I followed her around the farmhouse, men and women bursting in and out of its doors. Delicious smells were already emanating from the smoky kitchen and my stomach growled despite the big meal I’d eaten the previous evening. My guide looked back at me as we wove our way through a maze of laundry dripping onto the dusty ground. “If you missed breakfast that’s your own concern. I don’t have time to go around making sure young men such as yourself get up in time for breakfast. All I care about is whether or not we get all the work done.”
She walked along with a precise, stiff backed but smooth stride waving away several women and a man as we moved through the small cabins. “I’m afraid you’re not going to like the work I have to give you. I doubt if you have any useful skills so I have to employ you where I can, but don’t worry we’ll have plenty of work for you soon.” She looked around the sky. “And then we can all rest for a while.” A cold breeze emphasized her words as it blew her skirts back away from her thick ankles. We soon approached a small cabin near the southeastern outskirts of the small village. Its roof was woven with sheets of clear plastic and its sides were patched with rotting particleboard. A couple of boys followed us stifling their giggles and looking at me with wide brown eyes, but they ran away disappearing down a small alley when Dottie looked back at them with a scowl. No doubt she would have set them to work if they’d hung around even a minute longer.
We came around the front side of the cabin and found a man sitting on the lane leaning against the wall of the cabin sipping a cloudy yellow drink from a dirty glass and looking down the narrow lane at a group of cattle that moved slowly along the side of the pastured hill. A wiry red beard trembled against his chest as he sipped, and he balanced his hand curled around the glass on thin knees as he sat. He didn’t notice our approach until Dottie sighed and then he got to his feet quickly, offering her a curt nod and holding the glass at his side with a chagrined grin. “Mrs. Dottie,” he said.
“Andy,” she replied in a formal manner.
His gaze shifted to me as if startled to find me at her side and then stared at my face with fervent awe in his bulging eyes.
“You’re Benjamin’s brother?” he asked his voice half pitched as a question half as a statement.
Dottie cut off any answer. “It doesn’t matter who he is, he’s got to work same as anyone if he wants his rations. So, you just take him up to the Barn and show him how to muck it out. I don’t wanna hear about you wasting time and drinking anymore or you’re never going to get back to a more respectable duty.”
The redness and sleepy lifted from his eyes for a flicker in time and he said in a quiet but perfectly distinguishable voice, “It doesn’t matter what I do as long as he doesn’t like me I’ll be stuck mucking till I’m dead, which probably won’t be long.” Dottie’s back stiffened and straightened even further and she crossed her arms across her chest and glared until Andy scurried off at a brisk walk down the lane leading out of the village. I hung back a second unsure until Dottie waved me away and then I followed catching up to the wild-eyed man shuffling his feet through the dust as he slowed for me.
“Man,” he said breathlessly sucking his hollow cheeks in deeply. “I can’t believe they got you doing this shit too. I knew your brother was a hard ass but that’s cold.” He spoke rapidly and looked around as he did it as if he thought we’d be beset at any moment by Dottie or other attackers. He still carried the glass and after offering me a drink which I turned down he drained it, throwing his head back and gulping down the cloudy liquid. He exhaled loudly when finished and tossed the glass so that it came to rest against the wooden siding of a hut as we left the warren of the village paths and begin climbing the hill along dirt path worn through the grass. The village’s morning odors of smoke, sweat and excrement faded as crisper air blew down into the valley tinged with manure and the slight smell of rot and death. Black and white cows meandered slowly towards us along the hillside their heads down as they grazed. The air warmed up as a thin fiery arc of the sun rose from behind the grassy hill. Andy spoke quickly in a staccato rhythm and looked at me askance as we walked, pausing at times to wait for me to respond
