by Rishi Reddi
“No,” he said.
The intensity of her gaze was too much, the round luminous eyes, the full lips. Suddenly the tears came and her face contorted.
“No,” he said again, in his most authoritative voice, and turned his back to her. Why did she question his knowledge, his dignity in everything?
They stood like that for a long time. Why did she not have the sense to leave?
He could hear her sniffling, wiping her nose. “The children ask about you.”
He stiffened, readying to defend himself again.
“They miss you,” she said.
How good it was to hear—just that little bit.
“Federico always thinks of life on the farm,” she said.
He turned to her. She was looking at him, but it was not with love; what he saw in her eyes was pity. He stepped toward her but she did not reach for him. He put his hands over hers as they grasped the bars. They stayed like that—her hands clenching the bars, his placed upon hers. She did not take her hands away. On the day of their wedding, those hands had cut his hair, had remade him. She had determined so much of his life. But now she stood looking past him, her eyes focused on something beyond his shoulder.
“I am scared for the children in school,” she said. “I have kept them home for these days.”
He released her hands. He had not thought of what would happen to them. “You cannot keep them from school,” he said.
“They will go to the one near the barrio.”
“The Mexican school?” There were so many consequences. He had been angry at Clive, he had been humiliated, he had defended himself, and now the consequences grew and grew like roots in the soil.
“What will you do?” she asked. The question itself made them separate people. And it was without meaning; there was nothing for him to do but wait.
“Jivan Singh will know what to do. Ask him. And Ram.” He knew that she would not ask.
Rosa stepped away. “I am going back,” she said. He felt a pang.
“Will you—visit again?” he asked. He would be taken back to El Centro, and the distance would be difficult for her to travel, but that was not why he asked.
She didn’t answer immediately. Her lip was quivering. “Por supuesto.” But she didn’t look back as she stepped toward the door.
38
CLIVE’S MURDER WAS SPOKEN ABOUT IN THE VALLEY’S BUSINESS OFFICES and dining rooms, in the gambling halls in Mexicali, in the sun-scorched fields. It was written about in editorials in the newspapers. Slowly, pieces of the story were fleshed out. People learned that the shippers were stealing a field of early lettuce from farmers who had worked hard to bring it up. That lettuce prices that April had been high, so very high. Slowly, alongside their condemnation of the crazed Hindu, another opinion took root and spread its leaves to the sun. Hadn’t this man bought candy for their children, left gift credits at boutiques for the wives of his business associates? Hadn’t he brought chocolates for the girls at the telephone exchange? He was clean-shaven and handsome and a skillful farmer. And hadn’t they, themselves, suffered at the hands of swindling shippers?
Perhaps Clive Edgar had not deserved death—but it felt good that someone had finally stood up to those damn shippers. Always, always, the little man fought the big man, and always the big man won.
The trial was looming, Amarjeet stayed with them, and Ram’s plans for returning to Punjab receded into the future. The lettuce field remained unpicked and rotting and the flies and vermin came. Finally, Amarjeet hitched up the plow and turned it over. He did the work on his own. Somehow, Ram could not bring himself to help and Amarjeet did not ask him.
Clarence Simms wrote a letter that Amarjeet read to them before dinner one night: Had Jivan or Ram seen what had happened moments before Clive screamed? Before the fatal blow was struck? Had Clive disliked Karak? If they could find someone who had seen something, that could help. He would visit them soon, to discuss these matters and others.
“Have you spoken yet with Adela?” Jivan asked.
“No, bhai-ji.”
“Adela knows something?” Amarjeet asked.
“Maybe,” Ram said quickly.
“Then she should speak with us,” Kishen said, as if it were obvious. “She must.”
Jivan and Ram exchanged a glance.
“Kishen Kaur is correct,” Jivan said.
A WEEK BEFORE THE TRIAL WAS SCHEDULED, Clarence Simms pulled up to the farm in his yellow Packard. They gathered around him on the porch. Even Kishen stayed near, leaning against the door, listening and trying to understand.
They offered him the most comfortable chair. He pulled out papers and files and placed them on the table, but he did not open them. He looked at Ram and Jivan without smiling. He was not a friendly man, but he had a good reputation. They had to trust that.
“Unless we present evidence that shows that Karak acted insanely, or that he had some justification for what he did, he will hang,” Simms said.
Justification, Ram thought. He knew the justification, but that was not what Simms meant.
“They steal the crop. Right in front of him, they steal,” Jivan said. “It means nothing?”
“I will be blunt, Mr. Singh,” Simms said, addressing Jivan. “Karak is Hindu. The crop doesn’t belong to him.” The lawyer looked at Ram. “It doesn’t matter how hard he worked that land with you. It doesn’t matter that people have called this section Singh Farm for more than a decade. Under the new laws, that was not Karak’s crop. It was not your crop. I’m sorry.”
No, he was not a friendly man, but somehow Ram believed in his sympathy. “People call it Singh Farm?” Ram asked.
“Many do.”
“What do you need?” Amarjeet asked.
“Karak keeps talking about a gun. He says that Clive waved a gun at him, then Karak lost his temper. Others have told me that Clive started carrying a gun regularly a couple of years ago. But when we found the body, there was no gun in the holster. Can we find someone who will state that he saw Clive with a gun that afternoon?”
“Why must we do this?” Ram said, agitated. “It is not enough to say he was crazy? He was crazy. You did not see body, Mr. Simms.” Ram’s voice broke. “I saw.”
“People generally do not believe claims of insanity. I am invoking it as a defense because—” he hesitated. “We don’t have much else.” Simms’s expression was stoic, professional. “But if there was a gun, Karak can claim he acted in self-defense. It is a much stronger case.”
The silence was heavy. Ram felt it was directed at him.
“If we are finding someone to say they saw gun, Karak will be free?” Ram asked.
A wave of expressions crossed Simms’s face. Ram thought that he had said something unknowing.
“No. He will go to jail for a long time. But if he was threatened with a gun, and we can prove it, he might not hang.” Simms looked Ram in the eye.
After the lawyer left, when Jivan and Ram were alone, Jivan said, “We will go together to ask her.”
“Bhai-ji,” Ram said, wanting to disagree. But there was no choice now.
THEY DROVE TO THE BARRIO IN LATE AFTERNOON, after the sun had lost some heat. They parked off the main roadway and walked the remaining two blocks. Women and children stared from open doorways, following their progress. A cluster of men watched them from a front porch. “Why do they come here?” one said loudly, so Jivan and Ram could hear. But the Punjabis ignored them.
At Alejandro’s and Esperanza’s home, Jivan stood back and Ram knocked on the door. It opened a few inches and Adela’s face appeared in the crack. She must have seen them coming.
“We have something to ask you, Adela,” Ram said in Spanish. “May we enter?”
“We do not want to talk in public,” Jivan added.
Her face grew pale and she hesitated. But she opened the door wider and allowed them in. She was alone. Ram looked around, wanting to see everything; he had never spent time inside her home. But she would no
t meet his gaze.
“What do you want, Señor Singh?” she asked in Spanish, addressing only Jivan.
Jivan glanced at Ram. They had agreed that Ram should be the one to speak, but now he began talking. “Karak Singh’s trial will begin in a week. You must come to the court and tell them what you saw.”
Her face showed surprise, then indignation. She clasped her arms in front of her waist.
“If you do not,” Jivan continued, “Karak Singh will be sentenced to death and then he will hang. If you do, perhaps the jury will have pity. Perhaps he will live.”
Ram clenched his jaw. Jivan spoke as if she were responsible, as if the entire trial rested on her shoulders.
Her eyes grew round. She began to breathe quickly, then she gained control of herself.
“I do not understand. What do you want me to tell them? I saw nothing.” She would not look at Ram.
The realization came to Ram slowly, tinged with contempt. She meant to deny everything. His eyes met Jivan’s.
Adela grit her teeth. Her expression turned to stone. Surely she had killed the man who had approached her after her husband’s death; surely she was that hard?
“You come and ask this, but every day people threaten us now,” Adela said. “Alejandro’s workers have left. People say Rosa should not have married Karak. That only bad things can come of such mixing. Do you know what the men in the barrio say about her, about Esperanza? About me?”
“I know! You already told us,” Ram said, impatiently, his anger rising.
Adela still would not look at him.
“Rosa’s children will not have a father,” Jivan said.
“He beat her!” Adela cried.
“He does not deserve death!” Ram said.
“Have you not hurt us enough! In the barrio, we think your farm is a haunted place, evil!”
Through the window, Ram could see two men standing nearby, watching the house, smoking. They had been among the cluster of men who had stood on the porch. Far away, a dog barked.
“The lawyer’s name is Clarence Simms,” Jivan said, turning to go.
Ram followed him. He could not look at her again.
She closed the door behind them, quietly.
39
June 1924
ON THE MORNING OF THE TRIAL, PEOPLE FILLED THE COURTROOM BENCHES early, long before it was to start. Jivan, Ram, Amarjeet, and Kishen seated themselves in the second row. They breathed in the summer heat, felt its weight on their arms and legs and minds. Other Punjabis were scattered throughout the room. At the door, the bailiff began turning people away. Ram would not look at the back corner where Jivan said Clive’s wife and her parents sat. If he saw them, he knew regret would overwhelm him.
Voices rose from the street and floated through the open windows. A horn blared. Ram and Amarjeet rose and stepped toward the open window. The courtroom was on the second floor. A crowd was forming around an automobile that had just arrived. Some women were among them, workers from town, domestic help. Some men sat on other men’s shoulders to see. In seconds, Karak emerged from the car and was led by a deputy to the building.
From the building’s front steps, Sheriff Fielding and a deputy yelled at the crowd to back away, but people were milling about, ignoring them. Men climbed the trees growing near the courthouse wall, situated themselves on creaking branches. Faces appeared in the courtroom windows. A man brought a ladder and sat astride the top rung. Finally, the attorneys filed in. Clarence Simms turned to acknowledge Jivan and Ram. The clerk took his seat before the judge’s dais.
From the side door, the bailiff led Karak into the courtroom. He was dressed in a three-piece suit, clean-shaven, dignified. A hush fell over the crowded room. Karak looked directly at Ram, and Ram knew: Karak was not scared. The bailiff led him to his place next to Simms. From where Ram sat, at an angle, he could the side of Karak’s face. When the jury filed in, Karak did not turn his head.
Seeing the jury, Ram felt a moment of despair. These were sunburned, hardened men, struggling to survive. How would they find compassion for an alien farmer who had been a success? But they were alert, he noted; they carried themselves as if tasked with something important. “Look at them, Jeetu,” Ram said, leaning toward Amarjeet. “How will they understand Karak Singh’s life?”
“They do not need to, bhai-ji,” Amarjeet said. “They need only decide that he was insane, or that he was protecting himself.”
“How will they do that without understanding him?” They were all thinking of Adela, but no one said her name.
The judge was a large man with thick, graying hair. People said he was stern, that he did not think like the common man, that he had come from Pennsylvania and his father had been an abolitionist. Amarjeet had told Ram that he saw hope in that.
Now the judge looked at the faces in the windows and narrowed his eyes. “Clear those spectators,” he said to the bailiff, loud enough so the entire courtroom could hear.
“I’ve tried, Your Honor. There are too many of them.”
“Tell them again,” he snapped.
Occasionally, Ram had seen the judge about town. He was a farmer too, and owned land on the north side. The newspaper had printed an editorial insisting that he should recuse himself because a few years earlier, he had leased a quarter section to a Hindu—Mohan Singh, whom Ram knew. But the judge had refused to step away from the case.
The district attorney stood up and approached the jury. He was a short man but carried himself with importance. He smiled broadly, looking polished in a gray suit. A gold watch dangled from an exquisite chain, pearl cuff links cinched his starched shirtsleeves. He was jovial, folksy, many in that courtroom thought he would one day represent the county in Washington, D.C. When he spoke, they felt he was one of them, and as he told the men on the jury that Karak Singh had attacked Clive Edgar with the intent to kill him, Ram could see that the jury believed him. How comfortably the information seeped into their consciousness.
“The defense will try to tell y’all that it was an act of insanity. That the defendant did not know what he was doin’ when he swung that axe. But we’ll discover that Mr. Singh knew exactly what he was doing, and that if he hadn’t been stopped, he would have harmed others. Mr. Jonathan Hitchcock, an esteemed, upstanding, and integral member of this community, a farmin’ man like us, will state that Singh meant to kill him too.”
Ram could see Karak keeping his head down, clenching his jaw, staring at the wooden table before him. Simms placed his hand on the back of Karak’s chair, as if protecting him. That was kind, Ram thought. Perhaps there was more to the man than he knew.
Simms stood briskly and buttoned his jacket, allowing silence to fill the room before he approached the jury. Ram could see: His manner made those men uncomfortable. They did not trust him. “The defense will not challenge that Karak Singh killed Clive Edgar,” Simms said. “It is obvious that he did.” Ram saw Karak flinch. The jury shifted in their seats, some stole a glance at Karak. Ram wished that the lawyer were not so stiff. Simms did not draw out his vowels like other men. Ram had never heard him claim to be a farmer. If he did those things, perhaps the jury would believe him. “What the defense will show is that Mr. Singh was insane, irrational, when the killing happened. The very nature of the killing shows insanity.”
JONATHAN HITCHCOCK WAS THE FIRST WITNESS. The courtroom was quiet as he made his way to the stand, the knock of his cane on the floor resonated through the room. He walked slowly. Outside, the cicadas buzzed. The windows were propped open, men were still perched in trees, but everyone was quiet.
Hitchcock placed his hand on the Bible to take the oath, standing tall and erect, like a man who had never known fear. He settled himself calmly in the witness chair, adjusting his suit, gazing first at the men on the jury, then at the district attorney. He did not look at Karak at all.
The district attorney picked up a file of papers on his desk and strode toward the witness stand, situated himself at an angle to the jury
, and began his questioning. Hitchcock gave his name, his age, his education, his position with Consolidated Fruit. “I have loved the Valley since moving here two years ago from Atlanta,” he said. “It is a place for real men, for those not scared to work hard.”
Ram saw several jurors nod their heads. He felt a chill in his gut. Could it be so easy for Hitchcock to win them over?
“Can you tell us what happened that day, Mr. Hitchcock?” the district attorney asked.
Hitchcock licked his lips. “Clive Edgar and I were working together to get the lettuce to market soon. We had to get it picked, packed up, and shipped out. Singh knew we’d be coming to take charge of the harvest that day. He knew we had hired pickers and packers, and that we would be providing crates for the job. But he was in the packing shed when we arrived, chopping wood to assemble crates for the lettuce.” Hitchcock spoke calmly, both his hands resting on the handle of his cane. “He began to abuse us as soon as we entered the packing shed.”
“You say he began to abuse you as soon as you entered. Did you or Mr. Edgar do anything to provoke him, Mr. Hitchcock?”
“Absolutely nothing.”
“You are sure?”
“Absolutely sure.”
“Were there any other people in the packing shed with you and Mr. Edgar and the defendant during this conversation?”
“No. I did not see any others,” Hitchcock said. “We were alone.”
“So as far as you know, there were no other witnesses to what happened in the shed before the killing.”
“None.”
The district attorney paused, as if to make sure the jury understood this point. He walked to the table, put down his file, picked up another, and began to question Hitchcock again.
“Was Mr. Edgar carrying a gun that day, Mr. Hitchcock?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
Ram saw Karak straighten in his chair.
