by Todd Borg
“What else did they say?”
“Nothin’.”
“What do you think yo-pep means?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Did yo-pep sound like a place? Or was it something they were looking for?”
“Neither. It was jus’, you know, the guy would say, yo-pep.”
“Anything else you remember them saying? Take your time.”
Paco looked away. “Salt,” he finally said.
“Who said yo-pep, the black guy or the white guy?”
“The white guy, I think.”
“And the black guy said Salt?”
“Yeah.”
“Could be their nicknames. Salt and pepper. When the white guy said yo-pep, was it like ’yo, dude? Like, ’yo, Paco, hi, Paco?”
Paco shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.” He yawned again. “Where will I sleep? My sleeping bag is in the van.”
“We’ll figure out something. Your foster mom’s cell phone,” I said. “May I look at it?”
Paco looked worried. He reached up and touched his cheek where Street had wiped blood from a scrape. “A branch poked me in the face, and I dropped it.”
“No problem,” I said. “When you get chased, you gotta expect to drop stuff.”
The waiter came and took our plates. Paco leaned his forearms onto the table, laced his fingers together.
“When you first called me,” I said, “you said you don’t know the name of the town where you live.”
“We live in the country.”
“If I drive you home, can you tell me how to go?”
“I know how to get home from McDonald’s and the school. But I don’t want to go home by myself.”
“No, we don’t want that,” I agreed.
“Who else can you stay with?” I asked.
Paco shook his head.
“Do you have siblings?” I asked.
“What’s that?”
“Brothers or sisters?”
“No.”
“Who are your friends in school?” I asked.
“José and Rafael.”
“Can you stay with them?”
Paco shook his head. “They have big families and little apartments.”
“Do you have other relatives?”
He shook his head.
“You mentioned that Cassie talked about staying away from the cops because you could get sent back to Mexico.”
Paco looked alarmed.
“If you were born in Mexico, maybe you have relatives there,” I said.
“I’ve never been to Mexico. I don’t want to go there.”
“Mexico is a great place,” I said.
“They speak Mexican.”
“Spanish,” I said. “Don’t you speak Spanish?”
Paco shook his head. “I heard José and Rafael speak it. I don’t understand any of it. I’m not smart enough.”
“Paco, you need to understand something. What you know depends on what you’ve spent time learning. It’s not about smarts.”
He shrugged again.
“Can you ride a skateboard or bicycle?”
He scrunched up his face, suspicious of a sudden, new subject. “’Course.”
“So you have good physical ability. It’s like dodging. Not everybody can do physical stuff well.”
Another shrug.
“Can you remember when you were little and couldn’t ride a skateboard or a bicycle?”
“Yeah.”
“So you just hadn’t applied your physical ability to skateboards and bicycles, yet.”
“I was too little,” he said.
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “You also have mental ability. You just haven’t applied your mental ability to learning Spanish or learning to read.”
“So?”
“Mental ability is just different words for smarts.”
Paco didn’t respond other than frowning more.
“Paco, do you know how you came to be a foster child?”
He shook his head.
“Did you ever know your real mother or father?”
“No,” Paco said.
“Did anyone ever tell you why you’re in the foster program?”
“No.”
“The house where you live with Cassie, does she own it?”
“No. She says that owning a house traps you.”
“Like seat belts,” I said.
Paco nodded. Solemn.
“Does Cassie have a job?”
“Her job is growing tomatoes and peppers. The landlord lets us live there if we grow enough. He gets most of them.”
“Does he live nearby?”
“His house is in front of ours.”
“Can you live with him?”
“No. He’s mean. He hits people when he drinks beer.”
“Have you seen him hit somebody?”
Paco nodded. “He hit Rafael once. And he slapped Cassie.”
“So you have nowhere to go.”
Paco looked out at the lake, his eyes narrow beneath his frown. He didn’t reply.
“Where would you like me to take you?” I said. I was starting to worry.
“I guess I’ll have to stay with you.”
My worry turned to panic.
SEVEN
When we were in the Jeep, Paco asked, “What will I do at your cabin?” He sounded a little desperate.
“Hang out with Spot?” I said. That wasn’t a joke. Spot had rescued more than one person from despair.
Paco went silent. I ran possible housing scenarios for Paco through my mind. I had no long-term solutions and would no doubt have to go to Paco’s town in the Central Valley to find them, a town for which I had no name and no location. The temporary housing solutions for Paco mostly involved me, which made my breath short.
“Before we go to my home,” I said, “let’s see if we can find where you got out of the pickup. We might learn something about those guys who shot your foster mom.”
Paco shrugged.
I drove back to Van Sickle Bi-State Park where I’d found Paco, then followed all the roads closest to where the gondola went through the forest. We worked our way up the mountain, exploring the neighborhoods that fronted Heavenly Ski Resort.
At each likely place where the men could have stopped, allowing Paco to escape, I asked Paco if he recognized it.
He said no.
I repeated the process several times, eventually rising up Keller Rd. and then Saddle Rd. where the houses hung on the steep mountainside with unobstructed views across the big lake. We found several possible places where Paco could have run into the forest and made it over to the gondola, but Paco didn’t recognize any of them.
I headed back down the mountain and turned north on Lake Tahoe Blvd. We drove through Stateline, then north on 50, up the East Shore through low, swirling clouds. Past Cave Rock, I turned off on the private road that led to my cabin, and we headed up the mountain. I pulled onto my parking-pad driveway. Paco appeared to pay no attention to my excessively small cabin made of big logs, just as he paid no attention to the huge, angular, glass-and-timber-frame vacation homes of my summer-month and Christmas-week neighbors.
I let Spot out, and got all the way to the door before I realized that Paco hadn’t come. I went back and opened Paco’s door.
“This is my cabin. C’mon in.”
He shrugged and got out. The rain had lessened, and the clouds opened up a view across the lake. The mountains were visible on the far side of the water, their tops white with fresh snow. Paco walked to my front door without even noticing the world’s greatest view.
Spot lay down on his bed. Paco sat in the rocking chair.
“Why does Spot have an earring?” he asked.
“He got injured, and it made a tiny hole in his ear. So Street got him the earring.”
Paco looked at Spot. The faux diamond sparkled, moving slightly with each breath that Spot took.
“You want something to drink?” I said.
He shook his head. His face was blank. He didn’t rock the chair. He just stared toward the woodstove, maybe seeing it, maybe not.
I went into my kitchen nook, opened a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, took a drink.
I sat down across from Paco.
He looked at my beer.
“Don’t worry, I won’t hit you. I only hit bad guys, and even that is rare and has nothing to do with drinking beer.”
Paco didn’t respond.
“What is Cassie’s last name?” I asked.
“Moreno. But everyone calls her Cassie.”
“Do you know her friends?”
He thought about it. “She doesn’t have any friends.”
“She doesn’t like people?”
“She doesn’t have time.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Too much work. Cassie says that freedom comes with a price.”
“What’s the freedom?”
“She says working for herself is freedom.”
“What’s the price?”
“The price is you have to work all the time.”
“She works a lot?”
“That’s all she does.”
“Can you think of anyone I could talk to who knows her well?”
Paco stared into space. “Our clients.”
“Are they at the farmers’ market?” I asked.
“They used to be. We used to go to a different market every day. South Lake Tahoe, Truckee, Reno.”
“Why would you come all the way to Tahoe? Why not just do farmers’ markets near Stockton?”
He shrugged. “The people in the mountains like organic tomatoes and peppers.”
“It sounds like you help Cassie grow them.”
Paco nodded.
“Is that your specialty? Tomatoes and peppers?”
“Yeah. We have the best anywhere. Sungold, Brandywine, Big Beef, Fourth of July, and Better Boys.”
I grinned at his obvious pride.
“But our best tomatoes are Cassie’s Amazements,” he said. “She made them. And I helped.”
“You mean, you created a new type? Like a hybrid?”
“Yeah. She says big companies want the secret.”
“How did you make them?”
“We get pollen off certain flowers, and we put it on other flowers. Then we grow the seeds.”
“So you are scientists in addition to being organic farmers.”
Paco made a little nod like it was no big deal.
“And our peppers are Cassie’s Vipers,” he said.
“What does that mean, Cassie’s Vipers?”
“Hottest chili pepper in the world. Over a million Scoville units. Like the Naga Vipers in England. Cassie and me made it. She asked me what we should name it. I said they should be Cassie’s Vipers just like Cassie’s Amazements.”
“Scoville units mean how hot the peppers are?” I asked.
He nodded. “Over a million.”
“You said that you used to do farmers’ markets. Where do your customers go now?”
“Now we do deliveries.”
“Where do you deliver?”
“All over Tahoe. Cassie calls it Field To Fridge. It’s our business. Home-delivered produce, seven days a week.”
“She works seven days a week?”
Paco looked at me like I was stupid. “That’s what I told you.”
“What do you do when she’s always working?”
“When I’m not in school, I help her with Field To Fridge.”
“Her... Your customers here at the lake. Do you know their names?”
“Some.”
“What are they?”
“There’s Bridgett and Mike and Dr. Garcia and Mr. Schue. I don’t like Mike. There’s others, too, but I can’t remember.”
“Bridgett and Mike, do you know their last names?”
Paco shook his head.
“Do you know Mr. Schue or Dr. Garcia’s first name?”
“No.”
“Do you know where they live?”
He shrugged. “I know the houses when I see them.”
“So if we knew where to drive around, you might remember where they are.”
“Yeah.” Paco rocked the rocking chair for the first time, then stopped it after one oscillation.
“Were any of them on the lake? If so, that would make it a lot easier because we could just drive the lake-shore roads.”
“I think they’re all on the lake. No, not all. But most.”
“I may ask you to help me find some of those houses.” I sipped beer. “Why do you think Cassie wanted to come to Tahoe in the middle of the night? You didn’t deliver that early, did you?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know why.”
“What did she tell you?”
“She just woke me up and said we had to leave earlier than normal.”
“You mean, you still had to make your regular deliveries, but she had to go someplace first.”
Paco nodded.
“She give you a reason?”
Paco shook his head.
“Did she say anything during the drive?”
“No. I was asleep.”
I finished my beer, carried the bottle to the kitchen nook, came back.
“Paco, has anything been different lately?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, has Cassie been doing anything unusual? Different projects? Talking to different people? Working a different schedule?”
He shook his head.
“Why do you think she told you about contacting me if something happened?”
“I don’t know.”
“How did it come up?”
“I don’t know.”
“Think back. Something made her bring it up. She didn’t just say something like, ‘Paco, we’ll have dinner as soon as you finish your homework, and then I’ll tell you who to call in case something happens to me.’ She didn’t say it like that, right?”
“No. She was, like, upset. I don’t know why. She made me sit at the table and she said she had something important to tell me.”
I waited.
Paco continued. “She showed me a slip of paper with your name and phone number, and she showed me your number in her cell phone. She said that if anything bad ever happened to her, that I should call you. She said you were like a cop only you wouldn’t tell the real cops about us.”
“And she didn’t want to talk to the real cops because...?”
“Because they would take me away from her. She said that if you don’t have the right papers, you have to go to Mexico.”
“Did she tell you anything else?”
“No. She took me into my bedroom and showed me where she was going to put a note she wrote you. And your phone number.”
“Where did she put it?” I asked.
“She put the note up above one of the ceiling tiles. Then she taped your phone number to the dresser.”
“What’s the note about?”
“I don’t know,” Paco said. He looked down at the floor. “I told you I can’t read.”
“Is the note still in the ceiling?”
He nodded.
“Then tomorrow we’ll drive down to the valley and get it.”
Paco shrugged.
“Don’t you want to go home?”
“Not really.”
“You’ll miss school and your friends.”
“I don’t miss them.”
He didn’t say it with remorse or spite. Except for when he cried after being chased, he didn’t show any emotion.
“What do you want to do now?” I asked.
“Eat dinner.”
“We just ate.”
“That was a long time ago. You asked me a million questions since then.”
“So now you’re hungry.”
He nodded.
“Okay, I’ll get going on dinner. You got a preference?”
“I could eat another cheeseburger.”
I tho
ught about what I had in the fridge. “Tell you what. Because we just ate cheeseburgers, how about some chicken? You like chicken?”
He shrugged again. “It’s okay.”
I was starting to learn Paco’s vocabulary of shrugs. Some were affirmative, some negative, some in between.
I put some breast fillets in the oven, found an acorn squash, jump-started it in the microwave before adding it to the oven, put some canned green beans on the stovetop on low, sat down on the other chair near Paco.
“You want anything?” I said.
He looked at the woodstove. “That’s the furnace,” he said.
“Right.”
“Can you turn it on?”
“You cold? Sure.” There were just a few split logs in the rack. “Let me get some kindling.”
I took my bucket outside and got some huge Jeffrey pine cones from the can where I store them in the early fall.
Paco watched as I crumpled some paper, arranged a few of the big cones, set a split on top.
“You burn pine cones,” he said.
“Make great kindling.”
“We have a thermostat in our house,” he said.
“Dial heat is handy,” I said. “But I have to do it the old-fashioned way.” I struck a wooden match on the cast iron stove, lit the fire, sat with Paco while the fire grew behind the glass in the stove door.
Paco looked around the room. “Where’s your TV?”
“I don’t have a TV.”
Paco stared at me as if I were suddenly an alien. “Everyone has TV.”
“Everyone but me.”
“What do you do?”
“Work. Read. Go for hikes with Spot and Street. Stuff like that.”
“The bug lady,” he said.
I nodded.
Paco looked at Spot, then over at my shelves of art books.
“Why do you have all those books?”
“I like to look at them.”
“You read,” he said.
“Yeah, but those are art books, so they’re mostly pictures of paintings and sculptures. You want to look at some?”
Paco shook his head.
In time, I put some barbecue sauce on the chicken, and five minutes later I served up dinner on my little kitchen table.
Paco and I sat on the two fold-up chairs. We faced across from each other while Spot sat on the floor to one side, his head well above the table top. He watched Paco, following each forkful from the boy’s plate up to his mouth.
Paco ate his chicken, but left his squash and beans.
“Field To Fridge is all about selling and delivering produce,” I said.
