A man in a slim black suit trailed the prison ward by fifty feet or so next to the highway. He observed thirty men poking at the ground with long metal rods, trash collecting at the base of their instruments, plastic, coke and beer cans, cardboard. Underneath the sun the men operated like drunken, aberrant ants, off the trail, poking here or there, seeking sugar. Every now and then one would pick up a cigarette that had been discarded prematurely from another capricious driver. The man in the slim black suit saw one inmate, large and overweight with maroon skin lesions covering his face, ponder whether or not he should tuck the remaining stem of a cigarette into his palm for later usage, but, the prison warden, disgusted and belligerent, shouted at the prisoner to put all of the litter into their plastic trash bags.
The man in the slim black suit was drunk himself, not deliriously, as these prisoners walking along the side of the highway were in their movement, but drunk off of creativity, off of his craft. He was an artist and he had found his landscape. The early afternoon sky, sparkling. Now, a sudden ubiquitous dimming of the light, the artist had crafted a cloak for the sun.
(The warden to himself) Must be a cold front coming in. Next to his foot there was a cigarette butt. The filter yellow and burned. The edges of the highway covered in trash. Bad enough that there are already animal carcasses to be removed. No caring community had adopted this section of the road, so here he is with his ward. It is good for them to be out and see the bright atmosphere of the world, but now, this sky, an errant observer of the scene, seemed restless. Soon enough the warden was influenced by the sudden purple of the evening (except it was two o'clock just minutes ago?) and he was disturbed enough in the transformation to take his eyes off of his ward. The trash once stuck out incandescently, but was now swallowed by the long emerald grass.
....
