“I guess so.” He turned to leave, but paused and looked back at her. “I got good news for you.”
“Oh?”
“Remember last year I had a hunch the market would get off to a quick start this season? So I figured the early lettuce would catch it and clean up. I couldn’t gamble on planting everything early, but I did put in three hundred acres ahead of time.”
Ruth’s sweet expression changed instantly and a hard, calculating light crept into her eyes. Love was wonderful, but so was business. “Which three hundred?” she asked.
“Yours. Your north three hundred won’t make for a couple of weeks yet, but the west three hundred I put in early. That’s what we’re cutting now.”
“And what’s the market?”
“Four bucks on fours. I just told Hal a few minutes ago to go for four and a quarter.”
“Well, that’s a profit, but I wouldn’t call it cleaning up.”
“Not yet, baby, but wait. This is a rising market. I have a hunch we’ll hit six bucks pretty soon.”
“We’d better. You talked me into going in on a percentage this year. I don’t like it. I’m not really a gambler and I don’t think any landowner should gamble. I’ve always done well enough on straight leases, even with you.”
He shifted uncomfortably. “You’ll do even better this year. Well, I gotta run. See you later.”
She held out her arms and he leaned over to kiss her again, then hurried out of the house. Me and my big mouth, he was thinking. His mind was racing with what he could have done if he had kept his mouth shut. Ruth never looked over her property and would probably never have known it was one of her fields being cut. He could have juggled the books with a straight leaseholder and told Ruth later that her field had been cut on a lowering market. Then he wouldn’t have had to split a percentage on a big market. Of course, he had planted a percentage field with an early crop so that he wouldn’t take all the loss if there was one, but now that there was a profit, it was maddening to have to split it. Well, he thought, no help for it now. Besides, it didn’t hurt to keep her happy.
He got into his car and drove away, thinking of Ruth. Ten years before she had been a cocktail waitress in a Salinas bar. Then she had married, at the age of twenty-three, a man over thirty years her senior. But Ralph Tinsley had owned six hundred acres of black lettuce land. The real value of the land itself could not be calculated, as no one was ever crazy enough to sell it. The income of the land, however, though it fluctuated, was fairly well established. Generally, it returned two hundred dollars to the acre for each cutting, which meant that Tinsley’s acreage averaged about $120,000 per cutting. There were three cuttings during a season. A very smart marriage for Ruth.
But not so smart for Ralph Tinsley. He was in his fifties and Ruth was a very healthy girl who had never been troubled by inhibitions. Tinsley had lasted four years and then expired, leaving everything to Ruth. She had a rough time with inheritance taxes, but she was no fool, and she clung grimly to the land, refusing to sell even an acre of it.
Dean had been on his way up then, but he needed land desperately. He made a deal with Ruth better than any other shipper was willing to offer and got the lease on her land. His profits were cut very close and for three years he skated on exceedingly thin ice, but he managed to bull his way through and came out of it with an operation second only to Moore’s. He also saved Ruth’s land for her, as she was able to pay off her taxes with cash. Since then they had profited hugely together, and there was never any question about anyone but Dean planting on her land. Though he leased even more acreage from other owners, it was Ruth’s land that was the keystone of his operation. He could always depend on it.
He chuckled as he thought of how much more dependable it could become. Because of their gamble together, he and Ruth had drifted into an intimate relationship and had then become lovers. It had been going on for years. Dean had never been married and was in no hurry, and Ruth, with her native shrewdness, was willing to let matters coast until Dean was firmly entrenched in the business. That was now established and Ruth thought it was about time that she got married again. Nothing was settled, they rarely even spoke of it, but it was tacitly understood that church bells would ring sometime toward the end of the present season.
Dean would then have no worries whatever concerning acreage. It was a beautiful future.
He felt very good as he climbed the winding road that went up through the Del Monte forest toward Hill Gate. But his spirits ebbed again as he came out on a rise and glanced to the northwest, where a large spur of ground projected out from the hills like the prow of a ship. There were perhaps twenty acres there, and all of it in formal gardens. Squatting in the middle of the spur was the massive granite mansion of Tom Moore. It faced toward the sea, a mile away and a few hundred yards below, dominating everything in the immediate area and making the estates below seem puny in comparison. Moore had built but once in his life, but he had built big.
Dean chewed on his lower lip as he drove through the Del Monte toll gate, onto the state highway, and down the hill toward Monterey. Damn that Moore, he was thinking. Always the fly in the ointment. Always the big shot. Always Mr. Number One. Always the man, even in Dean’s moments of triumph, that he had to look up to. There was no getting around Moore and there was no topping him. He had to admit it. Regardless of his own patience and conniving and the passing years, Moore would always be top man.
It was really odd, he thought, how Moore had started. Moore had never been a farmer. He had been in the ice business, originally delivering ice to homes and stores by horse and wagon. It had been a comfortable business, but Salinas was then a small, sleepy town and hardly more than a wide spot in the road. Because of the good rich soil, of course, there had been some produce grown, but mostly for consumption within the state. Nothing really big about it. Small and sleepy.
But Moore had liked the lettuce that was being grown in the valley and thought of a way to better his ice business by shipping lettuce to neighboring states packed in ice. The operation had caught on and grown, the railroads became interested, and, in the early twenties, proper refrigerator cars were made available. For the first time lettuce was shipped to Eastern markets and suddenly the demand was tremendous and the Salinas Valley was overnight transformed into the salad bowl of America.
Moore was the only one that had seen it coming. He bought all the land he could get from farmers unaware of what was about to happen and he built an ice plant so big that everyone laughed at it. But when the boom hit, he was ready — and it all depended on ice. Moore was the king on the throne and he had remained there ever since.
And any day now he was going to challenge the rising young Dean Holt. Dean knew it was coming. It was inevitable. Moore, though in his seventies, was hard and tough and all tempered steel. He liked being the king of the valley and he smashed anyone that got too close to him. Dean was getting too close, and already, during the past two years, their swords had crossed a few times in the fields and the sheds and on the railroads and in the markets. They had been preliminaries, the overture to the big blowoff that was bound to come soon.
Dean’s jaw hardened as he thought of it. It was nice to think that he might come out of it top dog, but he doubted it. All he dared hope for was that he would survive. But whichever way it went, he promised himself that Moore was going to have the fight of his life. It could not happen too soon for him. At this particular moment in his career he was in excellent shape for a battle.
He drove out of Monterey and onto the Monterey-Salinas highway, which cut through the northern foothills of the Santa Lucia Mountains, where they petered out at Monterey Bay. Fifteen minutes later he crossed the steel bridge over the Salinas River, one of nature’s freaks, a river that ran mostly underground. From there he could see the town of Salinas and across the broad and rich valley to the Gabilans. And at that point, too, the lettuce fields started. They stretched to the north and to the south and to the east across the
flat land, row after straight row, square fields and rectangular, fields of all shapes, any place where land could be leveled, which was almost everywhere, and lettuce grown in the thick black soil. The fields ran the full width of the valley from a point miles south of Salinas all the way to Watsonville, the northern terminus of the valley. Sixty-four thousand acres of lettuce.
The highway, after leaving the river and the Spreckels sugar plant to the south, cut straight through the lettuce fields for three miles and slashed into the town. Dean drove slowly, looking at the lettuce on either side of the road, gauging its condition and its stage of development. He saw trucks in the fields and cutters stooped over and in one field a stapling truck dropping cartons for field packing, which would later be vacuum-cooled. Halfway along the road he saw some of his own trucks on a big field to the south, where they were cutting on Ruth’s land. Vince Moroni’s Plymouth coupé was parked at the edge of the field off the highway. Dean pulled up behind it and stopped.
He got out of his car and waved to a big man out in the field, who was talking with some Mexicans. Vince saw him, returned the wave, and after a moment crossed the field to join Dean. Vince Moroni, Dean’s field supervisor, was an enormous man of 250 pounds, with olive skin that had been further darkened by the sun, high cheekbones, dark eyes that were mild and gentle most of the time, and a mass of wavy black hair threaded thickly with silver. He could kill a man with his bare hands, and once, when angered and pressed too far, had done so. He was wearing short boots, corduroy trousers, a flannel shirt open at the throat, and a short leather jacket. A fisherman’s knitted stocking cap was cocked precariously on the back of his head.
He leaned back against the hood of the Cadillac, touched a match to a twisted black Italian cigar, and gave Dean a slow smile. Then his eyes returned to the fields. There was no show of deference, which Dean expected from everyone else. Vince was the best field man in the business and Dean was lucky to have him and knew it well.
Vince waved his cigar toward the fields and said, “She’s goin’ good.” He turned to squint in the direction of the ocean, which could not be seen, but he could see the low-lying fog bank offshore. “Maybe not later,” he said. “This fog she comes in tonight and goes out and we get three days good sun and you know what. We get slime. Not so good.”
“It’s all right now.”
“Oh, for sure. She makes well. Most fours so far. Not so many fives. She’s a good field.”
“How about the gang out there?”
“She’s two gangs workin’ today.”
Dean glanced out over the fields and realized that two gangs were cutting, or 160 men. They were Mexican nationals, brought in for the season through an arrangement with the Mexican government. A gang of Filipino cutters could load twelve cars during a nine-hour workday, as against five cars for a gang of Mexicans, but the Mexicans were much cheaper and worked by the hour. Filipinos demanded piecework. Dean used both, but he depended on the Filipinos when the going got rough. They were experienced and skilled, they never packed puffballs, and they knew when to leave the fives, the smaller heads, alone.
Dean asked, “How are they doing?”
Vince shrugged his massive shoulders. “You know. They’re slow. Maybe I should better put two more gangs workin’ from the other end?”
“Not yet. It’s a rising market. Don’t cut too fast if we don’t have to. The stuff isn’t too firm yet, is it?”
Vince walked out into the field and came back with a light-green head of lettuce of the Great Lakes heavy-leaf variety. He ripped off the outer leaves and handed it to Dean. Dean pressed it for firmness and it gave a little. He looked for cracks in the ribs, but it was a good head. “Most of it like this?” Vince nodded. “She’s good, all right.”
“Fine. Then don’t cut too fast. Two gangs will be enough here for a while, unless the weather changes and the rest of it makes too fast. Then you’ll have to get it cut.”
“I watch it.”
“Sure you do.”
The two men leaned back against the car and watched the Mexicans, each preoccupied with his own thoughts, Dean looking like a dwarf alongside the dark giant. Dean was thinking of stopping at Garcia’s, then going on to the office and checking sales and the market with Hal, then perhaps having lunch with Sam Parker at Berdell’s on the highway. He might squeeze in a little time to stop at one of the commission brokers’ and see about getting rid of some fives. They were always a problem. Everyone wanted the big heads that packed four dozen to the crate. Dean still could not understand it. When it came to taste, one was as good as the other, except that the fives sometimes did become too tight and too firm. But it was always the same beef and the same cutting of prices for the fives. Dean sighed.
Vince turned to look at him and said, “I hear the Moore kids they come home.”
Dean blinked up at him. “Steve and Truly?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Where did you hear that?”
“My old lady she knows these things.” He smiled softly and almost beautifully as he said, “The old lady always she knows these things. People like her. People tell her everything.”
Dean laughed and said, “You mean everybody gossips with her. So the younger Moores are home? Well, well. I wonder what that means. Last I heard, Steve was in Europe and Truly down in South America somewhere. Did they come home together?”
“I think just at the same time. They get home yesterday. My old lady thinks somethin’ she is wrong.”
“They’ve probably been spending too much money.”
“Maybe. Me, I don’t know. But I know I get back to work.” He stretched his great arms, grinned at Dean, and walked back into the fields.
Dean got into his car and started the engine, but he sat there a moment thinking of the news. It could mean something and it could mean nothing. Maybe Steve was going back into the business with the old man again. And if he did, so what? What would that mean?
He had to laugh at himself. Cripes, he thought, in this business you worry even about the little angles.
He took a short cut that bypassed Salinas to the south and came out on Highway 101, the main road to Los Angeles and San Francisco, a little over a hundred miles to the north. On that highway were the big shippers known as the Growers’ String, sometimes referred to as Silk Stocking Row, or, more often, Millionaires’ Row. Dean’s office and string of packing sheds were in the heart of Millionaires’ Row. He would never have been content to be anywhere else.
He had a huge ice plant just off the highway, offices back of that, and the sheds beyond. Workers’ cars were parked everywhere and lettuce trucks were coming in in a steady stream. Dean pulled his car into a reserved parking place and looked over the outside activity with a benign smile. Not so many years before, he had been driving a truck himself. He erased that thought from his mind and assumed the attitude of The Boss. He shrugged his shoulders in his jacket, straightened his tie, and walked into the offices with his usual morning expression, one of thoughtful drive and determination.
He sensed something wrong the moment he stepped through the door.
The three rooms were actually one large room divided into sections by glass partitions. Even the wall overlooking the sheds was of glass, so that anyone in the office could look down the long line of men and women at work. There was a reception room with a few chairs scattered about, rather bare and rarely used. Beyond was the sales office, where 90 per cent of all the business was transacted. There were four large desks, two teletypes, batteries of telephones on all the desks, typewriters, records scattered about, and a bank of filing cabinets. No effort had ever been made to decorate the room or make it comfortable; it was strictly functional. Beyond that, with windows overlooking the parking lot and the highway, was Dean’s own office. That room had been decorated carefully and expensively, with a mahogany desk, deep leather chairs, and a console radio and TV set.
Dean’s staff of salesman, bookkeeper, secretary, and shed boss were all in his
office, gathered before the radio. Teletypes and ringing telephones were ignored. The four of them stood there in a small group, all of them silent, staring thoughtfully off into space. They looked completely stunned.
Dean stepped through the doorway and stared at them incredulously. His whole staff quitting work to listen to the radio in the middle of a busy morning? Blood mounted to his cheeks and his eyes turned greener than ever.
“What the hell!” he barked.
They turned and looked at him, but slowly. Lois Nevil, his secretary, blinked at him as if seeing him for the first time. Pete, the bookkeeper, cleared his throat as if to say something, but thought better of it. Frank, the shed boss, was tugging thoughtfully at his right ear lobe, his eyes trying to read Dean’s expression.
Hal Smith, the sales manager, a lean man with a gray face and gray hair, seemed more stunned than the others. He sat back against the edge of Dean’s desk and took his time lighting a cigarette. He tilted his head back to blow out a column of smoke, then his eyes swung around to Dean’s.
He swallowed and asked, “You’ve heard the news?”
“What news?”
“Well, I guess it’s been kept quiet until now. Tom Moore had a heart attack four days ago.”
Dean walked by him and around the desk and dropped into his leather swivel chair. Two telephones were ringing on his desk. He reached for one and then dropped his hand without picking up the phone. His fingers beat a nervous tattoo on the surface of the desk. He stared blankly into space for a long while, then he looked at Hal.
He croaked hoarsely, “Four days ago?”
Hal nodded. He swallowed again and said, “He died this morning.”
Dean could feel the color fading from his face. “Old Tom Moore.”
“Yes.”
“So that’s why Steve and Truly are here.”
“Hmmmm?”
“Nothing. But he’s really dead?”
“Yes. This morning.” Hal attempted a feeble smile and said weakly, “The king is dead, boss. Long live the king.”
Hunger and the Hate Page 2
