It blows over the mountain tops, down the slopes, and across the brown fields. It winds between rusted shanties clustered for warmth around the low cinder-block buildings at the town center and funnels down the dirt streets and out the far end of town around the bend that dead ends at the glass yard.  It blows through the chain link fence, twisting around mounds of bottles piled higher than a man.  It rakes across uncapped mouths and through broken necks, a low groan weaving around the shifting piles of debris.

It brings with it roughnecks reckoning with reality they were warned against long before they laced up steel-toed boots and lit lights on their hard hats.  They know the dust cough. The buckled knees. Their eyes squinting against the sun. They know how the mine spits them out until the cold wind pushes them stumbling in the dark with their bottles to the glass yard.

They know the feel of cold glass in their gritty hands before flinging it into the abyss.  They know the crash of bottles returning to their ears.

They know the cold wind brings them to the glass yard.