From his distance, it looked to Amos as though it might be a depiction of the Halifax cotton field itself, at high noon, when the sun is at its peak and the pickers are under the strictest surveillance, when the throat threatens to collapse and crumble from lack of water, and yet the overseers look at you as though taking a natural human pause is unthinkable, reminding you that it could be worse: you could be chopping cane at an increased risk of severed limb; you could be at the docks with men who hadn’t seen civilization in quite some time and wouldn’t discriminate one hole from the next;
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