The Daughter's Walk - Jane Kirkpatrick [84]
“I’ve prepared my share of chickens for dinner,” I said, “and helped butcher deer and elk and beef. I don’t relish that part, it’s true. But it comes with the territory. We’re providing basic necessities for people to keep them warm and clothed. And who knows? In time, I may tire of it as you did, Franklin, and move on to warmer rooms.”
“There’s nothing all that warm about an auction house,” Louise said. “The pelts are kept in cold storage and—”
“She knows that,” Olea said. She’d been silent for some time.
“What do you think, Olea?” I asked.
“There are logistical problems.” She sounded thoughtful. “Franklin’s training you would put him out of schedule for this next season. You’d have to hire him separately. His schedule is arranged for this year.” Her words ended in annoyance.
“All right. That’s a concern I can address. I’ve looked at maps,” I said. “There are public properties for sale with streams and tributaries that ought to have lots of good game and timber. I can buy a section or more.”
“Where is this property?” Olea asked.
“Along the Spokane River,” I said. “It’s remote, yes. But we’ll need that for—”
I stopped myself from going further. They were having enough trouble with the idea of my trapping. They’d never understand my interest in what the Finns were doing with their crossbreeding. “All places that support lynx or beaver are remote.”
“Maybe you’re telling us that you want to do this on your own. It doesn’t sound like you really need us for this,” Louise said.
“We’d live year-round … in Coulee City.” Before they could protest too loudly, I said, “The New York Times touts Coulee City. The railroad goes through there, remember, and they sponsored an excursion to promote it. More importantly, they’re talking about building a dam there, which would allow irrigation. Congress is considering a bill to reclaim the arid west. We’d be in on the ground floor. Land can be purchased fairly cheaply, good wheat-growing land. And the property for trapping that I’ve been looking into isn’t so far away. You and Olea could live snugly in a house in Coulee City. The winters will be milder than in Spokane,” I said. “That wide natural coulee offers that. It’ll be easier farming than at Mica Creek too. I’d trap a few months a year and rejoin you.”
“But you won’t be farming,” Louise said.
“I’d set traps in the fall until Christmas, farm wheat in the summers. The land will sustain us.”
Franklin watched me as though I were a flower pushing through concrete, unexpected, worth noting. Then he stood. “Any more conversation about this ought to occur on a full stomach.”
I wasn’t hungry, but Franklin ruled the moment and Louise seized it.
“Oh, yes! Have you found a new restaurant for us?” Louise said. Lucy purred in her lap, and white cat hair drifted in the air as she petted the feline.
“We should eat at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel,” he said then, turning back to Louise. “It’s more than fitting for a celebratory meal.”
“I don’t know that we’re celebrating,” Olea said.
Louise put Lucy in her basket, then hurried to get Franklin’s camel coat. I really wanted to hear that they approved of my idea, but families defer, take on the pace of others in order to meet their needs at small sacrifice to themselves. I’d get resolution in their time rather than my own.
I met Olea in the small hallway outside our three bedrooms as Louise chatted with Franklin in the parlor. Olea checked her hat in the hall mirror, then turned to me. She readjusted my hatpin, one eighteen inches long with a sunflower at the tip. “I’m not sure your idea is a sound one, Clara.”
“Didn’t you say once that all new ideas are suspect because we tend to appreciate what already exists? Anything new doesn’t carry that substance.”
She nodded. “I said that about art and how artists diminish their own work at times because it isn’t ‘accepted’ or isn’t understood, which comes from