Read Together Apart for Free Online Page B

buying and the selling. If you cut the difference by half, I believe the women of Prairie Hill will form a line at your door."
    "How many women do you think would make use of such a place?"
    "Prairie County is settled now, all the land taken up. For the most part, there is one farm on each quarter section. Four farms, four farm women, more or less, for every square mile. I've done the arithmetic. The county is twenty-four miles in both its length and width, which multiplies out to 576 miles square. That counts the number of farms, the number of farm women, at something over two thousand. Half might never come, especially those whose husbands don't tarry. Of the other half, some might come only if they need to get out of the weather. But I believe some will come as often as once a month, and others, the ones whose farms are closest to town and those who most crave the companionship of other women, will visit as often as once a week. It might be slow going at first, until word gets out, but once the women know you are here, I truly believe they will come."
    Eliza clasped one hand over the other and exclaimed, "That's what we'll do then, turn this space into a resting room." She leapt from her chair then and began waltzing about the room, pointing out the placement of the furnishings—a chair over there, a sofa here, a table yonder. Isaac would build shelves against one wall, which Eliza would fill with books from her collection, with one shelf saved for the most recent issues of the
Women's Gazette.
    While Eliza chattered I did some imagining of my own. I imagined a blazing fire in the stove. Wood smoke threaded and scented the air. A resting place, safe and warm. If only my brothers had found such a place. If only it had been that simple.
    "And I know exactly how we'll spread the word. We'll print handbills, if I can coax my cantankerous printing press back into service, that is. You're the clever one, Hannah. Perhaps you can remedy whatever it is that's ailing the beast."
    I followed Eliza into the print shop, where she showed me how the thick ink was applied to the large platen disk. "It's a clamshell letterhead press," Eliza said, fitting a sheet of blank paper on a blotterlike pad. When she set the thing in motion, it printed only half a page. On the page were the words "Ten Reasons Why Women Must Be Granted Suffrage."
    "For your gazette?" I asked, trying to hold my brows from creeping up.
    "Oh, my yes, this is the blasphemy that Reverend Cobb's in such a dither about. His self-righteous indignation would be better served if he rousted one or two of his male parishioners from Shipman's Saloon and Billiard Parlor."
    My brows stayed in place, but the corners of my mouth curled into a smile. Shipman's Saloon and Billiard Parlor was responsible for none too few of the wagon-waits farm women had been made to suffer. My papa had said his own visits to Shipman's were necessary because much of the town's business was conducted within its walls, which were single-storied behind a false two-storied front.
    As for the matter of suffrage, I chose not to comment because I hadn't given it much thought. Papa had. I'd once heard him say from behind his newspaper that if women got the vote it would crumble the foundations of the American home. Mama, who'd been darning a hole in his sock, peered over the top of her spectacles and quietly replied, "Don't see that it'd make much difference around here. When you live in a sod house, crumble is about all you've got." If Papa heard, he didn't let on.
    ***
    "Try it again," I said, crouching so I could watch the workings of the press's many arms and gears.
    "And again."
    On the third try, I spied the problem. A bolt had worked itself loose from an arm. I asked Eliza if she had a wrench. She answered that she wouldn't know a wrench from a plow blade, then fetched the Judge's toolbox. And finely forged tools they were, with wrenches of every size. I removed the one I thought would best fit the