The Daughter's Walk - Jane Kirkpatrick [90]
When July arrived without contact, images of my mother’s pretending we’d make our walking deadline loomed. I admitted the truth to myself and decided Olaf wasn’t going to follow his interest in farming with me. Maybe he’d decided working for the Elstads suited him fine. But he might have written and told me so.
I’d locate a farm without his help. That’s what I’d do.
“It really isn’t necessary, is it?” Olea said. “Extending yourself further by purchasing a farm? And you’re upset now. Why not wait until you’ve had more time to think about this.”
“It’s an investment,” I said. One day it might support a breeding farm like the Finns’, only not with silver foxes but with mink. I didn’t tell Olea that. She would have thought me daft. “I can find someone to perform the labor. It’ll be a good place for Lucky to run. They’re still talking about the reclaiming act, and when it passes, prices will only go up. It’s better to buy now.”
Louise actually found the farm I purchased. She’d taken the dog for a long walk and talked to the farmer out in his field. No stranger that she is, he was soon telling her of his daughter’s wish that he and his wife would move to Seattle to live closer to her. Louise walked home, got me, and before the week was out, I owned a wheat farm of one hundred sixty acres. I could raise a passel of chickens on it too.
We rented the farmhouse to a young couple, and the husband agreed to work on shares. It was a perfect arrangement.
I didn’t need my brother.
“At least he might have written to me,” I complained. We’d bought peaches from a local farmer and were putting them up in Ball jars. “He said he’d always talk to me, and now he won’t.”
“Go see him again,” Olea said. The heat of the day and our canning had left moisture above her lips. Birdsong merried the air beyond the open window.
“No. He knows where I am. It’s up to him. It’s only right he contact me.” I rubbed my forehead with my forearm. It was so very hot in the kitchen.
“But you’re the one distressed. You can be right, Clara, but not be very happy about it.”
“I wouldn’t be happy begging him either,” I said.
“You think it’s begging to find out what might have gotten in the way of his contacting you again? He’s surely not out to hurt you. It’s in your best interest to believe he is doing the best he can. Maybe he’s sick or had an accident and can’t contact you.”
I hadn’t thought of that.
Still, he could ask someone to write to me. Maybe Erik Elstad. Or one of my brothers and sisters. He would find a way if he was really interested.
Obviously he wasn’t. Like my fantasy involving my father, I’d created a story with Olaf in it. Both stories had the same real-life ending: neither wanted contact with me.
THIRTY-FIVE
Calculated Changes
FEBRUARY 1904
Franklin arrived for a visit, much to the delight of the women, and me too I guess. The snow was deep in the stream ravines, but he and I snowshoed a distance into the timber so he could see the land. Afterward, we sat in my little shack, the wood stove crackling. It was his first look at the land I’d been trapping.
He assessed my pelts, commented on their size, pointed out the cuts I’d made in the fisher hide when fleshing it. “You’ve reduced its value,” he said. “You’ll get the hang of it. Otherwise, they look good. We didn’t see many beaver dams. Not as many tracks as I’d hoped for to indicate there’ll be ample harvest in the future. Makes me wonder if it’s overtrapped, or maybe disease has taken its toll and they haven’t reproduced as we’d expect. Stress in the coats suggests that too.”
“Are they good enough to sell on our own?” I asked.
“Some are. But we’d do better at the auction because you don’t have that many quality pelts.”
“Yet,” I said,