1844

I stood on the porch of our old farmhouse and looked around. Nothing had changed. The workers were still out in the field, farming tobacco and sweating in the hot sun, while my family and I sat inside and watched. I'd always known life wasn't fair, but to sit and watch while others suffer, that's a different kind of cruel.

But my parents would never listen. 'They're the help, Isabel,' they would say to me. Sometimes I wish I would have taken up on the man's offer to go with him, to make more equality between the rich and the poor. But my family would never let me come back home if I ran off with a bank robber.

Still, I thought of it daily, and going out on my own would be a welcome change.

"Isabel!" I heard my sister call, just before our tobacco fields were engulfed in flames, and in front of me stood the man, oil in hand.