Trigger Warnings: Racial Slurs, Threats of Racial Violence The negroes in the growing town of Canton were vanishing without so much as a whisper left behind. Leslie had been hearing the stories for weeks now. At his job at the textile factory, his coworker Desmond made a habit of sharing the latest disappearances when they stood around the maple tree, waiting for more batches of finished product to come through the factory doors so they could load them onto the boxcars. Leslie spent twelve hours a day heaving the heavy bundles of finished cotton cloth. It was grueling work that had made the muscles in his back develop a constant ache, even when he wasn’t working, but occasionally a machine would break down which meant the negroes could gather round the maple tree and share a few words. Leslie was on one such break now and took the opportunity to bite into the ham sandwich he’d made himself that morning. He ate quickly— one could never know how fast they would be call...