Alibi Read Online Free PDF Page B

it. Wooden logs made long benches and the children sat doing their lessons at
     long wooden picnic tables. When Abigail didn’t have school, she would have to help her pa with plowing the field. Matilda
     was still too young to work the field. The family worked hard and barely made it by. Scraped and scrounged to get through
     the Great Depression of the 1930s. It wasn’t easy, but the family survived through hard times. And just when things seemed
     to be getting a little better, they just got worse.
    “What do you want me to do, Arhris. We ain’t got no choice. Roosevelt has declared war. Pearl Harbor is gone, the Japs just
     blew it off the map. What do you want me to do? America is going to war. What if I get called to serve my country? I have
     to serve my country. Who’s gonna help provide for the farm until I get home, you? Are you nuts? You’re gonna need to hire
     a hand, you understand. If I sell Bessie, you’ll have nothing. I’ll be gone. I’m doing this for you and Matilda. Abigail is
     fourteen, come on. My daddy would have got her moved on.”
    “John, please, John, not Abigail, please. There has to be another way, John. She’s too young, she’s not old enough, she’s
     not even got her period. We just can’t.”
    “We can, Arhris, and we will, and that’s that, dagnabbit. Just because she’s slow with breeding don’t mean nothing, she’s
     ready. She’s a grown woman, for Pete’s sake, she’s gonna end up pregnant, then what? You see them boys staring her down when
     we go to town. We don’t got no choice. Winter’s coming, Arhris, you’re gonna need wood for fire. I can cut Kirby up to get
     you through the season, and there’s the chickens, but you’re gonna need Bessie, Arhris. Abigail is just another mouth to feed.
     Besides, Mr. Fothergill says he’ll give us a pretty penny for her, a pretty penny, and he said he’ll take good care of her.
     His money will help you run this farm and cover you while I’m gone, don’t you understand? He’s gonna make sure she gets to
     finish her schooling and what not. I made sure of that. And, she’ll be close by, only a few towns from here, less than a hundred
     miles. I just don’t see no other way, just don’t.”
    “There has to be another way.”
    “Well, there ain’t. There ain’t no other way. Mr. Fothergill said he’d be here later this afternoon, so… be best if you go
     on now and get Abigail packed up.”
    “But…” said Arhris, pleading with her husband.
    “Woman, I say the law,” said John Wright, flexing his suspenders, ready to strike her down for being disobedient. “Now, she’s
     going and that’s that. Mr. Fothergill’s fixin’ to marry her and take care of her and you need to have her ready. You hear
     me, Arhris?”
    “Yes, John, I can hear you, you’re hollering at the top of your lungs. How can I not?” asked Arhris, in the tone of a child,
     then mumbled under her breath as she watched John turn his back to her and leave the room.
    “Is that some kind of backtalkin’ tongue-lashing you mumbling about?” he asked with his left eyebrow raised.
    “No, I’m just humming, that’s all… if it’s all right wit’ you,” she said, cursing him silently under her breath.
    “I reckon it’s not, if I can’t understand what you’re saying,” he commented before walking away. “Don’t need to hear you or
     understand you no way. Don’t even know why you speak at all. Just a waste of air if you ask me,” he told himself as he closed
     the door behind him and walked down the hallway, continuing his personal conversation to himself.
    It was the saddest day of Arhris’s life to see her daughter sold away to some stranger, but she had no choice or say in the
     matter. What could she do? She was a woman, and unfortunately, in the 1940s a woman was nothing more than property and was
     just not allowed to disobey.
    Abigail seemed to sense something wasn’t right, walking up the dirt path from the