So, I had this conversation via text a while back:
Pretty Lady: Haha I like texting, don’t get me wrong, I just hate typing heaps on my phone
Me: Ah, that makes sense. So I’ll save the heaving bodice talk for when you’re not on your phone. Mmmm… bodices and ankles and bosoms :-)
A single bead of sweat crept from beneath the band of Little Joe’s hat, burrowing through caked on dirt until it worked itself down into a muddy afterthought. The young man rubbed the back of his grimy hand against his cheek, smearing the streak and wiping away dry earth. He squinted up at the sun while he pushed the heavy plough behind the family’s old, tired draft horse. The remains of weeds and old crop lay in the furrows behind him. Little Joe could see his father in the distance. The old man was mending their fences after one of the sheep got tangled in it. There’d be fresh mutton if the dumb animal didn’t survive.
Little Joe removed his wide brimmed hat to scratch at his black, wavy hair. He fanned himself and wished for the hundredth time that a breeze, any kind of breeze would come by and cool him off. He eyed wide blue sky but the one tiny white cloud far off in the distance gave no hope for shade and his father would have his hide if he ran off to rest under one of their apple trees. Tree lined mountains surrounded the small world he lived in and, again for the hundredth time, he told himself he’d make it to those mountains and keep walking. Some day. For now his bare feet dug into the fresh turned earth and provided him his only comfort in the sweltering heat.
“Saint Fran-swaur,” Little Joe whispered. He’d stopped his learning a long time ago but he could remember Miss Pastern in her thick dress and hair pulled back. Her with her stick, tapping on an old sheet of paper and trying to teach the packed room about their local geography. Little Joe remembered little of what he was supposed to have learned but he always remembered the name of the mountain range nearby. “Saint Fran-swaur,” he repeated, as if saying the very words would carry him away from his home.