In Oklahoma, in the 1920's, one thing you didn't want to be known as was a horse thief. Part of the reason behind that was, horse theft was still a hanging offense. Also, being known for it, caught at it, was just bad for business and really twisted the game.

December 1928 was warm enough,and thankfully clear enough to keep their six hour lead from being shortened. Smitty was on the bench, keeping the team moving, while his young wife, Ida was in the back. Groaning and swearing. Occasionally letting loose a scream that sounded too much like some panther in the night.

She was also cursing the day she met him, and hating on the day she'd fallen in love with him.

The baby was coming, and the only one around to help delver it was smitty's fourteen year old brother, Marion.

After a week just north of Alva, Oklahoma, they damn sure had the money for a doctor. The lynch mob on their tail didn't afford them the time such a stop would take however.

The kid's eyes were wide and glassy, and his Adam's Apple kept bobbing when he swallowed. He was an interesting shade of pale green under the red copper tan of his skin. Beads of sweat the size of golf balls smeared his face, and ran cold down his back.

"Smitty, Ida, I really think I oughta drive ..." Marion couldn't help the panicky whine any more than he could help repeating the plea he'd been giving voice to for the last ten hours.

Jeez, it sounded like she was dying. And it just wasn't right. Seeing his brother's sister's lady parts. Worse yet, there was something coming out of them and it just, ohgod.

"Shut up Marion and hold on." Ida's tone, tired and breathless as it was, brooked no nonsense, and had him swallowing again.

His eyes liked to have bugged out of his head when she braced her feet against the stakes of the wagon's bed and started bearing down.

The next few minutes would haunt him for the rest of his life (refreshed frequently by the birth of each of his ten kids).

Finally though he laid his red faced and fluid covered niece on his red faced sister-in-law's belly. Tied and cut the cord, cleared her nose and mouth with shaking hands. Listened to her squawl against all this bright, cold, and loud applesauce.

"What is it?" Smitty called anxiously from the bench.

Ida was too busy cooing and crooning and recovering to answer.

"It's a--It's a girl." Marion's voice broken from excitement and a parched throat when he piped up.

Smitty's big booming laughter rolled off, echoing across the terrain around them. "Hot damn. Welcome to the world little girl! What's her name Ida-Mae?"

Ida's mouth, a plump thing most often quirked with wicked merriment softened and her bawdy voice was a wondering croon, "Artis. Artis Vivian ."

Early 1940's Washington State.

They'd followed the crops from California through Oregon and up into Washington. Even when they'd been lucky enough to find work, she and her sister had gone to bed with their bellies aching-empty too many times to count, or remember.

They'd hidden with the other children in the fields when the bulls had come in to raid the camps. She'd tucked her sister into a tiny, tiny ball and laid over her herself in the backseat of their beaten to hell sedan when other pickers and farmers clashed. Started shouting and shoving, waving knives and clubs and guns around over the piss-poor wage offered. The "extra expenses" taken out at the end of the week.

So they'd moved on. And moved on and on.

For the last year they'd been lucky. Damn lucky. Fond a family up in Washington state that had a farm. Grew crops damn near year 'round. Who knew how to treat their workers.

The wages weren't great, but they were livable. they had a place to live; rows of quonset huts stretching between the orchards. They cobbled together a community with the other families on the rows.

Had gardens and chickens and goats to help stretch their wages further. The women, and some of the men, took it in turns to teach the kids their letters, reading, and figuring.

But when it came to work, everyone worked. If a person could walk and talk, they could pick or pack.

Some of the women and girls worked the fields with the men. Others worked the packing and canning sheds: Even if it wasn't pretty enough to sell, it could be canned whole or slices, or made into jelly or jam.

They lived there a year.

A year of stability and growth and hard-earned comfort in a world at war again. In a country still riding the ripples of the depression.

In January 1941 the head of the family that owned the farm, died. he'd been ailing for some time,his health on a sharp decline after a lifetime working the land. His eldest son, Willam. had been increasingly taking on more responsibility as the end needed.

Willam was a farmer, through and through. A true son of the soil just as his daddy'd been before him. He'd gladly taken up the reins of the small empire their family'd built. And for a while, things pretty much stayed the same.

The youngest boy's name was Brian, and he was the baby. Very much the baby of the family. A hard drinking, lecherous brat who'd been away at some college or another. Until he was kicked out for failing grades, and "drunken mischief."

It was Fall when he showed back up at the Farm, his eyes blurry, reeking of booze and the last opium den he'd been dragged out of.

And it was Fall when things started changing for the workers.

Subtle at first, and the eldest unaware. Biran would come down to the sheds and just stare at the girls. Tugging on his lower lip, watching them move. Watching them work like some oil slicked vulture perched on a branch.

After a week, Smitty started walking his girls to and from the sheds, leaving the fields early (even though that cut down on his count) to make sure they were never alone up there. And Ida-Mae made mention, worriedly, to the boys' mother about the situation.

The woman, Bethann, assured Ida her son was harmless, but she'd most assuredly speak to him. Brian, sneered.

Artis and Bobbie went back into the fields, and though Bobbie complained and whined, Artis was damn happy for it.

There was something, not right in Mr. Brian, and he'd watched her for too long. Made her skin crawl and her set her teeth on edge. So she worked.
Worked like a little fiend to match, or beat her Daddy's count day by day.

The winds were changing here at the Farm. There was a feel to the air around her parents, a steady determination, and resignation she knew all too well.

They'd be moving on soon and they'd need the money to get wherever they might be going next.

A month later, Willam drove Artis home in. She sat beside him in the front seat, one hand clenched in a white knuckled fist, the other holding the front of her torn blouse closed. Her hair was a dirty rat's nest full of leaves and bits of twigs and grasses. One of her eyes was swelling shut and her lips were split and smeared with dried blood. She kept herself hunched over, her knees tight against themselves. Compressed, like a rabbit about to bolt.

Willam's face was taut with rage and disgust, tained with shame. But he didn't say a word. Didn't say a single thing until they'd pulled up in front of the girl's home. He waited until Ida-Mae'd bundled the girl off into the house, held up a hand with as much authority as he could put into it to keep Smitty, a burly man with a father's rage in his eye, from rushing off.

"She beat him to hell Mr. Martinez. Took me and three men to pull her off'a him when he tried to- when he tried for her. I don't think his peter's ever gonna work right again, and that's a lot less than he deserves."

Willam sighed, heart sick and fighting his own rage, scrubbed a hand over his face. "He's gonna be gone come end of the week, after he gets outta jail. Won't have someone like that 'round here."

This was the hardest thing he'd done in his young life, keeping from wilting under this man's, this father's black, gimlet eyed stare.

(trigger warning; still birth.)

Summer 1945 North Dakota

The town was small, tiny even; the post office, court house, Hall of Records, and school all ran out of the same three room building. Set just on the outside edge of a reservation full of Lakota, more than half their custom came in the form of barter and trade. The other from tourists or the federal agents that kept an eye on the border.

Even with the tensions that ran deeper than anyone wanted to admit, even with the nearly palpable resentments, it was a good place.

A tiny, fly-speck community with a creek that might as well have been a river just spitting distance from the last houses at the edge of town. Trees followed the twisting water course, offering shade. Flat lands, rich and fertile for those willing to work, rewarding those who could, and would, continually start over. Nature tended to slap them back, loved reminding them just who was really in charge.

It was 1945. She was sixteen. And something was very, very wrong.

She'd sweated and bled and screamed in the bed her husband's father had made. She'd clutched at he hands and arm supporting her when the contractions ripped through her and the pressure built, demanding she get up off her back and squat. She'd cried out in exhausted triumph when the baby had finally slithered free of her body.

Resting. Laying back on the hastily remade bed, and newly plumped pillows she'd waited to hear the baby's first cries of protest and life. Expectant she'd watched, dark eyes drinking in everything. The smallest nuance of expression, the slightest twitch of eyelids.

As such, she couldn't ignore the building grief in the mid-wife's eyes,the sorrow blooming across her mother's face. Sobs wracked her, shredding the rising keen as she turned her face into the comforting curve of Ida-Mae's neck and mourned her first child's passing.

Beyond the bedroom door other voices lifted up, twining 'round hers to give strength when hers faltered.

They buried him on tribal land in a plain white box so tiny and harsh. A simple stone marker engraved with "baby boy smith".

In her heart, where no one could hear, she whispered goodbye to Michael James Smith. Her perfect little boy who could never be.