THIRTY-THREE

Out of the Trap

I’ve spent a fair amount of time learning about the business,” I told them. “I have great admiration for the way you’ve all conducted your affairs. You’re honest and aboveboard. You use mostly cash, and when you’ve had to make advances, you’ve had assets to cover them. You’re cautious but take informed risks. And you’re generous. I see the donations you make to charities and church.”

“We believe in passing on our good fortune,” Olea said.

“Yes, I’ve been the beneficiary of that.” I didn’t know how much Franklin knew or needed to know. I cleared my throat. “However, I believe your operations miss an important part of the fur market. Franklin spends most of his time making purchases at auction houses, then ensuring that the pelts reach the European dressers and are manufactured into those beautiful coats. He mostly goes to auctions in the East. The West Coast goes largely unnoticed.”

“Nothing much has changed from when earlier trappers shipped goods back from the West, or sent them to the Orient by ship,” Franklin said. “The population of buyers is here, in the East. Always has been. Astor hoped to establish a good West Coast market that would save time getting goods to the Orient. And of course, Hudson’s Bay and the Northwest Company have done well out there. But Hudson’s Bay is king in New York too.”

“But what about pelts from the West? Why not trap on our own land and sell to Seattle?”

Both women looked at each other.

“You ought to be interested in the fashion end,” Franklin said. “Not in the rugged part of it, trapping and all.” Lucy took the moment to wake up, stretch, and move out of her basket to twist her way around Franklin’s leg. He bent to stroke the purring cat.

I stood up now, to make my case firmer. “The finest fur-bearing animals in the country thrive in Washington State, in the Spokane area,” I said. “Beaver, otter, mink, coyote, fisher, skunk, squirrel, muskrat, bobcat—even bigger animal hides, such as elk, for the leather markets. And bear for rugs and such. Raccoon skins make beautiful and warm coats, and we have thousands of them; they’re almost like rabbits. Why depend on the auctions for pelts? Why not trap our own?”

“You want to move me from New York?” Franklin said. “Send me back out to the traps?” His face hardened, and I saw within the furrowed brows the steeliness that enabled him to buy at good prices. “Trapping is dangerous work, Miss Doré. And the West Coast harvests have declined.”

“I understand that,” I said. “I’ll trap.”

“Oh, Clara, no. That’s much too hard a job,” Louise said.

“Franklin could teach me. Then I’ll provide choice prime pelts so you won’t have to buy at auction. You’ll still have to negotiate tanning and dressing, but we can bring the pelts right into Spokane for the sale … after we’ve kept the best ones for our own use.”

“It’s not a very large auction, the one in Spokane,” Olea said. “We’ve attended.”

“Then we’ll use Seattle. But if we keep the prime pelts, Franklin could take them directly to the dressers and cut out the middleman completely. The rest we’d sell at the auctions in Seattle. They’ll ship directly to New York or Hong Kong or even Russia. We’d make less than at the big auctions back east, but that would be compensated for by having quality pelts of our own for our orders. We can ask higher prices. After they’re dressed, we’ll have them sewn and manufactured and sold back to furriers in Spokane or San Francisco. ‘West Coast Soft Gold,’ we could call the line.” I improvised.

“You’ve been studying,” Louise said. She smiled like a proud parent.

“You should learn the fashion end of things,” Franklin said again. “Trapping is only part of it. You’ll have to learn grading for various coats and muffs and furs. It’s not easily mastered. Consider design instead.”

“He’s right,” Louise said. “You made that supporter for your … for when you don’t wear a corset,” she said.

“Louise,” I protested. She’d seen my breast supporter one morning lying in my room and asked what it was. “That’s—”

“Private, I know. But it is a good design. It tells me you could do that sort of thing.”

“You could set new fashion trends from the West Coast if you’re a good sketch artist,” Franklin said. “Didn’t I hear that you were illustrating a book once?”

“Design doesn’t interest me,” I said.

“To humor you: where would we trap?” Franklin asked. He wasn’t scowling now. He looked more curious, surprised even.

“I’d buy land. The right kind of land, where I’d trap.”

“It’s not women’s work. You’re already thin as spaghetti,” Louise said.

Franklin shook his head.

“Women’s work is defined by women doing it,” I said. “Indian women have handled pelts for decades, so it is women’s work. Surely I can do it. The land is a good investment. Isn’t that what you told me, Olea? There’ll be timber I can sell. Trapping is seasonal, winter work. I could do it on my own.”

“Franklin’s right. You’d be better at the fashion end,” Louise said. “You sketch well. Didn’t you say your father was an artist?”

“Trapping …” Franklin said. He shook his head, his jaw flexing before he spoke. “It’s cold, hard work. You’d have to live out there, it would be the only way, learn to boil the human scent from traps, plunge your hands into icy streams. Why, are you even strong enough to set a trap?” He looked at my arms.

“I’ve brought in loads of hay,” I told him. “I’m sturdy. And I love the forests and studying the paths of beaver or muskrat. I love the cold air, a night sky filled with stars twinkling like lights on tall fir trees.”

“You’d have to check the traps every day, regardless of the weather.” Franklin wasn’t interested in my romantic version of the work. “When you found the animals in the gripping traps, you’d have to look them in the eye and. Could you do that?”

“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 our becoming familiar with it over time. New artists’ endeavors seem to fall short, at least initially. I’m not sure that applies to this venture of yours.”

“It’s a way for me to become independent financially,” I said. “And we can be in business together. If we control all aspects of it, we can’t be exploited.”

“We can’t control every piece of a business, Clara. Or of living. It’s naive to think that way. It’s how one deals with the unexpected that marks a successful business.”

“I’ve wandered around for almost a year,” I said. “I need to be responsible for my fate.”

She looked like she wanted to speak, shook her head, then added, “Our lives will change dramatically if we do this. You know that. A move is the least of it.”

“I do.”

“Elizabeth Cady Stanton used to say that ‘Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility.’ I can hear the quickening in your voice.”

I nodded.

She brushed at my collar. “Coulee City. Goodness. I’d say you’re avoiding Spokane.”

“I’m not ready yet to bump into members of my family,” I said. “That’s true.”

“Do you know when you might be?”

I thought for a moment, my fingers pressing down on the pewter sunflower of the hatpin. “When what they need is what I have to give and I have more hope that they’ll accept it.”

It had been a full afternoon and evening, much of it spent at Thompson and Dundy’s amusement park. Franklin gave us little dolls he won throwing balls at bottles. I laughed more than I had in weeks. The lights flickered over the water, and the joy lingered on the Thompson-Culver ferry line that took us back to the hotel. Both Louise and Olea chastised us for coming back with them.

“You were having such a good time. We old folks surely didn’t need to stand in your way,” Louise said.

“You’re not that old,” I said. “And besides, we haven’t come to a conclusion yet about my suggestions. Business is more important to me than pleasure.”

“Pity,” Franklin said. He didn’t elaborate.

At our suite, Louise hustled about getting us hot water for tea while Franklin sipped at a glass of red wine. When they were all settled and before I could speak, Olea said, “I’m wondering why you bring this up now, Clara, this big plan to trap and travel and relegate us all to Coulee City.”

“I … You and Louise, you have your business, and I can tell that you’re slowing down while I’m just beginning. You’ve been a success. I haven’t. I want this to be an operation that eventually I’ll be able to manage on my own,” I said, “after I’ve had good training.”

“She’s leaving us,” Louise told Olea. “I mean you have every right to, but I thought.” Louise looked genuinely distressed.

“I’m not,” I insisted. I wished my mother or even Ida had looked that unhappy at the idea of my going away.

“You and Olea can stay in Spokane if you want. I thought, well, if you lived with me in Coulee City, I’d have a place to come back to that wouldn’t …”

“Put you where you’ll see your family,” Olea said. “You wouldn’t see them in Seattle either, and that would be a much better place to settle in.”

“It rains too much there,” I said. “It’s too far from property with streams. And we can’t raise wheat there. We visited Seattle in the spring, and it’s beautiful with rhododendron blooms the size of Lucy, but I know I’d suffer in the constant dreariness of winter mists and downpours.”

I wondered whether to mention now the Finland fox-farming experiments but decided not to.

“I’d like to know that you were at home looking after things. I’d like to have a place to come home to that was well, my own.”

“You want us to work for you?” Louise said.

“No. I’d own the house and you’d look after it and maybe even operate it as a boardinghouse.” That thought had just occurred. “You love to cook and take care of people, Louise. When I’m not there, you’d have others to spoil besides Olea.”

“I’d always have Olea,” Louise said. “I guess it would make us money, having boarders.”

“Assuming people want to come to Coulee City,” Olea said.

“The dam,” I said. “It’ll bring in people. The New York Times says so. And there’s good ranch land available now.”

“You haven’t even gotten to the expense of wheat seed and paying a manager to farm it.”

“I’m going to contact my brother Olaf. He’s a good farmer, and I hope he’ll be open to working for us, farming the wheat on shares.” He may not want land of his own, but he might be willing to work for me.

They sat silently while my own heart pounded. Summarizing it as I had did make it sound a lot more involved than what I had imagined. Maybe at first it would be, until I had things pieced together. Buying a house. Acquiring property to trap. Then the wheat land. Right now my vision wasn’t something we could all see and understand.

But I could imagine it, I could. And for the first time, I felt excitement about moving forward in my exile.

We sat silent for a time, late-night-reveler sounds rising up from the streets to interrupt the teapot scream.

“I see what you’re after,” Franklin said. “But get someone locally to trap for you.”

“I want to learn that part myself. If you won’t teach me—”

“It doesn’t make sense for me to do it,” he said. “Find the men who have been trapping that land. Engage them.”

Olea nodded in agreement.

I deferred to their wisdom. I’d find local help. Between Franklin’s and the women’s advice, I’d learn about pelts and their quality. We’d move, make a change. It would be one we chose, not one thrust upon us.

“Change is kind of like a prayer, isn’t it?” Louise mused as she refilled our cups with hot water. “We present it and have faith it’ll be received as intended, perhaps even better, trusting that one day it’ll be answered in a way we hope is fruitful.”

“Yes,” I said. “Change is a bit like that.” Risk too.

Once I learned the trade, had my own property, my own way of doing things, no one would be in a position to take advantage of me. I’d be financially secure. I’d have an independent business that could sustain me well into the future. If it served as a way to reconnect to my brother, then that was a bonus. Yes, moving intertwined Olea and Louise with me in new ways, but they were people I imagined would remain in my life. I wanted them to stay. Wasn’t that the purpose in taking risks? Wasn’t that why my mother had wagered everything to walk across the country, doing what she thought best for family and financial security too?

But I was making better choices than she had. I’d thought my plan through. I didn’t hear any voice telling me not to pursue it.