women. But in truth, they don’t want people to hear about women who are not wasting away, not weak, who don’t constantly need a helping hand. People need to see that we are enduring souls willing and able to step up both mentally and physically to help our families.” She might have given her lecture right there, but she noticed the object in my hands. “What have you made there?”
“It’s … something I’ve designed,” I said. “Since my monthlies have stopped—”
“They’ll come back as soon as we’re not walking so much,” she assured me. “Dr. Latham said that might happen.”
“I used the rags to make a binder for my … breasts.” My face felt hot. “Since we’ve been without the corsets, I … My chest …”
She held up the strips of cloth I’d sewn together. “How does it work?”
I put it on over my blouse, showed her how the straps formed a crisscross over my shoulders and wrapped beneath my breast. “It offers support,” I said.
“Why, that’s
inventive,” she said. “What good thinking, Clara. Can you make one for me too?”
I lay awake as she slept. Despite my worries over arriving on time, I secretly liked my mother’s company. I enjoyed her descriptions of the women in the audiences, her encounters with the wealthy, her presentation of herself as an equal. She wasn’t a scared child waiting to deliver an unplanned baby; she wasn’t a tired mother looking after her children and husband in the big farm kitchen; she was formidable, a woman making her way. Despite the risky wager, I found I admired her tenacity, her refusal to be a shamed woman for the rest of her life though she hadn’t married for love. I liked, too, that she admired something I’d made, an idea that would ease both of us as we walked. This was an educational journey.
After two weeks, we began again and followed the Burlington rails through the unending horizon heading for Lincoln, Nebraska, where my mother walked right up to the porch of William Jennings Bryan’s home, hoping for his signature. Sadly, he was off campaigning to become the president of the United States. His wife, Mary, though, bought several pictures and signed her name to the signature book, the only woman who had. “In Cambridge,” Mary Bryan told us, “they voted not to give women university degrees even though they attend classes, and then they hung a woman in effigy, on a bicycle, wearing a bifurcated skirt, right from the top of Cambridge Hall.”
“Appalling,” Mama said when Mary showed us the photograph in the New York Times.
That picture jogged my complacent fear. Mama had said in the East we’d have sisters. But Cambridge represented civilization, didn’t it? Our bold adventure might not be so welcomed.
Out of Omaha, we followed the Rock Island Railroad lines. In Des Moines, Mama gave two interviews, one with Decorah-Posten, the Norwegian paper, which gave us one sentence. With the English paper, she emphasized the wager again, and the reporter suggested we were “greedy,” trying to take hard-earned money from businesspeople, the sponsors, for our own gain. He said we were women of questionable morals for walking the rails unescorted and fraternizing with men all across the country.
My face burned with the charge that seemed half right.
The weather changed as we trudged toward Chicago, cold stings of snow hitting our faces and melting on our straw hats and shoulders though it was only October. Nothing looked worthy of sketching, so I didn’t. I complained that my legs were cold despite the woolen socks, and my ankle ached by day’s end. The chilly wind roared up our shorter reform dresses. “I never thought I’d miss our long skirts,” Mama said, “but I do.” It was the closest she came to a complaint.
We stepped out behind the curtain onto a stage inside a Chicago department store to stares and scattered applause. Modeling the reform clothes available in the store helped us to earn funds, publicity for our photographs, and advertisements for Mama’s speeches. Best of all, the store had heat. We needed warm jackets, which we’d get as part of our modeling pay. I looked with envy at the women in their fur stoles and muffs. A few sniffed at us, and one even covered her daughter’s face with her gloved hands, she thought we were so provocative.
Mama was her performing self, quoting the Chicago Tribune in an article advocating reform clothes, decrying the suffering of tight corsets and the filth that long skirts picked up. She wove a good story, that was certain, embellishing what I would have reported as just facts.
“One hundred and ninety-five dollars so far,” I said that evening. We splurged after our modeling job and stayed at a hotel. Mama asked for an accounting of our expenses.
“We’ll get that all back once we reach New York and pick up our prize money,” she said.
“You did get the extension, didn’t you, Mama?” My ankle ached as I stood to dab a wet cloth on stains on our dresses.
“Nothing to worry about.” Mama put the accounting book back in the grip. She didn’t look at me.
“You got them to go to January 1, didn’t you?” By my calculations, we’d need every bit of that time to make even that date. We couldn’t possibly make December 13, the date she’d negotiated when I got sick from the stew.
She turned to me, took a deep breath. “December 13. They wouldn’t accept your ankle injury as an illness.”
“Mama!”
“I argued. I did my best. I don’t get to talk to the sponsors, though. Everything goes through the editor at New York World, and men don’t understand. If I could talk to them … It’ll all work out,” she said patting my shoulder. “We’ll make it. Have a little faith.”
“Taking this detour is not right, Mama.” After walking for nearly a month more, we traveled yet another side trip, which took us close to Canton, Ohio. “Can’t you see our problem, Mama? We have to keep going east.”
“Sometimes you have to put goodness over rightness,” she told me. “We’re visiting a cottage. You’ll like it. It’s only a few miles out of our way. And we don’t have to get signatures anymore in these more urban areas. But this one will be worth it. It’ll be our last.”
This distraction bothered me more than the silver mine episode or the time we spent talking to Wyoming ranchers or Nebraska wheat farmers and their wives. All that talking took time from walking, and that was what mattered most. I couldn’t imagine what made Mama so certain we’d be successful when the facts didn’t support it.
The “cottage” turned out to be a large Victorian home with a picket fence and bare elm branches framing the charming white house. “It’s the president-elect’s home,” Mama said.
“President McKinley?”
“Don’t look so surprised. Surely you didn’t think I’d pass up an attempt to let you meet your hero.”
“And get that one last famous signature.”
“It will add to the story,” she said, bumping my hip.
“You can’t just walk up to the door and knock. Maybe he won’t be here,” I said. I hoped he wouldn’t be. My hair looked a fright. And yet when William McKinley came to the door and Mama introduced me and herself, I could barely say his name. Mama congratulated him, said she hoped he’d remember the women’s vote one day, and then showed him our picture and a newspaper article we’d brought with us, the most recent one from the Ohio State Journal of November 24. “I’d like your signature, for the sponsors,” Mama said.
“Certainly. Come in,” he said. “If you’ll wait in the parlor.” He pointed after he signed Mama’s book. “I’ll wheel my wife in to join us and ask Lotty to set up for tea.”
A satin flowered settee, the pictures of a young girl and an infant, frames with gold flourishes, mirrors (which revealed the decrepit state of my hair), a coal stove, and a grand piano marked the parlor of a home both modest yet elegant. Distinguished, orderly, not too opulent, and pleasant—the way life ought to be, I thought, just the way McKinley had campaigned.
“Mrs. McKinley has fainting spells,” Mama whispered. She fingered the fringe on the lamp. “They’re devoted to each other. That’s why he didn’t campaign away from home very much and answers his own door. Both of their children died; so tragic. The story is that they met when Mrs. McKinley worked as a financial manager and ran the bank when her father traveled. The president-elect had his accounts there.”
The mention of banks made me think of Forest. I wondered what he was doing now. Might I one day live in such an elegant home, loved by a devoted husband like Forest?
“A woman as a financial manager? You mean like a banker?” I said.
“Like a banker.”
“Who would never be caught less than three weeks away from a deadline that’s nearly five hundred miles ahead.”
“Clara,” Mama sighed. “It’s your birthday present, meeting him. You’ll please me if you simply accept it.”
My birthday. I’d forgotten. I’d lost a year of my life on this trip. I thought I’d be turning nineteen, but instead I’d be turning twenty, with my mother giving me the only birthday present I could remember that she hadn’t sewn herself, at least not with thread.
Thir
ty-five miles a day, walking to make up time, legs aching, feet wet and cold. Chapped cheeks, no fur mufflers to keep my neck warm, though we’d bought warm hats after Chicago. No fat on our bones, so the wind played against our narrow backs as though we were xylophones. Through Pennsylvania we accepted warm meals from the Amish, whom Mama described as the true heart of America. I could have bunked with them for the winter, they acted so welcoming.
Energized, we made forty miles one day. In Pittsburgh we rode a trolley, acceptable because it was a free ride, Mama said, apparently no longer worried over spies turning us in as contract breakers. Maybe because there wasn’t any way we’d fulfill the contract. But like a child who hopes for dessert even when the plate is empty, I prayed we would prevail. Maybe it was Jonah and the whale that inspired, despite the narrowness of that whale’s throat.
News of our arrival now preceded us with greater interest, so in Reading, when we stayed at a hotel, we had requests from visitors who’d read the news reports of our trek. Mama entertained the reporters and society people with her stories. I even joined in at one point by saying, “McKinley well deserved to win. He’s steady and conscientious and understands finances. Mr. Bryan makes a good speech, but his interest in returning to the silver standard from the gold I think not very wise at all.”
“Everyone’s entitled to her opinion,” Mama chirped. “I know I have mine!”
“A woman who doesn’t is dead,” one of the suffragettes said to laughter.
One reporter described us both as “intelligent and well-spoken even as they disagreed” and said he was “charmed” by the “bronzed western women none the worse for wear.” Maybe Mama could charm the sponsors. Maybe I could too.
On December 10, with us slogging our way through New Jersey, I knew we could not make the deadline and all we had left was charm. This entire trip would be for nothing. We’d spent two hundred dollars and had one hundred remaining. We’d been seven months away from family, pushed our bodies to such leanness, and all for nothing. Anger and disappointment, futility and regret, churned through my day.