Carolina Moon

air for the crying gulls. A group of young people thrashed in the surf and sent out the squeals and shouts that were caught between mating calls and childhood.
    In a sky still deep blue with the last gasp of day, the first star winked to life and shone like a single diamond.
    The tension and temper of the day melted out of her mind.
    She didn’t think she was hungry. Her appetite was never particularly keen. But she poked at her salad while he began to tell her of his work.
    “When you feel your eyes begin to glaze over, just stop me.”
    “I don’t bore that easy. And I know something about organic cotton. The gift shop where I worked in Charleston sold organic cotton shirts. We got them from California. They were pricey, but sold well for us.”
    “Give me the name of the shop. Lavelle Cotton started manufacturing organic last year. I can guarantee we’ll beat the price from California. That’s part of what I haven’t been able to get across as well as I’d like. Growing organically, after you’re established, competes head-on with chemical methods. And the product commands a premium in the marketplace.”
    “Which equals more profit.”
    “Exactly.” He buttered a roll, passed it to her. “People listen to profit more than they listen to environmental concerns. I can talk about pesticide drift, the effect on wildlife and edge species—”
    “Edge species?”
    “Quail and other birds that nest in the grass along the fields. Hunters shoot the quail, eat the quail, and consume the pesticide. Then there’s insecticide. Sure they kill off the pests, but they also kill off the good bugs, infect birds, reduce the food chain. A chick eats a dead or dying insect after spraying, then the chick’s infected. It’s a cycle you can’t break until you try another method.”
    Odd, she thought, to realize she’d carried her father’s view of farming inside her, where nature was the enemy to be fought day after day, with the government running a close second.
    “You love it. Farming.”
    “Yes. Why wouldn’t I?”
    She shook her head. “A great many people make a living doing things they don’t enjoy and have no real talent for. I was supposed to go on and work at the tool and dye factory after high school. I took business courses in secret rather than argue about it. So I suppose I know what it’s like to go against the grain to do what you want to do.”
    “How did you know what you wanted to do?”
    “I just wanted to be smart.” To escape, she thought, but steered the conversation back to him. “The organic method’s sensible, and certainly forward-thinking, but if you don’t spray, you’ve got weeds and disease and pests. You’ve got a sick crop.”
    “Cotton’s been cultivated over four thousand years. What do you think people did up until sixty, seventy years ago, before we started using aldicarb and methyl parathion and trifluralin?”
    It intrigued her, interested her, to see him getting worked up. To feel the passion for his work vibrating out of him. “They had slaves. And after that, field hands they could work obscene hours for slave wages. That’s just one of the reasons, in case you were wondering, why the South lost the War Between the States.”
    “We can discuss history another time.” He leaned forward, needing to make his point. “Organically grown cotton can and does use more hand labor, but it also makes use of natural resources. Animal manure, compost, instead of chemical fertilizers that can pollute groundwater. Cover crops to help control weeds and pests and add to revenue, and the basic soil conservation of rotation. Good bugs—ladybugs, mantis, and so on—to feed on the cotton pests instead of exposing farmworkers, neighbors, children to pesticide drift. We let the plants die naturally instead of using a defoliant.”
    He sat back as their entrées were served, topped off the wine in their glasses, but he was on a roll. “We keep up the process through the ginning. We clear the gin of residue from conventional cotton, that’s federal regulation. So when it’s sold, it’s pure, free of chemicals. Not everyone thinks that such a big deal for a shirt or your jockey shorts, but cotton’s seed as well as fiber. And cottonseed’s in a whole lot of prepared food. How much pesticide do you figure you’re taking in every time you eat a bag of potato chips.”
    “I don’t think I want to know.” But she remembered her father coming home, cursing the land. She