King
King Covington shouldn’t even be here. He wasn’t on the vag, he was just passing through on his way to Mobile to see his sister Emma, thought there was some work she could get him unloading cargo. But a deputy north of Birmingham had collected his last two dollars as a fine for wrong place, wrong time, wrong color, which meant he was caught with empty pockets thumbing for a ride out on the highway. It isn’t the first time. King has some skills, too, pretty fair blacksmith if only people needed mules how they used to, owner might have forty in his stable at one time, but that’s mostly over. So now he’s on the outside looking in, catching what little work he can on the fly, never seeming to catch on in one place for too long. He’s picked his share of cotton, breathed in a lifetime of dust and eaten his share of prison food. All he can hope for now is to work through this harvest and hope they get tired of feeding him when there’s no work left. Then catch a good ride for that last hundred miles to Mobile.
