The Daughter's Walk - Jane Kirkpatrick [11]
“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