Traveler trilogy Book 2, updates every Friday!
Five years after killing Levi Cornwall, Arthur Morgan is happy. He has a wife who loves him, an honest job he enjoys, and two beautiful children named Sadie and Hiram. All of it is turned on its head, h...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Arthur woke the morning of the Saint Denis bank robbery feeling a bit sick.
He'd been taking his antibiotics and other assorted medicines exactly as he was supposed to, but for some reason, he still felt ill, like he had right before Guarma in some ways. It might be a coincidence, and it might just be a virus making him feel off, but some part of him still was not firing on all cylinders, in a way.
If he remembered correctly, today was the day of the bank robbery, and it was set to happen right after lunch. He knew this because the whole city was bustling with news this morning about the kidnapping of Angelo Bronte the night prior. He'd only just opened his eyes, but already he could hear a few of the older black ladies who used the pump attached to the outside of the house to wash their clothes as they talked about it.
This house, for some reason, had its own water pump, and upon renting the property, Tori had given anyone in the neighborhood who asked permission to use it. The nearby community water pump did not always have clean water. It was frequently muddy, especially after a storm, and it smelled like a storm drain. This part of town was almost entirely inhabited by black families, with a few Hispanic, Chinese, and poor whites mixed in. They deserved clean water just as much as anyone, and so folk frequently came to the house to wash clothes and dishes, and to collect drinking water for the day. The pump was conveniently located right under the window in Arthur and Tori's bedroom, and he frequently woke to the sound of gossip first thing in the morning.
"You hear Bronte ain't here no more?" one of the women asked. There was the sound of splashing and then wet cloth rubbing on a washboard. Clearly they were doing laundry. "Done been kidnapped," she added.
"Mmhmm," said a different woman. "Serve him right, you ask me. What he ever done for us? Nothin'. Not a damn thing. He sit in his goddamn palace while we ain't even got clean water. 'F not for the folk livin' here, we'd all be usin' swamp water to clean ourselves and quench our thirst."
"Mmhmm," said a third voice. There was more splashing, and then the first woman spoke again. "Somethin' odd about them white folk in this house though, Minnie. They nice, but they strange."
"'Specially that one with the mark on his face," said one of them. "He an odd feller. Caught him lookin' at me the other day all strange, you know?. I ask him what he lookin' at, and he just smile and offer to help me with the load I was carryin' from the market."
"They dress nice too," said the one called Minnie. "You seen that Mrs. Morgan when she go out? She got all them fancy clothes, but she live in the poor neighborhood with all the Negroes."
"And she the only woman in a house with all o' them men," one of them added. "She cook for all them and do all they laundry. And she pregnant with twins, you know. We was doin' the washin' out here together the other day, and got to talkin' 'bout it. She a hard worker, but she live in this ugly house and wear all them fine clothes. I hope them menfolk treat her good. That's all I got to say. If she carryin' twins, she ain't gonna last much longer."
