"Course they stuck me out in the fields," Waters chortles from the top bunk soon after lights out. "What about you Hillbilly?"
"Dang dishwashing," whines Loy Patrick from the next bed over.
"That's about perfect with me down in the butcher shop," Oil declares with his dentured grin still visible in the slow summer dusk.
Assignments were being divvied out in preparation for the move to the recently completed main building of the new Kentucky State Reformatory. It had been over a year since the flood that finally closed down the old one. The two-hundred non-violent offenders who had been conscripted as the building crew had become accustomed to life in a tent city. The routine of wake-up call at dawn, construction work all day, mess tent in evening shifts, and bedtime at dusk had persisted year round, rain or shine, humid or frigid. Now in their second summer in the camp, it was time for the inmates to start producing their own food.
"Not so great for these dishpan hands," Loy deadpans, getting a chuckle out of a few of the others in their tent.
"Looky here," Oil declares to clarify his job assessment. "Waters'll grow it, you'll make it, I'll sell it."
"Just where'll I get that yeast?" the moonshiner worries.
"I got me a visitor coming up from Paintsville," Loy concludes as a big black bird alights from the mast pole with a raucous cry.
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