My Parents Died And Left Me With Four Siblings — Then A Stranger Walked Into The Mercantile

Part 1

The soil was still loose and dark when we buried my parents.

I stood at the edge of the earth and did not cry.

I had done my crying already in the dark so my siblings wouldn’t hear me through the thin walls of our cabin.

I had cried until my chest ached and my eyes swelled shut.

Then I had gotten up before dawn, built the fire, and started the oatmeal because someone had to.

That someone was always me now.

Behind me, I could hear the shuffling of small boots in the dirt.

Sarah, who was nine and trying very hard to be brave, stood straight-backed and rigid.

Beside her was eight-year-old Tyler, who had given up on being brave entirely and was crying quietly into his sleeve.

The twins, Emily and Brian, were only six and didn’t fully understand what a grave meant yet.

Pastor Hicks from town said a few short words because he had other calls to make.

When the small gathering dispersed, I stayed behind.

I looked at my mother’s name scratched into the pine cross.

She was thirty-eight years old, and now she was gone.

Sarah told me we should go inside because Brian was getting cold.

I turned around and saw the four of them standing in a loose cluster a few feet away.

They were watching me with the particular look of children who have just discovered that the adults are gone.

It was a look that would become very familiar to me in the months ahead.

They were hopeful and frightened in equal measure, just waiting for me to lead.

Our ranch sat on forty acres of grassland threaded through with a creek.

There had been good years scattered through the bad ones.

Then the fever came in February and took my father in twelve days.

My mother followed six weeks later, her body simply refusing to carry on without him.

I found out the truth about the ranch in pieces, the way you discover a rotten fence post.

I sat at the kitchen table the night after the funeral with a candle and worked through the columns until my eyes burned.

The numbers were not good.

There was a note on the ranch, three hundred and forty dollars owed to the bank.

There were smaller debts scattered through town for feed, blacksmith repairs, and roof work.

There was almost no cash left because my father had spent the winter months buying hay to feed the cattle.

Tomorrow was going to come whether I was ready for it or not.

The first month was the worst.

I was up before light every morning to feed and water the cattle.

I broke ice off the water trough with the back of an axe.

I split wood in the early dark, my arms aching and my breath coming in clouds.

I rode out to check the fence lines on a horse that was still learning to trust me.

I came back in the early afternoon to start the cooking and the laundry and the mending.

Sarah helped by taking over the cooking on the mornings I was too tired to stand upright.

Tyler was harder to reach, retreating into silence and going through his days like a small, pale ghost.

I slept less than I should have and ate less than I should have.

I made sure the children had enough before I thought about myself.

I lost weight I couldn’t spare, and the dark circles under my eyes became permanent features of my face.

I did not ask for help out of pride and a bone-deep suspicion that if I let myself lean on anything, it might give way.

By June, the cattle were getting thin.

I was supplementing with hay from our dwindling supply in the barn.

I watched the bales disappear with a cold arithmetic that kept me awake at night.

Meanwhile, Tyler got sick with a summer fever that burned for three days and left him pale and shaky.

The medicine cost me four dollars I didn’t have.

I pulled it from the envelope I had been saving for the mortgage payment.

In July, I went into town to buy supplies at Greg Hudson’s mercantile.

It was the kind of hot that made the air shimmer over the road and put everyone in a foul temper.

I had exactly six dollars and twenty cents in my pocket.

My list totaled eight dollars and fifty-five cents.

I did the arithmetic for the fourth time, hoping it would magically change.

It didn’t.

Greg offered me credit, but I knew we already owed him money from the winter.

I refused his charity and told him I would leave the kerosene behind.

I was counting out coins on the counter, organizing them in careful rows.

I heard the door open behind me and felt a slight shift in air from the summer heat outside.

A man’s voice, unhurried and unfamiliar, asked for three pounds of coffee.

Finishing the count, the coins slid across the worn wood toward Greg.

The heavy oilcloth for our patched roof went straight into my canvas bag.

Halfway to the door, the room suddenly tilted.

A wave of dizziness struck, born from too many skipped meals and months of carrying an impossible weight.

Blood drained from my head as the edges of my vision blurred into gray spots.

I reached for the doorframe to keep from hitting the floor, praying my knees would hold.

But the ground tilted beneath my worn boots, and the mercantile spun wildly out of focus.

I was twenty-two, raising four orphaned siblings, and I had exactly six dollars to my name.

I felt myself falling, my vision fading to black at the edge of the mercantile counter, when a calloused hand suddenly caught my arm.