The Daughter's Walk (9 page)

I did pray. Oh, how I prayed!
Please, please, please. Don't let anything happen to Mama. Please, forgive us for being foolish
. I'd never take the word of a stranger, not ever again! I'd never take a wager like this. Money needed to be earned, not received for wild schemes. I prayed for my brothers and sisters, thinking,
What will they do if we die here?
They'd never even know. We'd be two lost clusters of bones found one day by strangers, and they'd make up a story about what happened to us. I started to laugh.

“Clara. What's the matter with you?” Mama asked, shaking me as I leaned against a rock that looked like a statue of flowing water.

“What will they find of us?” I said. “My curling iron. Your frying pan. How will they ever explain that?”

“Don't,” Mama said. “Don't think that. We have to get out of here. We have to.”

I started to cry then. The fear, the hunger, the realization that we were lost set in.

“Please, show us the path and we'll walk in it. Please, save my child if not me,” Mama whispered into the still night. I could feel her rocking beside me.

The night was a grave, time disappearing into darkness.

I slept, awoke in a start. “Mama? Is Papa here to take us home? Over there? By the lantern.” My face felt like I had my head in an oven, checking on the brown rolls. “Are you talking to him?”

“No, no,” Mama said. “You're … I'm so sorry. Let me hold you. I'm praying, child. That's what you hear. Hush now. The crying won't help us, and it robs you of strength. Try to rest.”

She held my hands, rubbed at my fingers, smoothing over the rough edges. I didn't remember her ever holding my hand. I must have been a little child.

“Your nails, they're all torn,” she said then.

In the morning, Mama held the compass. She directed us to the northwest, saying we'd walk back the way we came, back to Boise City. I lagged behind. Thirsty. Rocks looked like soft pillows I could just lie down on. I sat in a crevice between rocks as big as buckboards.

Mama shook my shoulders. She looked blurry and fuzzy as a rabbit. I wished I had a rabbit to hold.

“Listen to me, Clara.”

I couldn't.

She struck my face. I blinked, touched my cheek.

“We're going to take one step, then another, then another.”

“I hear you. Everyone hears you, Mama.” I sloughed Mama's hands from my shoulder. “Everyone hears what you say. That's why we're here. Hold tight,” I told her. Mama looked confused, but I only needed her to hold my hand again, to keep me from floating like a bubble from the washtub up, up into the air and far away into blue sky.

N
ight. Darkness. Whisperings. “If you must take us, please let Clara die first, Lord, so she won't have to die alone without her mother tending her.”

A rumble far away. A storm brewing. Whispered words continue. The thunder.

“Clara! Do you hear that? A storm! We'll have water.”

I hear her scrambling in the night.

“Where is that frying pan? We'll collect water. It'll rescue us, that old pan!”

She sounds happy. Mama is happy. I look up. No moon. No rain. Only pinpricks of stars. I close my eyes.

“Clara. Listen to me. I need to tell you something. Listen now. Clara?”

“My ears aren't tired. Only my eyes.” I keep them closed. There's nothing to see but darkness. I sleep maybe. I dream of
julekaga
, Mama's Christmas bread, so sweet, so filling. One slice and I am full from all
the love that goes into that bread for Christmas morning. Smells fill the kitchen. Am I dreaming? “Do you have
julekaga
, Mama?”

“Clara. Listen. It's not Christmas. I must tell you a secret thing.” She holds me in her arms. I'm little, like Lillian. She rocks me. “There's something I hoped I would never have to tell you, but you should know this. If something happens to me—”

“Are you going away again?”

“No. No. But if I … If you get back to Boise but I don't, you should know.” Thunder rolling, closer this time and steady, rolling and rolling through the still night air. She sits up, pushes me up too.

“A secret, Mama? Another secret?”

“Clara,” her voice changes. “Clara, I don't think that's thunder.” Joy in her voice then. “Clara! Oh, Clara, look!”

It's too dark. I can see nothing but a tiny star moving across the low horizon far in the distance.

“A star.”

“Not a star at all,” Mama says.

“Lightning in the storm. Rain will come.”

“No. No storm, Clara. It's a train! God has sent us a train!” She stands. She leaves me. “Where is that compass?” She clatters over the rocks, finds her grip. I can hear her, then see her in the lantern light. “Yes! That's the direction we will follow in the morning. We know where we're going! Oh, Clara, we're saved. We're truly saved.”

Is she going to tell me another secret? How many does she keep?

W
eak as a kitten, I followed her in the morning. She put everything into one grip and carried it. I had to carry only myself. I imagined
lefse
soaked in butter and rolled up around fresh blackberry preserves, or
sandbakkels
shaking sugar from their crispy shapes, and my licking the crystals from my mouth. I imagined cream porridge served with milk and eating mounds of boiled potatoes, saving the water for the next day to use for making bread, fresh brown buns, straight from the oven, soft and smelling of yeast. I could see the
julekaga
. I could see tables spread and a chicken steaming, its oyster-flavored stuffing spilling out onto the plate. I saw pools of water Mama said weren't there.

“Clara. Sheep!” She pointed and held up the empty canteen, shouting to them. “Water! May we have water?”

Sheep will give us water?

Two Basque sheepherders halted, then walked out of the desert heat toward us. They spoke no English, but it wasn't necessary. We looked so gaunt and ravenous, and we received the gift of water and biscuits like
communion as in our Norwegian Lutheran church back home. Two hours later we were at the railroad tracks. I bent down to touch them.

“Praise God,” Mama said.

“Don't ever leave these again, Mama. This is the path. We follow the rails. Promise me?”

Mama nodded, tears in her eyes. She dropped to her knees too and said, “Thank You, thank You.”

Mama changed after that. She was as determined, but a part of her seemed … humbled, maybe a little more open to my thinking. When I suggested that the eggs we were given might contain more fuel for our bodies than the venison jerky pressed onto us by a rancher's wife outside of Battle Creek, Utah, for example, my mother agreed. When she mentioned politics and how much she admired William Jennings Bryan, she didn't try to cut me off when I said I preferred William McKinley. Once, she even agreed with me when I told her that Bryan supported segregation, and that didn't seem like the actions of a man who worked for the downtrodden, as my mother claimed he always had. She accepted that we had differing views and didn't push to make me think like her.

But when I tried to have her talk a bit more about what she'd almost told me in the lava beds, she said it was of no consequence. “You were nearly delirious, Clara. It wasn't anything so important.” She changed the subject then, telling me a story of a pair of red shoes she'd brought with her from Norway, beautifully embroidered. “They'd never have survived this trip,” she said.

My mother, the avoider.

The July day felt balmy with white-capped mountain peaks looking down on us as we approached the Mormon town in Utah. We could
walk side by side here instead of having to traverse narrow trails that kept me behind Mama and made conversation difficult.

“We might have people stare and point at us in Salt Lake City,” Mama said, “once we put on the reform clothing.”

“I know. The Rescue League of Washington thinks wearing such clothing is the work of the devil,” I said. “But then I suppose they think the devil rides the bicycle too.”

Mama laughed. “I can't tell you how many of my women friends said every part of this trip would be of the devil, but we've already proved them wrong in that. The light of a train when I felt most lost came not from him, I'm certain of that. God answers in His own time, but He always answers.”

I didn't want to contradict Mama, but bad things still happened: I'd been dragged on this trip, for one.

“He can answer in ways we don't want, though,” I said.

“Yes. But that's another way of telling us to wait, that He has chosen the path, and at the crossroads we are to look to Him to say right or left, rather than look to ourselves.”

It seemed to me that often Mama didn't wait to hear the direction; she set off on her own.

“The sponsors were to ship the clothing to the train station. We'll change there, walk to the nearest newspaper to affirm that we've made it this far and are now clothed in what some call our Weary Waggles wear.”

“Leaving behind this skirt won't cause me any crying,” I said and I meant it. I brushed at the Victorian skirt I'd been wearing since home, a chipped nail catching on the stitching over a tear made by the volcanic rocks. “I'm amazed you were able to stitch up these tears,” I said.

“A needle and thread are a woman's lifeblood,” Mama said.

But it was my curling iron that satisfied a group of Indians who
stopped us outside of Salt Lake City. Sea gulls screamed in the distance. The men, half-clothed, surrounded us and grabbed at the bag I held on to.

“Give it to them,” Mama whispered, what sounded like fear shaking her voice.

There were five of them. They snatched the bag and dumped it out, compass and maps and curling iron falling beside the tracks. Mama had the revolver in her pocket; the pepper-box pistol rested in mine. The apparent leader picked up the curling iron, pressed it open and closed, then held it, curiosity in his eyes. Maybe they thought it was a gun.

“It's for my hair,” I said. My voice shook. “Here, I'll show you.” I put my hand out and he gave it to me. Without being heated it wouldn't do much, but I demonstrated a fire by holding it over the lantern, then removed my hat and rolled my hair around the tube. It left a limp curl.

They chattered to each other, eyes marveling, handing it around. One touched my flat curl, gazed as though it was precious. I motioned to use one of his long strands, and it left just the slightest twist. They laughed together and took it, chattering as they walked away, leaving behind our guns.

It's surprising what people claim as treasure.