Chapter 37
Home Again

I’d left Miracle on a Monday. It was now Friday afternoon, a week and a half later, the 29th of August. I wondered if Almeda would be at the office, but I was actually relieved when she wasn’t. I wanted to see everyone at once.

I can hardly describe the feelings I had inside as I went around the last turn in the road and the house came into view. I felt as if I’d gone to a foreign country and was now returning after many years. Yet it had only been eleven days!

Almost immediately Becky saw me. But instead of coming to meet me, she turned around and ran inside, then out again, then up the creek, screaming at the top of her twelve-year-old lungs, “Corrie’s here! Corrie’s home . . . it’s Corrie . . . Corrie’s back!”

Within seconds people were pouring through the door of the house, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Pa and Uncle Nick and Mr. Jones running down from the mine. By then my eyes were full of tears; everybody was hugging and laughing and shouting and asking questions, and I could hardly tell who was who. I was so happy, yet I couldn’t stop crying even at the same time as I was laughing and smiling and trying to talk. And I don’t even remember getting off my horse, but there I was surrounded by the people I loved so much, arms and hands and voices all coming at me at once. Every once in a while I’d hear a voice I knew—Katie’s one minute, then Alkali Jones’s high hee, hee, hee, and of course all my sisters and brothers shouting at once. The only two voices I don’t remember hearing were the two whose sound I loved more than all the others. But Pa and Almeda and I got a chance to visit quietly alone later. The three of us stayed up and talked around the fire way past midnight, and I told them everything.

“I’ve got to tell you, Corrie,” said Almeda when I was through, “we were mighty concerned about you.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re starting to remind me of myself, girl!” said Pa with a smile. “Maybe it ain’t just the Belle blood, but some of the Hollister too. Tarnation, but I’d like to see you in ten years! You’re gonna be some woman, that’s all I got to say.”

I could tell that in spite of Almeda’s concern, Pa was proud of me. I suppose he’d figured I was a mite timid—which I was!—for a daughter of his. So I think he liked what I’d done. He’d been acting a little different toward me all evening—not just treating me like I was older and wasn’t a little girl anymore, but also more like a son who had done something brave. Being gone a few days wasn’t all that courageous a thing. But because it was me, timid little Corrie Belle, I think it gave Pa kind of a special feeling to see his daughter do it. Zack acted different, too, as if I’d proved my right to be the oldest Hollister.

Once the article on Jessie Fremont appeared in the August 30 issue of the Daily Alta—on the second page with a big bold caption over three columns, with my name right under the title!—my life would never be the same again. Whether I liked it or not, ever after that I was a reporter, a writer, and much would change as a result. How many times I must have read those words over: “The Real Jessie Benton Fremont . . . by Corrie Belle Hollister.” I was so thankful inside, so thankful to God. More and more, as I reflected back on those eleven days, I realized that none of it would have happened had he not been guiding my steps just as he promised. Even though I wasn’t aware of it at the time, and even though I hadn’t even been thinking of him through some of it, he had been there all the time, going along the path just in front of me.

As I read over the article and the caption and my name underneath, I couldn’t help wondering if I shouldn’t have used my full given name, Cornelia. But when I later suggested it to Mr. Kemble, he said, “Too late, Corrie. Folks know you now. And once you’re writing with one name, you can’t change it any more than you can change horses in mid-river, as the saying goes. No, you stick with Corrie. It’s a good name, and folks are starting to recognize it.”

The excitement of my trip and the article died down, especially after church on Sunday when everybody asked me all about it, and then the following Monday I went into the office with Almeda and spent a regular day working in town.

I’d almost forgotten about the Miracle Springs election. Almeda hadn’t said much about it since my return, but all of a sudden the church service on Sunday seemed to stir it up again, even more than before. People came up to me afterward, welcoming me home, asking me about the trip and what I’d done, and most everybody said something about my interviewing them earlier about the mayor’s election. Sometimes it was just a little comment, like, “I been thinking about that conversation we had,” or they might say, “I might like t’ talk t’ you again, Corrie, if yer still gonna do interviewin’ about it.”

Most of the folks were quiet about it, as if they didn’t want anyone to hear them talking to me. And Mr. Royce acted pretty friendly at the service too, like I reckon a fellow ought to be if he’s trying to make people vote for him. He was greeting the men and their wives and shaking hands. And he even came up to me and gave me a light slap on the shoulder and said “Good to have you back, Corrie!” before he went on to visit someone else.

But in the background amid all the hubbub of the after-church visiting, lots of people seemed as if they wanted to talk to me again about the election. My getting back to town seemed to stir up people’s thinking in a new way.

All day Monday my mind was on the interview article, going over what I’d done and things people had told me and thinking of how to go about starting to write the article. There were only two months left before the election, so I couldn’t delay too long. On Tuesday, the Alta came with my article in it, which set my mind running in a hundred directions at once! So it wasn’t until Wednesday that I really settled myself down enough to think about the interviews and article again. That morning I gathered my papers together and put them in my satchel to take with me into town to work. I hoped to see some of the people who’d talked to me at church. There were still a few people in town I hadn’t interviewed yet. As I went through my notes and quotes from what people had told me before and started to consider actually beginning to write the article in a way that Mr. Kemble’d like, I found myself getting enthusiastic about it again.

But that very evening something happened that suddenly changed my thoughts not only about the article I wanted to write but about the whole mayor’s election.