Disclaimer: I own nothing, except a huge tuition bill. However, if someone out there owns Harry I'll add the purchase to my Visa.
I joined the CCC hoping that eventually I'd forget. I would forget about a kid I met on some train. Usually I could forget almost anything. Remembering makes you weak and when you work the rails, you can't be weak. That's how you get hurt. But I couldn't forget Natty Gann. Natty with her sleek brown hair and magical smile. I kissed her before I left and it was perfect. I lived that kiss in my memories for weeks, until her first letter came. Then I was too busy trying to see if I could get anything out of it, anything at all.
I lived for those letters Natty sent me. It sounded as if she was really struggling in Seattle. I knew what she was going through. The first time I had to live under a roof again after some time on the road I thought I'd never been so close to suffocating in my life.
At first she sounded like she'd eventually adjust to life with her dad again. But then the letters started to turn depressed. It was hard for Natty to follow someone else's rules, not that her dad was around a lot or had many rules. But she chafed at the bit and, well, I guess I knew I'd be getting a letter telling me she was coming out one day. And a while after we split up she did send me that letter. Natty was going to be dropping in on me!
For me, that meant one thing. I was going to marry her. I loved her, although the closest I got to saying it was writing it down and scratching it out. So I took ten dollars I saved and bought her a cheap little ring. Nothing fancy, you understand, but all I could afford.
The day she got to California was the happiest day of my life. I'd asked my supervisor to let me have the day off to meet my Natty at the bus station and as soon as she walked off I asked her to marry me. Lucky for me, she said yes.
We walked hand in hand to a court house and got married that very day. Looking back, I don't know what we were thinking. We were just two crazy kids, me eighteen and she was fifteen. She got herself a room at a boarding house and I went back to the CCC the next day.
Nine months later our son Jack was born. I don't know how she made it through those first years. First Jack, then Daisy a year after that and two years after that Samuel. And I was away in the CCC and then in the Army.
I loved that woman for her strength and her courage and her heart. I guess that's why even now, when she's been gone for so long, I can't forget her. And I hope we never do.
Author's Note: I know, I know. CCC people weren't allowed to be married. I'm really sorry, but it worked for the story so call it AU if you have to, okay?