Carson Valley

by Bill Barich

  17

  Now in the waning hours of another Carson Valley afternoon, with the bells at St. Brigid’s ringing five times live on tape, Victor Torelli continued the job of cleaning out the office he was finally vacating, packing away thirty years or so of largely worthless materials that he hoped to put in storage and never see again. The light falling across the town square had a melancholy foretaste of autumn in it, an edge of clarity that divided tree from tree and robin from robin, but Torelli barely noticed. He was too preoccupied with his archaeological dig, rooting about in a bottom drawer that had so far yielded a penknife and a mummified orange. The orange held a special fascination for him. It was covered with a grayish green mold that flecked off in noxious little clouds. Rooms own us, the old man thought, and not the other way around. Rooms, houses, the very air.

  His few valuable possessions he had already carted away with Antonio Lopez’s help, his TV and his VCR, his deer rifle, and the plaque he had once been awarded as “Merchant of the Year,” coveting it even though he had never done any retail business and knew well enough that the Chamber of Commerce gave out such trophies on a revolving basis without any regard for merit. Those objects, each deemed useful, nostalgic, or salable, had been jammed into the spare bedroom on Quail Court. Torelli was down to the true detritus of his so-called professional life now, the items whose presence in his office seemed linked to an unfathomable practical joke, here a plastic doll’s arm and there an entire slab of Easter Seals, hundreds of fake stamps not worth a goddam penny. Whatever we manage to save, he thought, we must save by accident.

  He could not account for the crumbling roll of Tums in his other bottom drawer, a remedy he might in fact have benefited from after lunch that very day when his bowl of chili began riding too high, nor did he have a clue how a mousetrap and a fragment of incredibly hard cheddar cheese had come to rest beside it. Farther back, he found a marble, a jack of spades, and a grocery list in Claire’s fine script, her perfectly formed Palmer-method letters still elegant to his eye. Two pounds ground chuck, hamburger buns, toilet paper, cookies for the kids, the ghosts were everywhere, circling him, and he had no place to hide.

  Torelli stumbled up and sat in his chair. He felt bushed, and his pulse was racing. Only his three-drawer metal filing cabinet was left for him to empty. He had removed from it all but his most recent correspondence, the sum of which amounted to a last series of bills to be paid and three hokey birthday cards—he had turned eighty a week before—of the sub-Hallmark variety sent by prelapsarian business associates of his, who probably kept a list of such occasions somewhere and continued to extend greetings automatically to everyone on it, not bothering to check on whether the party in question was dead or alive. Torelli was delighted by the notion that he would still receive such cards when he was cold and in his grave. He scrawled some checks to dispatch the bills and settled back to read his single letter from the morning mail, a bulletin from Consolidated Vintners that encouraged him to think that the world might yet quit its confounded spinning.

  Dear Victor,

  It gives me a whole lot of pleasure to send you the enclosed. It will be the last report from your Consolidated Vintners field advisor Rawley Kimball that you will get prior to the all important time when our annual harvest begins.

  I am sure you will agree with me when I say the report could not be better. With Rawley’s expertise and advice, your vineyard is in better shape than ever. This report shows the kind of real progress we at CV always hope for. I am sure you can look forward to the prospect of good news when the harvest is over.

  At CV, we are expecting a banner year this harvest. Everything has worked out just about as well as it could. The weather has been cooperative, and all we need now is some of our famous “Indian Summer” sunshine to bring up the sugar in our grapes. Every indicator we use to assist us in predicting how the crop will go tells us to expect the very best.

  Let me add on a personal note how glad I am to have the Torelli holdings in our portfolio. I would also like to take this opportunity to express my sympathy over the recent tragedy involving your daughter. We went through something similar with our youngest. All I can say is, bad things sometimes happen to good people.

  I look forward to celebrating with you after the grapes are in and the crush is over. Don’t forget the treat will be on me. Maybe you’ll agree to join me for one of our Rotary Club feeds at La Bella Italia.

  Meanwhile, please go over our report and let me know if you have any questions. As ever, I and my staff are at your service.

  Wishing you the best at harvest time,

  Wade Saunders

  WS:rw

  Enclosed: CV report, CV T-shirt, CV baseball cap

  18

  The six wood frame cabins behind Roy’s Market, each layered with decades of flaking paint and upgraded for the harvest season with a new brass numeral from Ace Hardware, stood in a semicircle around a huge, mossy live oak. No other vegetation grew anywhere nearby, except for grapevines. The cabins rented for $600 a month. They had linoleum floors recently swabbed with Pine Sol, bulbless light fixtures in both bedrooms, and tiny kitchenettes where a scarred Formica-topped table was pushed into a corner. Bathing and toilet facilities were communal, in a concrete-block washhouse out of which a trickle of foul-smelling water was always dribbling from a dented drainpipe. Only men were allowed to live in the camp, and they lived there only while they had fruit to pick, splitting up the cost among their bunkmates, eight or ten or a dozen ways.

  Antonio Lopez had shared a harvest cabin during his first summer in the valley. He still recalled with true feeling the good times he had enjoyed, the constant ribbing and raillery and the empty cans of Budweiser stacked in pyramids, as well as the beguiling confidences that the lonely pickers traded on the long, hot nights when they sat up late listening to someone strum a guitar. They played card games and had penny pitching contests and little fiestas every payday, simple rewards for the painstaking labor that Lopez, having risen from the ranks, was currently denied. Now he was a family man, a salaried employee with responsibilities, and his carefree days were over. He had never actually missed them before, but he felt a stab of nostalgia when he stopped at Roy’s after work one evening late in August to secure a place for his cousin Omar Perez who, wanted or not, would be arriving that Sunday.

  He didn’t bother to go into the market to ask about vacancies. The clerks never kept track of how the cabins were being divided up, and Roy himself intervened only if the rent wasn’t paid on time or the frequent parties were too noisy. Anybody interested in a bunk had to wander like a supplicant from door to door, hoping to find a fellow picker sympathetic, desperate, or greedy enough to strike a bargain, so Lopez began walking and knocking. He had no success until he reached cabin four, where a teenager, stripped to his Jockey shorts and all alone, lay on a cot reading a novela.

  “Buenas tardes,” Lopez said in a gracious way, smiling to show that he meant no harm. He granted the youth a few seconds to comprehend the essential fact that he was older, more experienced, and deserving of respect. “How you doing today?”

  “Okay.”

  “Where are your amigos at?”

  “They coming. Mañana.”

  “From where, man?”

  “Baja.”

  “Podría poner otro hombre en la habitación?” There appeared to be some space in the second bedroom, Lopez thought, peering around a corner. “You got a cot left in here?”

  The youth scarcely paid attention. “No soy el capitán,” he said, turning a page.

  “Of course you’re not the captain, you’re too fucking stupid, aren’t you?” Lopez asked, still smiling but speaking very rapidly in English to obscure his meaning and create an impression that he might be there in an official capacity. He hoped to provoke the fidgety unease that he had often experienced himself. “Isn’t that right?”

  “Yes.” The youth nodded. “Okay, sir.”

  Satisfied that he had asserted his domi
nion, Lopez made a splashy show of touring the cabin. It was decorated after a fashion with the debris of its former tenants, who had pinned up everything from snapshots of themselves to the postcards that their relatives in Mexico had sent. The postcards were often displayed with the picture side to the wall, so that the benevolent wishes and fervent prayers written on them could be accessed as necessary. Above the sink was a penciled cardboard sign, NO PEEING HERE. A poster of a blond model in a Tecate T-shirt, her nipples straining against the flimsy fabric, was central to the ambience and had the vibrant quality of a much-adored icon at which countless pilgrims had worshipped on their knees.

  Lopez did indeed find a cot at the back as yet unclaimed, its availability advertised by the absence of any shoes, bundled clothes, or food stored beneath it. It lacked sheets, but it had a thin blanket thrown over it and a stained and lumpy pillow. He tested the mattress by punching it and hurt his knuckles.

  “Tiene agua caliente aqui?” he asked when he returned to the other room.

  “Sí.”

  “The toilets working?”

  “Sí.”

  He passed over a five-dollar bill. “Esto es para usted,” he said, explaining that the money was a small gratuity, even a mordida, to reserve the cot for his cousin, and that only an idiot who had never done any business in the United States would refuse it. “Five more for you next time. La cama esta reservada. Diga el capitán. No mistakes, okay?”

  “Okay.” The youth grinned stupidly and stuffed the bill into his underpants.

  Sunday came before Lopez was ready for it. There were tattered clouds in a gray-blue sky. He escorted his wife and daughter to Mass as usual, nervous about his cousin’s arrival and wishing that in a moment of weakness he had never bragged to the boy. To complicate matters, Elena was actually looking forward to meeting Omar, imagining him to be a welcome member of the family, a relative from the wilds of Jalisco. Her romantic view of things helped to sink Lopez further into gloom. Now that Elena wasn’t working herself and had nothing to do except care for one easy baby, she was discouragingly upbeat about everything, he thought.

  “Remember how you acted when you first got here? How excited you were?” she asked him on the drive home from lunch, trying to boost his spirits.

  “Sure, I remember. But you didn’t know me then.”

  “You told me about it, though. Your cousin looked out for you, right?”

  “He looked out for me a little bit.”

  Elena rested a calming hand on his shoulder and rubbed him gently. “Don’t take it so hard, Antonio,” she told him. “This should be fun for you. You’re an idol to him.”

  “I’m like his Elvis Presley?”

  “That’s right. And you’re my Elvis, too.”

  He waited for the boy at the Greyhound station in Santa Rosa that afternoon. It was a small, plain, odorless room adjoining a car rental agency. Inside were a couple of video games, a burbling coffee machine, and some chairs in which a few people were sitting. They were mostly white and obviously poor, elderly retired folks who looked defeated, all the life energy sucked out of them, their skin horrible for Lopez to see, pale and wrinkled and brown with liver spots, their false teeth shining and clacking. He roamed about impatiently and tried to put the best possible face on his situation, recalling Omar’s mother, a sister to his own late father. She was a kind woman who had fed him whenever he came to her door hungry, and if he concentrated on her it helped him to gain a sense of mission. He began to feel the nobility of somebody honoring a debt, yet he was worried that he wouldn’t even recognize Omar, whose face was lost to him, submerged in a stream of time, a watery image he couldn’t quite bring into focus.

  The bus pulled up at two o’clock, right on schedule. There was a hiss of pneumatic air as the doors swung open. The driver preceded his passengers down the steps, lifted a panel to the luggage compartment, and started unloading some luggage and a few cardboard cartons bound with twine or fastened with strapping tape. Lopez watched the steady descent of stiff-limbed travelers and saw how each was met in turn, sister joined to brother, father to child, in the midst of joyous greetings, tender embraces, jokes, and tears. It troubled him that he felt no such emotions himself. He felt nothing really except aggravation—he could not seem to get beyond it. He kept watching until a boy who could not be other than his cousin emerged from the bus, a cocky, strutting kid who puffed on a cigarette and wore a cheap leather jacket dyed a bumblebee yellow, saddle-stitched on the collar and embroidered with his name Omar over a breast pocket.

  Lopez moved toward him with foreboding. The boy jumped into the air at the sight of him and ducked past the hand he offered to bestow a clumsy abrazo. “Yo soy Omar,” he said, his voice high-pitched and full of good humor. “Hermano, don’t you know me?”

  “Cómo no? From Guadalajara.”

  “Eso es!” The boy laughed uproariously, as if he were at a carnival, and gripped Antonio’s biceps to look him over. “Tu pareces differente, sabes?”

  “Different? How?”

  “El pelo!” Omar cried in delight.

  Lopez lifted his thick ponytail. “It wasn’t like this before?”

  “No, no! Más corto!” The boy ran his fingers through the ponytail, his admiration manifest. “Muy guapo, Antonio. You are very handsome in it.”

  “Yeah, well, we better get going.”

  Omar had just one bag, a woven costela in choleric Indian reds and blues that he carried slung over a shoulder. It bulged with clothes and gift-wrapped packages. He, too, was a handsome fellow, although there was something about him—an eagerness to please, a disingenuous quality—that put Lopez on the alert. In the car, Antonio had to listen as the boy related the tiresome tale of his border crossing as if it were a feat that only he had ever accomplished. Omar boasted about his own heroism and praised his own knack for survival by telling how he had snuck up the coast from San Diego to Oceanside and how he had landed a job at a nursery there for almost four dollars an hour. He had lived with some Mixtecs from Oaxaca, who taught him how to swipe flower bulbs, hide them on his person, and sell them to another nursery down the road, where the owner asked no questions.

  “So you’re a thief?” Lopez said to him. “Un ladrón, eh? That’s really something to be proud of.”

  “No, hermano.” The boy shook his head in fervent denial. “Only for this.” He reached into his bag and produced an Alien Registration Receipt Card. It was not green but a rosy pink. Laminated in plastic, it bore a passport photo of one Omar Rosario Perez, along with his date of birth and the date on which he had supposedly migrated into the United States through the legal port of entry at San Ysidro. “‘I yam of good moral character,’” Omar said, with a smirk. “I have my documentos.”

  Lopez tapped the card against the dashboard, annoyed in spite of how resourceful his cousin had been. His instincts warned him against the boy. “It’s fake, right?” he asked. “How much did it cost you? Or did you steal it, too?”

  “No, no stealing.” Omar seemed anxious and unsure of himself now. “I pay money for it. Forty-five dollar.”

  “But it’s fake, right?” The boy shrugged and looked out the window. “Do you understand what a risk I’m taking here? I could go to prison for helping you.”

  “It can’t happen that way, hermano.”

  “Put out that cigarette,” Lopez ordered him. He saw that he had all the power and that he liked having it and would exercise it if he had to. “I don’t allow any smoking in my vehicle, man, so you better get used to it.”

  “Sorry, hermano.”

  “And you can forget this ‘brother’ shit. You’re not my brother, Omar. This isn’t Oceanside up here, hermano,” Antonio went on sarcastically. “We’re not a bunch of Mixtecs in Santa Rosa. You keep walking around like you’re some kind of king, and you’ll take a fall. That jacket of yours?” He grabbed the lapel. “This is a jacket for fucking Mexicans, man. The border patrol would pick you out in a second.”

  “I take it
off,” Omar said, tugging at a sleeve.

  “People in California, they don’t dress like that.”

  “I take it off.”

  The boy was thoroughly chastised and obedient by the time they reached the Lopez house, but Elena soon cured him of that. She hugged him, pinched his cheeks, and fussed over him like he had just won the Big Spin, remarking on his resemblance to her husband, which caused Antonio to turn away in utter distress because there was, to his eye, no likeness at all. She pretended to be in awe of his journey and the imaginary bravery he continued to yammer about in ceaseless self-celebration, not the least bit shy. Elena’s attitude toward Mexico was very unrealistic, Lopez thought, probably because she had never lived there, or been billeted in a single roach-infested room with a bunch of battling siblings, or had to survive on rice, beans, and tortillas. She had cooked a grand feast for the boy, in fact, but before she could steer them all to the table Omar rummaged in his bag and gave her one of the wrapped packages. It was a box of caramels with an old white lady’s photo on the front.

  “Oh, look, Antonio!” Elena showed off the box “Mrs. See’s. It’s my favorite kind.”

  “That’s expensive candy,” Antonio agreed, wanting the day to be over right then.

  Omar had a package for Dolores, too, and the infant drooled, giggled, and fumbled with the wrapping paper for about an hour until she got a fist inside and extracted a fluffy toy duck by its throat. She pecked Omar on the nose, oblivious of his guile.

  “Hey, she kiss me!” the boy said, giggling himself. “She kiss her cousin!” He squeezed the duck to make it squeak, and Dolores kicked her legs in her high chair, almost beside herself with joy.