Virginia Cotton Docks: The Weight of White Gold

Lyrics

The red brick breathes in coal smoke.
Waits for the shudder.
The BeltLine rails sing below the floorboards.
It’s time.

The boxcar door slides heavy, a metal groan against the frame.
Sunlight cuts the dusty dark, a blade on floating motes.
And there it is.
Stacked high to the roof, a wall of soft geometry.
Burlap skin, rough and smelling of the Georgia field, of red clay and dry sun.
Bound tight with metal straps that bite into the corners.
Five hundred pounds of someone else’s harvest.
Waiting for the hook. Waiting for the strain.

Hook, and pull.
Grunt, and slide.
The weight of white gold on the dock.
From the flatcar to the floor.
One more for the Fulton Mill.
Just a mile south.
Hook, and pull. The weight of white gold.

Calloused hands grip the worn wood handle.
The steel point bites deep, a quick and certain violence.
Leverage, and muscle, and the salt-sting of sweat on the brow.
An endless chain of ghosts with no names on the manifest.
Up in the office, Sidney R. Johnston dips his pen.
He tallies the car numbers, the bale counts, the tonnage.
The clean, crisp numbers of commerce.
Down here, we just count the next one.
And the one after that. Until the car is empty.

Hook, and pull.
Grunt, and slide.
The weight of white gold on the dock.
From the flatcar to the floor.
One more for the Fulton Mill.
Just a mile south.
Hook, and pull. The weight of white gold.

This isn’t just cotton. This is the city’s fuel.
This is the engine. The ceaseless demand.
This is the roar of Jacob Elsas’s looms a mile down the line.
The thread for a million bags to hold a nation’s flour and feed.
This is the shadow of the strike in 1914, the whispers in the weave.
Every fiber holds a story of sun and soil and bent backs.
Every strap holds a debt the ledger never shows.
And we just move it. From the rail to the warehouse.
One bale at a time. The weight is the only truth.

The whistle blows again, a final, weary sigh.
The air settles.
The dust settles on the floorboards.
The docks are full now, silent mountains of white gold.
The building holds its breath.
Waiting.
Just waiting.
For the morning whistle. For the next train.