Eureka

Here was no place for illumination the cotton dust thick window-strained light. The metal squall drowned what could not be shouted everything geared warping and filling. Though surely there were some times that he paused my grandfather thinking This is my life and catching himself before he was caught lost wages or fingers the risk of reflection. Or another recalled in those reckoning moments remembering the mountains the hardscrabble farm where a workday as long bought no guarantee of money come fall full bellies in winter. To earn extra pay each spring he would climb the mill's water tower repaint the one word. That vowel heavy word defined the horizon a word my grandfather could not even read.