I am walking down the road towards my grandmother's dress store because my sisters and mother need new handmade dresses for church, so my mother asked me to collect them for her when I walk past Mr. Lawson's bakery, which smells of fresh loaves, cakes and more as he holds up our regular two freshly baked loaves of bread through the bakery window, and I nod at him.
I have known Mr. Lawson since I was a baby. He would tell me and the other children stories of his time in the war with his one leg and the scar running down his wrinkled cheek are his two favorite stories to tell. His grandson, Arthur, is a shy boy who was one of the first children I taught to read and write. He had a real talent for poetry and writing, but he loves helping his grandfather in the bakery, which Mr. Lawson told me he will inherit one day, not from his lazy and ungrateful son.
Next to Mr. Lawson's Bakery is Prairie Creek General Store, owned by a lovely blind man who always knows if a child is stealing candy or a drunk trying to get more whisky. He is such a sweet old man; he gives my siblings and me candy and treats whenever we go in for groceries for our home.
"Addie,"
I look around the street and can not see who said that. Did someone say it?
"Addie!" More urgent this time, so I look in the alley between the Mercy's End Saloon and the Iron Lantern Lodge
"Josie?!" I whisper back, but I can't see her face, and I know it is her
I walk towards the alley where she is, and as I get closer to her, I can see that she has another black eye again
"What happened to you?"
"Daddy is se...sell...selling me to..." She starts to cry uncontrollably in my arms.
Clifford Leon Wolcott, an aggressive old drunk, the bastard has a bottle in his hand ever since his wife died from Scarlett Fever when Josie was six years old. A sorry excuse of a man is what my grandmother says. She and I are the only ones in town who do not coddle him because we see what he does to Josie.
I guide Josie towards my grandmother's store so we can get her cleaned up. Josie is a very petite girl; her face is simple, with sun-kissed freckles, light green round eyes, matching round lips, and a pale complexion. She is beautiful, but her father beats her because she reminds him of his wife.
I open the door to my grandmother's store and my grandmother, Lavinia Estella Schnider, is standing at the counter, where she is talking to a customer and she instantly recognizes the scenario that just walked in her door, like she has seen it a thousand times.
"I am sorry, ma'am, but we are closed." She said to the woman at her counter
"But," She starts, and then looks at Josie and me, then she leaves the shop and my grandmother locks the door behind her and ushers us into her sewing room in the back. She closes the door behind us and turns to me
"What happened?" She asks me
"I have no idea. I found her in the alley by the Saloon and the lodge, crying and saying something about her father." I recall to her as if I am giving a debrief
"Daddy is selling me," Josie whispers as if she is praying for it not to be real
"Selling you? To whom?" My grandmother questions
"Selling me to Cornelius Lauderdale so I can marry him," She informs us
Over my dead body, he is