They answered cautiously, then one of them reached out and touched her hair. The dark-eyed girl giggled. “It’s so soft!” she rattled off in Spanish to her friends.
Soon all of them were touching Becca’s hair. Becca figured out that they all thought it would feel differently than their own dark straight hair. She cadged a seat on a broken cinder block and let them explore to their heart’s content. One girl was expertly braiding Becca’s hair, and Becca decided it felt cooler that way.
“Hey!”
The girls scattered, retreating to far corners of the yard. Becca looked up to see a woman glaring down at her.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
IN SPANISH, the woman demanded, “What do you want? Who are you?”
Becca held her hands out and stood up. Her introduction and explanations did little to ease the glower from the woman’s face. Finally, the only thing that moved her was an assurance that Becca wasn’t from immigration and that all she wanted was to speak to someone in charge.
The “take me to your leader” request got a bit of head scratching in response. The woman told her in no uncertain terms to stay put, then retreated to a nearby hulk. A moment later, a worried-looking older woman came across the clearing, wiping her hands on a towel wrapped around her waist.
This wasn’t the leader. No, in a Hispanic settlement like this, it would have to be a man.
Becca started her pitch anyway, laced liberally with solemn oaths that she wasn’t from USCIS.
The Hispanic woman pursed her lips thoughtfully. Then she glanced over at the old man still dozing on the bench.
But he wasn’t dozing, not anymore. He was surveying Becca and the woman with lazy, half-open eyes.
Of course. He was the one in charge here. The garden bench—the best thing in the whole place—should have tipped her off.
With a slow lift of his hand, which could have been mistaken for him shooing a fly, the old man waved off the woman.
“Go talk to Antonio. He wants to talk to you,” the woman told her.
The girls cautiously resumed their playing. Becca closed the gap between her and the garden bench. She waited for Antonio to pat the seat in invitation before she sat down.
Once settled, she started speaking again, but he interrupted her in Spanish.
“I’m only an old man, but I heard you. You come here after something. So what is it?”
“Murphy.”
“Pah!” He spat in the sand. “What about him?”
“I’m investigating him. He’s stealing money from an insurance company.” She phrased it as a known fact in hopes that her certainty would draw him out.
“I’m not surprised. He likes money. But what man doesn’t? Why are we here, after all?”
“I think he may have used some of your men to transport a vine from Texas.”
Antonio narrowed his eyes. “No. This I would know, even if it were done by some of the young hotheads. Besides, we didn’t come here from Texas. We follow the crops. Onions in the spring, and before that, we worked citrus. Most of our group has already moved on. But we—” he indicated the rag-tag bunch of trailers “—have our papers, so Murphy keeps us on. That vine—dodder vine, yes? That came after we were already here. So it was not us.”
“So some of your men didn’t plant the dodder vine? Say, in various farmers’ fields?”
He didn’t answer. Instead he asked her, “Why should we care to get involved in business between gringos? So one gringo steals from another? What’s it to us?”
“Don’t you want to see Murphy punished? I mean, look at what he has you living in.” Becca indicated the hovel with a swoop of her hand.
Antonio shrugged impassively. “This isn’t so different from Mexico. But at least here we all have jobs. In Mexico, there are no jobs. Not since free trade. They promised us factory work, but what they did was make it impossible for an honest farmer to earn a living in my country. There are only so many factory jobs.”
“But you could earn so much more—do so much better—than this. These living conditions are shameful!”
Again he shrugged. “Who would hire us? Only gringos like Murphy who want cheap labor.”
She thought about Wilkes toting food and other necessities down to them. She thought about Ryan, the person she’d come to know through their electronic correspondence. “Not everybody is like Murphy. Is it true you have to pay part of your wages in rent?”
“Sí, of course. In cash.”
Becca’s stomach rumbled loudly. Antonio raised his eyebrows in question.
“Past time for lunch,” she told him. She thought wistfully of Ryan and his invitation. But no, Mee-Maw would have put away the food by now, and Ryan would have headed back for the fields.
“Maria!” Antonio snapped his fingers at the oldest child. “Fetch something for the lady to eat.”
She scampered off to the trailer the older woman had disappeared into. In a moment, the child came down wobbly metal steps, a giant burrito in her hand.
Antonio indicated that Becca should take it. “Go ahead. Eat. A skinny woman like you—you need your strength.”
Hesitant, she bit into the flatbread and the vegetables, finding chicken tucked underneath. A flood of Tex-Mex heaven showered over her taste buds. With greedy bites, she made short order of the meal.
Antonio looked pleased. “You go now,” he told her in heavily accented English. “Come back again and I will find out if any of my young tontos planted your dodder vine, or if they know anything about who did.”
Becca noisily licked her fingers. “I’m sorry—I was just so hungry, and this was the best Mexican food I’ve eaten in a long time—”
“Say no more. I could tell you were a good woman by the way you let the chicas play with your hair. But we have work to do—water to bring up from the creek, wood to gather—all that before the men come in. A few years ago, I’d be out there myself. Now look. Bossing the women around—when they don’t need it—that’s all an old one like me is good for, I guess.”
She could tell a dismissal when she heard one. Becca stood up, extended her hand, which he gallantly took and grazed the knuckles with a kiss. She waved goodbye to the little girls and headed the way she’d come.
* * *
IT WAS MIDAFTERNOON by the time Becca made her way back to Wilkes’s fence and to the farm proper. The old man fussed over her as much as he had his porcine pets earlier.
“I was just a-fore comin’ after you. Got busy with somethin’ I needed to do, and the time, it just slipped away from me. And you walkin’ all that way. Have you had any dinner?”
“They gave me a supersized burrito back there. It filled me up.”
“Well, I can offer you a glass of water or some iced tea.”
“Thanks, I believe I’ll take you up on that,” she said.
A few moments later, Becca tipped up a glass of iced water as she sat on a swing under a big pecan tree. As hot as she felt, the water tasted like nectar.
“I know you have to be a country girl if you didn’t turn and run from a few hogs and you can appreciate good cold water,” Jake Wilkes told her.
“Yes, sir.” Becca thought back to the summers she’d spent with her grandparents.
“So did you find out anything that’ll help you take down ol’ Murphy?” The old man’s face sharpened with eager inquisitiveness.
“Well…they filled in some blanks for me, but they also created a few more. I guess I’ll just have to keep digging.”
“Anything you need, you just let me know. That old son of a—uh, gun, he robbed me of half my farm. Now I’m pretty much down to just messing around. It’s something to do, more than anything else.”
Becca set the glass down on a rusty table by the
swing. “I’ll be sure to let you know if there’s some way you can help. But honestly, you’ve been a big help already.”
“Thank ye kindly.”
She stood up. Off in the distance, she heard a squeal of hogs. “Sounds like your hogs are already plotting their next derring-do.”
“Probably right. Blamed ol’ things. Don’t know why I don’t turn the whole lot of ’em into pork chops.”
“They seem to like you. Maybe they’re just doing it for the attention. You know, pigs are smarter than dogs.”
“See now? I knew you were quality, but that there just goes to show I was right. Most folks get put off by the smell, but you got it spot-on. Them jokers are smarter ’n any hound I’ve ever had. You’re probably right about them just wantin’ some attention.” He beamed at her. “I’ll remember that next time and not yell at ’em so.”
Becca managed to keep her face straight until she got in the car, then she indulged herself in a burst of laughter. She backed around and headed toward the main road.
The call of Ryan’s farm beckoned to her as she came to the turnoff for it.
Oh, I can at least apologize for not coming to lunch. Maybe he knows more about Murphy’s fiddle with labor costs.
She regretted her impulsiveness when she saw several cars and trucks parked in Mee-Maw’s yard. Becca at once concluded that family had gathered for some purpose. She would have turned around and quietly gone on her way, but Mee-Maw spotted her.
The old woman straightened up stiffly in her garden. A broad smile lit her face when she recognized the car. She gestured with her hand for Becca to get out and join her.
Nothing to do but obey. Well, she’d only stay for a minute.
“Now, that’s what I call timing!” Mee-Maw told her. “I was just thinking I needed a hand with this. I cut all this okra yesterday, and Ryan helped me with the tomatoes and the cucumbers—but will you look at it!”
Becca wasn’t fooled. From the number of cars parked on the grass, Mee-Maw had a whole houseful of people to help her, just a call away. In spite of that knowledge, Mee-Maw’s welcome warmed her.
Becca bent beside Mee-Maw and went to work. Together they gathered the day’s harvest in companionable silence. The big baskets held okra, cucumbers, bell peppers, a couple of good-sized chili and jalepeño peppers, eggplants, some straightneck squash and, atop all that, firm red tomatoes.
The only times Becca hesitated were when she came to a spot where a plant had been yanked. To her satisfaction, however, she didn’t see any sign of dodder vine.
“What about the peas and beans, Mee-Maw? Should I go ahead and pick them for you?”
“No, no…I pick those in the mornings before it gets so hot. This little bit of peas—well, it’s nothing to the acre I used to grow. Ryan refused—flat refused—to put in anything more than this garden for me. Said I’d kill myself with heat exhaustion. I tell you! Young people are just getting so—so uppity these days. I wouldn’t have dared dream of tellin’ my grandmother she was too long in the tooth to grow a good-sized pea patch.”
Becca hid a smile. She could see Mee-Maw bossing around her grandmother. She was glad Ryan had put his foot down, though, because she could tell from the old woman’s labored breathing how tired Mee-Maw was.
“I, uh, started not to stop. Not when I saw all the cars.”
“Oh, that.” Mee-Maw waved her concern away. “Emily’s birthday supper. That’s Jack’s youngest daughter. We got a whole houseful in there. Tell you the truth, I came out here to give myself a bit of a rest.”
“Here I’ve interrupted that.”
“Nope. You don’t chatter on. You work. You understand that a garden is a sacred place.” Mee-Maw gave her an approving look. “I like that about you.”
Again, Mee-Maw’s words drenched Becca in a warm wash of love. Becca felt far differently with Mee-Maw than with her father. Her father made her, even now, feel prickly and uncertain, off-balance. He seemed to be always looking out for Becca’s next mistake—while Mee-Maw never expected anything but good.
“Well, let’s get these baskets in, shall we? I’ve got supper to finish up—though Ryan was going to put chicken on the grill to save me some trouble. That is a good boy. You could do worse than him, you know?”
Becca’s stomach did a triple somersault at Mee-Maw’s words. The memory of the almost-kiss came back to her. Was her attraction to Ryan so palpable that she hid it from no one? “Mee-Maw, are you trying to fix Ryan up?”
“No’m. I’m trying to fix you up. A handsome boy like Ryan? He’ll be off the marriage mart before you can say whist.” She winked. “I just don’t want to see you miss a good deal.”
Becca laughed, taking the joke for what it was. She hefted the heaviest basket. “I’ll just get these in for you, and then I’ll be on my way. I won’t interfere—”
“Becca!”
Another little seismic jolt shot through her as she heard Ryan’s pleased voice. She looked up to see Ryan on the back porch, smiling. “Hey,” she called back, feeling shy at his obvious pleasure at seeing her. What was it about this family that enveloped her in warmth?
“You stood us up at dinnertime.”
“Um, well, I was way off in the woods near the creek. But I did get a very nice burrito.”
Mee-Maw clucked her tongue. “You must have gone down to talk to those Mexicans Murphy keeps in near servitude. Ain’t nothing more than keepin’ slaves, you ask me. The whole lot of ’em is afraid to say boo to a ghost.”
Ryan loped across the backyard and took the heavy basket from Becca. “Here, I’ll take this. You get the lighter one.”
“And what will I tote?” Mee-Maw protested.
“You grew all this,” Ryan told her. “You just tote yourself.”
“I had some help.” But she went on in, leaving the two of them alone.
“So—” Ryan shifted the basket in his hands “—did Jake help you?”
“When I could pull his attention away from his hogs, he was very helpful.”
Ryan grinned. “Man loves his pigs. He’s had ’em for years, Mee-Maw says.” His expression grew more serious. “Was Mee-Maw right? Did you go down to Murphy’s Little Mexico?”
“Yep. The conditions are awful, aren’t they?”
He nodded. “Some of those guys are really talented farmers. We’d be lucky to hire them, but Murphy pretty well has the Keep Off The Grass sign up all the time. I tried to get one or two men to come help me after Gramps died and J.T. took off—no dice.”
His comments triggered a flood of questions Becca wanted to ask. But they had reached the back porch, and the screen door swung open for them.
Ryan’s cousin, Jack, stood there, balancing on his one good leg. His smile turned sour as he recognized her.
“What’s she doing here?”
CHAPTER TWELVE
MEE-MAW SAVED BECCA from feeling awkward with her scolding, “Jack! Hush, now! Mind your manners! Becca’s just stopped in for a spell. She helped me gather those vegetables. You go on now and light that grill for Ryan, else we’ll be eatin’ at dark o’clock. That broke leg of yours won’t prevent you from scratching a match.”
Jack looked from Ryan to Becca and then back to Ryan. He started to say something. Then, with an expression that shouted “We’ll talk about this later” he pushed past them and headed for the barrel grill on the porch.
“Er…should I leave?” Becca asked Ryan.
Ryan scowled. “No. I just— Well, Jack and I just have some talking to do. I haven’t really had a chance to explain to him…” He slid the basket of produce onto the kitchen counter. “Well, about how you—”
“Weren’t a forked-tail, horned she-devil out for blood?”
Ryan gave her a crooked grin. �
�Yeah. Put it that way, it makes me sound bad, but what was I to expect, anyway? You come sashayin’ down here on Ag-Sure’s orders, I guess I just expected the worst, that’s all. But…”
“Yes?” Her insides tingled with anticipation.
“You’re just…you fit in. You fit right in. That’s all. You’re so different than what I expected. I feel like I’ve known you forever. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?”
Guilt tempered Becca’s pleasure at the compliment. She wanted to tell him the truth. She glanced over her shoulder to see family approaching, no doubt expecting an introduction to this strange nonkin addition to the party. No, now wasn’t the time. Maybe later if she got the chance alone with him.
So when will be the time? Aren’t you just putting off the inevitable?
Becca quelled the inner chiding. “I’m glad I fit in, Ryan.” She reached over and squeezed his hand. He responded by clasping her fingers in his and not letting go.
Then he turned back to the family members—his sister-in-law, Marla, all of Jack’s brood, the entire extended family crowding into the kitchen. “Hey, y’all, I’d like to introduce you to someone who’ll be staying for supper.”
* * *
RYAN KNEW from the bangs outside on the porch that Jack was communicating his not-so-silent displeasure at Becca’s presence.
Or maybe Jack really was having trouble lighting the grill?
Another wham, this one still louder.
Scratch that last thought.
Nodding at Mee-Maw, Ryan jerked his eyes first to Becca and then to the direction of the porch.
Mee-Maw gave an ever-so-slight nod of understanding. She’d look after Becca while he dealt with Jack. “Becca, girl, you come in the living room so I can show you pictures of how cute Ryan looked when he was a baby.”
Ryan groaned at the ruse Mee-Maw chose, but he was glad to see his grandmother shepherding Becca away from the kitchen and the back porch.
A hot breeze that did nothing to cool off the afternoon kicked up Ryan’s hair as he pushed open the screen.
Seeds of Trust Page 10
