The Daughter's Walk - Jane Kirkpatrick [14]
“Let’s say good-bye to Henry too,” I said as we started up the first hill.
“Go by the cemetery? All right,” Mama agreed and we headed up the dirt road.
The landscape, so vast and emerald, scooped me in its arms from the hilltop. Spring wheat thrived over the rolling hills and disappeared into the shallow swales. At the Mica Creek cemetery, wind whipped us as we stood over Henry’s grave. Rheumatic fever, the doctor said, had caused my brother’s death. Mama pulled at weeds around the stone, lost in thought.
“He wrote the sweetest letters to me when I was gone to Wisconsin,” Mama said. “I’m so glad I saved them. Glad we have his picture too. I wish I had a picture of Ole.”
“You have one of Papa,” I said. “Didn’t you bring it?”
She looked confused, then looked at me. “No, I meant Ole. Our first son. He’s buried in Minnesota.”
“I had a brother who died? Another brother?” Her words were like stones thrown into a still pond, disturbing in all directions.
“It was a long time ago,” she said. “Before you. Our firstborn. Son. I wish I had a photograph,” she said. She patted my shoulder.
“But you never said—never spoke of a brother. Older than I? Does Olaf know? Do the others?”
“No,” Mama said. “No need to tell you either, I suppose. But we have seven months to face together, so I imagine secrets will come out.”
In an instant I had a fleeting memory of an infant crying in our sod house in Minnesota, fuzzy lantern lights casting strange shadows on the earth walls, Mama crying too, hands to her mouth and a man holding an infant. Could that have been Ole? No, Ole was older, Mama said. The crying child must have been Olaf, sixteen months younger than I. Yes, it must have been Olaf I remembered crying, my now-big, scrappy brother. I had no memory of Ole, who’d come before me.
“What happened?”
“The sod house. So very cold. Pneumonia. It was why I wanted us to leave there, come here. That and the cyclones that lit the sky like fireworks with booms and crackles. I hated them.” She shivered. “And the prairie fires. And the harsh winters with their snowdrifts.” She sighed. “Little Ole wasn’t with us very long, but I still miss him. So,” she said in her changing-the-subject voice, “let’s stop at the store and pick up a hard candy to help us commemorate our walk.”
I’d have to catch her in a thoughtful time to find out more.
Mama hesitated at Schwartz’s store in Mica Creek.
“That’s Martin Siverson’s horse. Your father’s best friend thinks I should listen to my husband and not take this walk.”
“Let’s not go in then.”
The door opened as we turned to leave.
“I suppose you’re off then, Mrs. Estby,” Martin said. He motioned to our bags. Mama paused and turned. “Such a crazy scheme. Shameful.”
“It’s for good,” Mama said.
“So you say,” Martin said. “And Clara. You can’t talk sense into your mother, then? Are you stubborn like she is?” He shook his head and crossed the street.
My face burned. His expression reminded me of Mrs. Stapleton’s. Shameful. My mother’s wish to save the farm brought shame to our family. Would success even wash it away?
“Let them say what they will,” Mama said. “I will prove them wrong. Don’t you worry about a thing.”
Since I was going with her against my will, the least she could have said was “we.”
SEVEN
Walking
So much for God smiling on our venture. We walked through days of pouring rain. Mama said once we reached LaCrosse Junction, a Norwegian town in southern Washington, we wouldn’t have to sleep on the hard benches in the train stations because people there were like family. We’d speak Norwegian and be treated with hospitality.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” one woman said as we approached her house, drenched to the bone. “You should have stayed home with your children where a good Norwegian wife should be!” She slammed the door in our faces, so we slept on the benches again, only ninety-five miles from Spokane.
“I thought you said we’d be welcomed,”