Twelve Mighty Orphans by Jim Dent

Author:Jim Dent
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780312308728
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

OPAL WORTHINGTON WAS the oldest of three daughters and the closest thing to a boy in the family. She was her father’s right hand.

The Worthingtons lived in a ramshackle house planted so deeply between the cotton and the maize in West Texas that folks traveling Highway 208 between Colorado City and Snyder never dreamed it was there.

Charles Oscar Worthington could spare not a minute for his own farm because he was out chasing odd jobs, trying to keep his family fed. Twelve-year-old Opal was left to do almost everything—the milking, the planting, the cotton-picking, and the wood-chopping. Taut muscles sprouted on her lean arms and she was chiseled from head to toe. Everyone knew that Opal was destined to become the toughest girl in Scurry County. After all, she had been born in the midst of a blizzard on a day when the temperature dropped to five below. The high drifts made it impossible to seek a doctor’s assistance, and Opal’s twin brother did not survive being born.

Not a boy within twenty miles could swing an axe like Opal. What she really hated was that the wood-splitting had caused her to miss school that day. She promised herself that she would rise before the sun came up the next morning and walk three miles across plowed ground to the one-room schoolhouse.

It had been a long day of hard work. Now it was getting dark, and she hurried to milk the four cows before her daddy came home and it was time for supper. Opal had filled two pails to the brim when headlights pierced the rows of cotton and shadows danced across the back of the farmhouse. This seemed impossible. Oscar Worthington would be on foot. Not a soul he knew owned an automobile.

But Opal was certain she had heard the automobile tires breaking up clods along the sun-baked road. She could never remember anything but a horse or a mule approaching the Worthington shanty. The slamming of the car doors jolted her heart. She stepped from the shadows and did not recognize either of the men. They were large and seemed menacing in the twilight. Her daddy was not with them.

“Who are you?” one of the men said.

“I’m Opal Worthington. I live here.”

“Is your daddy Oscar Worthington?”

“Yes sir.”

“I have some bad news, little girl. Your daddy won’t be coming home.”

“Why not?”

“He’s dead.”

Opal’s heart turned to putty. She glared at the men and said nothing. Then she walked over to the pails of milk she had just filled and pushed them clattering into the bin below.

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