“It’s perfect timing then,” I said.
“I don’t see how,” Olea said.
“You’ll need a place to stay while you rework the kitchen. I want you to come home, Olea. We do. I’m not sure we ever said that out loud when I got back from Finland and learned you’d bought your house, but I am now. You are my family, you and Louise, and I’d like us to be together.”
“What’s brought this about?”
“I don’t know why you left. Maybe you thought I wanted you to go, or maybe you were offended by my wanting to go to Finland alone, but—”
“But you went with Franklin,” Louise said. “Didn’t you?”
“Yes. I did. It was selfish of me, and I’m sorry.” I took a deep breath. “I just saw my sister,” I said. “She invited me to come home and told me I hadn’t been sent away, that I’d gone on my own. I don’t remember it that way at all. I guess in a way I had, but—”
“So you need Louise and I to be together now that you’re going home.”
“No! They want me to return but to act as though what I’ve done these past years has no meaning because … you gave me the start. And they still don’t allow my mother to talk about the trip. Apparently she’s accepted that, even though my stepfather has passed on.”
“I’m sorry,” Louise said. “He was a good man.”
“You didn’t know him, Louise.” Olea said, turning to her.
“Didn’t I?”
I patted her hand. “But seeing Ida helped me realize I’ve been dreaming of a reunion that could never be. I’d like to help them, but what Ida wants is for me to forget who has given me strength these past years.”
“Oh, you can’t forget God,” Louise said. “He’s the one who’s done that.”
I looked at her. “Yes, He did, when I listened. But my sister was speaking of you two. I’ve made a new life, and you’re my family now. So please, Olea, come back. Let’s live together. I need you because I’m going to do something you and Franklin suggested I do years ago: make up fur fashion designs and have them manufactured. I’m going to sell the other river property and invest it to take care of us.”
“You’ll make designs?” Olea asked.
“I have a few finished, and I’m thinking of—”
“I thought you should have done that years ago instead of that trapping business or the fur ranching fantasy,” Olea said.
“And you were right.”
“She got a nice trip to Europe though,” Louise said.
“And she almost died of pneumonia too,” Olea reminded her.
“But the Warrens looked after me. They were sent just when I needed them,” I said. I loved the banter between Olea and Louise, my part in the subject. I’d missed that!
“Lucky you.” Olea smiled. “We’ll have to plan a trip together, the three of us.”
“Yes, we will,” I said. “You’ll come back and live here? Please do.”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
We turned the shed into a workplace for Olea and got her house repaired and ready to sell. A hawk circled outside the window higher and higher, and I felt like him, more pleased and satisfied and hopeful than buying property had ever made me. We called Franklin, told him of our plans, and he concurred, helped us define each of our parts in this new venture.
In 1914, when Franklin arrived, we were ready. I’d sold the Spokane River properties to the Washington Water Power Company. It had been the most painful of sales because it meant I was truly giving up the livetrapping future. The water company planned to dam the river, and my orchards and shoreline and even the old building would be under water, only the high timber left. I’d likely never walk the land again. I thought of my mother and the Mica Creek farm. One had to move on.
Olea’s house sold. I’d put the rentals in Spokane on the market, and several other properties I’d planned to keep longer to turn a better profit, I released for sale. I wanted to pool our funds for this large investment. We put the farm up for sale too, but I expected it would take a while to sell given the drought. I’d keep the taxes up.
I might sell the ring Franklin gave me to get more cash … but I couldn’t let go of it, at least not yet. I twirled it on my finger as we talked.
We all sat at the table after finishing a breakfast of oatmeal and maple syrup. The windows frosted with the February cold made designs that reminded me of my mother’s Hardanger lace. Franklin wore a look of anticipation.
“You’ll buy high-quality pelts in Montreal, or Russia if you think, but I’d prefer as much come from North American furs,” I said.
“The size and coverage is better and the color richer and deeper,” Olea reminded him.
He nodded and I continued. “You’ll need to secure a contract with tanners and manufacturers in London. Or Paris or Florence or Athens. We’ll leave that to you. Have the garments made up where you think best, but I did like what I saw in Montreal and Paris. Bring them back for sale here in the States. Sell them in New York and Chicago.”
“Not Spokane?” he said. “Isn’t that what you imagined years ago?”
“Maybe, but you were all right: the big markets are where people are, and that’s the East, New York. Maybe Chicago and Detroit.”
“Clara,” Franklin said, “if you now have resources to invest, don’t you think you should follow what you’d always wanted to do, ranch wild game?”
“It’s sweet of you to remember,” I said. I sat back. “This is a better arrangement for our … family. And this yield doesn’t depend on vagaries of breeding stock or whether I can locate enough protein within a reasonable distance, nor the years it’ll take to see a profit. This is what we think we should do.”
“Tensions are running high in Europe,” he said. “The Balkans. The Greek president was assassinated. The war could involve us.”
That surprised me. “Surely we’ve found more civilized ways to deal with conflict,” I said. We sat thoughtful. Franklin had a better command of European issues.
“Even so, we can contract with Lloyd’s to insure the shipments,” he said. “That way we won’t be out anything if something should happen.”
Lucky meandered into the kitchen, shook himself all over. The gray around his muzzle was a sign that all of us were aging.
“Clara has a surprise for you,” Olea said. “Go ahead, show him.”
This was the real risk, to put out my own work. “I have a few creations,” I said. I went to the room where I kept my folder of precious things: the sketches I’d drawn on the walk, the album of stamps I’d collected. The signature page of the distinguished people, including McKinley’s, fell out. I laid it aside. He was gone now, assassinated by an anarchist way back in ’02, the same year as Olaf’s death. I lifted the thin drawing sheets I’d worked on while Louise snored in her chair. Olea showed Franklin her side cabinets, her new interest now with bedside tables over birds.
But they all hovered when I pulled out the first designs, an ermine stole and muff. “I see it over a red broadcloth coat with black velvet lining and a black beaver hat with a veil. This one would be black fox, the scarf and muff with tails.” He lifted up two or three others. Ermine caps, “near seal,” a man’s black sealskin collar on an overcoat. “He’d wear gaiters over black oxfords,” I pointed. “And this is my personal favorite, a black velvet mantle edged with white fox.” I’d drawn a lattice embroidery of pearl beads and drops to crisscross the cape’s back. “The silver tissue turban would have a paradise.” I pointed to the feather I’d drawn coming off the model’s turban, but Franklin’s eyes were on the magnificent cape.
“Do you have more?”
“A few,” I said. I felt like I was undressing in front of a window at night with the lights on.
“How much are you willing to invest to have these made up?”
I told him. He whistled. “It should return us triple that.”
“Yes. It should.”
“I don’t have those kinds of funds to match your inve
stments,” he said. “I can’t even contribute a quarter of that cash.”
“You’ll be contributing your expertise, the contacts, setting everything up,” Olea told him, “making the best deals you can, marketing what we expect will be one of the finest outlays of fur fashion customers have seen since the turn of the century. We’ve formed a company. Deluxe DDOL Furs, with two Ds for two Dorés and one Olea and Louise. You’ll have to escort the finished product back. That will make up your contribution.”
“I know exactly who should work on these,” he said. “They’re stunning, Clara. You could find yourself in demand as a designer. Maybe I should simply take these and sell them. You wouldn’t risk so much that way.”
“No. We’re going all the way. I’m willing to invest ten thousand dollars for our future.”
The same as what my mother and I had been promised when we started our walk across the country.
Franklin wrote of his progress. I read his letters while Olea sanded a table in the shed. He’d bought fine pelts; he’d chosen the tanners and dressers and shown my designs to furriers in Paris, whom he said raised their eyebrows at their elegance. “Especially the beaded cape,” he wrote. “It will be a smash in Paris and New York.”
I worked on others with Olea leaning over my shoulder, commenting now and then. I soon forgot that I didn’t know what had caused our rift. Families had their ebb and flow, I decided, not unlike a river. There could be dry periods and floods. What mattered was keeping on the river, not letting old snags pull one under or diverting us to streams that simply dried up and disappeared. That’s what had happened with my family: we moved on different rivers. I didn’t see how those streams would ever intersect again.
As I walked the fields that summer under blue skies without a hint of rain, I prayed that it wouldn’t be another year of wanting. I did miss the green of the Palouse Hills, and I wondered if my mother had missed the Mica Creek farm during that long walk, missed not only the children and Ole, but the land itself. What had given her hope on that trip? Her faith? Her history of persevering, of making things happen? Was she trying to repay Ole for all he’d done, rescuing her from the shame of my existence? Maybe our conversations gave her courage on that journey. Maybe my presence did. But no longer, that was certain.
Franklin sent us postcards with special stamps he’d looked for, which I put into my book. Olea, Louise, and I enjoyed morning walks in Coulee City before the high heat of the day. We took the car out for spins. The new pharmacist in town worked on a poured cement wall around his yard meant to keep the rattlesnakes out, as his young wife deathly feared them. He drew lines in the wet cement to make them look like blocks or bricks.
“Are there snakes here?” Louise asked. “I’ve never seen any.”
“I wonder what he’ll do about the gate,” I mused. “They’ll crawl right under that.”
“Maybe I’ll offer him a finished board for the gate that can be raised or lowered depending on the season,” Olea said.
“What we do for love,” I said, thinking that cement wall the sweetest gesture.
When Austrian Archduke Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated in Sarajevo, I read the news report but felt confident it wouldn’t affect our transport scheduled for January. I listened to that voice telling me to walk this way and felt sure I was. But one morning I awoke, sweat drenching my cotton gown. I rose and wrote out my telegram, taking it to the operator as soon as daylight showed itself. Franklin was in Paris, and I wanted to remind him to purchase insurance before he shipped.
Then I thought, How silly. Of course he’s already done that. I walked back home and took a nap.
At harvest that fall, we three women brought dinners of fried chicken, pickled beets, string beans, fresh baked bread, potato salad, and blackberry pies out to the harvesters. Louise commented on my appetite improving, and it had. I enjoyed the taste of the pies and vowed to fix julekaga for us for Christmas. My fingernails had even grown out.
Lucky ambled behind us to the fields. I offered to sit in the “dog house”—what the men called the chair on the combine shaded by an awning. A man sat there and sewed tight the ears of the sacks of grain, something every woman could surely do. But the very idea was met with solemn stares. Women couldn’t be part of the harvest crew; it was probably considered too much work. We were allowed only to steam over a hot kitchen stove in hundred-degree heat, preparing four meals a day to serve to the men. When he finished with his needle and thread, he stuck the needle into his wooden leg while he prepared the next sack. He pulled the needle out, held it in his hand.
“I bet you can’t do that,” he said, handing me the needle.
“Sure I can,” I said. I took the needle from him and stuck it in his wooden leg myself. He yowled.
“Oh, I’m sorry!” My hands flew to my face. I truly was.
“You were s’posed to stick it in your own leg,” he said. “Not my good one.”
“Well, you know how silly women are,” I told him. “We never get instructions right.”
The three of us laughed together when I told Olea and Louise, but I was glad it was only a poke in his leg.
“We feed the world,” I told Louise one day as we gathered eggs from the clutch Olea had built in our backyard. Louise wanted to keep the chickens in the basement of the house, but Olea and I demurred.
“I count only six eggs,” Louise said. “I don’t think that’ll be enough to feed the world. Do you think? It’s unclear.” She sounded so serious, and I laughed and hugged her. What would my life be without her in it? I wondered. I enjoyed the rhythm of this place and was reminded of the peace I’d found growing up on Mica Creek. I missed anew my brothers, sisters, and yes, most of all my mother, but this was the family given to me when I was desolate. I gratefully accepted.
“Fifteenth of January, 1915. Insurance exorbitant. Cargo insured. Not all ready. Getting out. Reach New York, January late. Stop. Franklin Doré.” Mr. Raymond read the telegram to me over the phone. “Sounds like everything is all right, Miss Doré.”
“Yes, Mr. Raymond.” The phrase “exorbitant insurance” bothered me. It would cut into our profits.
“How long has your mister been gone this time?” he asked.
“He’s not my mister,” I said. “You know that.”
“Oh, brother then.”
I let that stand. “Where was it sent from?” I asked.
“Oh, let’s see. London. The Brits are in the worst of it, I hear. Guess he wants you to meet him in New York.”
I didn’t hear the telegram that way at all. But when Mr. Raymond delivered the paper copy to me, I did wonder if Franklin could possibly mean for me to come to New York. Maybe “reach” should have been “meet.” Commerce was terribly interrupted with the Russians, British, Hungarians, Germans, French, and so many other countries shooting at each other, and I couldn’t figure out what it was all about. We read of refugees. It occurred to me that few Europeans would be interested in upgrading their wardrobe of furs until after the conflict was over. Perhaps we’d picked a poor time for this venture.
At least America hadn’t entered the war, though the papers suggested that war machinery geared up even here. Billy was of age for enlisting if it came to that. Arthur might be considered too old at twenty-nine. I wouldn’t let myself think of that. My mother had lost enough sons and me enough brothers. I’d be glad when Franklin reached our shores and telegraphed or called saying all was well.
“Norway declared her neutrality,” Olea said, putting the newspaper down. “But the allies will cut off her trade to be sure we don’t support Germany.” She tapped her fingers on the paper.
“I’m glad Franklin’s getting out and the shipment is on its way.”
“With the war,” Olea said, “the demand might drop for luxury garments like the ones you’ve designed, but it could well increase for military use. Fur hats and trim, uniforms.”
“Nothing I’ve designed comes close to being suitable for military functio
n,” I said.
“We’ll hope for the best,” she said.
We women busied ourselves. Louise knitted in between her snoring naps. Olea had made a cradle she carved for the pharmacist’s wife expecting in the spring. I sketched more designs and put them away, got out my album of stamps. I organized them by color shadings, almost the way a quilter might piece what was left of her little one’s dress or her husband’s trousers. Nothing interrupted the growing restlessness.
On a late January morning, Lucky couldn’t get up. Olea helped him stand as I entered the living room, the smell of bread baking in the oven. We watched him waddle to the porch. He turned back to look at me peering at him through the diamond-shaped glass in the door, then at the steps, then back at me. I opened the door, pulled my coat around me. “You need help?” I said. I lifted him and carried him down the steps. He wobbled a bit as all fours touched the snow, and I was surprised at how little he weighed. He shuffled to a leafless shrub, watered it without raising his leg, turning the snow yellow. He looked back at me as though apologizing for his lapse in manners, then made his way to lie beneath a tree.
“It’s too cold for you out here,” I said approaching. He was at least fifteen years old and had marked my life with Olea and Louise. I helped him stand again, and he let me. When he stumbled, I half carried him onto the screened back porch, where he plopped down on his rug. His doleful eyes stared up at me, and he panted as I squatted and stroked him. “We finally get everyone home and on a good, straight path, and you’re acting like you might leave us. You stay here and rest,” I said. He looked up at me and sighed, closed his eyes and went to sleep.
It’s where Olea found us at lunchtime, me lying beside him, stroking the now still fur.
Louise was nearly inconsolable when we told her of Lucky’s death. Olea rubbed her back and fixed her tea. “He lived a good long life, Louise. And you fed him like a child. When his time came, he just wanted to lie down and sleep. What better way to end life, right there next to Clara?”