Nan's Journey Read online

  “Yep, I don’t want Ma beatin’ you again.” Nan rolled up the blankets and decided to have the beans for dinner or supper. They would have to do something else after that if they were going to eat again. There was nothing else left.

  As they slowly traveled down the road, Nan began to think. Mrs. Dewey would be asking around if anyone had seen them. People would be looking for a girl and her little brother. She had to think of something. Just then they passed a small house next to the road. Elmer pointed and said, “Look, Nan, some woman left part of the wash on the line. Boy, wouldn’t Ma skin us alive if we had done that!”

  Nan blinked through the semi-darkness and saw a clothesline. She jumped off the horse and grabbed the clothes off the line. They smelled like skunk, but she took them anyway.

  “Now you know why they were on the clothesline, Elmer. Some boy got sprayed by a skunk and was trying to get them aired out before he washed them.”

  “Why did you take them, Nan?” questioned Elmer.

  “Well, I need a disguise. They won’t be looking for two boys,” said Nan.

  “Yep, but you would still look like a girl, you got long hair!”

  “Elmer, do you have your pocket knife?”

  “Yep.”

  “Let me see it.”

  “Okay.”

  Nan grabbed the little pocketknife and began sawing off first one black braid and then the other. Her hair was the same length as Elmer’s. Nan sadly looked at the long braids in her hands, wrapped them in her old dress, and tied it to the bedroll. She tugged on the loose fitting trousers and heavy shirt.

  “Nan, you look just like a boy!” squealed Elmer.

  “Let’s cut us a couple of limbs and rig us up some fishing poles. If anybody sees us, they will think we are boys off fishing.” Nan said. “You will have to call me another name. No boy would be called Nan. What shall it be?”

  “I like Ned,” said Elmer.

  “Ned it is, Elmer. I look kinda like a Ned, huh?”

  Silently the two rode into the west with the sun rising on their backs, the world brightened up little by little. Nan wondered how each morning seemed full of new beginnings. That is what we have, a new beginning, she thought. If only she could figure out what to do next. Elmer needed food. They stopped next to a stream and she got out the little tin cup of cold beans. They shared and ate slowly.

  “Nan, does your back still hurt?’

  “Yep, Elmer. Do you think you could help me clean up the blood? I’m afraid that when I start sweatin’ the blood will come through to the new shirt.”

  “Nan, she beat you bad! You don’t got much skin that ain’t broke open!”

  “Elmer, we had to leave, else she would have took the strap to you. I never want you to have this pain.”

  “Sister, how far away are we? Are they going to look for us?”

  “I don’t know. We gotta let the horse rest and eat some grass. Maybe we can catch a fish while we lay here by this creek and sleep. You are tired aren’t you, honey?”

  Elmer stretched out on the grass and was soon asleep. As Elmer slept, Nan noticed some berries on bushes close to the creek. She took the tin cup and filled it up. She dumped the berries into the hanky and refilled the cup. Taking the old rag from home she dipped it in the stream. Washing the grime from her face and arms without soap was quite a task. She was exhausted and laid on the ground next to Elmer while Molasses grazed nearby.

  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 your 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 stood next to the tracks about one hundred yards away. Nan knew that the train would stop 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 came 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 youngsters. As 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, there 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 farm 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 several apples. She couldn’t cook the eggs, but she knew that Elmer needed nourishment. She got the tin cup and broke one egg open into it. Quickly she swallowed 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. Lately 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 she 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 unkempt 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 look 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 run 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 her 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 thinking 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 with laughter and common happiness. She was not invited in. True, her family had been a good family—hard working, educated, and clean, but they 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, this 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 becoming 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 from 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 hours 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 things 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 “little 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.” He 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 Mama used to say to ask God for help and I think we should try to ask.”

  “Nan, I think God helped us already.”

  “Yes. Is 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?”

  “Mama told me about Jesus too. I guess I’ve been too sad about her dying and stuff to think He cares much about me.” Nan quickly brushed a tear away.

  “Nan, He does care…doesn’t He? I need Him to care.”

  “Mama said He does, but I don’t really know if He does. Why would he give us such bad trouble as we have had if He really cares?"

  Elmer looked at her with a determined look in his five-year-old eyes, “I think He does care.” His eyes were filled with tears. He looked pitiful and sweet, but Nan wasn’t very sure about whether God wanted to help them with everything that Elmer was asking for. Maybe He would help a little. That was all they needed now, just a little help.

  “I guess it won’t hurt us to ask for a little help,” she grunted.

  *****

  The train lurched to a stop. Nan saw hundreds of sheep next to the train. She heard shouts from the engineer and sheepherders. The engineer was angry about the sheep crossing the track. Elmer’s eyes widened as he saw the sheepherder’s dog running this way and that, moving the sheep across the tracks quickly. He sprang back and routed out stray sheep that were going the wrong way. He worked quickly and efficiently.

  “Look Nan, that dog is moving as if he is having fun!”

  Nan was amazed at the grace and agility of the humble little creature. She thought again, “humble” wasn’t quite the word. She had never seen a dog trained for such a task. It was like watching a dance.

  The train slowly began to roll. Nan and Elmer edged to the opposite side of the boxcar to watch the little dog as long as they could. There were two sheepherders, all those sheep, and one little black and white dog. When he disappeared from sight, they both were in their own thoughts. “That surely was a smart dog, Elmer”

>   “Do ya think we could ever get one, Nan, for our very own?”

  “Well, we don’t have any sheep…I don’t know.”

  “Maybe we will get some sheep so we can have a little dog like that one.”

  Nan had no idea about sheep. How to get them, raise them, shear them, or anything. Did you have to have a lot of land? She just smiled and thought about that intelligent little dog. Nan began to plan. Soon the train will stop, the door will be unlocked and we could get out. What will we do then? I must find a way to earn some money for food. If she could only think of something she could do. Maybe chop wood or hoe in a garden or do other chores?

  The train stopped on the edge of a fair-sized town. Nan watched as several men approached the boxcar. One of the fellows was short and stout with a mass of red hair and freckles. The second man was tall and lean with balding black hair. The third person was a big young boy with a sunburned face and blonde hair. The first unlocked the boxcar door and the three of them unloaded all the crates from the boxcar. After it was unloaded, the children climbed out of their hiding place behind the hay bales. The door was left open so Nan jumped to the ground. Elmer threw the bedrolls down to her and reached out for help to the ground.

  Nan tied a bedroll to Elmer’s back and one to her own. They kept the fishing poles and still had the look of two boys off fishing. Slowly they walked away from the train and over to the railroad station. There were a few men and boys milling around. Some of them were unloading freight.

  “Hey, anyone, I need some help unloading these three boxcars! …Any takers?”

  Nan stepped up, “I’ll do it!”

  “Say boy, you’re kind of a runt aren’t you?”

  “I’m strong.” Nan stated.

  “What’s your name, kid?”

  “Ned.”

  “Alright kid, see if you can unload that boxcar over there. There’s fifty cents in it if you do a quick job of it. Pile the crates on this spot on the platform.”

  “Elmer, you sit over there under the tree and rest. We’re gonna eat a good meal today!”

  Nan lifted and stacked the crates one by one onto the platform. Some of them were heavy and others felt as if they had nothing in them. Most had labels: cloth, ammunition, crackers, or nails.