Hattie Ever After
Authors: Kirby Larson
This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical and public figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical or public figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2013 by Kirby Larson
Jacket art copyright © 2013 by Jonathan Barkat
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of
Random House, Inc., New York.
Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark
of Random House, Inc.
Photographs on
this page
and
this page
courtesy of the author. Photograph on
this page
courtesy of San Francisco Bay Area Post Card Club,
postcard.org
.
Visit us on the Web!
randomhouse.com/kids
Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at
RHTeachersLibrarians.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Larson, Kirby.
Hattie ever after / Kirby Larson. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Sequel to: Hattie Big Sky.
Summary: In 1919, seventeen-year-old Hattie leaves the Montana prairie—and her sweetheart Charlie—to become a female reporter in San Francisco.
eISBN: 978-0-307-97968-1
[1. Self-reliance—Fiction. 2. Orphans—Fiction. 3. Reporters and reporting—
Fiction. 4. San Francisco (Calif.)—History—20th century—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.L32394Hb 2013 [Fic]—dc23 2012007068
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and
celebrates the right to read.
v3.1
For everyone who asked what was next for Hattie,
with affection and appreciation
Homesteads and Hamlet TrapsJune 4, 1919
Great Falls, Montana
Brown’s Boardinghouse
Dear Perilee
,
You will never guess what I am posting in the mail besides this letter to you: my last check to Mr. Nefzger! After these long months, Uncle Chester’s IOU is paid in full. When first presented with that IOU some months ago, I couldn’t imagine how on earth I would repay it. Especially after that summer hailstorm knocked down my crops along with my hopes of making a go of the farm. The good Lord has quite a sense of humor, plunking me down here in Great Falls, in just the sort
of job I left Iowa to escape, though I must confess, it was pure pleasure this past winter to have indoor plumbing. No more walking to the necessary when it’s forty below! And I’ve certainly perfected essential cleaning skills. I’ll have you know that I can now make a bed, scour the washbowl, and Hoover-sweep the carpet in a lodger’s room in fifteen minutes flat
.
Despite the glamour of my current position, I am counting the minutes until the next thing. What is that, you ask? I do not know. You are right, as always, that the sensible plan is to come to you in Seattle. Of course, I would love to be neighbors again, as we were on the Montana prairie. But you know I am not prone to the sensible. What sensible girl would have said yes to spending a year under Montana’s big sky, trying to make a go of a long-lost uncle’s homestead claim?
And what sensible girl wouldn’t say yes to Charlie, who is quite convinced we are meant to grow old together? Only a fool would deflect his attentions. Well, I saw such a fool in the mirror this morning
.
It’s not that Charlie wouldn’t be easy to look at for the next fifty years. Aside from your Karl, I can’t think of another man so solid, kind, and true-blue. What is it that I want, one may wonder, if not to be Mrs. Charlie Hawley? That’s as much a mystery to me as Uncle Chester’s past. But I feel strongly that Hattie Here-and-There must change her life before she can change her name
.
I still puzzle over Uncle Chester, God rest his soul,
calling himself a scoundrel. Perhaps this world needs more such scoundrels. Without him, I never would have had the chance to test myself on the homestead, to breathe in the promises carried on a prairie breeze, or to fill my heart with so many friends, among whom I count you the dearest
.
Mrs. Brown is hollering for me. She is in a perfect dither over the acting troupe soon to arrive. The Venturing Varietals are sure to be livelier boarders than our usual Fuller Brush salesmen
.
Your friend
,
Hattie Inez Brooks
The floor began to vibrate beneath my feet. Mrs. Brown had progressed from hollering to pounding the ceiling below with the broom handle. Evidently, the workday had begun. I set the letter to Perilee aside, tied my apron on, and went to find my employer.
She was in the kitchen, kneading bread dough. I was not to be trusted with this particular task. Despite Perilee’s expert tutelage, I never managed to bake a loaf of bread any lighter than a flatiron.
Mrs. Brown clapped floury hands together. “Busy now! I want things spotless when the actors arrive. Spotless!” She slapped the dough for emphasis.
Taking stock of what yet needed to be done, I dragged a rug outside, threw it across the clothesline, and began to beat it clean.
As I swung the rug-beater back and forth, my thoughts
back-and-forthed, too, settling first on a snippet from Charlie’s last letter:
I should be grateful to be home. And I am, don’t mistake me. Too many families lost their sons in that war. It’s hard to explain what I feel. The best I can come up with is that it’s like trying to pitch without a baseball. Something’s missing. And I think you know what that something is
.
I shook my head. Why couldn’t I be more like other girls my age? Take Mrs. Brown’s niece. She spent her every waking hour sizing up this beau or that, stitching tea towels and petticoats and putting aside a little each month for a set of Spode Buttercup dishes.
Perhaps I’d have been the same way had it not been for Uncle Chester leaving me the homestead in his will. Last year, working to prove up, I had been more than Hattie Here-and-There, the orphan girl with too many temporary homes. I had been Hattie Big Sky, carving out a place to belong. Like so many others who’d been drawn to Montana’s prairie, I was not successful. And losing the farm was not the worst of my losses. It was nothing compared to losing Mattie.
I stopped my exertions and swiped at my eyes, suddenly thankful for this dusty job. Should anyone come upon me, I could blame
it
for my damp eyes, not memories of Mattie. The influenza had cut a wide swath of death through this country, but that one loss cut an even wider swath through my heart.
After a moment, I resumed the rhythmic slapping of beater on rug, another thought moving to the forefront of my mind. For all its challenges and sorrows, my time on the homestead had given me a taste of what it might be like to stake out my own claim on life, and had left me craving more.
After a while, I carted the last rug into the house, smoothing it back in its place on the floor. Windows were next. I lugged buckets and rags upstairs, catching my reflection in the glass in the Daisy room. Guilt was stamped all over my face. For good reason: I had been less than forthcoming with Perilee, my truest friend, in my letter to her. I
did
know what I wanted to do. Six long lonely months here in Great Falls had provided ample time to piece together new hopes.
Those Honyocker’s Homilies I’d written from the homestead for the
Arlington News
back in Iowa were the first fleas to bite. Then I began to read the assorted newspapers our lodgers left behind, discovering articles written by female reporters like muckraker Ida Tarbell. And Nellie Bly, who earned her first assignment at eighteen, just a year older than me.
I could not yet confess it to anyone, not even Perilee, but I had thrown a lasso around a dream even bigger than a Montana farm.
I wanted to be a reporter.
Even though I was about as worldly as Rooster Jim’s hens, I did know that a mild talent and a few pieces published in a small-town paper were not sufficient. Women like Nellie Bly did Grand Things; that was how they got to be real writers. Despite its name, Great Falls was hardly the place to do something grand.
Neither was Arlington, Iowa. And even though my heart approved of Charlie’s plan for an “us,” my mind feared that saying yes to him was saying no to myself. I needed to find my own place in the world. My own true place.
And something in me believed
that
place was connected to the working end of a pen, not a plow. And certainly not a polishing cloth! Every night, after I was done for the day at Mrs. Brown’s, I’d been scribbling away in children’s composition books—the cheapest I could find at the five-and-dime. I copied down inspiring words and snippets of poems, but mostly I used those pages to practice being a reporter.
The first article in my book was about Mrs. Brown’s neighbor Sam Blessing, who had the brains of a chicken. No, that was an insult to chickens. In a fit of pique at his wife, Sam had shut himself in the shed out back. The shed that locked from the outside. Equally piqued, his wife had not been inclined to unlock the door. It took some serious horse trading on his part to coax her to wield the key and let him out. The bargain they’d struck was reflected in the headline I’d written: “Mrs. Sam Blessing’s Mother to Visit Great Falls for Three Months.”
I was also partial to the piece I’d written about Mrs. Maynard’s dog, Blue. Mrs. Maynard would send Blue, by himself, to the grocer’s with her shopping list and market basket, and he would return with the requested provisions, carrying the basket handle in his mouth. “Course, I don’t send him after cream,” she’d told me, “lest it would be butter by the time he trotted it home.”