Chapter 18

Olive Augusta Radley, 1909

Looking at her and listening to her, it is impossible not to think of her as a child, and then one remembers, with a sort of shock, the work that she has done. She looks like a schoolgirl; she talks like an idealist; she is, perhaps, a visionary.

—Sunday New York Times article about Kate Barnard, December 8, 1912.

Kate Barnard is a tiny woman. She's a half head shorter than me, and I bet I outweigh her, too. The first thing I think when I see her is, She doesn't even look big enough for a lady dress yet.That's who all these people came here to see?

You'd think the hay wagon hung with flags and striped buntings was waiting for Teddy Roosevelt hisself. Folks of all sorts and sizes fill the meeting grounds. There's timber cutters and miners, oil drillers and farmers, businessmen in fine suits, and ladies and kids and babies. Mrs. Grube must be someplace in that mess, too. I hope she's got a good hold on Baby Beau because it's so crowded there's barely room to stand. And folks been standing awhile. First a preacher talked, then a mayor, then a state congressman for a long, long time.

The crowd has started yelling, "Kate! Kate! Kate…" which is something like I never heard before. I never would've heard it, either, except I didn't get hauled off for a turnip thief. When that parson saw me standing outside his church with the tow sack full of garden goods at my feet, he said, "Praise God! The women's club sent someone to gather the turnips."

"Oh, yes, sir, they did," I answered, and stuck my hands in my dress pockets so he wouldn't see them shaking.

He looked the sack over. "That should be plenty. Hurry now, run them to the meeting grounds for the women cooking the luncheon. And no more dallying with boys, young lady. The speeches start soon, and lunch must be ready after. There's a nickel in it for you if you stay to peel and chop the turnips. Go, now, go!"

And so I did, before he could ask any questions about that half-eaten turnip on the ground. Besides, I wanted the nickel.

It never even crossed my mind that by helping the clubwomen fix food at a long row of plank-lumber tables, I'd end up with a good view behind the scrim cloth curtain strung up to hide folks before they go on the stage. Just like Dorothy in The WonderfulWizard of Oz, I got to watch while they fussed with their neckties and wiped the sweat off their faces and checked their pocket watches when they thought nobody could see. The congressman took a nip out of a flask, then handed it to a helper to keep in his coat pocket. Congressmen don't even have to carry their own whiskey.

I'm so close to Miss Kate Barnard, while she paces like a nervous stable horse behind that hank of scrim, that I can hear her talking to herself. Of a sudden, she stops and looks my way and smiles.

It ain't like me to be shy, but I just stand and stare. Even after she turns to shake hands with Mrs. Threadgill, who's headed up the stairs to say her howdies as president of the Oklahoma Federation of Women's Clubs, I don't stop watching Miss Kate and wondering how somebody so tiny can gather this many people.

Up on stage, Mrs. Threadgill goes on about the state federation and a new age for women. Then she says she's sorry that Mrs. McDougal, the vice president of the state federation, couldn't join her right now to talk about the clubwomen's traveling library because Mrs. McDougal is riding on the library wagon, and it's running late getting here. It'll surely arrive soon, though, and they should all stay around to see it after the noon meal.

Finally, Mrs. Threadgill comes to the point, which is a good thing because the crowd is getting rowdy. "And now it is my distinct honor and pleasure to welcome a woman who shall require no introduction among you, as you quite fondly regard her as ‘Our Kate.' I need not remind you that she is only the second woman elected to a statewide office in the entire country, and by the largest majority of any candidate on the 1907 ballot! This new state can hold up no finer specimen than our Oklahoma commissioner of charities and corrections. I give you Miss Kate Barnard!"

The cheering goes wild while that tiny woman in a plain black skirt, ivory blouse, and a hat with nothing but one peacock feather for a fancy marches up to the middle of that hay wagon like it's hers. She waves and waves while all the people yell and cheer and hoot and holler. But the minute she opens her mouth to talk, the grounds get so quiet you could hear a butterfly land.

A big voice comes out of that little lady, and I go back to washing and cutting leaf lettuce and carrots, which Mrs. Vernon of the Talihina Women's Club said would earn me a second nickel if I'd stay and do it. I want that money, and besides I can listen while I wash and chop.

Up on stage, Miss Kate says her greetings and tells how, since she took office, she has been all over Oklahoma, but there's no lovelier country anywhere than these mountains in the southeastern part of the state. Then she thanks the mine workers and the timbermen and the farmers for all their support during the statehood campaign, when they stood up for her again and again.

"Vast and powerful forces battled against our campaign to include the planks of worker protection in the state constitution, forces that went far beyond this new state of ours," she tells everybody. "At one point, rousers in Washington were desperate to keep a foothold here, and they sent the attorney general from Washington to stop our progress. Hardly had I started speaking one night when the attorney general and his party arrived and with loud, boisterous remarks attempted to break up the vast assemblage of miners. I addressed the attorney general, and he aimed a stinging rebuke about ‘women in politics,' whereupon the huge hulk of Jack Britton moved to the front from out of the depths of two thousand miners.

"Stepping up to the attorney general, Jack asked him to vacate the premises. Jack told the attorney general the miners of Oklahoma respected women as they expected their ‘outside guests to do.' Jack Britton has stood faithful to labor in all its storm and stress, and I am proud to call him friend. Must not God look proudly down on such a man, whose soul cannot be bartered for skyscraper or gold?"

The folks lift their flags and streamers and hats and babies and cheer and cheer and cheer. Miss Kate lets that go on awhile before she starts talking again. "Human conservation, then, is the first consideration of true statesmanship. So long as America has one starving child, our governors and statesmen have a right to think of nothing else. Yet there are six million women in these United States toiling for a pittance wage. Many of them are on the road to motherhood, yet their wage will not buy sufficient food, and the child is starved before it is born.

"Shall those who occupy positions as governors and controllers of the destiny of a nation use their influence to conceal this crime?"

The crowd hollers, "No! No! No!"

"I agree!" she says. "And not only is the crime against the mothers and the workingwomen. Two million American children are slaving in mines, mills, and factories while we gather here. It has been my misfortune to visit some of their workshops.

"I tell you of the little children breathing glass dust in the factories of America, seven thousand of them working on day shifts and seven thousand working on night shifts, inhaling fine pulverized glass dust until the thin, delicate lung tissues were cut and bleeding. The little children could no longer get air, so the average life in these factories is three years. I speak of the early graves of these little folks and the tragedy of their short lives. I ask you, is this right? Is it righteous?"

"No!" the crowd yells. "No! No! No!"

"I tell of forty thousand little children in the cotton mills of the South, breathing cotton lint until it wadded in their lungs, and of their working on floors trembling with the vibration of machinery until they succumbed and died of Saint Vitus's dance or lived to be permanent nervous wrecks. I speak of the children in the canneries, in the coal mines, and the coal breakers, buried away in inky blackness where a plant would die for lack of sunlight and oxygen.

"The day that Governor Haskell signed our state's child labor law, only a few short months ago and after a long and weary battle, hundreds of children came out of the black pits of Oklahoma, hundreds more were released from the laundries of the state, and thousands more were liberated in miscellaneous industries. My child labor bill and my compulsory education bill were both written for the conservation of the American home and the American child.

"I tell you that if we are ever to become a great nation of splendid men and women, we must take hold of our little folks. A dollar spent in the morning of their lives is better than a thousand spent in the evening, in shelters and poorhouses. The true wealth of the nation must be figured in terms of child life. If the child grows up to a life of usefulness, the state is clearly the gainer; while conversely, if it becomes ignorant, or a shirker in the world's work, or criminal, or insane, the state must bear the cost of such defection. And so we must…"

She talks a long time about why boys and girls both ought to be in school, and how, if a widow woman has to put her kids to work so her family can eat, now she can get help from the state of Oklahoma instead, so long as she follows the new law and keeps her children in school.

It makes me think that when we get up the mountain to the old place, we'll need to have a school. In the cabin, there's the small stack of books Mama brought in her trunk when we left Kansas City for Fort Smith, and then the Winding Stair. I figure I'll be the teacher for Nessa and the younger ones, since Mama showed me how to read and cypher before I was ever in a classroom.

The crowd hoots and hollers again, and I realize my mind's been up the mountain awhile. I go back to washing vegetables and listening at Miss Kate's speech.

"…appeal for a shorter workday for the workingmen of this state was based solely upon the necessity of permitting the father to reach home in time to have some hours of leisure and some little energy left for the enjoyment of his wife and children. The sanitary workshop law, I endorsed because it would protect the father's health and enable him longer to live and protect his home. The home is the unit of the nation, the keystone upon which the whole arch is built, is it not?"

The crowd cheers and yells, "Yes! Yes! Yes!"

"In this nation," Miss Kate says when they quieten again, "we must fight to preserve the lives of fathers and mothers, so that children may have fathers and mothers. For we have made too many orphans, too many friendless children, too many laid young in the grave. All for a profit, can you imagine? Fortunes made from little hands and ruined bodies. I yearn for a day when we adopt a uniform child labor law nationwide, for truly we are playing the Game of Life, and the stake is the destiny of the nation. I shall carry the story to the grassroots and the country districts, telling of the fight some senators and representatives are making to stop me."

She points a finger toward the crowd, like those bad men are out there. Some folks look around to see, and then Miss Kate tells them, "When you get home, you good workingmen and -women, what are you going to do about it? What are you going to do to secure a different future for yourself, for the children, and for our newly formed state of Oklahoma?"

She finishes, and the last of her big voice echoes down the valley, then bounces off the foot of the Winding Stair.

Not a whisper breaks the stillness. No talking, clapping, ladies sniffling into their hankies, or men clearing their throats. Even the kids that've climbed trees stay right where they are. Everybody's frozen by a spell.

Her spell.

The magic holds till one man in a plain canvas work shirt hollers, "Hear! Hear! Three cheers for Our Kate, the Good Angel of Oklahoma!"

Noise breaks like a summer squall. Folks yell and clap and blow penny whistles and shake tin-can rattlers.

Miss Kate Barnard stands up there, waving with both hands while the crowd cheers, "Hurrah for Our Kate!"

I wonder what that might be like to have all those people listen at your words and call your name.

When Mrs. Threadgill climbs back up on the stage and tries to take Miss Kate away, the crowd doesn't like that one bit. But there's roast pig cooked in pits in the ground, and big iron kettles of beans and field peas and root vegetables, plus all sorts of covered dishes the club ladies made at home and put on the long tables.

The cost for a plate is twenty-five cents kindly donated to the Talihina Women's Club. That food smells good enough, it's a sure temptation for most folks, and the line grows long right off. I figure I better ask for my pay before all the ladies get too busy. It's way past time for me to head back to Tula and Nessa, so we can make our plans, and get shed of those boys if they're still lingering around. With all the money earning and speech hearing, I've hardly cast a thought toward the hiding place down by Jack Crossing. That shames me some, but we do need the money.

I climb up on a bench to see if I can spot Mrs. Vernon from the Talihina Clubwomen and get my pay. Of a sudden, here she comes, hair sticking out from under her hat all around, and sweat drawing rivers down her cheeks. "Hazel!"

She sounds mad, and I jump off that bench figuring I oughtn't be up there, but soon as she gets within reach, she grabs my arm and says, "There's another nickel for you if you can assist with the toting, serving, and cleaning. We were to have students from the Choctaw Female Academy in Tuskahoma as helpers, but only half of them have arrived. Their second wagon met with some trouble on the road. I need girls to work. Will you?"

"Why, yes, ma'am, I most surely will," I answer because all I can think is another nickel. "My mama expected I might be in town awhile, so she won't be missing me at all. I know how to place silver and china, and serve a proper table, and clear it, too."

I cast an eye toward the church building, where a special lunch is set up just for the ladies of the Talihina Women's Club. That's where they're headed with Miss Kate Barnard, if they can ever get her past all the folks.

"Wonderful," Mrs. Vernon says. "Go inside and help as long as you're needed."

I sprint off like a deer, and once I get in that building, a woman shoves a apron my way and points me to two girls in school uniforms from the Choctaw Academy. They're being bossed by a tall dark-headed woman while they chop block ice and get it in glasses. I put on the apron and help with running the glasses to tables before the luncheon guests can crowd up the place.

Once we're done, the woman, whose name is Mrs. Paulson, stands us up along the wall and looks us over. "Straight, straight." She tidies our apron ties and dabs our clothes. "It isn't every day a state politician and the president and vice president of the Oklahoma State Federation of Women's Clubs come to visit. Such an auspicious occasion. If we in the Talihina Club are to be taken seriously, we must show that the remoteness here is no hindrance to culture and refinement. Do you understand?"

We all answer, "Yes, ma'am."

"I assume in your classes at the academy you have been instructed in the proper serving of beverages from a pitcher?"

Mrs. Paulson thinks I'm one of the academy girls, and with the apron over my blue ribbon-sash dress, I match them pretty well. "Yes, ma'am," I answer right along, because I am good at pouring without dripping. At the Lockridges' house, dripping will land you in trouble. Only the guests get to mess up the linens or their own dinner clothes.

Soon as Mrs. Paulson leaves us be, along comes bossy Mrs. Tinsley, who I already learned to watch out for while washing vegetables outside. She has us hold our left arms out, bent, and she hangs tea towels on us and tells us to make a comely sight of ourselves. "For the academy! For Talihina! For the federation, and for womankind!"

That makes me giggle inside, but I know better than let it out. So do those academy girls. We stand like statues till she walks away, then those girls and me look sidewards at each other.

We don't even get so far as trading names before a skinny man in a flashy brown-and-blue checkerboard suit comes hurrying in the back door and points his folding box camera at us. "Girls, look this way. Be still, please! One, two, three…" He takes our photograph, then squints an eye at us and says, "How's about a bit less stiff this time? This isn't just for the Talihina newspaper. I've been tasked with sending material to Oklahoma City in consideration of a commemorative in TheDaily Oklahoman."

Right in that minute, I feel pretty important, so I fold both arms behind my back to hide that silly tea towel, and I tip my chin up high. I pretend I'm Miss Kate Barnard, first woman elected to the state government.

The other girls do the same pose. We look so good the newsman takes an extra picture. Afterward, he pulls out a pencil and paper pad and says while he writes, "Girls providing beverage service, left to right…names, please?" He looks at me first.

"Olive…" I'm just about to add Augusta Radley, when I snap my mouth shut, then finally spit out, "Hazel Rusk."

"Olive…Hazel…Rusk." The man repeats after me. "Is that R-U-S-K?"

"Yes, but just Hazel Rusk is best. That's what folks call me."

"As you wish. Hazel Rusk it is." He gives me a smile, and he has the prettiest blue eyes. For just a minute I feel like I am the only person in that big room. I never had a feeling like that in my whole wide life. Someday, when I get grown, I think to myself, I'd like to marry a man with blue eyes like that.

Quick as that thought comes, it scampers off, and my head goes to spinning about my photograph and Hazel's name being in the Talihina newspaper and maybe even TheDaily Oklahoman. That was stupid of me. Tesco doesn't read a newspaper, but Mr. Lockridge sure does. If he shows Tesco that picture, Tesco will know Nessa and me didn't drown in the river…and he'll know right where to look forus.

I step closer to that newspaperman and say, "Girls visiting from the female academy near Tuskahoma. You should put that in your paper. The academy teachers might be real upset if you don't."

The man nods, then marks over some words and writes new ones. "Very wise advice, young lady. The ire of teachers is best avoided."

"Oh yes, sir. It sure is." I let out a breath. If Tesco does see that newspaper, he'll go looking for me down in Tuskahoma.

While me and those academy girls finish putting out ice glasses, I make sure to let them know I'm on my way to Kansas City to my mama's family, and I leave on the train tomorrow. I tell them about aunts and uncles and cousins up there to make the story seem real, but we only get to talk for a few minutes before the ladies settle in to their tables. Then there's work to do and water glasses to fill.

I don't just pour from the pitcher while I go up and down the tables. I listen at what those women say, more than I ever did at the Lockridges' place. I feel like I'm older now, being on my own with Nessa to look after, and I need to know things. But the biggest reason I mark their words is these ladies talk about more than each other's pretty hats and how to bake a pie.

At the head table, where I dally the most, Mrs. Tinsley gets to jawboning about a man running a new laundry in town, and how he lives in the rooms above the business and has six young laundry girls that never go outside, except to deliver laundry. When they do, they keep their heads down and don't speak to anybody and are even sent alone to the homes of bachelor men.

"He claims they are all his daughters." Mrs. Tinsley shakes her head and makes a tsk-tsk-tsk. "But I do declare. None of them resemble one another or him. I fear it might be a circumstance…well if you ask my opinion…quite untoward. I will say, though, he has trained the girls at the laundry trade. They do fine work, particularly on the linens, but the girl who brought mine could not have been more than ten years old and certainly not fourteen, as your new child labor law stipulates. I reported it to the Talihina deputy and our city leaders, but nothing was done. Men, you know. They do not see the trouble in such things. And, of course…they like the starch in their shirts." Mrs. Tinsley hides a giggle behind her hand. "Your department simply must look into the situation, Miss Kate."

"I will make note to send an investigator," Miss Kate answers when Mrs. Tinsley finally stops talking. "But in the meanwhile, if the men offer no satisfaction on the issue, the women of the town might form a formidable opposition by doing their own wash at home, wouldn't you say?"

Mrs. Tinsley chokes on a sip of water, and right in that minute every lady at the table has to wipe her face with her napkin to cover a grin. I clamp my lips together and hurry off to refill my pitcher.

Next time I make my way back to the head table, the ladies have started talking about the vote, and Mrs. Tinsley looks like she just bit into a lemon.

Mrs. Threadgill and Mrs. McDougal, the federation president and vice president, sit on either side of Kate Barnard. Mrs. McDougal looks worse for the wear of whatever trouble slowed down that library wagon on its way into Talihina.

"But what say you on women's suffrage in general, Kate?" Mrs. Threadgill wants to know. "Are you a supporter of women having the vote?"

"I do not need the vote for myself," Miss Kate tells her. "As present, I am all smiles because the men of our legislature this year did everything I asked them to do. But if women want to vote, I do not see why they should be denied the privilege. Women pay taxes without representation. Women are wage earners and yet cannot vote for men who will legislate for or against labor. But I say we cannot wait for that time to begin influencing the laws of our new state."

"It is my opinion that many current-day social problems would be greatly diminished if women had the vote." Mrs. McDougal says. She ain't in the pearliest mood, since she missed all the speeches.

"Oh, indeed." Mrs. Threadgill sets down her fork and dabs her mouth. "Women's hearts are naturally inclined toward the poor, the infirm, the feeble-minded, the friendless child. Don't you agree, Kate?"

"To address the suffering of the present," Miss Kate answers, "I find that one must work within the confines of the present. The legislature has authorized me to appear in probate court as ‘next friend' to orphans, for example, and I must use my available means to protect them now, not tomorrow or on some future day. The starving orphan, the child abused or forced to labor, cannot wait upon political tides. Case in point, the fates of minor children and orphans of the Cherokee, Creek, Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw tribes in Oklahoma worsen by the day. The congressional enactment of May 1908 having removed the Interior Department from oversight of the Five Tribes, county probate judges are free to do as they please."

Mrs. Tinsley jumps in before anybody else can. "But in truth, orphaned children—especially the Indian ones—should be managed closer to home. Local administration is most efficient, after all."

Miss Kate sets down her glass hard enough that water splashes out the top. "And I must counter that efficiency is not the matter where human lives are concerned, but rather equity. Placed under the control of county probate courts, these children are as defenseless as lambs among wolves. They are delivered into the hands of judges who award lucrative guardianships to political donors and heartless grafters who seek guardianships so as to steal the wealth of their wards. Money is spread thick from here to Washington, and the children suffer. This is a travesty, and I tell you, women must stand against crimes such as these now, vote or no vote. And so my question in here echoes my question out there, When you get home, ladies, what are you going to do about it?"

The table quietens, and of a sudden everybody's busy with their food.

Mrs. McDougal coughs like she's swallowed a bone, and she motions to have her water filled. Just when I step in there, she looks up at me, and I realize I've seen her face before. She's been at the Lockridges' parties out at the ranch.

I get as nervous as those ladies twisting in their seats.

"So many multifarious issues, indeed." For once Mrs. Tinsley busts up the quiet at a good time. "And how do you find the roast pork, Miss Barnard? Is it to your liking?"