Their entire life savings are in her pockets.
        She removes the money habitually, the silver rubbed clean by her calloused thumbs, fingers stained with the astringent smell of metal. Six dollars, three quarters, one nickel, nine pennies. She lines them up like beads on a string, stares, counts, replaces. They clink in her pocket, the children tug on her shirt, and she counts on her fingers how many days they have left.
Nine if the adults skip breakfast. But the men wander in the days, wading through dust and dreams as they search for work in the morning’s pastel—they’ll need all the nourishment they can get. Maybe ten if she takes to eating just the crumbs. But with vertigo and disease on the price tag, she can’t afford even the cost of famine.
        Seven then. Seven days left.
        The woman stands in the mouth of their tent, anchored only by the weight in her pockets. Her husband and his brother appear on the horizon—silhouetted by the red sun, heads bowed, kicked-up dust swirling with each step. As they grow nearer, she gets the affirmation with one shake of the head. Eyes fluttering closed, she turns away from their hunched shadows.
The men are losing reason. Incapable of providing, their pride shrinks while the mother’s grows, her purpose swelling as her pockets wane—a dichotomy born from life’s morbid attempt at irony.
In the stale air and settling dust, the woman remembers—she once wished to feel needed.    
Her husband enters, wiping the shine from his cheeks on his sleeve. "The banks are killing us," he says, spitting into the dirt, kicking away the evidence. "First the banks take our land, then they take our jobs, then they take our hope. What's left to take? They gonna take our children? Our arms an' legs an' mouths? The banks are killing us, I'm telling you."
        The brother nods, just outside the doorway, mouth twisted into a snarl. His knuckles knock against his palm, jaw grinding like he’s got the banks’ claws trapped between his teeth. "They're poisoning us," he seethes. "It's their way of weeding out the small ones. They have no use of us small folks so they kill us instead."
        Head downcast, the woman’s fingers furl and unfurl. She sets to boiling a pot of water, listening for the yells of the children. While the water warms and the men leave for kindling, she bends over the empty counter. Out comes the money. Six dollars, three quarters, one nickel, nine pennies. They'll be starved by the end of the week.
        Before the tractors came, her husband studied medicine in his free time. He would tell her of books filled with words he'd never see before, of blood groups founded by a man named Karl Landsteiner, of diseases that spread across nations. He explained that each disease begins with a pathogen—an agent that causes the disease. Sometimes it's an animal, he said, or organisms even smaller than raindrops. She couldn't believe that some monsters are invisible, that some monsters can't be fought with fists.
        If banks are the pathogen, then poverty is the disease.
        She sets dinner out in cups, the stew lifeless and steaming. The children scramble up onto the bed with their portion, tongues licking across their dirt smudged mouths. Bottom lips jutting, they kick their feet and scream, complaining that it has no taste. Then they remember the hunger gnawing at their gut, and continue to drink, white tear tracks across their cheeks.
The woman can't bare to eat. She stares into the pot, at the bubbles of heat, and feels only the cold sense of Dread. It settles on her shoulders, fangs pressed to her jugular, breath puffing against her throat. She closes her eyes and waits for night to come.
       
With daybreak comes the police. They knock down tents and spit at their feet. They tell them to move, so they do.
Their truck splutters and groans, gears desperate to come unstuck, huffing before giving way to silence. Sitting in the back with the children, she holds her breath until the engine is able to breathe with her. Passing gas stations and real houses, they drive to another small community, filled with tents and tear-stained children and parents that welcome them with tight smiles and tighter silence. "We gotta go look for work," her husband tells her, leaning out the window. His brother is clenching his jaw, working saliva across his tongue before spitting out the window. He doesn’t look at her. Her husband regains her attention, saying, "just set the tent up with the children and we'll be back by nightfall." He doesn’t look at her.
        The mother nods and nods, and Dread scrambles her stomach. She spends the day raising their tent with children clinging to her skirt, one eye on the sun’s descent toward the horizon. 
        They don't come back.
        Other men and women of the camp look at her with pity. They don’t say a word when her children steal bits of bread, and they place pennies in her bag of linens when they think she’s not looking. Stuffing one in her pocket, the woman breathes in deep and kneels in the corner of their tent. Her hand trembles as she lays out her dwindling stash. Six dollars, one nickel, five pennies. She counts it over and over again until the numbers jumble into meaningless words, so similar to promises of hope, freedom, opportunity. Two weeks, at most, if they're lucky. In the night, the bank haunts her dreams—teeth of silver, blood stained mouth, pupil-less eyes—it consumes her husband's soul and laughs, it's each step punctuated by the clink of coins.
If banks are the pathogen, then poverty is the disease.
        Her daughter asks where Daddy and Uncle are, eyes welling with tears, cracks of red spreading across the white. Her son gets in a fist fight with a little boy, spitting into the dirt like his uncle. He comes home with a scarlet collar and black eyes. Scrubbing it away in the river, she stains her fingertips red.
The weight of Dread is too broad for her shoulders to bare—but she will not let it crack her spine. She will not crumble under its gravity.
        Packing away the tent and their bag of belongings, they walk down the road until blisters make the children sob, and the sun sits low in the sky. But the gas station she was heading for is as busy as she remembers. The small diner on the side is bustling with truck drivers and immigrants, sipping coffee and bowls of soup. So with dirt on her temple and red on her fingertips, she asks if they could find her a job.
       
The sun is glinting through the dusty windows on her first day of work. She keeps her eye on her children, and ties on her apron one handed. The owner tells her, "we'll be opening soon. Let's hope for a busy crowd today, 'else you won't be getting much pay." He says it matter-of-fact, punching buttons on the cash register just to see the drawer jump to attention. He adjusts the tobacco between his teeth and cheek, and continues to wipe down the counters. "See, I would love to give you enough salary that you and your children could get a nice apartment an' new shoes an' running water, but the banks are keeping us from the American dream. They want us here, they want us doing they're work, they want us feeding their pockets, but they don't want us happy. They're poisoning us, I tell you. They've been killing you and soon they'll be killing me." His jutting thumb stays pressed to his chest as he shakes head. "See, them banks are like those cows that spread all those diseases. What's that called? Right, pathogens. You gotta understand, that if banks are the pathogen, then poverty is the disease."
        The woman nods and nods, and goes to the bathroom where she empties her pockets, one coin at a time. Three dollars, two nickels, four pennies. The mirror is fogged with condensation, and before she can wipe it away with her palm, Dread creeps around her peripheral vision. She whips around to catch it, but finds only floating dust.
        Spitting the poison from her mouth, the woman drinks in the air like it's the cure.