Free The Daughter's Walk by Jane Kirkpatrick

wasn’t necessary. We looked so gaunt and ravenous, and we received the gift of water and biscuits likecommunion as in our Norwegian Lutheran church back home. Two hours later we were at the railroad tracks. I bent down to touch them.
    â€œPraise God,” Mama said.
    â€œDon’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 couldwalk side by side here instead of having to traverse narrow trails that kept me behind Mama and made conversation difficult.
    â€œWe might have people stare and point at us in Salt Lake City,” Mama said, “once we put on the reform clothing.”
    â€œI 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.
    â€œHe can answer in ways we don’t want, though,” I said.
    â€œYes. 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.
    â€œThe 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.”
    â€œLeaving 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.
    â€œA needle and thread are a woman’s lifeblood,” Mama said.
    But it was my curling iron that satisfied a group of Indians whostopped 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.
    â€œGive it to them,” Mama whispered, what sounded