November’s defoliated days were in full view
November’s defoliated days were in full view as the motor coach left the outskirts of Lubbock and made its way East on highway 114 destined for Dallas. The morning light of the coming day passed through the dimensions of the bus window reflecting the disquieted mask of Florence as she tried to make sense of her own passing. 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.