For an unknown reason, her mother stopped the wagon in the middle of the woods, “Lila,” she said, “You go on and get out right here.” The baby was crying. Lila raised her head and looked at her mother. She was five-years-old.
“I want you to get out here and wait on your brothers, they will be coming along directly.”
Lila looked around the dense trees, the sunlight dappling through the tops of those tall pines, filtering down like a host of magical, small fairies. She turned and looked at her mother, short, dark and fierce. There was nothing like Matilda when her eyes grew dark and she tore the leaves off a mulberry switch. So Lila climbed down out of the wagon full of uncertainty. She looked back at the baby and her younger sister.
“See, sit on that log there and just wait, they’ll be along shortly,” and with that, her mother whipped the horses into motion.
Lila found herself all alone in an East Texas forest, trees as massive and tall as time itself. Birds called in the distance, and she could hear a brook running its course over rocks. She watched her family as the wagon jaunted down that narrow dirt road cutting through the forest like a jagged trail leading out to the place where people lived. Lila wondered how far her brothers were behind her. Did Hiram know that she would be there? What if he didn’t know to look for her? Lila sat there not daring to defy her mother. She missed her papa, he had been gone, off helping his brother build a house, but he would come home soon. She loved the crinkled skin around his eyes, his songs that he sang just for her. She loved the happiness that flowed like a fountain at the center of his heart. When her papa was home, Lila was happy too.
Lila slid off the log and started gathering pine cones and leaves, putting them into patterns, taking them apart. Shadows began to fall in the forest, it was getting colder.
“Hiram….” Lila said softly under her breath. Then she heard a scream, a shrill scream that sent shivers down her back. The soul-shattering scream of an animal. She sat back on the log, perfectly still, twisting the braids of her hair. Lila knew there was nowhere to go. More sounds, the sound of pain. Scream – survival – predators at large in the forest. A five-year-old girl wanting to go home, wishing her father could save her, counting on her brothers to come, but where were they? Wouldn’t they be afraid of that big cat with the lingering scream? Lila cried softly, the woods were so much darker now. If she was home, she could be helping feed the baby, she could bring the wood in for the stove. Lila liked to help. She was a good girl, she would always be good.
From the slivered shadows, the noise of horses coming pulled Lila back from the ravine of despair. Someone was indeed coming. Lila peered into the distance. It was a man in a buggy. So in a time long before children were harmed randomly, she sat on the log off the narrow road, listening to the clomp, clomp, clomping come nearer.
The man in the buggy spotted her and began pulling the team to a stop.
“Whoa! Little girl, hello. What are you doing here?” he asked.
Lila looked at him. He had a kind face like her papa’s, pleasant eyes that were a deep, mellow, friendly blue.
“I’m waiting for my brother,” she said. “Did you see him back there?”
“No, little lady. There’s nobody back there. What’s your name?” he asked.
“Lila, Lila Stricker,” she said.
“Lila, why don’t you come along with me? Let’s go find where you live,” said the man.
She was happy to leave. The shadows in the woods were getting larger and closing in. There would be different animal sounds now, coming closer, Lila knew that. She had lived in East Texas her full five years, and she had been through the forest with her papa. Lila knew these things. Relieved, she climbed on up the sideboard and sat by the stranger. Lila and the kind man road on through the woods. He smiled at her.
“Now my two horses here, this one is Big Pecos on the left and Diana on the right. They are real workhorses, all right. Gotta watch Diana though, she’ll take a bite out of you if she’s got a mind to.”
Lila smiled.
“So now, you live around here?” He said as they approached the end of the forest trail. Lila nodded.
“You think you can show me?”
“Um huh,” said Lila.
“I remember some families live off Drew Creek Road….” he mused.
“So if I go up there and turn left, does that seem the right way?”
Lila looked ahead. She could see her road. The road she had gone down a million times with Papa, Hiram and sometimes Mama.
Turning onto the road, the outline of the small farm house greeted them in the distance. The buggy pulled up in the front. Hiram was busy chopping wood.
“Hey!” he said coming toward the wagon. He smiled broadly at Lila, his sandy brown hair wet at the edges and sticking up slightly in the back.
“Little sister!” He held up his hands and Lila grabbed them eagerly in her small ones. Hiram brought her swiftly and safely down to the ground. Familiar ground it was. Hiram thanked the kind stranger, and Lila waved goodbye, happy to be home.
Years later, as my grandmother faced the end of days and was beset by Sundowner’s Syndrome, she would recall with vivid details the story of a little girl left in the woods. At night as the evening shadows crept in and her mind shifted, she would look at me with frantic sadness in her eyes and call her son’s name: “Tommy, Tommy! There’s a little girl in the woods. She needs to get home. Please help her, Tommy!”
I would swallow back the tears welling in my throat, and take her hand into mine, as her brother had done many years before. “It’s okay grandmother, the little girl in the woods is safe now. She found her way home and made a home worth having for all of her children and grandchildren. She is the became the best grandmother anyone could ever hope for, and I will love her beyond boundaries, beyond forever.”
Beautifully written! Loved the ending.
Thank you for reading and for the gracious compliment!
I love this. Especially the ending!☺
Thank you so much!
A marvelous story – poignant.
Thank you, Sha’Tara….
Sweet!
Thanks Marissa!
Beautiful and moving… lovely writing, Lana.
Thank you so much, Iris.
You’re welcome, Lana.
You mean this is a true story?? Wow, very powerful stuff, Lana! Hard to accept the often-cruel things that happen to others. Why was she left behind though??
Debbie, I never met my great-grandmother. She was a dark lady, both in physical appearance and moods. She had 14 children, and for some unknown reason, my grandmother was her least favorite. Nobody can say why she left her in the woods, but it was truly a sinister thing. This always haunted my grandmother, sadly to the very end.
You know, Lana, it’s frightening how many things like this probably happened in many of our family trees (not that I know of something like it in mine, but it wouldn’t surprise me much) I’m sorry for the little girl who had to endure this — and the hurting adult who never outgrew the pain.
That’s true, Debbie. Of course, now, she would have been prosecuted (but back then, neighbors were far apart), and laws were not what they are today. She also did not seem to have a problem with her other children but was really hard on my grandma. As a mother, it is truly hard for many of us to believe someone could do such a thing.
I feeel so sorrry for the little girl
It was such a terrible thing to do, and it made an impression that lasted through life.
Wow. I think I held my breath through the whole story. A poignant ending, Lana. Loved it.
Thank you Diana. My grandmother was a wonderful woman, her mother, not so much….
I was wondering if it was a true story. It seemed real but unreal. Your poor grandmother. Bless her for making a different choice for her family.
Reblogged this on John Cowgill's Literature Site.
Thank you, John 😀
You are very graciously welcome, Lana.
Wow, thank goodness for kind strangers. The ending was great, tied up the whole story perfectly. Shows how a traumatic event can stay in your memory, even when memory starts to fail. Powerful. 🙂
This is a wonderful story. Thank you for sharing this.
Thank you so much for reading, Jennie!
You are most welcome!
Lana, wow! This is wonderfully written, I was hooked from the start and could just have curled up and read for an afternoon – I really didn’t want this to stop. What a twist of an ending to finally realise what I assumed was fiction to be fact. Having read your comments I’m even more saddened to see what happened to your grandmother – it must be impossible to get over being abandoned like that as a child, even if you were safely found. This is one story that will stay with me a long time; a story that needed to be told!
Thank you so much for your kind words, Annika. It really does seem like a fictional story, something almost akin to the horror genre. My grandmother was the closest to being angelic of anyone I have ever met, so I’m quite sure she was a well behaved, obedient child. I could not believe her mother did that, it was a story she told me many times, made even more heartbreaking when she was reliving her life in her final days.
As I read the story, I kept hoping that the little girl would be taken back to her brother, back into safety. And yes it happened! Then the heartbreak of the end.. the aging process and all that brings.. A tearful read.. And this line in particular was beautifully penned, Lana: “She loved the happiness that flowed like a fountain at the center of his heart.”
Thank you so much, Christy. As you stated, a quite emotional story, an event that stayed with her until the very end. My grandmother was very special to me. xo