The Year We Were Famous (3 page)

Pa put both elbows on the table and cradled his cup in his hands. He bent his head to take a sip. "You don't know your Ma if you think I can talk her out of anything she has her mind set on. She's found someone to take her up on this walking idea, and she's so hepped up on this notion that nothing short of tethering her to the bedpost would keep her home."

"I'm sorry, Pa. This whole thing is partly my fault. We were trying to think of ways to save the farm and I started mooning about wanting to be like Nellie Bly and seeing the world, and that sparked her idea of walking across the country."

"So you'd like to be like Nellie Bly?"

"I'd never be crazy enough to walk clear across the country by myself." I meant what I said when I said it, but just the words triggered daydreams of writing stories as I went from town to town, and of people from coast to coast reading about my adventures.

Pa tilted his head quizzically, and I regained my common sense.

"Of course I wouldn't do it, and Ma shouldn't try it, either," I said. "She could break a leg."

"I know." Pa bent his head for another sip.

"She could have another of her dismal spells, and she'd have no one with her who understood her and her moods."

"I know." Pa sighed.

I wondered if Ma would get to see the site of the Chicago World's Fair, if she'd meet Indians, or see buffalo on the Great Plains. My head was so far away from the kitchen in Mica Creek that I missed what Pa said next. "I'm sorry—what?"

Pa leaned forward, glancing at the bedroom door to make sure Ma wasn't up yet. "I said, since I can't talk Ma out of it, would you be willing to go with her?"

Maybe when I'd said she shouldn't be so far from home without someone to help her he thought I had been hinting that I should go with her. I had fantasized about traveling across the country before, but I had never imagined walking every step of the way with Ma. It was Ma as well as Mica Creek that I wanted to get away from while I figured out my life. And I knew the difference between fantasies and real life. In fantasies, your heart thrilled to feel the ground shake at the thunder of a hundred wild horses. In real life, your heart, lungs, and everything else got mashed as a hundred stampeding horses spooked and trampled you. Walking the twenty-five miles home, as I had on long weekends when I attended high school in Spokane, took nearly all day, but then I could tend my blisters and rest. To get from here to New York, I'd have to get up, blisters or no, and walk twenty-five miles again the next day, and the next day, and the next..."For seven months?"

"I doubt that you'll be gone seven months. You know how she gets with her notions. She will probably burn out before she gets to Walla Walla and you'll both be back before harvest. I just want to have someone with her, to make sure she gets back home."

"Who would take care of Billy and Lilly and all of the others if both of us go?"

"Ida's old enough to look after them."

"She's only fourteen," I said.

"You were only twelve when Ma broke her pelvis and you took over for her."

The blood pounded at my temples. I wasn't a flibbertigibbet who could blithely agree to walk across the whole country like it was just tripping over to the next farm. And I wasn't crazy. I knew this walk would be harder than Ma expected. Could Ma hold on to the energy she had now for seven months?

Pa said, "If you're worried about Erick, I don't think you need to be. He'll still be waiting for you when you get back." He smiled reassuringly.

"Pa, I know you like Erick, and I like him, too. But I don't want to get married—not now. I want to see more of the world."

"Here's your chance then!" Pa looked at me expectantly.

I closed my eyes.

"Yes or no, Clara. Stop mugwumping and get off the fence."

I restrained my half smile as I thought of what the girls at Lewis and Clark High School would think when they found out I was walking all the way to New York City. I had been Cinderella Clara, the one who had to hire out as a domestic to have a place to live while I went to school. I had been the skittery country mouse, too timid to look anyone in the eye. If I went with Ma, I might become famous, right along with her.

This would be my year abroad, my year to turn the old Clara into someone bold, someone with newfound talents, strengths, and purpose in life. Those uppity girls from Lewis and Clark would read about me in the papers and say, "Oh, yes! I knew Clara Estby from school. She was a quiet one, but deep. I always knew she'd surprise us someday."

I opened my eyes and did not restrain my smile. "
Ja,
" I said, "if you think I should."

When we heard Ma's rustling from the bedroom, Pa and I looked toward the door.

He smiled; at least I think he did. His bushy, reddish-brown mustache all but covered up his mouth. "You're a good girl, Clara," he said. "I know it's asking a lot, dealing with Ma by yourself away from home. I doubt if you'll really have to go the whole way."

He raised his cup toward me in thanks. "
Tak,
" he said. "Pretend to be surprised when Ma asks you to go with her."

My mouth gaped open as I watched Pa go back out to the barn. What had I gotten myself into?

A week later, when Ma received a letter from New York, I found out.

Note to Mrs. Helga Estby: Per your instructions, I have added 'and her daughter' to Clause 2. Miss A. J. Waterson

Contract between Waterson Press and Mrs. H. Estby

1. The walk from Washington State to New York City shall be completed by November 30, 1896, although by mutual agree
   ment this time may be extended in case of unpreventable delays such as illness.
   
2. Mrs. Esthy and her daughter will start their trip with no more than $5.00 apiece and they must earn additional money as needed for food, lodging, and replacing shoes and clothing.
   
3. Mrs. Esthy must document her trip by granting interviews and obtaining signatures of governors, mayors, or other notables along her route. She must also submit monthly logs of miles walked.
   
4. Mrs. Estby will not divulge the name of the party with whom she has made this contract, who wishes to remain anonymous until Mrs. Estby has completed the book based on her travels and it is published.
   

In return for meeting all these conditions, I, A.J. Waterson, will award to Helga Estby the sum of $10,000 as an advance against the proceeds of lecture fees and the sale of her book.

W
HO
is Miss A. J. Waterson?" I asked, poking one finger at her signature. "I've never heard of Waterson Press."

Ma shrugged and averted her eyes from mine. "Well, I don't know Miss Waterson personally, of course. But one of my suffrage society friends suggested a New York publisher. You just have to let enough people know what /C) you want, and someone will know someone "who can help you. That's part of hoopla—something you could use a little more of yourself."

I was too distracted to take offense at Ma's criticism. My hands holding the contract trembled; my heart forgot to beat. We were really going to do it.

In a whirlwind of activity, Ma took care of the hoopla and I took care of the details. She talked the husband of another of her Spokane friends into taking our picture so we'd have copies to send to the newspapers and sell along the way. She also talked him into printing two hundred postcard-size calling cards, or—as she airily called them—
cartes de visite.
They read:

Mrs. H. Estby and daughter,
Pedestrians. Spokane to New York.

I didn't rate my own name on the cards.

She sent a copy of our photograph to the
New York World,
along with a letter explaining her desperation to save the farm and her passionate support of women's suffrage. A week later, she received a large envelope in reply. The editor had ignored Ma's letter entirely. His article made us sound like two adventuresses out on a foolish lark:

Mrs. H. Estby and her daughter of Spokane, Washington, have announced their intention to walk from that distant city to New York. They expect to break all records in the line of pedestrianism and will travel rapidly, with very light equipment. They intend to write up their adventures afterwards if they survive the experiment.

—New York World
Sunday Magazine,
April 26, 1896,
[>]

Ma convinced the mayor of Spokane to write us a letter of introduction on official city stationery so everyone along the way would know we were respectable women they could safely welcome into their homes. When we gave our interview for the
Spokane Chronicle,
I got the impression that the reporter thought we wouldn't last to the Washington-Oregon border.

Ma said she'd thought of everything, but she missed a few details, like where the five dollars apiece start-up money was going to come from and how we were going to outfit ourselves for the walk. She must have guessed I had a secret college fund. It had taken me four years, taking in ironing at nine cents an hour, to earn that money. It took Ma one trip to the general store in Rockford to spend it. We came home with new work boots for me, two canteens, first-aid supplies, two tins of matches, two oilskin ponchos, a tin of tooth powder and two toothbrushes, two journals and six pencils, and a secondhand satchel a little smaller than a doctor's bag, with a sturdy leather bottom and waxed canvas sides.

We planned to leave in early May, well past any chance of snow in the mountain passes we would have to cross in Oregon. The day before we set out, Erick walked me up to the little rise in the land between his family's farm and ours. Perhaps he did have a little poetry in his soul, because he stood silently on the hill, waiting for the top rim of the sun to disappear behind the horizon before he spoke. He grinned and smoothed his hair, which he had plastered down with pomade this evening instead of leaving it loose across his forehead. He opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it, while a blush that rivaled the pink of the sunset spread across his cheeks. His right hand fumbled with something in his pocket. Was this the moment he would ask
The Question I Didn't Want to Answer
?

"I wonder how many bushels an acre you'll get this year," I said, bending down to pick a stalk of wheat.

Erick touched my shoulder. "Come on, Clara—I don't want to talk about grain right now. Not with you leaving tomorrow. I have something I want to give you."

If I had to marry someone and live in Mica Creek for the rest of my life, Erick would be the one I'd choose. He was kind and hard-working and nobody in the county knew more about wheat. Kids—and the ladies—liked him; men respected him, although he was only twenty.

But why did he court me instead of my younger sister Ida? Her hair was such a pale blond, it was almost silver. Mine was the color of old hay, or, more charitably, like the light brown flecks on a tweedy sparrow. Her nose was straight and finely molded. The nicest word for my nose was
snub.
Ida made folks laugh, organized hay rides, and decorated the grange for dances. I guessed Erick liked me for the same reason he liked his horse: we were both strong and reliable.

His hand was out of his pocket, and in that hand was a three-inch square plain cardboard box. "I almost got you a ring, but you're such a sensible girl, I knew you'd rather I spent the money on something practical."

I was relieved that it wasn't a ring, but what else would fit in that box?

He turned it over so I could read the lettering: "Magnetic Pocket Compass, Keuffel and Esser, New York."

"They make the best compasses in the country," he said. "And I wanted you to have the best, when you're going so far from home."

I took off the lid and slid the compass from its thin cloth pouch while Erick held open the box.

"Genuine nickel silver, with a lid you open like a pocket watch, so you don't break the beveled glass top. It has this little thingbobby you can thread a cord through, so you don't lose it." His hand brushed mine as he pointed out the features. "Do you know how to use one? See, you hold it flat in your palm and turn the compass needle—see the red end? That's the end that points north. Turn the compass housing—that's this big part—until the big
N
for
north
lines up with the red needle."

He tried to show me how to use the direction needle, too, but I was so giddy—partly from relief he hadn't outright asked me
The Question,
and partly nervy over thinking about leaving tomorrow—that I just shook my head.

"That's all right. Girls don't really have a head for gadgets; just remember that red points north."

I'd normally have set him straight about what a mere girl was capable of, but this wasn't the time for it. Who knew how much money he had spent on this compass, and his intent was generous. "Thank you," I said. "I'm sure it will prove useful."

I truly regretted that I didn't love him.

Responding to the sadness that must have crept into my face, he said, "I know, it's sad to leave home. But it's another sign of your good character that you were willing to go, to take care of your ma."