Stand the Storm by Breena Clarke

while her gang stood idle and feigned confusion, Nancy was sent back to get them hard at it. The clever girls saved their boss a further beating.
    Rather than break the whole crew for the noon meal, Nancy sent one girl to fetch the basket for the gang directly at the kitchen door. It was no honor or privilege or light work to fetch the gang’s dinner. It was necessary to walk from the tobacco field, hoist two large baskets of the vittles, and carry both all the long way back to the field. The one who fetched would suffer the heated displeasure of the gang and of Nancy if she were too slow or too careless of the meal. Though the fetching was drudgery it was a change from the punishing tobacco work. The gang went to the field in dark and returned to their cabin in dark. This fetching afforded the briefest opportunity—on the way to the kitchen—to swing the arms freely at the sides of the body, to feel them dangle there, and to let the ache of fieldwork run off like an oil. When it was Mattie’s turn, the food came quickly. She and Nancy drew off together and the others tittered over a hotter, longer supper.
    On the hot afternoon that Ellen took her fetch day, the cook had ridden to town to have her tooth pulled. Ellen came into the kitchen as she was accustomed to and was no more surreptitious than was usual. They should have heard. Ellen saw the girl called Katharine who helped the cook. The cook herself never bothered with dishing up vittles for the gangs. Her grimy assistant handed out portions to the fetchers.
    The girl certainly should have heard Ellen coming. She should have done something to hide the picture from view. But there they had been as plain as the nose on Ellen’s face: Katharine with her bodice askew and holding Esau’s hand against her breasts.
    Because of the heat Ellen had thought momentarily that it was cool relief Katharine was after. But Ellen had seen the black hand on the girl’s naked white skin. Esau had turned dead-calm eyes toward Ellen where she’d stood in the doorway. His face expressionless, his fat fingers continued to mash Katharine’s untidy breasts.
    Ellen froze. She put her eyes to the floor and did not move. She resolved to remain in this state brought on by the great fear in her until one or the other of them moved away.
Lord in heaven! What will happen? What has happened? What have I happened upon?
was the dialogue in her brain. She reflected upon what Jonathan Ridley had taught her when he’d come to the loom room while his wife was at her afternoon rest. He had grasped Ellen by the wrist and brought her to a corner of the barn. He pinched her face and pulled it toward a lamp. He pulled at her breasts and watched her face. He handled her so swiftly that his thrusting was not as painful as her mother had prepared her to expect.
    Katharine broke the impasse when she snorted disdainfully. Who was a gal like this gal to be pretending she don’t know nothing about what you do with menfolk? Katharine slapped Esau’s fumbling hands away from her breasts and slapped his face. She adjusted her bodice and pushed out of the pantry past Ellen turned to salt. Katharine stopped abruptly, turned, and slapped Ellen across the face. The blow jogged Ellen from her shock. She assembled the vittles and hoisted and hauled the gang’s meal back to the field.
    It got to be a regular thing that Katharine and Esau went into the back pantry or the root cellar when Mrs. Clover, the cook, was gone for her rest and it was Ellen’s turn to fetch for the tobacco girls. Ellen became complicit. She looked at them. And the looking fascinated and shamed her and caused her to feel she must stand on the secret. She feared if anybody found out about these goings-on there’d be a big ruckus and she’d be pulled into it. She knew that just knowing about this and not telling could earn trouble.
    Katharine Logan was a girl who had been working on the Warren place for five years. She worked in the kitchen as a