and the fine particles from chutes and conveyors rise and remain
in the atmosphere. Fibers suspended in orbit dim the lights
of tractors, combines, and module trucks that flash in the dark
along calcite paths and county roads to highway 180, where shift
crews in big metal buildings sleep on cots in the back room to save
money on gas. Even the office ladies pound out trucker logs and time
cards and cost reports and payroll checks ninety hours a week so men
who flop in motels and fifth wheels can follow the harvest, up from
the Rio across the South, and get cash. Three or four or five
thousand dollars stashed into secret compartments in their jackets.
Rolls of hundreds, taped tight, will pay their bills, until next year,
when the part-time teller girls, who come in after school, become
full-time teller girls who put in extra time on Saturdays to keep
the lines moving so the farmers, foremen, and hands can get back
to the fields where every single hour of every single day they strip
and pack and load and haul mountains of cotton that is not white,
but dingy. Gray, like diesel exhaust or the sky, ginned at night,
or the dust upon dust upon dust swept from every corner and crack.