Page 57 - North Star Magazine 2022

right. He needed to calm himself. If the man saw him sweating, he would be certain something was off.
“They were using things they learned in the East. Us southerners use a complicated system of planting and sowing. They didn’t understand it here, and they still don’t, which is why I’m producing more than the rest of ’em.”
“Rilos you moron you said you were from the west,” Blink yelled.
“Fuck.” Rilos knew he had made a grave error.
”I thought you said you came from the West?” Lou asked, leaning forward in his chair.
Rilos began to think of ways to dig himself out of this hole. If only he could find a way to see Lou’s true intentions. If only there was a way to draw it out of him. “I went South first and then to the west, but what does it matter? I thought ya said we are all the same people?” Rilos was desperately looking for ways to hide his intimidation.
Lou looked at him inquisitively. He was studying every detail about the man. He closed in on Rilos’s face, a surface littered with moles, craters, and a very peculiar scar.
”Your face. What happened to it?” Lou struck a menacing smirk. He was now toying with Rilos in a sinister game of cat and mouse.
”I beg ya pardon?” Rilos did not know if Lou knew who he was, but what he did know was that the next answer he gave would determine the state of his life.
”The gaping, disgusting scar across your face. Where did it come from?” Lou’s once amicable tone was now replaced with hostility.
Rilos was hopelessly attempting to change the mood of the conversation, but he did not know what to say. “Blink what do I do?”
“I’m not sure, but you should say something, anything, at this point.”
“Ya said ya were in a rush. We should talk about the seventy-five percent-” Lou had now lost all of his patience.”You will answer my question, or I will cut open your belly and fill it with the disgusting chair on which I sit. Answer me!”
“He does not know who I am,” Rilos responded.