And Then Everything Changed
By Deemarie
Disclaimer: I own nothing. Etc, etc, etc.
My whole life changed at that moment, although I didn't realize it until later. Harry kissed me before he went to California. He kissed me, Natty Gann. He didn't think I was just one of the guys like all my friends in Chicago.
And I left. I went looking for my dad. I still thought that everything could be the same. Just me and Dad against the world. I guess I didn't count the fact that I'd hitched, jumped trains, and stole my way half way across the United States. That changes a person.
I tried for a long time. Dad set me up in a boarding house in Seattle while he continued working at logging camps around the state. I didn't do much of anything. I spent a lot of time wandering the streets and looking for work. But they weren't hiring men, let alone fourteen year old girls. I even tried going back to school. I quit that the second day. I couldn't be cooped up listening to some old biddy trying to tell me about geography and mountains when I'd seen them for real.
The best thing in my life were my letters. I wrote to Dad and Harry a lot. Dad wrote back often and Harry not so often. With Harry you always had to kind of read between the lines. He missed me, I could tell but he never said so. He was always writing about the other guys or the kind of work they were doing. It was the little things like calling me Natty instead of kid or putting down that he read my letters more than once. Once I could even make out where he had signed Love Harry. He scratched out the love but I could read it through the ink.
Dad tried to talk with me about my restlessness but it didn't change me none. I kept wondering the streets and looking for something to do. I guess I really can tell how The Wolf was feeling at the end of our journey together.
I guess one day I just snapped. Dad was out of town again and I was so lonely and bored. I'd made some friends like Anna the pencil seller but she wasn't nowhere to be found that day. I up and left Seattle. I guess I had some half-cocked idea that I was going to head back to Chicago for a visit. I got about fifteen miles out before it hit me what that was going to do to Dad if he found me gone when he got back. I had to stay in town until he rolled through between jobs.
He came back on my fifteenth birthday. It'd been about a week since I'd hopped a train to Chicago and I had time to do some thinking. The happiest I'd ever been was with Harry and he'd wanted me to go to California with him. I had to go out and find him. It was hard talking to Dad about it but finally I got him to understand. Dad was the focus of the first part of my life and I still loved him. But we all got to grow up sometime and I did mine. Harry was the next part of my life. I hoped anyway. So I started a letter to him.
Dear Harry,
I think I'll be passing through California pretty quick. Do you think I can look you up?
Love,
Natty.
And with that letter I hoped that the next part of my life had begun.
AN Well? What'd you think? Does anyone actually know the movie The Journey of Natty Gann? Should I continue?