Shattered Trail

Chapter Four

Once I get home, I eat a small dinner and then curl up in my chair with the newspaper. Of course there aren’t any big headlines- Markersville isn’t exactly a busy town with lot's going on. The biggest story of this week is a man who lives in the next town over getting run over by a wagon. So I move onto the classifieds.

I skim over the notice I read for Lemuel. Most of these are the same- horse for sale, wagon for sale, home for sale. But an ad right at the bottom of the paper catches my eye.

HELP WANTED, it reads. TRAVELING TO OREGON COUNTRY VIA THE OREGON TRAIL, LOOKING FOR YOUNG WOMEN AGED 17-23, UNMARRIED WITH NO CHILDREN TO LOOK AFTER THREE CHILDREN AGED TWO THROUGH TEN ALONG THE JOURNEY. CONTACT MR. AMOS REED IF INTERESTED IN POSITION. After that it lists an address. I squint at it and realize that this Reed family is one of the rich folks that live up on the hill.

I re-read the ad, and then my heart starts to race. I fit nearly all of the requirements, except for one of them, and I want to get out of this town so badly it hurts. Could I-?

I shake my head. It’s ridiculous to think that I could take this position. But why not? I ask myself. My heart really starts to race now. If I want to, why shouldn’t I apply for the position? I could very well get it, for I can’t imagine there’s many young women in this town who want it.

But, a voice in my head says, you don’t fill one of the requirements.

I try to argue back to it. What they don’t know won’t kill them. They never need to know.

I pick up a pen and some ink, and I find a sheet of paper I kept for an occasion just like this. Then I begin to write.

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I suppose the time has come that I must tell what requirement I don’t fill, and why. I’ll start with saying this: I’m twenty years old, perfectly within the age requirements, and I’m not married, nor have I ever been. That just leaves one left.

The first time Poppa ever deliberately hurt me was when he realized that I was pregnant with Lemuel’s child. Lemuel caught me in an alleyway in February of my fifteenth year. When I missed my cycle a few weeks later, I knew.

My daughter Ada was born on November 18, 1843. But I haven’t seen her since December 15, 1843, two days before my sixteenth birthday. I only got to hold my daughter for twenty-eight days before she was taken away from me.

When Momma ran away, she took Ada with her. Maybe it was to help me hide from the shame of having an illegitimate child, or maybe she didn’t want another girl to grow up in my father’s household. Either way, Ada’s gone. I haven’t seen her in five years.

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Rosalind had run off a few years before, so when I discovered I was pregnant the only people to tell were Lemuel and my parents.

Lemuel took it exactly how I thought he would. I pulled him aside one day in the street, against a building. In a hushed tone, I told him what was going on.

Without hesitation, he said, “I’m not taking care of it.”

I told him that was all right, because I would rather be dead than have him lay his hands on my child, anyway.

I was just about to walk away when he called after me, “This means you have to marry me now, doesn’t it? You don’t want an illegitimate kid. Now we have to get married.”

Slapping him across the face, I turned to go home. He quickly caught up with me. “Nia, we’re getting married now,” he said.

“No we ain’t, I don’t care if the entire town thinks I’m a whore. I won’t tell people who the father is, if that makes you feel any better. We ain’t never getting married, and I will be the sole parent of the child. It’ll be like you don’t exist.”