Hers the Kingdom (8 page)

     When I asked Owen if he was a gambler, he only smiled and said, "No, at least not with cards."

     He has told me nothing of his financial position. I had expected him to give me some general information, at least. I suppose I should not have referred to it at all, but then I remind myself that I am his wife, his partner in this life.

     I scarcely know him, yet we are that: Partners for life. I wish you were here, Lena. I miss you and I need you.

     . . . It is some hours since I wrote the lines above. I feel better now, not quite so dreary. Before I close this letter and begin the search to find a station at which I can post it, I wanted to tell you about one more conversation with Owen. He has met several of those men who control the Central Pacific Railroad in California, and who are, he tells me, very powerful. There are four of them, though their names escape me at the moment. Owen says that they are not smart men, but rather shrewd. They were, he explains, small-town merchants in Sacramento. One had a hardware store, I believe.

     "The dreamer of the big dream," said Owen, "was a man named Theodore Judah, an engineer who was certain that a railroad could be built over the Sierras that would connect the East to the West. It was Judah who
convinced Congress to finance this railroad." As for the four little merchants, "They only had the sense to hang on to Judah's coattails. When he died suddenly, they took over and squeezed everyone else out."

     He told me this, I believe, to distract me. But all I could think about after that was what he had called Judah—"The dreamer of the big dream." The wheels turn and the coach sways, the dirt blows in the windows and the noise wraps around and enters my head, but over and above all of it I hear in the cadence of the tracks, "The dreamer of the big dream."

     I am not sure what Owen's dream is; I am not even sure of mine. All I know is that it can only happen in the West. Illinois is behind me now. We have crossed the river at Burlington and we are in Iowa.

     All of my love,
     Willa

Somewhere West of Cheyenne, Wyoming
June 21, 1887

     Dearest Lena,

     It has been five days and four nights since we left on the Pullman palace car with its carved and gilded walnut fittings, its plate glass and tapestry carpets, its promise of the most elegant possible journey westward. That is the promise; the reality is that the motion enters your very bones; the noise and the grit thrown back from the engine seeps into you, day and night, night and day. I sit on the seat for hours on end, gently swaying in a sideways motion, and wonder if I will ever be still again, if I will ever hear real silence. Soon we will be pulling into one of
the stations where we will stop to eat. Then I will be able to put my feet, for a few minutes at least, on land again. It must be the way a sailor feels after so many months at sea. In a way it is as if we are covering a land ocean. The grasses wave as we roll across the vast expanse of the plains; I feel as if I could drown in it.

     But the stations! They are nothing more than clusters of buildings, clapboard or logs daubed with mud and looking as if the first high wind would take them down. They have beautiful names like Papillon, Silver Creek, Plum Run—but they are dismal cankers that have rubbed all along the railroad line. When the train stops at one that is a dinner station, everyone rushes off at once and descends on the one or two restaurants, almost all of which feature a bar. (The Western men who have joined the train invariably move up to the rail to imbibe their dinner, and the foul smell of whiskey is added to their body odors, which are disgusting enough.) We have fifteen minutes in which to bolt our food—a hot beverage and tough beef, usually—if we are to have ten minutes left over to stretch our legs.

     Owen is adept at arriving first at the lunch counters and securing food for us. (Ladies ceased to be first almost immediately after we pulled out of Omaha.) We devour our lunch, then we stroll up and down on the flimsy wooden platform, concentrating so the food stays down and gives us the nourishment we require. No matter, it does break the boredom.

     Boredom. I am sick with myself for being bored. The whole of the country is passing outside my window, and I want to see it all, to remember everything . . . but there is a strange sense of unreality about it. The plains are endless. Here and there I glimpse a sod house and sometimes a few dirty children standing outside. It seems such an empty, barren life. In front of one of these huts I saw a perambulator
—very fancy, the kind you might see on the high streets of Springfield, or in Boston, and I wanted to cry, it so heightened the sense of desolation.

     So far, the only Indians I have seen are those that gather in the stations, their greasy blankets pulled around them, begging. Their eyes are dull, their bodies filthy. The papooses, naked and dirty, cling to their mothers. They look more like monkeys than I thought a human could look. It is repulsive, shameful, degrading. I try not to look at them. I would think the passengers on the train would give them wide range, but no. They seem to find them entertaining. Even Owen crowds around them, and when the male Indians pull out their pathetic arrows and try to hit a target (for the promise of a coin) it becomes a sideshow. Yesterday, at one of the stops, one of the passengers got a bit excited when none of the Indians could manage to hit the target, so he pulled out his Colt revolver and began banging away. Soon four or five other guns were going off, everyone seemed to get into the mood of it, and the tin plate that was the target was bouncing around as the train began to pull away from the station. Stupid Indians and stupid, stupid, gun-carrying men. When I vented my rage at Owen (who is one of the few men on this train who does not carry a gun, thank goodness) he would only say that they always leave a few coins behind, enough to keep the Indians in bondage to this shameful existence.

     In Cheyenne I did see some real Indians—real, in my terms. Three braves were riding their beautiful ponies. They were on their way to Fort Russell, Owen guessed. They sat wonderfully erect, looking straight ahead as if the train and the town didn't exist. (As indeed they didn't too many years ago.) I could feel their pride, it was that tangible. When I told Owen I was glad to have seen them, he said only that I would do well not to romanticize Indians,
that the ones I had seen in the station were a portent of what was to be for the Indians in all of the West. When I saw the braves, I thought of three hawks, soaring. It is what they were meant to do—soar.

     But this letter is becoming a complaint, and I must tell you about the nicest thing that has happened to us on this journey. In Omaha, a private railroad car was added to our train. It was one of the most ornate any of us had ever seen, and in gilt along the side was the name Alhambra. Of course, all of the passengers were buzzing with curiosity trying to discover what great man was in the car. Owen was beside himself; he does love a puzzle. As usual, he was the first to find out. (Owen has an uncanny ability to draw the railroad men into his confidence.)

     He came bounding down the aisle, his face alight with triumph, and I could tell that he was bursting with his news, so I decided to pretend nonchalance.

     "Well?" he finally asked.

     "Well?" I repeated.

     "Well, I
know
," he said.

     I took a few leisurely stitches of crochet, and said in as casual a manner as I could, "Really, dear—what is that?"

     Unable to contain his news another minute, he blurted, "Sara Hunt."

     This time my nonchalance was not pretended. I hadn't the slightest notion who Sara Hunt was or why I should know her.

     "Sara Hunt is Phineas Emory's adopted daughter—his only child."

     "Oh," I said, "and Phineas Emory is one of those smalltown merchants who rode to power on poor Theodore Judah's dream?"

     I could see at once that I had spoiled his fun—first by not knowing who Sara was, and then by reminding Owen
that he had been contemptuous of Emory. So I moved to make up by suggesting that we meet her.

     "Exactly what I was thinking," Owen answered, mollified.

     Sara Hunt, Owen learned (how I do not know), was returning from a women's college near St. Louis, having completed her course of study. Her father, the illustrious Emory, sent his private car to collect her.

     Owen has methodically set about meeting all of the passengers on our train—the drummers and the ever-present Englishmen, the women going to meet their husbands, who are surveyors or engineers or miners, and their children. I marvel at Owen's curiosity and at his tenacity. Occasionally he learns something of interest, and repeats it to me. I suppose it is a better way to pass the time than looking out the window or playing endless games of euchre, as many of the men do. But I cannot bring myself to become interested in people who seem, for the most part, to be dull and commonplace.

     Sara Hunt is an exception. I am glad that Owen convinced the conductor to take her his calling card, and I am glad that he convinced me to send a note along with it.

     Later that same day, at the dinner stop, one of her servants—a lovely little Chinese girl—approached us as we promenaded on the platform, and said that Miss Hunt would be pleased if we could join her in her car that same afternoon. Owen was delighted and, when I met Sara, so was I.

     She was standing by one of the big leather chairs, her hands lightly touching the back of it to give her balance, the French pier glass on the far wall reflected her back. She is a small woman with a child's body and great, dark eyes. I thought for a moment that she would not be able to look at us, but I was wrong.

     "Please," she said in a whispery voice, "come in, sit down." Owen set about putting her at her ease. She ordered tea, and I noticed that her hand shook not at all as she served it to us, a remarkable feat given the swaying of the train. She looked at me only occasionally, and when she did I saw what I thought to be fear, yet behind it something else. I can't quite explain it. But something else was there, behind the fear . . .

     More important, for me, was that she reminded me so of you that I felt I already knew her, and some of that familiarity must have passed on to her, because she began to smile a bit. I cannot really say why she is like you—she does not have your small-boned prettiness, nor your clear light skin. She is, in fact, quite plain. But there is something—a certain resilience, a calmness—that is attractive.

     Whatever the reason, I enjoy Sara Hunt. Owen entertains her, makes her laugh, teases her as he would a younger sister (as he teases you). And she enjoys it, that is plain to see. But when he leaves and we are alone, she seems calmer and it is as if we have known each other for a long time. I have told her about you, naturally, and once she blurted, "How I envy Lena!" (I know what you are thinking now. Don't. You
are
to be envied, twisted back and all. And we will be together again, and you will meet Sara!)

     Yesterday, as we rode endlessly through the plains, she told me that her father and Phineas Emory had been business partners. Her mother died giving birth to her. Her father died when she was five. Mr. Emory became first her guardian, then her legal parent.

     "How good of him," I said. And she answered, without the slightest rancor, "It was a business proposition."

     Sara and Owen have sad childhoods in common. And yet they are quite opposite in character—the one
bold and outgoing, the other meek and introspective.

     Sara is returning to San Francisco to meet Mr. Emory's new wife, a woman only a few years older than she.

     "Will that seem strange?" I was cheeky enough to ask, and she said: "Nothing ever seems strange to me." When I asked her to explain she began to stammer, and I was sorry that I had embarrassed her and I began to apologize, but she held her hand out to stop me. Then she did answer. She said: "Whatever presents itself in a certain context, I accept."

     I was confounded. How can that be? How can one live by that rule? I suppose it is why she agreed to see us. We were "in a certain context."

     I must admit to being glad that Sara
did
see us because she is dear to be with and because the private car is infinitely more comfortable than Mr. Pullman's magnificent palace car. Not only that, it has a bathtub. Truly. And yesterday Sara asked if I wished to take a bath.

     It was like asking if I wanted to go to heaven when I die. I could have cried. The pale linen dusters that are supposed to protect our clothing are now the color of a dirty mouse. The odors of the car get stronger each day so that the windows are open most of the time, letting in more grit from the engine.

     After a bath in Mr. Emory's amazing copper tub, I felt almost human again and I think I became quite hilarious. I did a small dance or two, sang a few songs for Owen and Sara, and even had the Chinese girl giggling. Today Sara is going to join me in the parlor car so that Owen can bathe. Then he promises to sing for us.