November’s defoliated days were in full view as the motor coach waited under the traffic signal at Texas Avenue and 19th street.
November’s defoliated days were in full view as the motor coach waited under the traffic signal at Texas Avenue and 19th street. The legible brick-lined streets of Lubbock escorted the bus through the lattice of city blocks as it departed the commercial heart of the Llano Estacado, orienting itself eastward to the Blackland prairies of Fort Worth and Dallas. The morning light of the coming day passed through the plane of the bus window reflecting the disquieted mask of Florence as she struggled to make sense of her own passing. She could still see Anita’s form on the curb outside the bus terminal, her hand separating the clouds for her as she bid farewell. The image of her lifelong friend was clearer now than just a few moments ago, when she sat a breath away from her in the dark isolated lobby of the bus terminal. It was awkward in that anomalous waiting area was filled with other travelers whose estranged company silently warmed their spirits.
“I never thought it would be like this,” Florence mumbled under her quivering lips.
Anita put her hand on Florence’s shoulder. “Oh cheer up Flo. You know what they say. It’s always darkest before the dawn.”
Those short moments seemed like the only memories she had left of the last twenty years they spent together. She clung to the linen scarf that Anita gave her for safety. As the flaxen fibers wrapped themselves around her fingers, Florence could feel the other parting gift, sitting just under her palm, in the breast pocket of her jacket, separate but never too far beyond the necessary layers of skin, clothing and her heart.
“I made Dexter look all over Naples until he found something borrowed, old and blue.” Anita said with an ancient excitement. “He nearly drank it the night before he shipped off. That man of mine, bless his heart, ain’t got no sense once he’s full of beer. The Navy hasn’t changed him one bit. He’s still all hat and no cattle.”
Florence didn’t hear the last words out of Anita’s mouth. Instead she gasped with a mouth wide open. “Oh Ani! I don’t know what to say. It’s gorgeous. I.. I.. I haven’t even left yet and you’re already planning the rest of my life.” Florence said in a mildly defensive tone.
“Why Florence Peacock I’ve got good mind to just smack you right here and now. You’re not going to Egypt to climb the pyramids that’s for sure.” She exclaimed, folding her arms and lips and glaring at Florence.
“You’re right. I’m sorry. It was rude of me not to thank you,” confessed Florence.
Anita’s angelic smile made every effort to fight the current rising between them, but it was fruitless.
The driver halted the vehicle’s forward progress as it approached the traffic signal and the red, white and blue of a barber’s pole on the street corner caught her eye. A sign in the window of the shop read “No dogs allowed. No Mexicans allowed.” She was suddenly purely aware of the tear attempting to trespass across her colorless cheek as she thought of her own roots. The last quarrel she had with her mother, a woman as pertinacious as any West Texas dust storm or drought, was still vividly posted in the corner of her mind. Florence questioned her patriotism. The guilty void nesting itself between the past and the present desired attention, some parting words that would make it go away.
The highway would remain atop the Cap Rock for another hour or so before it made the descent into the town of Dickens. Was she ready? She thought to herself as trucks replete with white cotton bales raced down the farm to market roads seeking the judgement at the scales of the gins as they abandoned the rows of black skeletal stalks. Will he forgive me? She wondered nervously as she considered her true possessions twelve years ago, when she initially conceived of the trip. The era of the manual harvest seemed so personal to her now. Farmers took their time with the cotton. They waited for the stalks to die and hired laborers to pick them by hand. There were no defoliants to chemically induce the stalk to death. Only the wealthy farmers had the mechanized harvesters. Her palms began to ache. She rubbed the spots on her hands once occupied by callouses. By the second full month of the cotton harvest, the stench of paraquat doused the air, serving as a growing reminder that life was not always desired, that the year was about to end. The pungent odor of herbicides would eventually die down, the bus would navigate its way off the caprock, and she would cast off the bond cotton fields her sole bond to the earth.