by Robert Miltner
after a painting by David Ligare
From a distance, it could be children on a field trip, lunches in brown paper sacks, warm flat cola in cans. The yellow school bus is parked where it stopped, surrounded by rock and sand. Next to it is a black sedan that either got there first or arrived second. High above, huge white clouds float in a wondrous world of blue sky.
Men and women disembark from the bus that has transported them here to work in the increasing heat. They feel cooler under the bright sun than they did on the stifling bus. Even driving with the windows open, the rush of air was heat blasting from an open furnace, dust and grit sticking to their faces along the scalp line and in the squinting eyes.
Walking from the bus, worn shoes held in their hands, the hot sands burn the soles of their feet. For hours they stoop to pick lettuce, backs flat like the tops of tables. A storm rises on the horizon, approaches like a piece of night broken off from the dome of the sky and tumbling toward them. With the precise measure of a metronome, raindrops fall.
Back to the bus they rush, soaked skirts and shirts clinging as wet sand rubs between toes. The engine starts, the gears engage, and they are driven back to the road. Packed into the seats, it feels like summer on the Equator, or being laid across a steam press. Their lined faces are road maps to places they are too tired to go.