Hidden 6 yrs ago Post by Little Bill
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There was never a good time to be a farmhand, though there were certainly worse times to be one than a Sunday afternoon. The Tackett farmstead, for all the backbreaking labor that went into it, was a gem among the many farms scratched out in the muggy flatlands. The farm was thirty acres of sprawling countryside altogether, like a great quilt of emerald green squares stitched together by hedgerows and fences. Chickens were scattered all across the farm, preening on fenceposts and pecking at the soft dirt, each clucking contently. The long dirt road leading to the farm went straight to the farmer's front lawn, making a circle in front of the farmhouse from the countless trips cars and wagons had made. An old, twisted oak grew from the center of the circle, with long, sturdy branches that grew like a scarecrow's outstretched arms.

Sunday was the one day a week the men had off, and so the farm was not as buzzing with life as it usually had been. Most of the workers were content to stay in their respective barns whittling bears out of soap and playing cards, and the few men that had gathered outdoors for a game of stickball were on paltry three man teams. It was the second-to-last Sunday of the month, and so very few of the men had funds remaining to take trips to town to purchase anything -- by and large, they had not found themselves working on a farm because they were too good at minding their finances. The plucking of a banjo and the smell of stew being cooked pervaded the air around the colored barn while the chatter of a radio and the sharp smell of whiskey hung around the white barn, some twenty feet away. Had it been dusk, the lamplight peeking through the barn's wooden cracks would have made the two barns almost seem to stare at one another.

In the farmhouse, there were no idle farmhands, nor any of their offensive sounds or smells. The farmhouse workers worked seven days a week, and quietly at that. Farmer Tackett's female uniform employed soft-soled "mary-janes" so that he and his wife would be spared from the sounds of over a dozen pairs of clicking heels in their attic at all hours, and so the maids and cooks glided throughout the house almost silently. The house, in reality, was an old colonial mansion, built in a pseudo-Grecian style that would have appealed to the sensibilities of a slave owner hundreds of years ago. A white porch wrapped the building's three stories, supported with wide pillars on each corner. The pillars were wooden, though they had been expertly carved on all sides and painted white, and appeared almost in the morning haze. Blue shutters and shingles were set against the otherwise uniformly white building, and a single stone chimney on the western wing of the home offset the otherwise completely symmetrical appearance. It was the work of a long-dead commissioned architect, built without the cost of labor or the artistic taste of its viewers in mind. It was an antiquated building, and yet the Tackett mansion was easily the gem of the farm, and perhaps of Cypress Hills.

Approximately fifteen miles away is the Bunce farmstead, owned by Carl Bunce. He had considered himself Henry Tackett's rival for many years, going as far as to attempt to sabotage his crops three years prior and shooting one of his goats dead just a year ago. His workforce was delegated to three former slave cabins, and his farmhouse was a cedar-brown fortress of a house his great-grandfather had built, and it was currently burning to the ground. Carl Bunce was dead, sprawled out on his back across his front lawn with a rifle in his hand. Blood oozed from his chest into a great pool crimson pool around him, still slowly pooling out of the missing chunks of his head, chest, and arms. The three cabins behind him were devoid of life, but not empty by any means. Gore caked the walls and floor of the cabins, littering the dry dirt between them and the burning building. Whatever clues to the terrible fate that had befallen his workers was obscured by the level of animalism. The viscera and bones covering the cabin walls appeared more like the cave of some awful predator, though no such creature lurked about. The sole perpetrator, a woman named Susie, was long gone by now.




Susie didn't remember how she found herself in the forest. She remembered a lantern, and a man with a gun, and eating, but these thoughts came to her like a flickering lightbulb. It didn't matter. She smelled something in the forest. Food. She was always hungry, though she hadn't remembered how long always was. She didn't remember anything, in fact. She held no memories of her former life, and made no new memories. Her thoughts, if they could even be called thoughts, were sporadic and short-lived, and mostly focused on one subject alone. Hunger. Her hunger was maddening. All she could focus on was hunting and food. Warm, life-giving, flesh and blood. She drooled at the thought, continuing her aimless shuffle. She had lost the scent she had picked up earlier, but was now tracking a noise. It sounded living. If Susie could have formed words, "prey" would have come to mind.

Something was moving up ahead.

Susie's head turned ninety degrees, snapping in place almost instantly. Two targets. Loud, screaming, tiny humans. Instinctively, the smell of blood filled her nostrils, as if she had bashed the back of her head. Her vision began to turn red. Her hands sprung open, cracking her joints with tension. She lowered her posture, squatting obscenely in the muck of the forest, wearing nothing more than a torn pink nightgown. She let out a low, gurgling growl. They hadn't seen her and they hadn't heard her, though unbeknownst to Susie, they had began to smell him -- the stench of stale urea and rotting meat clung to her as readily as the clay covering her limbs. ThoughSusie didn't possess the intelligence to consider if her prey could smell him, she knew that she could not afford to lose the two. She was too hungry to lose them. She slowly crept closer, shambling quickly from one patch of bushes to the next. When they would pause and look around, she would stay still. When they loudly advanced through the woods, she would follow.

There was little she understood outside of the hunt, though she understood the importance of surprise, as primitive of an understanding as it was.

Her red eyes blinked with an emotionless intensity, scanning the two children. She was so hungry. So hungry. She grinded her teeth together, now only about sixty yards away. The closer she got, she could feel her adrenaline rising higher and higher, filling her nostrils with the scent of their ambrosial blood and warm, marbled layers of meat. She grinded his teeth more.

She stood up, supporting herself on a tree, staring at the twon with a wolfish gaze. Her stomach rumbled softly as she growled, clenching her hands into fists. Images of violence and nourishment flashed through her mind, instinctively urging her to infect the men. She was too hungry for that. She would eat them, she planned to herself in silence.

Eat them.
Hidden 6 yrs ago 6 yrs ago Post by Genni
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Tackett Farmstead
Stables/Colored Barn

MJ Tackett, unnamed colored farmhand



Heading into the stable MJ called over at one of the negros who seemed to be hanging about listlessly in the corner. "Go and fetch me some water," the farmer's daughter demanded, not even considering the need to say 'please' to the lower class farmhand. Moving over to the tack store she quickly chose a brush and a couple of clothes from where they were stored before fetching some soap from the cupboard.

By the time she moved back to the horses the negro was limping his way back in from the hand pump around the side of the bui8lding, a large bucket hanging down between his legs as he struggled wit the weight. MJ rolled her eyes at the display. She should've found one of the white-skinned boys to help her out rather than relying on the worthless wretch, perhaps then she'd have some decent company to converse with while going about her chores.

Sighing to herself the girl remembered back to the sermon she'd listened to that morning, reminding her that good Christian folk were charitable to all they dealt with, especially those of lower station than themselves. Thinking the lesson over she moved her hand away from the riding crop tucked in her belt, and instead simply glared at the farmhand as he set the bucket down beside her and quickly scurried away again.

It only took a few moments of shaving and mixing to build up a good lather, and MJ quickly began to brush down the first horse Sammy, making sure his flank was free from any large clumps of dirt before she began adding the wet soap suds to wash it down properly. Her father had told her many times to leave the grooming to the farmhands, after all that's what they were paid for, but MJ enjoyed taking care of the horses. As she brushed the course hairs down, leaning over to add soap with her washcloth every now and then, the young woman started to let her mind drift away, all her cares vanishing as she slipped into the steady rhythmic motions of her task.
Hidden 6 yrs ago 6 yrs ago Post by Stitches
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Alice was stooped over a tarnished mirror in the attic, dutifully plastering her face with makeup. Her Sunday clothes were hung neatly in one of the communal wardrobes in the attic room. She was still wearing her wide-brimmed straw hat, if only to keep the impetuous mass of ginger curls away from her face until she had finished painting it. The attic was decidedly less well-kept than the rest of the mansion as it was the only room in the building that did not necessarily need to be cleaned. Everyone had their own ‘territory’, and Alice got the last scraps as she was one of the newcomers to the farm. She was shunted into the corner, but it was a corner with a wardrobe nearby and enough floorspace for her to squat down in front of a propped-up hand mirror with a brush and an infallible determination to, somehow, keep the beauty products she smears onto her features in place for more than a few hours of hard labour. Once she was finished, Alice tied her apron and whipped off her hat to stare miserably at her orange frizzy mass. She struggled with a hairbrush for a few minutes before resigning herself to simply managing her parting. She sucked in a deep breath and strode purposefully out of the door, taking the steps two at a time as she rushed out into the cool autumn day.

The first task was laundry. Alice was always in charge of changing the sheets in the coloured barns, primarily because she was the only one who was not particularly bothered by handling the linens of negroes every week. She whisked up a large wicker basket from one of the piles in the utilities rooms scattered around the mansion and skirted across the freshly polished floorboards as serenely as possible. Crossing the threshold into the farmyard itself, Alice raised a forearm to cover her eyes from the blinding sun and pressed the basket into her waist. She took long strides and crossed over to the black barn in mere moments. Once there, she knocked on the door - a bemused man opened it for her. Even though Alice had only been on the Tackett farm for a month, almost all of the african american residents knew her by name. “Mornin’ Miss Alice,” murmured the farmhand warmly, stepping aside to let her in.

“Good morning Leonard, how’ve you been? Did everyone remember to take off the linens-no they did not.” Alice huffed and looked at the array of unmade and half-heartedly stripped beds before her. “I keep telling you people to get it done before I show up so’s I don’t have to lurk around in your bedroom for too long,” she sighed, promptly getting to work whipping blankets and bedsheets off tired old mattresses and into her wicker basket. “Say, Leo, where is everybody? They ain’t all at church still?” Alice asked, peering at the largely vacated barn with curiosity. The farmhand responded with a vague shrug of his shoulders as two calloused digits scratched behind his left ear.
Hidden 6 yrs ago 6 yrs ago Post by DinoNuts
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Elijah
Tackett Farmstead: Makeshift Infirmary


With furrowed brows accentuating his annoyed demeanour, Elijah was busy bandaging the hand of one of the many farmhands that were now under his medical care thanks to the grateful Mr. Tackett who had hired both his and his young niece’s services. His workload was relatively simple: his day was either filled with cuts and bruises that he disinfected and bandaged with ointment or he may be lucky and have to deal with the only real medical threats on a farm like this, which were the illnesses that gripped one man and spread amongst the rest. Today it was a young man named Tobias’ turn to partake in the former. Elijah’s cold demeanor and distaste in socialising had helped to ensure there was nothing but silence during treatments or examinations of the injured. ‘Where does it hurt, what happened, be more careful’ was all that was needed, most of the time.

“I told you to try and avoid soiling your dressings” he broke the silence, scowling judgmentally at the boy who was awkwardly waiting to be let go. “They must be kept fresh, yes, but we don’t have to waste supplies daily now do we?” he paused, staring at the boy but receiving no response except an apologetic nod and a meek ‘Yes sir.’
Elijah let out a sigh and took a step back, motioning towards the door marking the exit of the medium sized shed that was recently dubbed the ‘Infirmary’. Elijah held the door open and followed the boy through, only turning to the corner to dip and wash his hands in the barrel filled with cool water. His mind briefly pondered over Alice; who usually dropped by before attending her own duties.
Hidden 6 yrs ago 6 yrs ago Post by Bork Lazer
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Tackett Farmstead

Date: 09/23/24

Location: Stables/Coloured Barn

Stumps briefly ran the dried pads of his fingers through the thin, trickling stream of water that dripped out from the pump into the pail, sighing in relaxation as the liquid cooled his fading blisters. He stopped the pump, the level of water in the bucket near the edge of the brim. He ran his damp hand through his sun-singed hair, eyeing his blurry brown reflection on the water’s surface before grabbing the thin handle of the bucket, a brief grunt as he pulled it upwards. He found himself missing the benefit of having two hands as he struggled to lift the pail by its handle, his muscles taut and tense and his knees almost buckling at the sheer weight. The pail became heavy as a sack of bricks, yet, he could still take it. As he walked back to the inside of the stable, the glowering sun was in the middle of its long journey westwards, the long shadows of the building stretching further by the all-seeing light that the sun casted overhead.

His right hand was aching hard once he’d made it back to the horses, the steeds not paying him any notice whatsoever. MJ Tackett was waiting for him to fufill her request, a nasty expression on her sun-tanned face as she regarded him with contempt. The scars on his back began to throb again as he noticed her fingers slowly inching towards her personal riding crop. Well, that was an improvement if he ever saw one. The old man’s daughter was usually more foul-mouthed with negroes like him. He placed the heavy pail of water down besides MJ, ignoring the withering gaze she sent his way. He’d given up on hoping for a simple thank you from people like her already.
“ You’re welcome,” grunted Stumps before he retired himself to the relative sanctity of his bunk.

He continued to walk into the inside of the dilapidated barn, rags of cobwebs hanging in the rafters of the wooden ceiling. It was more sparse than usual. Most of the other Negro farmhands were outside behind the coloured barn, the aromatic scent of spice and shrimp the only clue to the nature of what they were exactly doing. It was designed to be efficiently crammed as possible, the bedframes placed next to each other in an orderly fashion. The walls had seen better days, flakes of white-wash beginning to peel off like a scab, revealing the moth-eaten wood behind. Sunlight sneaked through the slits between the walls, small pinpricks of dappled yellow visible in the gloom of the barn. His own bed was at the bottom of the bunk bed. The blankets were folded haphazardly on top of the linen sheet with a canvas bag filled with sand poking out from underneath the bed frame and a small box-shelf to the right of his mattress. The rickety wooden supports creaked dangerously underneath his weight as he considered what to do next. It was a lazy Sunday. There was no barley-bucking, cotton-picking or work that needed to be done out in the fields today. He sat silent for a while on his bunk before leaning down under to the bottom of his bed and procuring a roll of white gauze, tossing it up and down in his single hand.

He needed to relieve a little stress anyway.

Stumps bit on the end of the gauze wrap with his teeth as he began to wind it around his right palm in an awkward motion that was practiced after months of fervent frustration. The band looped around the palm of his hand several times before he began working tightening each knuckle. He then lightly tapped the back of his right hand against the stilted frame of his bed before dragging out the canvas bag from underneath his bed. He hoisted it up on his shoulders along with a coil of rope as he climbed up onto the top bunk. The door to the colored barnhouse creaked open as Stumps was hooking the canvas bag onto one of the many wooden support beams that criss-crossed across the ceiling with the help of a hemp rope. Stumps squinted his eyes to see who it was, the gloomy darkness of the bunkhouse making it hard to discern the appearance of whoever entered.

It was Alice Hallark. She was a recent arrival onto the barn, relative to Stump’s time spent working in the Tackett farmstead. He didn’t know much about her except that she worked with the doctors and that she didn’t say nigger every time she saw a black skinned person. Stumps absentmindedly answered her question as he managed to secure one of the ropes around the beam, leaving the canvas bag aimlessly swaying a few feet above the ground.

“Last I heard, most of the guys in here were cooking sumthin’ good outside at the back for grub. Can’t say about the rest though. ”
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Hidden 6 yrs ago 6 yrs ago Post by Stitches
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Tackett Farmstead 09/23/34
Alice Hallark, Elijah Graham
Coloured Barn, then Near the Farmhouse

Alice swiped another sheet off the dilapidated bed energetically. ”Better than whatever ol’ Tackett gives them I’m sure,” she responded wryly. The chefs at the farmhouse were gifted in their own right, but feeding half a hundred men with whatever they had left in stock from previous harvests or traded in from the markets was no easy feat. That said, Alice grew up on Louisiana gumbo, dirty rice, Jambalaya and more Beignets than she could ever hope for thanks to her uncle’s patients and the folk up in Jacksonville. Unfortunately, vegetable stew just paled in comparison against such a diverse menu. ”Nobody never tells me where they manage to find the ingredients - definitely not from round here, that’s for sure.” A plume of dust filtered through the barn as Alice ruefully thought about good, proper food as she dutifully went around her daily chores.

She certainly did not shirk away from the labour but this was most likely because it was not the worst part of doing the laundry. Not every farmhand on the ranch had the best sense of personal hygiene, and she pointedly ignored the smell of sweat and testosterone whilst she was taking in the linens. No, it looked like she was quite content to spend her time fluffing the pillows and turning the mattresses too, if only to stave off having to lug the pails of hot water into that steel washing tub and get to work rubbing her fingers raw. ”Hold up there bud, lemme at those bedsheets before you start swingin’,” chirped Alice lightheartedly, flashing Stumps a quick smile as she got to his bunk. It was not the first time she walked in on one of Joseph’s workout sessions, of course; she was one of the most mobile farmhouse workers on the property. Most of her colleagues were quite content to shut themselves off from the rest of the world in that sterile mansion but Alice could be seen flitting back and forth from the barns doing the cleaning and tidying around there. Of course, given her shorter skirt (purely for practical reasons, she claims) and her insistence on talking to all of the men with that full face of makeup, Alice had started to gain herself a bit of a...dubious reputation. Whether she was aware of it was another question entirely. Her conversations seemed too innocuous to carry any innuendoes but the fact she kept lurking around the men was enough to spark the rumour mill.

Nevertheless, if Alice was looking for anything specific from ol’ Stumps or Leo (who had busied himself playing solitaire on one of the rickety tables) then she was certainly not trying hard enough. ”I’m definitely gonna have to pull out the wool blankets in a couple weeks. It’s starting to get real cold at night and your walls are starting to look more like a sieve. Anyway,” Alice stretched back, clasping her hands together as she cracked her back. ”That’s me sorted out here. You two have a nice day off now, I’ll be back in a few with the fresh linens!” With a polite nod Alice heaved up the basket, which was now overflowing with piles of yellowed, reeking cloths. She was so petite that her head barely peeked over the top as she scooped her arms underneath the basket to get a better grip.

Even little Alice knew better than to mix the coloured and the whites’ belongings together when it came to the laundry, which meant she had to do two sets of washing in one day. She left the basket out by the porch, tucked at the side as she carefully wiped down her shoes before entering the household. Once she was there, she scurried down to the boiler room, squeezing between the tense bodies of a half-dozen sweaty women who were hard at work cleaning tablecloths, tea towels, napkins, shirts...the room was far too occupied to bring in billowing bedsheets and hope to make a solid job out of the whole thing. She grabbed a box of starchy fabric soap and one of the steel washtubs, trying to bustle her way back outside. Unfortunately, she managed to clip one of the older women with the edge of the tub - lightly, of course - and immediately got the venomous response for her clumsiness. “There you are, Alice. Done playing with the niggers? Because we’ve got a few more jobs for you if you deign to spare us a moment…”

”No, I’m not done. I’m doing both barns on my own today, my treat,” Alice replied warmly. As she reached the narrow stairway up to the ground floor, she muttered ”By the way, you’re meant to hold a broom with your hands, not shove it clear up your arse...” one of the girls let loose a snorting chuckle, catching Alice’s complaint as she disappeared out of the washroom. Bad news for her; that meant when she went down for the water, the whole team would know what she said. But that was just how it was when you’re lodging with a triade of overworked, underpaid and cranky girls. You had to find an outlet somewhere and the only alternatives were your boss or a bunch of six-foot gorillas. She set the washtub outside on the sandy grit, dumped the linens inside and went back down into the washroom where she made note of how conversation went stale the moment she entered the room.

The next twenty or so minutes involved a rather monotonous routine of pouring buckets of boiling water into a tub, sprinkling soap over the sodden mass of filthy sheets and then miserably grating them against a steel washboard whilst staring blankly into space. Alice hated her job. She truly, utterly despised it. She was no stranger to housework; back home, Alice was in charge of all of the chores whilst her uncle worked. What truly broke Alice here was the relentlessness of it all, the ceaseless mountain of work that she had to finish all day, every day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Back home, she was done by noon and could read, or go fishing, wander off to the park or get some ice cream with her friends. Here, work typically finished after dinner, once all of the dishes had been washed and put away. By the time that blessed hour rolled past Alice was so exhausted that she could barely bring herself to do much other than a chapter or two from her latest novel before collapsing into bed. She had aches in muscles she never knew existed. Her feet were swollen and her heels were cracking because of those devious flimsy mary-janes that she had to wear, making each pebble and rock painfully dig into the soles of her feet, allowing grit and dirt to seep over the edges and scrape into the blisters across her toes. She could feel all of the work getting to her, the onset of a cold that has been lurking this past fortnight in the depths of her body, constantly pushed back with second helpings of soup for lunch and as much sleep as Alice could muster. She knew she would not be able to keep this pace going for much longer. The other girls in the washroom probably knew it too.

Coincidentally, Elijah was taking a stroll and soaking up the sunday sun on his way to commencing checkups on some of the recently treated and healing. Squinting against the sunlight he leisurely directed his route to pass by Alice who was sat nearby the farmhouse going about her duties. “Pumpkin’” he voiced out, aiming to catch her attention. Alice lifted her head up at the nickname and waved a reddish hand to her uncle. She did not rise to greet him, too preoccupied with the laborious task set before her.

“Long sunday ahead?” he stood straight, squinting against the sunlight.

”As per usual,” Alice responded lightheartedly. ”Sometimes I wonder if I could pull the whole ‘Catholic’ shtick, but something tells me Mr. Tackett don’t believe in God anymore.” she went back to her scrubbing with a renewed vigour, seemingly frustrated over something. The water was already turning cloudy with muck.

“Sometimes I wonder if maybe you shoulda’ picked a better profession.” he stared at her, a shit eating grin slowly creeping up on his face.

Alice dropped the linens and gave her uncle a frosty stare. ”What, you mean like a receptionist? Plenty of job openings for a secretary out here in Cypress Hollows, huh? Or d’ya want me to get into the oldest profession? I bet that could bring in money. Shall I become a whore, uncle?” she went a little pinker as her tone of voice went sharper and louder before, realising that it wasn’t worth the effort, she sighed miserably and scrubbed at the sheets once more. ”Ain’t no other place for a woman on a farm and you know that,” she mumbled.

“Alright, alright, quit whingin’.” he kept smiling, letting a few seconds of silence linger in the air as he seemed to be contemplating something, “I can always tell ‘em I need your extra hand at the infirmary. It’s still work, but it’s a lot less laboursome’.”

”It wouldn’t work…” Alice mumbled. ”You barely got stuff to do as it is. And I’ve been serving that family for a few weeks now, they’re very-....traditional-”

“American?” he chuckled over her, mainly to himself.

”White American, yeah,”

“We’ll survive, sweetheart. Times change, we’ll be back home in no time.” he turned to look over at the barns which reminded him of the remainder of his duties. “I’m on my way to check up on a few people, i’d like have a look at you too later. All this time under the sun and you’re only gettin’ paler, I worry.”

”It’s the food, definitely. It’s so bland I feel like I’m drinking dirt. This tub, full of pee and ballsweat, probably has more spice in it than lunch here. Ugh, this is disgusting…” lamented Alice, peering down at the filthy water. She pondered over it for a moment before attempting to flick some at Elijah.

Elijah recoiled, stumbling away as droplets rained down on him: “Gawh! Wretched-... watch it you!” he yelled, face contorted in disgust. The mood now dampened, literally, Elijah ignored Alice to continue on his way to the barn for his checkups. Alice’s peals of laughter rung out across the yard, echoing down to meet him as he stormed off. Then she went back to washing.
Hidden 6 yrs ago Post by Kuro
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Current Location: Outside Colored Barn, Tackett Farmstead


It had been a warm autumn day.

For the farmhands, Sunday was their only day off during the long work week, yet Andrew had no found himself idle. Whereas many of the farmhands were content in socializing and playing games of cards or stickball, Andrew had always felt a pulling in the back of his thoughts to stay active. Perhaps it was military instinct or plainly a desire to always help out, but regardless, it was why Andrew found himself toiling when he could have been relaxing.

Placing a log on a flat, yet thick stump, Andrew raised his ax and swung downwards. Cracking into two pieces, Andrew picked up the now-broken sections and placed them in a growing stack of firewood. The South was usually one of the warmer places in the States, yet firewood still had its uses, such as being sold or used by the bundle--especially by the colored folk cooking their own southern specialty. Andrew was a white man, yet he was never prejudiced towards his fellow man, even more so when he knew they could take something rather basic and make it overwhelming tasteful.

Pausing for a moment, Andrew dug into his pockets and pulled out a dirty handkerchief. Wiping his forehead free of any sweat brought on by the sun, Andrew found his gaze lingering on those playing stickball, and the thought came to him that he had not yet seen Benji. Whilst Andrew knew it was their day off, he found it hard to consider where Benji would possibly be. The boy was just as much as a hardworker as Andrew, yet he was stil a kid, and could just be as easily goofing off somewhere in the distance.

Setting the ax safely away to where it once had been, Andrew set out to find Benji. He wasn't exactly where he would find him, yet Andrew felt he had an inkling of where exactly the boy might've been. Walking towards the colored barn, Andrew made sure to nod politely to those he passed by, especially his boss' older daughter. Andrew, like many farmhands, had heard the rumors, and even though he wasn't of the judging type, Andrew made sure to cover his bases, lest he happen to end up in the hot seat and a heap of trouble.

As Andrew rounded the corner to the back of the colored barn, he was overwhelmed by the scent of whatever they were cooking. The scent of spice and shrimp loomed from the stew---a luring taste as if it was straight from Louisiana itself.
"Have any of you seen Benji?" Andrew asked, his voice louder than how a usual person would speak. He wasn't attempting to be rude, but after losing most of his hearing in the war, Andrew had a hard time judging how loud he was.
Hidden 6 yrs ago 6 yrs ago Post by spicykvnt
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Lawrence sat back on the grass outside of the barn. Sunday's for him were usually spent trekking into town to grab a few items, but today was not one of those Sunday's. So today he sat back on the grass, soaking up the sun, book in one hand, his last cigarette in the other.

He had started the day by bathing - washing his hair with the last of his soap. Next week he'd have to get more. Next week he would have to get his hair cut again, it seemed to grow so quickly under the Florida sun. He could smell the scent of baked bread wafting across from the Tackett house. Sometimes, if he was in the right place at the right time, he would be lucky enough to get himself a warm buttered slice. There was nothing quite like it.

He could hear one of the women at work in the other barn, taking away their sheets. It reminded him that he hadn't stripped down his own bed yet. He wondered if he'd get a scolding this week because he had left a few oil stains on his pillow this time. The red-headed girl would more than likely scold him. Alice, her name was. He liked Alice - but he liked her from a distance. He couldn't afford to be caught looking at any of the girls who lived in the Tackett house. It didn't matter how much Mr Tackett liked him, if he pushed it with the girls, he'd be out on his ass - and his ass might even get peppered with bullets.

He could see Alice strolling with the baskets of laundry. He only took the quickest look at her and imagined what it would be like to touch her, to kiss her. Then he snapped back to his book. If he couldn't afford to look at her, he sure as shit couldn't afford to think like that. There were plenty of girls for touching and looking at in town. Over here, at work - it was forbidden. But Lawrence knew from his childhood that forbidden fruit was always the sweetest...

He found something likeable in all the girls on the farm. But Tackett's daughters... They actually scared him some. Especially MJ. He learned very quickly that Tackett's daughters were no damsel's in distress. Ever.

He went back to the pages of his book, minding his own business again, taking a long drag from his cigarette before exhaling the smoke into the air. It was a beautiful day to be out on the grass, reminding him that life could be good here.
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