Mungus: Book 1 by Chad Leito

near Hank’s waist.  “What do you want, Little Salyer?” Hank asked me.
                  “Di told me to come over here.  He said that I was in your group.”
                  “Fair enough.  Let’s get moving.”
                  Hank shoved a sack into my hands and walked off along a dirt road.  I followed along with the other workers.  Twenty groups of workers split up onto the farm to go to different places to work.  Our group walked over a mile under the blue sky.  Stalks of cotton rose up above my head as far as my eyes could see.
                  As we walked, the young Beardsley who was in the cabin beside me came up and introduced himself.  “My name is Bradley,” he put out a thick hand and I shook it.
                  “Nice to meet you Bradley; my name is Walt.”
                  Bradley smiled and showed his scattered teeth.  His arms were covered with wiry curls of hair that ran down to his hands.  Thick, black curly hair came off from his head and face and onto his shirt.  His long beard twisted and turned below his mouth and his bundle of hair on his head was tied back in a ponytail.  His shoulders were thicker than Saul’s, even though he was only a little taller than me.
                  “You kind of messed up back there,” he said.
                  “What do you mean?”
                  “Asking Heather about her baby, that was a bad idea.  As a rule of thumb, you need to understand that babies don’t live long out here.  Neither do old people.”
                  I couldn’t help but slip a glance over to Verne.  He looked timelessly old and his skin hung like a coat on his emaciated frame as he followed Hank along the dirt road.
                  “Her baby died?” I asked.
                  “Yes.”
                  “I’m so sorry.  I didn’t know.”
                  Bradley shook his head.  “Don’t worry about it. Just next time, try to understand that.”
                  Black birds circled high overhead and the temperature was already starting to rise.  “What is this sack for?” I asked, holding up the one that Hank had given me.
                  “It’s to pick cotton with.”
                  “I don’t really know how to pick cotton.”
                  “There’s not much to know, but I’ll show you.”
                  Whenever we finally stopped walking we were so far away from any other group that we couldn’t hear anyone else’s voice.  Our group split up as if they had assigned rows and began to bend over and finger out little white bolls that they then dropped into their sacks.  I followed Bradley and he demonstrated on a tall leafy cotton plant.  “It’s simple,” he said.  “You just pick the cotton.”  Bradley picked off a little ball and dropped it into his sack.  “And drop it in.”
                  “That seems easy enough,” I said.
                  Bradley laughed.  “Easy things done all day tend to get hard.”
                  Bradley and I picked different sides of the same row.  He seemed warm and nice and I liked him.  The first boll I grabbed too aggressively and pricked my fingers.  “Ouch!”
                  “Be careful.”
                  Going down the rest of the stalk, I carefully tried to only grab the edge of the cotton and pull it off.  This seemed to work and my fingers didn’t get pricked again, but Bradley was already moving faster than me.  I moved to the second stalk when a sharp pain snapped down upon my back and radiated throughout my body making me collapse.  I cried out and it wasn’t until seconds later that I realized that Hank had whipped me.
                  “What was that for?” Bradley