Fierce quarrels raged in the billet the morning after the killing of my tiger. A woman screamed at the top of her lungs for a missing sliver of soap. Another wailed about the few flakes of mouldy flour she got in her rations.
“Out, you drunken w***e,” cried the factor, grabbing a woman from her bunk.
“Go to hell!” she screamed at him.
“I’ll give you hell,” he said, raising a cane across the woman’s back.
She roused enough to lunge at him, biting his thigh.
“w***e!” The factor swiped the cane across her gullet and the woman fell back on her bunk, groaning loudly. She was dragged her by her hair to the door and cast upon the road.
I ran to the window to watch the woman that the factor had turned out, and my attention shifted. A shower of young boys swarmed around the front of the barn
