Nan's Journey (3 page)

After a while Nan woke up stiff and sore. She could hardly move, but she knew she must. She gasped as she looked over
at her young brother. He was extremely
pale. She placed the cool damp rag on his forehead as he slowly opened his eyes.
“Elmer, what is it?”

“My head is bustin’, Nan. I can hardly see.”

“Honey, I forgot that you suffered yesterday with you
r head hurting. What caused it?
Do you know?”

“I don’t know, I think I’m gonna be sick.”

Nan tried to think of a plan. What could she do? She wrapped the rag around his head and helped him back on the horse. The sun was high now. They hadn’t caught any fish, but they did have the berries. After finishing off the berries their stomachs still had a gnawing hunger. Nan heard a sound in the distance. It was a train whistle. She had heard trains before, but was much too frightened to approach one. She had to get Elmer to safety and maybe even a doctor. A water tower st
ood next to the tracks about one hundred yards a
way. Nan knew that the train would s
top there to take on water. She
gathered up their meager possessions and helped Elmer up to Molasses’ back. They made it to some bushes next to the tracks just as
the train rounded a curve and ca
me to a stop at the water tower. Hurriedly Nan and Elmer carried their bundles to a boxcar with its
door partly open. Nan lifted the tyke
up and climbed in after him. They held their breath until the train slowly began rolling into the sunset. They looked through the gaps between the boxcar boards and bid goodbye to their dear friend, Molasses
,
and left all that was familiar to them behind. Elmer and Nan spread the bedrolls out in a dark corner of the boxcar and slept a deep exhausted sleep. The rhythm and movement of the train was comforting to the young
sters. A
s she slept Nan dreamed that she was being rocked in the arms of her mother.

*****

They awoke to the sound of grating
brakes
. Blinking sleep from her eyes, Nan grew accustomed to the dark. Elmer was still lying on the pallet. His eyes were glazed over with pain. The rag on his head had dried with the warmth of the fever.

“Here Elmer, have some more berries. It is very dark tonight. I think we have traveled pretty far. Ma won’t be looking for us since we have come this far.”

They froze as they heard voices approaching the boxcar. Nan motioned for Elmer to stay quiet.

“Mr. Blake
,
ther
e
is room for your crates in this boxcar
. Just tell your boys to bring them over here.”

Nan hid Elmer behind a couple of bales of hay and huddled down beside him. A couple of far
m hands brought twenty crates into the boxcar,
shut and locked the door. After they left, Nan crawled up to the crates and discovered
they contained
five crates of
apples and three
crates of chickens along with various other supplies. Nan reached through the cracks in the crates and fished out a few eggs and sev
eral apples. She couldn’t
cook the eggs, but she knew that Elmer needed nourishment. She got the tin cup and broke one egg open in
to
it. Quickly she swal
lowed it. It was
slimy
, but the gnawing slowed in her stomach. She fixed one for Elmer and told him to drink. He didn’t know what it was and he asked for more. She fixed another and gave it to him. Then she handed him an apple. He quit moaning after he finished the apple and fell into a deep sleep.

Nan hated taking things that
didn’t belong to her. L
ately she had been stealing a lot, first the clothes and now this food. When was she ever going to act like herself? She felt her hair where it was all cut off. The shorter hair managed to get in her eyes and her ears were cold. The back of her neck was exposed and she felt extremely ugly. There she sat, a lonely little girl, hiding in a boxcar full of crates with a sick little boy
,
propelling down a railroad
track farther and farther west.

Chapter 4

Mary Dewey awoke early. She had little patience with folks who slept past
five
o’clock. The children
were
raised on the farm and they knew the routine. The cows were milked, the eggs were gathered, and then the breakfast was prepared.

Mary grunted as she recalled that she still hadn’t gotten the wood brought up to the house. She had gotten so worked up when she started whipping Nan that she forgot the reason for the whipping. Mary grimaced. She
didn’t know what had come
over her since she married Mr. Dewey.  She resented the formality, but Sam wouldn’t let her call him anything else in front of the children.

That man certainly had a lot of rules! Sure, she was a spinster
, and s
he suspected that Sam realized how desperate she had become since her
thirtieth
birthday. He told her that he had two stepchildren he was responsible for
,
and that she would be their new Ma. She wanted a family and a husband
,
so she agreed to marry a
man that she didn’t love.

She wasn’t prepared for the home she would be in charge of. Instead of being a run down, dirty shanty with unk
empt children, she saw a
farm house, lovingly decorated, simple, clean, and efficient. The children were beautiful. Nan was a dark haired, brown-eyed girl with a soft
,
thoughtful lo
ok about her. Elmer was a sweet-
faced
,
blond haired boy. They didn’t need her.

Nan was young, but she cared for the house as one with experience. Mary had never understood how or where to start running a
home. The
idea that a girl fifteen years old knew
more in this area
irked her. Sam expected Mary to ru
n
things.

Everything she tried to change had been a disaster. She ruined clothes, burned food, and found it impossible to get the children to call her Ma. She had to hit them to get them to say it. They began to look at her in fear.
Good
, at least they are minding me
.
If they didn’t, she would give them reason to fear her. She began with a couple of swats. They jumped as soon as she ordered them.

She became alarmed as she remembered her reaction at the sight of blood on Nan’s back. She had not been raised to cause injury. Why had she done this? When the blood began soaking through Nan’s dress she had become angry about the effort it would take to get the stain out. In h
er frustration she hit
Nan harder and harder with the strap.

The release of anger felt good to her. She quit when the strap became too heavy for her to lift. Nan
lay
barely able to get a breath.
Mary grew sick to her stomach
think
ing
that she had done all the damage to the body lying at her feet.

Mary had never been hit much before she married Sam. He looked harmless, but he certainly brought pain when he wanted to. Working at the mill made him strong and frustration made him mean. He had left three months ago to be with his dying mother
, and
Mary
was
relieved to see him leave. Maybe she could sort out her thoughts and actions while he was gone.

She opened the old trunk in the corner of the kitchen to see if Nan and Elmer had more clothes that she could make over for them. The photograph on the top of the items had an unusual effect on her. A beautiful family was smiling at her from the frame. Mother, Father, daughter and son in their Sunday best looked like something out of a dream.

Mary had always envied families such as this. She had always felt like an outsider, as if she were outside the window of a house looking in to a warm room with a cozy fireplace and a family sitting around the room speaking wit
h laughter and common happiness. S
he was not invited in. True, her family had been a good family
—h
ard working, educated, and clean
, but t
hey were not especially happy. They made little time for play
,
and her mother and father were not affectionate to their children. Praise was considered a flaw. Mary remembered asking her mother to forgive her once
,
and Mom told her that she didn’t believe that she was sorry. She would have to prove that she was sorry by being good. Mary had been at a loss as to what to do. She never remembered her mother smiling at her.

The face in the photo seemed to mock her and show her that she had never proved her love to her mother.
At one time, t
his woman had everything that Mary had wanted out of life,
a loving, handsome, husband
two sweet children, and a real home. Sam was gone. His mother had lingered longer than he had planned
,
and Mary was be
coming worried that he might never
return.
Enough of this thinking, I must get things done!
Mary said to herself.

She walked into the kitchen and noticed the bedrolls were already up fr
o
m in front of the stove. She walked out the
door and looked around the yard.
She walked across to the barn and found that the cow had not been milked.
Where were those children?
She would have to look for them of course.
Where could they be? They weren’t in the chicken house either.
Mary ran into the kitchen and looked around. The torn, bloody dress was lying in the corner and the old work dress was gone. The bedrolls weren’t in the spot that they were kept.
Had the children run away? They had taken so little with them; of course they had very little that belonged to them. What should she do? What was she expected to do? What would Sam say?
Just at that moment she heard someone coming onto the porch.

Chapter 5

The sun spilled
a rosy
glow across the sagebrush as
Nan blinked her eyes open after hou
rs of deep sleep. She
glimpsed
the sunrise through the cracks in the boxcar. Elmer was still sleeping and Nan placed her hand on his brow. The fever had left. Maybe the headache that
was
tormenting him for the past three days had run its course. She smiled as she looked at his little boy
face. He was a tough little guy. He
never complained until thi
ngs were unbearable. She was
proud of him. He still had a babyish look when he slept. His soft little cheeks and rosebud lips parted as he breathed. Mama had called him her “
l
ittle golden boy”
.
Pa must have looked just like him at this age.

The chickens clucked and flapped
in their crates. Nan grimaced at the thought of more raw eggs, but she retrieved them and drank them down. Apples helped get the taste out of her mouth. She prepared some for Elmer. He sat up and looked into the tin cup. “Raw eggs, Nan?”

“Yep, go ahead, you had some last night.’

“Oh
.” H
e drank it down quickly and gnawed hungrily on the apple she handed him. “Where do you think we are, sister?”

Nan looked through the cracks
of the boxcar and noticed dark-
blue mountains in the far distance. In the west there was desert-like land next to the train track up to the mountains and closer snow
-
capped mountains to the North. “I don’t really know, but there will be a town soon.”

“What town are we going to?”
Elmer asked.

“I don’t know, but Ma
ma
used to say to ask God for help and I think we should try to ask.”

“Nan, I think God helped us already.”

“Yes
. I
s your head better today?”
Nan asked.

“Yes, I prayed and asked God to help it
,
and I asked Him for food and sleep
,
and to get away quick.” Elmer smiled at the thought of his own prayers being answered so quickly.

“Just when did you do all this praying, Elmer?”

“I prayed last night
. Jesus is my friend. Mama said He walks with me, so I just tell Him what I’m thinking and He knows what I need. I prayed for you when you were getting whipped too.”

“Do you think He cares about that?”
Nan frowned.

“I know He does, and look! We got away fast and had eggs and everything.
…
Right?”