Field Worker

Field Worker

All morning, bussed South from Mexico City,

I watch Volkswagens and motorcycles-

some with three riders- blur by in a stream of color and faces.

Blue smoke puffs from chrome tailpipes,

the putter and exhaust of worn rings

and neglected metal that will soon seize.

If angels breath, they won’t fly here.

Not where the Sierra Madres

pierce the sky like ghosts armored in beryl-horned caps

as if to readying to march.

Not in this place where a blight falls quiet

from the same slack sky, coating the sugar cane’s electric green.

Jose says the field workers are dying by the thousands

of a mystery kidney disease,

says the newspapers lie,

reporting any pesos for a study would be a waste,

because workers drink tequila

stay out late

say they chew cane pulp instead of food.

I’ve been on this bus too long not to care,

and so I mistake the low-flying crop-duster for something holy

when it glides by,

streaming parathion and paraquat in contrails from its wingtips,

which descends, spreading over the men in a blue cloud

so it looks as if the cane is harvested by the dead.

I think of working McDonald’s weekends,

how I always thought the managers jobs were to care,

that they sat in the office studying Material Safety Data Sheets

as I hunched in a black apron over the grill,

scrubbing it with the scouring acid that looked benign as dish soap

in its clear package that I scissored open,

but would settle like lesions into my hands,

ghosting them for months after.

What my great-grandfather said about working coal seams for scrip-

the stamped-out copper coins they could only use in the company store-

they gave us shit and called it sunshine-

how he emerged from the dark of a twelve hour shift

to the dark of night, exhaling carbon

and wiping black from the creases in his eyes.

I open my eyes again on the fields,

thinking of what we allow settle into us and see many

like my grandfather- the truly working dead,

their leather-worn hands rasping the bead tighter up the bolo

of their straw hats.

I see them in loose pants and chambray,

I see them in helmets with spit-carbide lanterns.

I see them working the field the same as I see them in a hole,

hobbling bundles of cane

to the rusted beds of pickups and longbed trailers

like mining cars doing not what they want,

but what they believe they must.

About the Author: Jonathan Travelstead served in the Air Force National Guard for six years as a firefighter and currently works as a full-time firefighter for the city of Murphysboro. Having finished his MFA at Southern Illinois University of Carbondale, he now works on an old dirt-bike he hopes will one day get him to the salt flats of Bolivia.

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