"There you go," John said with a forced smile.

His khaki colored shirt and black tie were spattered with mud from the road. Eli Turman and his three boys were giving the final push to their wagon to get it out of the mud. The thick red mud from the other day's rain made this part of the road like quicksand. When John rode up on his horse, Eli and two of his sons were pushing the wagon loaded down with farming equipment while the youngest son held the reigns to the single horse that pulled the wagon. John tied his horse up to the wagon with the Turman's before he slung off his coat and helped the three farmers with their wagon.

"Thank you, Johnny," Eli said with a nod. "We woulda been stuck here to nearly noon if you hadn't come along."

"Just doing my job," John said as he untied his horse and slung his jacket back on. "Now, ya'll be careful farther down the road, there's a fair bit of mud down near Pollar'd Corner."

"Obliged," the old man said before climbing into the wagon with his sons.

John watched them leave and waited until they were down the road and around the next corner before he looked at the mud on his shirt and sighed. The red clay of the Carolina mud was damn near impossible to get out sometimes, at least for him. One of the few downsides to no longer living at home was that he didn't have his mamma doing the wash for him. Mrs. Bonds, his landlady, would wash his clothes once a week as part of his rent agreement, but she couldn't get stains out worth a damn.

He got back on his horse and headed back down the road in the opposite direction that the Turmans had went, heading south towards the McCormick County. John clicked his tongue and worked his horse up into a steady trot that had him bouncing down the dirt road at a pretty brisk pace. He pulled back on the reigns and slowed the horse down when he saw a bicycle speeding down the road towards him. His throat nearly closed up when he saw who it was riding the bike.

Kitty Avett had been one of John's playmates as a child, the Normans and Avetts practically thicker than thieves when the kids were all coming up. Matt, Mark, and Luke ran around with Jacky when they were boys and on into their teenage years, Matt and Jacky even enlisted together and went over to France during the War. Ruth and Sarah were just about the right age to form their own pack with Willa and Violet. John and Kitty were the two youngest of the ten kids, so they always got stuck together. John didn't mind it, especially when he got to a certain age and started to recognize Kitty's beauty.

Then, that thing that always happened with the old man happened. The problem with Harold Norman was that anyone who spent enough time with him realized he was a worthless son of a bitch, everyone always came to that conclusion. It just took Mr. Avett longer than most to see that, and the families had their falling out just a year or two before the old man ended up dead. They said he drank himself to death, but John always figured he nastied away, all that meanness and hatred eating him up inside like the worst kind of cancer.

John took a deep breath and started to steadily ride towards Kitty, doing his best to look official and respectable... even with the mud all over his shirt. He silently cursed Eli Turman for picking today of all days to get stuck in the mud.