The sisters Tovar make it to North Carolina. Delia, who has been there before, helps her sister Ceci make the adjustment.

Here is how the second installment in Hull's 315-inch series begins:

Delia Tovar tried to warn her younger sister about the smell.

It would linger on their skin, in defiance of lemon-water baths and rags doused with bleach. It would burn into the shine of their dark hair, inhabit their sheets and seep into their dreams.

Wandering the aisles of the Food-a-Rama, they would stink of crabs. Everyone would know they'd been brought from Mexico to do the work Americans refused.

"Think of it as the smell of money," Delia told her sister.

With the desert sand of Palomas still in the cuffs of their jeans, Delia and Ceci Tovar finally reached North Carolina, exhausted from riding a bus for three days. They were dropped at a darkened gas station in Elizabeth City, and a Daniels Seafood employee drove them another 90 minutes down the wind-swept coast. They reached their trailer at midnight.

Six hours later, they were awakened for their first day of work. The moon was still out. Delia's hands trembled.

When they pushed open the door to Daniels Seafood, hundreds of cooked crabs were heaped on silver tables, waiting for them. The clock above the sink read 6:45 a.m. Delia and Ceci stood on the concrete floor, blinking against the fluorescent lights.

They were issued aprons, hairnets and knives. No gloves. The crabs were so sharp that latex wouldn't last 10 minutes.

Only Delia had worked at Daniels Seafood the previous season. She knew speed was everything. Slow pickers could be sent back to Mexico, defeated and poor.

A Daniels Seafood employee gathered the newcomers around a crab table. She swept her arms to draw them in a circle.

She didn't know Spanish, and they didn't know English.

So she spoke loudly. "This," she said, "is a crab." Then she disappeared. Orientation was over.

<a onClick="window.open('/olcweb/cgi/pluginpop.cgi?it=jpg::::/sites/dl/free/0073511935/535060/Una_Vida_Mejor_p1.jpg','popWin', 'width=NaN,height=NaN,resizable,scrollbars');" href="#"><img valign="absmiddle" height="16" width="16" border="0" src="/olcweb/styles/shared/linkicons/image.gif"> (20.0K)</a> Joshua Dautoff, St. Petersburg Times Learning on the Job    Delia Tovar wields her crab knife as she instructs her sister Ceci how to take apart a crab without losing much of the meat or pricking her fingers on the shell and claws.

It wasn't all work, and Hull in her third installment describes the personal lives of some of the Palomas women. The young men slipped into a pew at Holy Trinity Catholic Church. Earnest, long-lashed, their goatees trimmed desperado-style, they leafed through Spanish hymnals, trying to find their place. But what they really wanted, beyond eternal salvation and God's hand over their families in Mexico, was a better view of the women in the third row. The women who'd worked at Daniels Seafood the previous season, the mothers with the round shoulders and somber scarves, had been replaced by their daughters, this pageant of crushed velvet and gold crucifixes on bare skin. Ana Rosa and the Tovar sisters sat in the lilac coolness of the church, exhausted from another six-day work week of shucking crabs.

But they summoned every last ounce of energy for church. Holy Trinity held the keys to their freedom. Not in the outstretched arms of the saints, but in the pews of worshipers.

Every Saturday evening, Holy Trinity celebrated a Mass in Spanish for migrant workers.

That included young Mexican men with cars.

Ana Rosa had the habit of casting her eyes down, shyly, as if remembering her mother's words. Be humble before God. When the priest nodded, she walked to the altar.

She read the letter from Paul to the Galatians, unaware that a stocky young man was watching her.

His name was Fermin, one of the hundreds of illegal aliens working the construction boom on North Carolina's Outer Banks.

Fermin had left Guadalajara when he was 15, scrambling through the fence in California, and heading east. Now he was 19, earning $15 an hour under the table. Half of his paycheck he wired to his family in Mexico.

With the rest, he gorged himself on expensive sneakers and shimmering sweat suits. A pair of headphones were usually clamped over his ears. He listened to old-fashioned norteñas that were oddly wistful for a man so young.

After church, Fermin approached Ana Rosa.

From that moment, she knew.

Soon, they were taking drives out to the dunes on Nags Head Beach. His 1986 Toyota was so small the women from Palomas dubbed it "El Zapato." The Shoe.

Fermin drove cautiously, using his turn signal at all times, even when changing lanes. The other 19-year-olds on the causeway blew by in their fathers' Jeep Cherokees.

A simple traffic stop could have led to his deportation.

Ana Rosa began making Fermin's lunch. Tortillas, carnitas, black beans, butterflied chicken breasts, something different every day. He would come to Daniels Seafood at noon on his break.

Wearing a hairnet, she looked like a señorita from an old bullfight poster, except her skin was flecked with bits of crab.

Fermin got used to the smell.

"There is no shame in work," he told her.

. . .

Employment at Daniels Seafood became a way to fuel their consumer frenzy. They were earning roughly $270 a paycheck and sending almost nothing home. Once a week they were taken to Kmart. They left no aisle unvisited. They were blowing their money like none of this would ever be possible again. Maybe it wouldn't.

Only one woman in the trailer of nine was wiring money back to Mexico. It was Nelida, the slowest picker at Daniels Seafood. "My hands move like turtles," she said.

Still, she managed to send $500 a month to Mexico. Save your money, her father told her, and bring it home where it is most needed. They were building a house with her earnings.

Since arriving from Mexico in May, the women had been exiled in a trailer at the edge of town, filling their nights with TV.

But by late June, they were rescued from the worn radius of Kmart and Family Dollar. The Mass at Holy Trinity had proved fruitful.

Other young suitors were now calling at the trailer, wearing Chicago White Sox ball caps and low-slung jeans. They offered gifts of chorizo, boxes of doughnuts or sacks of Burger King.

Most were undocumented Mexican workers. The young men knew their way around the Outer Banks, and delighted in revealing its secrets: the striped lighthouses, Pizza Hut and the summer carnival at the beach.

"The round wheel?" Guadalupe asked.

The next Friday night the women scrubbed their skin until the crab smell was gone. They drowned themselves in drugstore perfume and buttoned on their new jeans.

From the road, they could see the twirling colored lights on the beach. It was the summer carnival, the one they'd seen through the windows of the crab house van.

They bought tickets for the Ferris wheel. Up they went, their feet dangling, screaming for the ride operator to slow down. "¡Bajanos, bajanos!" they shrieked from the top. Their dark hair flew in the wind. They laughed so hard tears streamed down from their cheeks.

The next morning, the crab house van honked at dawn. They were exhausted.

. . .

The four elderly black women who still picked crabs at Daniels Seafood possessed none of the newcomers' exotic mystery. They worked quietly, in a far pasture, while the new low-wage thoroughbreds trotted all around.

Ruth Daniels, the meat packer at Daniels Seafood, was taking the Mexican women on Friday nights to La Fogata, a Mexican restaurant.

"They's brave, all I got to say," Ruth observed. "The first time they came over, I picked them up at the bus station. They's just as scared as they could be. My heart went out to them."

Whose heart had ever gone out to the black women? They started picking crabs before minimum wage, before overtime. The years melted in their minds as they tried to remember all the crab house bosses they'd answered to.

"What was the name of that Jew man down to Skyco?" Mary Tillett asked her sister.

"I don't rightly know," Annie said. "They had me cooking for him. They'd take me from the factory and have me cook his dinners."

The very presence of the younger Mexican women reminded the black women of their mortality.

The older women found pride in extracting imperial pearls of crab meat unbroken and beautiful. Their knives worked in intricate patterns, skillfully lifting the lumps from the fluted compartments of the shells.

The Mexican women were faster, but in the name of speed, they threw away crab carcasses still containing the last hard-to-get bits of meat.

"Vamanos, Mary," Guadalupe called out, teasing Mary to hurry.

"Yes, Lord, yes," Mary said, smiling, a dimestore barrette in her gray hair.

But it was just a matter of time for the older women.

"I think Mickey Junior's going to have to replace them with Mexicans," Ruth said. They lived in Manteo, on the north end of Roanoke Island, in a shaded neighborhood populated by deacons, teachers, shrimpers and garbage men. The occasional loose hen walked across the road. If the windows were open on Sundays at Free Grace Church, organ music drifted out into the muggy air.

One drizzly dawn, the Daniels Seafood van rolled up to Mary Tillett's house on Fernando Street to pick her up for work. A straw hat was nailed to the front door. Mary, 84, was a widow, without children.

Ruth gave two short honks. The women from Palomas were in the back seats, spoons clanking as they ate their mugs of yogurt or cereal. Mary was never late.

But this morning, Ruth had to honk again. The rain started coming down harder. Still no Mary.

Annie, her 77-year-old sister, sat up, holding her patent leather pocketbook. For 39 years, Anne and Mary had worked side by side at the crab picking tables.

"Where is she?" Ruth asked.

"Maybe I should go see about her," Annie said, her eyes fixed on the door. Annie's face was expressionless, but she began to twist the handle on her pocketbook. Even Delia, who was in the back of the van, took off her headphones and leaned forward to watch the door.

Twelve years earlier, the van had stopped at the home of Mary and Annie's other sister, Esther, who also worked for Daniels Seafood. The van honked and honked. Esther had died in her sleep, her crab knife still in her purse near the door.

Ruth shifted into park and was beginning to climb down from the van when Mary appeared. She was dressed but moving slowly. She wore an orange bandanna and a rain bonnet patched with duct tape. She winced as she pulled herself up into the van. Nothing was said.

At quitting time, Annie carried Mary's meat to the scales for her. When she returned, she squeezed Mary's wrist.

"You done real good today," Annie said. Mary had picked 12.8 pounds, which earned her $21.76 for the day.

Delia had picked 26.4 pounds, earning $44.88. She bought a pair of $100 Nikes that weekend.

. . .

So intense was the summer sun that Mickey Daniels, Jr., was crabbing before dawn with a spotlight to avoid the heat. His eyes were bloodshot. His skin stung from the wind and salt. The crab season lasted only six months.

"You got to get all you can, while you can," he said.

Around the fishing village of Wanchese, children watched their fathers fall asleep in their supper. The men tossed at night, wondering where the big schools of fish were running.

One Sunday at church, the preacher beseeched the men in Mickey Junior's congregation.

"All the fish out in the sound are not as important as the fish at home," the pastor reminded.

But Mickey Junior had it right. Nature provided a window of opportunity that opened and closed at will.

One of his sons was urging him to forget fishing and cash in on the tourist boom along the Outer Banks.

"Jet skis are the future," he told his father.

By the middle of the summer, North Carolina was having a strong blue crab season and would surpass the 1997 catch of 56-million pounds. The crabs were plentiful. Nature's window was wide open.

His work force was the problem.

Five of the 12 Mexican women were still picking less than 24 pounds a day, which meant Mickey Junior had to supplement their pay to meet the minimum wage law. He didn't like this. It worked on him. He fe1t he was giving his money away.

One of his workers—a woman from Palomas who'd overstayed her visa from the last season and now lived illegally on Roanoke Island—got pregnant and began missing work.

"Once they stay," Mickey Junior said, "they become independent, and not as dependable."

He faced a decision. He could send the slowest pickers back to Mexico and order replacements. It would take a month for a new picker to get up to speed. By then it would be August. The season only lasted to December.

Or he could tough it out and hope his current crew got faster.

Ana Rosa was barely producing 25 pounds a day.

For most women, working six days a week in the crab house sapped every ounce of strength. Ana Rosa had a second job. She was in love.

"She's courtin' pretty heavy," Mickey Junior said. "I don't know if she's staying out half the night or what."

. . .

A letter arrived in Palomas, with a North Carolina postmark. It was from Ana Rosa. Eagerly, Juana Cedillo opened her daughter's letter.

His name is Fermin, He is from Guadalajara. He was getting ready to leave and then we met. He was all packed. I prayed, "If he is for me, let him stay."

He stayed. He tells me he loves me.

Juana read it again, to make sure she understood the implications.

Juana was the speed king of Daniels Seafood whose visa had been denied for the 1998 blue crab season. Not getting a visa meant more than missing out on $6,000 in potential earnings. It meant her 19-year-old daughter had gone to North Carolina alone. Unguarded.

Juana couldn't get the letter out of her mind. She wanted to talk with Marcos, her husband. But he was 2,500 miles away, working the tobacco harvest in Virginia with their oldest son.

Juana had other worries. Palomas was suffering through a crushing drought. The desert flowers were brown-paper blossoms. Residents lined their roofs with buckets, waiting for rain. The water supply was dangerously low.

Juana sent her 14-year-old son to the communal cistern every few days. The dirt road out to the cistern was a cavalry of wagons and burros lashed with empty containers.

Palomas had a ghostly feeling. Twenty-five percent of the residents were working in the States. To be left behind was a form of financial banishment.

Construction on the new Catholic church in Palomas had come to a halt. It sat in a pit of sand, a half-finished, open air reminder to Juana. She'd planned on giving her earnings from Daniels Seafood to the new church.

The old church was so small and humble that the holy water was kept in a baby food jar.

Juana earned $2 an afternoon wrapping tamale husks for a local factory. The church need $1,200.

And yet, secretly, she felt relief. Daniels Seafood kept her away from her children for six months.

"At first you go because you think you can give them a better life with the money you earn," Juana said. "But then you realize to have a good life, a mother's love is more important than anything money can buy." One overcast afternoon, an urgent bulletin was passed from house to house. "The Virgin is doing visits."

Suddenly, a large parade rounded a corner. The swaying mass of women and children were led by a barefoot boy carrying a portrait of the Virgin Mary. They were praying for rain.

Early the next morning, Juana was still in bed when she heard the noise. The scent of fresh moisture came off the desert. It was unmistakable. And the sound! Ping, ping, ping, as the rain drops pelted the tin roof.

But then it stopped, and sun rose like a hot coin.

That night, Juana couldn't sleep. Alone in her kitchen, while her children slept, she composed a letter to Ana Rosa.

You are not an orphan. You have a strong family. If he loves you, he should come to Palomas and meet your family.

Juana's family was sprinkled across a map she couldn't see. The United States had her husband, her oldest son, and her oldest daughter.

As Juana finished the letter, the only sound in the kitchen was the hum of the new refrigerator. It was self-defrosting.