On the Road to Spuds...

Blazing blacktop road to the horizon, melting in the unapologetic sun, flanked by soggy fields sprayed with septic chemicals for too many generations, all banned now and leeched into the local groundwater. Heading West on that burning sauna of a Florida afternoon, radio says it's 101 in the shade, although there is none of that in sight. Just open fields of pale cabbages raised too long on Monsanto chemicals, slowly killing the earth, even as the crops try to grow. Heat snakes undulate skyward, blurring the horizon, dancing in mirage pools that evaporate into the searing oven with my approach. A shape on the side of the road ahead, at first fuzzy, unfocused, sharpens in flashes until I see him clearly. Dirty, stooped, dragging a piece of airline luggage like an errant child, jumping and bucking with a broken wheel. His back to oncoming traffic, the acknowledgment of his left thumb turned slightly outward with my approach, barely visible. An appeal, a question already answered by his hunched, defeated shuffle. He was heading the right way, walking hand in hand with a thousand miles of hopelessness, toward a little farm town that no longer had anything left to offer, as sick and toxic as the water that ran through its veins.