Working alone, I didn't realize I was slowing down. I was drinking plenty of water, and the mayordomo was kindly making sure to park the trailer in the shade each time we moved down the row. it wasn't until he came over to spot-check my work and began to pick over the crate, throwing out peach after peach after peach, that I realized there might be a problem.

He looked at me balefully. The crate was almost full, and, I realized, probably needed to be sorted over again. I was hazy and tired, and felt an inkling that I ought to have been embarrassed. But when I looked down at the peaches before me, they were an indistinguishable mass of yellow fuzz. They all looked fine to me.

The foreman said something to me about the other tractor, one that was a few rows over. I barely understood any of it, my Spanish having disappeared along with my energy. I blankly stepped off the trailer, thinking he was telling me to go work at the other trailer.

"No, Tere, stay here and sort this," he said deliberately. "Tell the workers to bring their fruit to the other trailer, over there." He looked at me again. "Have a peach," he said, handing me a piece of fruit. It occurred to me that if I could be fired, today would be the day.

I nodded, my head thick and foggy, and watched him walk away through the trees toward the other trailer. For the first time in two weeks, I sat down on the wheel well and bit into a peach. It was sweet and utterly unappetizing, but I ate it anyway. My head felt heavy and swollen. I made a nominal effort at picking through the fruit in the crate from my seated position. Whenever pickers came to the trailer, I would lift my head and say: "This one is full, you should go to the other trailer, over there," and point after the foreman. Soon, the pickers stopped coming by at all.

Finally, I heard a series of cries: "Vamanos!" Literally, this means, "Let's go," but in the field it means "We're outta here!" There was nobody to drive the tractor away -- Carlos tried to teach me, but I couldn't get the clutch to budge -- so I left it sitting between the irrigation ditches and plodded toward the end of the row, emerging on a lane where there are no cars. For a moment I was confused. Where's my car? Then I remembered that we had moved our cars at lunch; they were at the other end of the row, a quarter or half mile away; the distance didn't really matter because it all translated to "far." When I finally reached my car, I waved weakly at the worker whose car was next to mine.

"It's very hot!" I said, an attempt at levity. "What do you think, one hundred and four?" That's how hot it was yesterday."

"One hundred and eight."

"Really?"

"Yeah, I heard someone say so."

"Damn."

The exhaustion became tangible, a solid force expanding through my body, centered between my shoulder blades and exerting a gravitational pull back and downward. I had the distinct urge to lie down in my car, but held off until I could pull myself into the house, take a sold shower, and pull three ice packs out of the freezer. It occurred to me that lethargy and confusion are classic signs of heat sickness, that the line between sickly and dangerously ill is an internal temperature of 103, and that, being in possession of a thermometer, I would have been well advised to use it. But the thermometer was tucked away somewhere; to reach it I would have had to sit up. I stayed lying down.