Carmen explained, “It’s the mace and pepper spray the cops used on the marchers. I just barely made it out of there before the police swarmed in.”
Lorenzo entered and the brothers hugged and squeezed each other’s arms.
“What the hell for?” Vito asked Carmen.
“Immigrants,” Carmen said, “were marching for civil rights.” She beamed.
Lorenzo asked, “Did you go to the camp? See how much we did? Does Miller know you were there?”
Vito gave him another big hug. “It looks great and I didn’t ask permission.”
“Man, it is so nice to see you, carnal.” Lorenzo was genuinely glad. “Sorry it had to be like this.”
“How’s everyone doing, my old partners still out there—Ramiro, Armando, Omar?”
“They’re around, keeping tabs on your career. But a lot of them moved away.”
“The workers living in the trailers by the river were wiped out by the flood,” Carmen said. “Their trailers floated down the interstate and within hours those nasty developers came in, wrote out checks for their lots, and rumor has it that by next year we’ll have gated communities next to camp—mansions on the river. Believe that shit?”
Lorenzo mused, “Yeah, the rains were bad, but everything else seems to be coming down on our heads. Come on, sit down, sit down.”
They sat at a small steel table reserved for inmates and visitors. In the guard’s cubicle, guards from other parts of the jail kept streaming in to see if it was true, was Vito really in the jail?
Vito recalled, “We used to sit on the ditch bank fishing, talked a million times about somehow making it out of the fields. Well, we’re here. You ready now, carnal?” Vito clenched his fist, pumped it up and down, turned his head toward heaven, and said, “Teaming up!”
“I’ll manage you, we’ll get a title shot.”
“When do you get out?”
Carmen interjected, “Talk business later.” She stood and pushed between them, showering Lorenzo with kisses.
Lorenzo muttered as he was being smothered. “I’m a first-time offender. No sweat. I got a hearing and they’ll set my bail and in four days …”
Lorenzo and Carmen sat holding hands. “I want you to take Carmen to San Diego, load up whatever she has there, and by the time you come back, I’ll be out.”
She was puzzled.
“Take tomorrow off. I’ll see you when you come back. We’re moving our marriage date up.” He smiled at her.
“Serious?” Vito asked.
“Oh God,” Carmen steadied herself.
“Dude, that ain’t no way to do it. Get on your knees vato!” Vito chided Lorenzo.
“I already did, some months ago, but I’ll do it again.” He knelt and proposed to her a second time. He wiped her tears away with his tongue and held her. The guards, the cons, and the visitors clapped.
Regaining her composure she asked, “And the business?”
He combed her hair with his fingers. “It’s over, done with. We have enough saved up.”
“Congratulations,” Vito offered. “I’m so damn happy you’re finally going to get your act together.”
Lorenzo rocked her back and forth in his arms while over her shoulder he said to Vito, “And you better get ready, I’m working you out twice a day, five times a week. A title shot would give us the money we need.”
“For?” Carmen asked.
“Miller’s land. I’ve got quite a bit saved up, but I want to buy a whole section, six hundred acres. He said if we came up with the cash, he’d sell it to us. And you, little brother,” he pointed with his index finger, “and I are going to own that land, build our homes, and start our own farm.”
39
After the visit, Vito and Carmen returned to the camp. They exited I-25 and drove west for two miles and turned right at the long dirt road where the fruit stands were. Vito was surprised to see no trucks, cars, or vans parked bumper to bumper beside the fields and no workers. The endless stretch of chili fields looked empty. He passed Miller’s place and was stopped by a mob of migrants gathered on the road. A helicopter flew above them.
“What’s going on?” Vito asked.
Carmen pointed to the river, and through the trees Vito saw police escorting migrants in handcuffs to three ICE vans. “What the fuck’s that?”
“They were protesting the jailing of two Mexicans,” she told him. “Last night, a couple of Mexicans jumped off the train and they hadn’t eaten in days and when they came to Miller’s pond, they found a swan egg and ate it.”
“How the hell do you eat a swan egg?”
“You don’t, really. You puncture a hole in the shell and drink it. There’s lots of good nutrients, but it makes you sick afterward. Anyway, the female attacked, and one of the Mexicans used a pocketknife to ward her off, stabbed her to death. Miller had them arrested.”
Vito shook his head in disbelief. “I can’t believe those fucking border patrol assholes can just invade the camp like this and arrest anybody. Damn.”
“They should have known they could have knocked on any door and we would have gladly fed them. But they were young and had probably been terrorized by Mexican gangs. They didn’t trust anyone.”
“Yep, that’s the old Miller I know, that’s his way of sending a message. Don’t fuck with his property … like his son.”
They arrived at the camp as dozens of geese descended on the fields. Some men were playing chess and dominos in the yards and women were clustered at picnic tables while others walked or stood in open spaces and talked. Chickens and goats scattered as they parked in front of the boxcar. Once inside, Vito paused in the doorway. Carmen pointed him to the chair at the table and reheated a pot of beans and chili. Vito sat for dinner at the table with his father. Carmen served them steaming bowls of rice and beans and excused herself, saying she had errands to run.
Vito watched her cross the compound toward the river, lingering at the hens. His eyes went from his father’s immobile face and limp body to the now-rusting oil lamp that used to flicker in his mother’s hand when she would check up on them at night.
The flame hovered, illuminating long-buried memories of his father—his foamy jaw as he shaved with a barber’s razor, tinkering with the ironing board, embering the woodstove at dawn, retelling a worker’s story of escaping from ICE with such animation that he made listeners believe it was a greater miracle than the parting of waters in the Bible, at the table with a cup of coffee warming his palms, listening to Mexican music, looking out the screen door at someone walking past and seeing something in the person that made his father’s eyes go melancholy and his features somber and sad, a sadness with no words.
A wave of compassion for his father compelled him to rise and embrace him. With moistened eyes, he muttered hoarsely about how there had been many times he had disappointed his father’s expectations but that there was no lack of love between them.
Casimiro wanted to question him, Where have you been? You look very healthy. How is school going? How is Rafael? Did Miller give you permission to visit me? Vito saw the desire to communicate in his father’s eyes and reached over the table and held his hand, thought he felt it tense for a second.
He brushed his father’s hair back, kissed his head. He adjusted a napkin under his chin, dragged a chair next to his, and sat and spooned him beans and rice, wiping the corners of his lips. It was an effort not to cry and rage at the injustice of it. After dinner, he pushed his father’s wheelchair out and down the boxcar ramp, facing him toward the field. Vito sat on the ground next to him.
“Those chickens,” he started, “I still blame them for distracting me.” He looked at his hand with the scar on his pinkie. “You warned me not to mess with them. Many memories, Papa …” He stopped, afraid of the emotion mounting in him. He wiped his eyes and ended, “Ahh, what a nice life you gave us.”
Casimiro commanded his eyes to speak, to respond, to magically make tongues appear in the air or to protrude from hi
s sockets and string words together in a sentence, but even this desire withered, for his mind failed to order it. It infuriated him and his passion to fight it, to confront it, to overcome it resulted in gibberish grunts that enraged him.
“I saw Lorenzo. He’s in El Paso doing business,” Vito lied. “Mexico’s thinking of getting into the chili business,” he said, which was true, he’d heard it on the radio.
On the surface, his grim-lipped sullenness showed, but Casimiro smiled inside to himself. He knew the soul of the chili could never be reproduced in Mexico, not anywhere on the planet. It was about the spirit in the soil.
Vito sat in silence, absorbing the memories leaping from the elm tree with the clotheslines tied to its branches, the warehouse packing sheds, and the worn paths and roads leading to the fields, from where Carmen now came walking up in the dusk, carrying a stack of homemade tortillas wrapped in dish towels and a big bowl of menudo.
She was upset, her silence pulsed red; the heat of her eyes could boil water.
She went in and put the food away, pushed Casimiro inside, undressed him, dabbed his body with a warm washcloth, and laid him in bed. She kissed his forehead and signaled for Vito to follow her.
They leaned against the corral. He watched the horses as she casually pulled fresh grass and fed them. He dared not speak because she might be upset with something he had done. But that wasn’t it.
She was thinking about the two Mexicans being arrested for eating the swan egg. There was absolutely no doubt in her mind. When a person is hungry and he can save his life by eating an egg, he has a right to that egg.
And it was not because they killed the swan, or ate the egg, no, the real reason they were put in jail and charged was that they had destroyed the fairy tale in the mind of the rich landowners—pond, swans, big house. It’s the same old King Arthur and the holy grail bullshit. From the outside, life is beautiful and perfect, there’s no injustice, no hunger, life is peaceful and nurturing.
Those two Mexicans shattered that fantasy and that’s why they were put in jail, because in eating the egg they crushed the fable concealing the lie, she thought. Because the lie that comforted Miller, the lie he saw when he looked out his window and saw how peaceful and rich he was, how good life was, how everything and everyone was content and in its place and thriving—those Mexicans didn’t kill a swan, they killed the lie that life was perfect.
“We should make some swan burritos, swan tacos.” She said it to herself.
“What? What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.” She made kissing sounds and the horse came over. She patted his mane. She rubbed the horse’s belly and scratched behind its ears, calmed herself by caressing the horse. The horse kept nudging her hand. “I know, baby, I know.”
“How you talk to him is how I talked to you a hundred times, in my head,” he admitted. “Just imaginary talks, you with me.”
“It’s called infatuation, Vito.”
“You have to admit the first time we saw each other there was some strong chili sauce between us. Most people see cupids and arrows when they fall in love, I saw chili pies flying in my dreams.”
She frowned, squinted, and nodded at him. “That’s a lame attempt at flirting. We barely hung out a day or two. You’re nuts, Vito. I love Lorenzo. Respect that or I’ll bust your balls.” She smiled. “Besides, what would those Budweiser girls in your hot tub think. And that day or two was enough to know that every woman is the apple in your eye.”
“True, true.”
They walked down the dirt road that cut between the fields. The air was heavy with coming rain, red and green chili peppers spicing the air. Lights glowed from houses and trailers, the river was quiet, poultry and goats nestled under porches and cars, and the only sound came from the packing sheds, where workers laughed as they oiled the conveyor belts and did monthly maintenance on the tractors.
“Over there,” he pointed to an old elm tree, “Papa quartered two goats someone found on the highway shoulder. The female was pregnant and Papa pulled out two fetuses and after that I had the worst nightmares.” He paused, studying her round-toe boots, the blue braid edging her jean hems, the curve of her legs and her nice, full hips. “By the way, you ever finish your dissertation?”
“Sure, with flying colors. I’m working on a book now about the migrant life.” She looked into his eyes. “Lorenzo started hanging out with Felipe, going to Juárez, gambling at the casino, he got into using cocaine.”
“Cocaine? Lorenzo? I thought maybe they busted him for weed. He wasn’t dealing it, was he?”
“No, no, he would never do that. He used it, mostly just weekends. I tried it once, before we made love, and hated it. When he snorted it, I could tell the difference in him right away.” She gazed at the fields. “It changed him. I think he even fucked around on me.”
They walked.
Vito said, “I know a lot of good boxers that got fucked using that shit.”
A soccer ball came bouncing toward him and Vito leaped and kicked it high and far and four kids chased after it across the field, illuminated by flashes of distant lightning.
“I warned them to stay inside but they don’t believe lightning could hit them.”
“No soccer kid with corazón would ever let lightning chase him off the field.”
“The lights from the barracks over there, that’s our schoolhouse. Tutors teach migrants English, computer skills, and GED. Lorenzo’s money made that happen. There’s also a physical therapist, the handicap van, the wheelchair, it cost over a hundred thousand, easy. Listen, coyotes in the distance.”
She started talking again, filling him in on what had happened in the camp while he was gone.
“When your dad had the stroke we had to drive to Cruces, a good hour, all of us in the back of the truck. Lucia took his shoes and socks off and packed his feet and groin in ice. We took his clothes off and wiped him with a cold rag. Some of the women rubbed ice on his face. We forced him to drink water.” She stopped walking.
They sat on a log next to the field, facing east. The moon gave enough light to see the fields. Crates and gunnysacks were piled and stacked next to cars and trucks that were parked alongside the field where the migrants left off picking.
“In the fight game there are just as many shattered dreams as there are in these fields … we just make a lot more money for the punishment we take.”
“On weekends some of the men would go into town to a sports bar to see you on pay-per-view. In the ring in Vegas, mariachis serenading your entrance, flowers tossed as you walk—what kid wouldn’t want that when you’re as poor as they are. Becoming you is their goal in life.”
“You win, you’re loved; you lose, you’re despised.”
“When you left I started working with the migrants. I knew nothing about picking; interviewing them was one thing but I wanted to work with them. Your brother and I worked side by side and soon I picked as fast as anyone. But during those weeks and months I fell in love with him. At night we went out and rode horses, in the day we worked together, and before you knew it I couldn’t go an hour without seeing him.”
“Right there,” he pointed to where four dirt roads met. “That’s where I beat Miller’s boy. Remember that, whack, whack, whack!” He threw a few jabs at the air and did a little dance. “I was moving dirt to build that dumb golf course; can you imagine, in the middle of the desert?”
Back at the camp a pack of kids emerged from the dark, shoving toward him. One pushed a black marker at Vito. “Firme, firme, firme,” he pleaded, while his friends lunged and pulled to get an autograph on their T-shirt, sneakers, notebook, arms, or hands, and then they dissolved into the dark.
She sighed and gave Vito a big hug. “Get some sleep. I’m happy you’re home again.”
“It’s a whole new world.”
“Good night. I’ll meet you here four thirty.” Carmen crossed the fields, going toward the river and the house she and Lorenzo shared.
40
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br /> How stunning the morning desert was to Vito. His heart burst with pleasure and a desire for his childhood days when the sun radiated one tiny ray of faith on his life, a ray that had weight, one he could toss from hand to hand and hold up and carry in his pocket and embrace before sleep and kiss at daybreak.
Fields steamed dew as the pickers arrived. Men, women, and children humped in the furrows, picking. Carmen slept the whole way. He was thinking bad thoughts as her chest rose and fell. He looked away, told himself to stop thinking of touching her. He told himself to shake it out of his head, he could control his mind, he was a trained boxer, he could discipline his body and mind, he could fuck any chick he wanted, but something else was pulling him.
In the miles that stretched out before them he wished Carmen wasn’t engaged to his brother, that she was like so many he’d had—a free-loving chick who just wanted to fuck all night. But no, he was on a mission, and he would never betray his brother.
Still, he reached out and his fingers grazed her cheek and the sweetness of her sleeping face and her breath made something in his chest tighten.
He forced his mind to obey his will and pulled it back to what he was going to do—the upcoming fight—but her jeans were tighter at her crotch and the fine black hair on her arms and upper lip and between her eyebrows made his dick hard. He quit looking at her, determined to be strong and allow no thought of her body to fill his mind. He turned up the radio, shifted in his seat, and started thinking about the fight.
A few miles down the road he slowed for a roadblock. The solemn radiance of the desert morning convulsed suddenly into a military camp as armed National Guardsmen approached. They eyed him quickly, squinting into the passenger-side window at Carmen still asleep, waved him through, their eyes following him with suspicion.
Thirty minutes later, he saw a concrete building a few hundred yards from the freeway and he guessed there were at least four hundred people standing behind the barbed-wire fence that encircled a big, dirt yard. A gun tower stood at each of the corners. A large sign facing the freeway read HUTTO PRISON.
A Glass of Water Page 13
