The Window Pane

A snippet of a short story I started writing for an English class. I started with a prompt and evolved from there.

She stood with her black face some six inches from the window-pane and wondered would it ever stop raining. It had started raining early this morning and never seemed to let up. It would lighten a bit, but then just go back to bucketful’s shortly afterwards. She was worried about Jim. He had a cough when left in the morning to work the fields and she feared that the rain and the cold would make his cough worse. Some of the other slaves had already come down with a chest cold, and one of them had pneumonia. She stared hard out the window, trying desperately to glimpse her husband through the glass that had become a never ending waterfall of her misery.

            She sometimes felt bad that she was a house worker, and he a field worker. She had warm clothes and a fireplace, and it was never wet indoors. For Jim, daily life meant sore hands, a lashed back and never enough food to really fill him up. She tried her best to sneak him food when she could, but had learned early on that the kitchen master was a crafty old coot, and saw everything. She vowed that if she ever had the chance to switch places with him she would in an instant. 

            After an hour of peering through the window, she finally saw movement. Men were coming out of the fields hauling what looked like their crop for the day. As the men got closer she could see that the shape filling the wheel-barrow was not that of wheat and potatoes, but of a man. It was her husband, to be precise. Her heart started to race and her breathing grew harder. “Please let him be alright”, she thought, “he’s just tired from the work and resting”. She knew this was not the case, as Jim would never allow someone else to carry his weight. He was the type of man that would take another’s sack if they looked tired, but never would ask for help himself. He was too proud for that. Sometimes she would tell him that stubborn pride of his would get him killed one day. It seems today might just be it. 

            They brought him in the back entrance of the house, and gingerly transferred him to a small couch. His breathing was shallow and fast, and his pallor was quite atrocious. She ran from the window to his side, kneeling in the muck tracked in by the others. Her attentions were too focused on him to notice her dress being soiled. Jim coughed fitfully and opened his eyes. They seemed distant and glazed, like he was seeing somewhere far away. Slowly his head turned to her and she could see that he did not recognize her. Her heart sank, knowing that he was not going to get better easily.