Raven sighed in relief as she stepped through the door of her temporary home for the unforeseeable future. She needed a bath and a hot meal, not in that order.
Her muscles and joints ached, but she had to push through the pain. She was doing this for her grandmother. Her grandmother had taken out a loan from a loan shark, it was to help with some of the expenses at the ranch that they couldn't pay for.
But the interest payments became too much and the loan shark came a calling. He came himself, he didn't send someone else. Raven managed to convince the man, Charles Axle, to let work the debt off instead of paying for it as they were barely making it as it is.
Charles said he'd agree to it if Raven came to his son's company to work off the debt and live in the small apartment above the company, if she did that, then he'd waver the debt through her labor.
Raven's only request to this was to let her call a friend to come and help her grandmother out until she returned, Charles agreed and with one phone call to her childhood friend to take her place, Raven was a bus to the coast of Maine where Charles' son's company was.
Jack Axle, Charles' son, his company, turned out to be a fish factory where they prep the fish to be canned, meaning they haul, cut, and gut the fish that comes in.
Raven's job includes, catching the fish that gets tossed out of the trucks, roll her cart to the cutting station where she cuts the fins, heads, tails, and guts them where she then takes to a conveyer belt of hooks where she places the cleaned fish onto the hooks. Then repeat until the day is over or until the fish truck are empty.
It's been two weeks now and Raven knows it's going to be a long and grueling months or even a couple of years ahead of her. Though she's sure that once she gets into the rhythm of the work it'll go faster and before she knows it, the debt will be paid off.
She knows that Jack is supposed to be keeping track of her debt and the labor she does to counter it, but she too is also keeping up with it. That way she won't be getting taken advantage of.
Unbeknownst to Raven however her childhood friend Thomas is paying for her to live there. He actually thinks he's paying off the debt to get her out of there, but Charles is using that money to have Raven live in the apartment, it's how she eats too having the meals delivered or supplied if she wishes to make her own, after all, Charles' business is with Raven and her grandmother only, it's their debt not Thomas'.
And had this Thomas Rame wanted to help, he should've done so before Charles showed up. Raven and her grandmother are responsible for paying their debt, not this young punk.
Charles humored the kid and accepted the wade of cash he slammed down on his desk. But he didn't take it off Ella's debt. Instead, he gave the money to his son and told him it was for Raven to live above the small apartment above the fish company. There was actually two apartments, the larger one Jack stayed sometimes if his work took longer than he expected. And sometimes Jack could smell Raven cooking dinner and was jealous of how it smelled compared to heat up leftovers or tv dinners.
Also when Charles took the money, he told Thomas to not tell Raven what he was doing, claiming to not want her to slack off if she thought the debt was being taken care of. Thomas wasn't happy about it, he knew Raven wasn't a slacker, she was her grandmother's ranch hand for god's sake. Ella could barely move around anymore because of her injury, it was healing, but not as fast as she liked it too, not wanting to leave the ranch and house work all on Raven's shoulders, she was a strong woman and could be just as stubborn as her grandmother, they were also proud, but not to the point that they were blind, they hated having to ask for anything if they couldn't do themselves.
And Thomas was a lawyer, not a ranch hand, but he was going to learn so that he could help Ella around the house and keep the ranch going until Raven returned.
So far it wasn't easy for the man, the animals didn't like him and the horses kept trying to bite him or would stomp at him, trying to keep him away. He wondered how Raven managed to do it all. The chickens kept chasing him away from the roosts, the pigs, sheep, and cows tried to trample him or would knock the bucket over, spilling the milk on the ground, trying to crush his foot.
Ella said it was because he was new and that they'd straighten up once they got used to him. He hoped that was the case, as far as house work goes, he was acing that. That was easy, though tiring and exhausting. Ella told him that Raven would take a day and either tend to the animals, tend the garden, water the flowers, go to the store, and then rest on the weekend or help her around the house.
Thomas tried this and soon got the hang of things. Though the animals still didn't like him.
Raven would call her grandmother every Friday to check on her and tell her about her week, sometimes she'd talk to Thomas and see how the ranch was holding up with him tending to it.
But other than that, nothing exciting. Except for the occasional thunderstorm where Ella would ask him to sit out on the porch with her to watch and listen to it, even though it was dangerous, he found it fascinating. Raven would also call after a thunderstorm and ask if it rained at the ranch. Ella and Raven loved thunderstorms and rainstorms.
Thomas had to bring his work to the ranch so that he could continue to get paid and send some of his money to Charles so that he could pay Raven's debt off quicker, but those interest rates that Charles charges made it slow, he wondered how Raven can handle that man and his son was probably no better and working Raven to the bone.
Contrary to Thomas' thoughts of Jack and of Charles who both can be reasonable men as well as understanding, something that lacked in the world these days, Raven was being treated fairly well. And they couldn't complain about her work, she got it done and didn't complain.
She had been working none stop for the last two weeks and hardly took a break. She even worked the weekends. If she intended to work off her grandmother's debt to Charles, she needed to take break every now and then or she'd burn out.
Another week went by as Raven began feeling the strain of working day after day and sometimes at night, but she shook it off and pressed on until Jack took notice of the dark circles under her eyes.
" Hawthorn! My office! " He shouted out over the loud speaker.
Though Raven was tired, she didn't think that she did anything wrong that day, but none the less, she did as her 'boss' ordered and went to his office,
" Yes sir? " She asked once she opened the door, she could feel her nerves began to shake, as she wondered what it was that she did wrong.
" When was the last time you slept? " He asked once she was fully in his office, he watched her as she stayed close to the door as though he were going to attack her, had she been abused in the past? Or was she just being cautious?
" Sir? "
" You have bags under eyes, that tells me you haven't slept. If you're going to 'work' here, I need you to be rested otherwise accidents happen and I don't need that. I'm ordering you to go to the apartment early and get some rest. "
" I can finish my shift. "
" You can barely stand up straight, go to the apartment, get some sleep. And from now on, you're resting on the weekend like the rest of the workers. Otherwise you'll never get that debt wavered from my father. "
" But... "
" That's an order Hawthorn, go to the apartment, eat, shower, sleep. You've done enough today. You can come back once you have rested. "
" I-Yes sir. Sorry sir. " Raven replied and took her leave.