Chương 143: Fleeing Farmers

We left the special economic zone and continued westward.

The pickup truck crossed the border and entered Maryland's territory.

The paved roads have completely disappeared, replaced by unpaved interstate highways covered in ice, snow and mud.

Ahead lies a long, gradually ascending slope, foreshadowing the approaching foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.

As the headlights swept across a bend ahead, Arthur slammed on the brakes and slowed down.

An old Ford Model T cargo truck was tilted in a ditch on the right side of the road.

The road here was extremely soft due to the melting snow, and the truck's two rear wheels were completely stuck in the mud, with the chassis almost touching the ground.

A man wearing a thin, coarse cloth coat was standing in knee-deep mud, his shoulders braced against the back of a truck, trying to push it out.

The back of the truck was crammed with old mattresses, iron pots, and several cardboard boxes tied with rope.

A woman wrapped in a tattered blanket was huddled under a tarpaulin, holding a little girl who looked about five or six years old.

Next to the front of the car, a boy of about fifteen or sixteen years old was holding a thick wooden stick under the tire, his whole body covered in mud.

As soon as the engine starts, the tires start to slip wildly in the mud, kicking up large amounts of mud. Instead of moving forward, the vehicle gets deeper and deeper into the mud.

This is clearly a bankrupt family on the run, trapped in a dead end.

Arthur parked the pickup truck on a flat surface a dozen meters away from them. He got out of the car.

Hearing the noise, the man pushing the cart immediately turned around.

He grabbed the mud-covered stick with extreme caution and held it protectively in front of the boy. The woman quickly pressed the little girl's head into her arms as well.

"Good evening. Stop stepping on the gas. The chassis is stuck in the mud; you can't get out on your own."

Arthur greeted the group.

The man stared at Arthur's impeccably tailored black coat, his wariness undiminished.

In this era, strangers driving nice cars and dressed smartly often represent bankers, debt collectors, or landlords who have come to drive them away.

"We don't need help. You go your way, sir," the man said in a hoarse voice.

Arthur ignored his attempts to shoo him away and turned to walk towards his pickup truck.

He lowered the tailgate and pulled a trailer chain out of the back of the truck.

He then reversed, aligning the rear of the pickup truck with the front of the T-truck.

"Hang this hook on the crossbeam of your truck's front axle. Avoid the radiator base, or you'll tear the cab off."

Arthur threw the other end of the chain into the mud at the man's feet.

The man paused for a moment, looked at Arthur's off-road pickup truck with its extremely high chassis and wide tires, finally put down the wooden stick in his hand, bent down to pick up the iron chain, and skillfully hung it on the stress point of the front axle.

Arthur returned to the driver's seat and engaged low-speed four-wheel drive.

"Now, get in the driver's seat and take the steering wheel, but don't step on the gas," Arthur instructed, rolling down the window.

The man immediately climbed into the truck.

Arthur smoothly released the clutch, lightly pressed the accelerator, and the four widened off-road tires gripped the traction on the muddy ground.

With a muffled roar, the T-type truck, stuck in the mud, was pulled out of the mire and dragged down the slope onto the hard road surface.

Arthur got off the train, untied the chains, and threw them back into the carriage.

"You'll freeze to death if you go up the mountain now. There's a sheltered woodland a mile ahead. Drive there, build a fire, and wait until dawn. I'll lead the way," Arthur said, looking at the shivering man.

This time, the man nodded without hesitation.

Three o'clock in the morning.

A fire was lit deep in the woods.

Arthur took two cans of meat and a box of hard biscuits from the car, and brewed a pot of hot coffee.

The family gathered around the fire, wolfing down the food that they considered a luxury.

Because of the warmth and firelight, the little girl stopped shivering and quickly fell asleep in her mother's arms.

After they had filled their stomachs, the man held up a hot coffee and introduced it to Arthur.

"I am Elias Parker. This is my wife Sarah, my son Caleb, and my daughter Ruth. I don't know how to thank you enough, Mr. Arthur. If it weren't for you, that car would be our whole family's grave."

"Arthur. Just call me Arthur." Arthur handed Elias a cigarette and lit it for him.

"Why take your whole family on a flight in this weather?"

Elias took a deep drag of his cigarette, coughed twice, and his eyes reddened slightly.

"We used to grow tobacco in southern Maryland; my grandfather was already growing that forty-acre plot of land."

Elias's voice was filled with deep sorrow.

"During the European War, tobacco prices rose to thirty cents a pound. A bank loan officer came to my land and strongly urged me to mortgage my land to buy a tractor to expand production. I signed the papers."

"But now, there's no war in Europe. The price of tobacco has plummeted to two cents a pound. I can't even pay for fertilizer and gasoline, let alone repay the bank loans. The National Bank of Washington has seized our land."

Elias covered his face in pain.

"The bank sent a driver from the city, who drove a huge tracked tractor. That guy was paid three dollars a day, and he could plow the land that our whole family worked on for a month in just one day."

"That cold machine knocked down our wooden fence, and even ran over our front yard to expand our farmland, filling in our well. We were driven out by the machine."

Arthur meticulously recorded these details.

"But that's not the most deadly part."

Elias gritted his teeth, the veins on the back of his hand bulging.

"The foreclosure price of those forty acres of land wasn't even half the loan amount. The judge ruled that I still owed the bank $300 in 'underpayment debt.' The bank sold this bad debt to a local debt collection agency."

"Yesterday afternoon, debt collectors came to our makeshift tent with court documents, saying they wanted to confiscate our last remaining personal belongings—this Model T truck. We had no choice but to flee overnight."

The atmosphere at the camp was extremely oppressive.

They lose their land, are crushed by machines, burdened with lifelong debt, and face legal plunder.

This is a kind of despair that makes it hard to breathe.

The boy, Caleb, sighed, went to the back of the truck, rummaged around for a while, and pulled out an extremely worn wooden guitar.

The guitar's soundbox was repaired by wrapping the cracks with black insulating tape, and the thinnest high E string was broken and missing.

Caleb sat cross-legged by the fire, clumsily scraping the remaining five strings with his pick, but he couldn't play a complete chord.

He tried to distract his family this way, but the unpleasant noise only made his sleeping sister frown in annoyance.

Caleb lowered his hands in frustration, preparing to put the guitar away.

"Would you mind if I took a look?" Arthur asked, sitting on the other side of the fire.

Caleb paused for a moment, then handed over the guitar with the missing string.