Lowndes County, GA

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A fire, they say, down in the paper mills. In the field, a cradle of spined nettles. A forest of ferns unfolding like mittens in the push of late evening. Four tight-chinned women ferry supplies toward the town, floral dresses catching noiselessly on ribbed thistle. In the daily paper, the girls’ faces will appear lashless and copper. One will say she knew the man, somewhere in that field, mowing tinker grass, tightening his silver smile with age. She will dream of smoke forever, tracing its calligraphy into the sky. Bleeding out and around like loose pulp. Like old cotton, or nails. The metallic hum of workers buried in heat snaps and pops like tin, the slide of choked wood chipping like bones. She will return to this moment for the rest of her life: the chapel hill, from which she observes both the dulcet noise of house crickets and the ferocious beating of smoke against employed breath, weeds underfoot, the faint scent of wisteria or lilac turning in from the east, the baritone pang of bells through the night.