Marilyn had eight slices of bread on the worktable, and she made four roast beef sandwiches. She sliced the beef into quarter-inch slices, and each sandwich had two layers of sliced meat. She put two sandwiches into a brown paper bag for Hoke and wrapped her two in waxed paper. She had a vinyl shopping bag, and it was half filled with canned goods, mostly pork and beans and canned pineapple slices. She added her wrapped sandwiches to the bag.
“I got carryin’ privileges,” she said, smiling at Hoke. “But I been here for almos’ six months now.”
“I noticed,” Hoke said.
Mr. Sileo padlocked the walk-in freezer, the refrigerator, and the storeroom. He hit the No Sale key on the antique cash register, placed a twenty-dollar bill in the till, and left the drawer open. There was no other money in the till, but Hoke hadn’t seen him remove it. Either it was in his pockets, or he had locked it away in the freezer while Hoke watched Marilyn make the sandwiches.
Sileo frowned at Hoke. “Somebody breaks in and don’t find any money, he gets mad and breaks things up. So I always leave a twenty, just in case. It’s cheaper’n buying new tables and equipment.”
“Have you had many break-ins?”
Sileo shook his head. “Not since I been feedin’ the homeless any leftovers. They kind of watch out for me now.”
“I heard down at the pepper tree that Mr. Bock’s been looking for a crew chief. That’s what I do, you know. I haven’t worked in a kitchen for years.”
“You did a good job here. Mr. Bock’s always lookin’ for help, but you’ll have a much easier life workin’ here for me.”
“I need at least forty bucks a day, Mr. Sileo. I’ve got a sick wife up in Lake City to support.”
“You’ll make that much with Bock, but you’ll earn it— that is, if you’ve got the belly for it.”
“What d’you mean by that?”
“He works Haitians, that’s why. And he specks to get as much out of them as Mexicans. So his crew chiefs have to produce, that’s all I mean. I don’t hold nothin’ against Mr. Bock. He eats in here sometimes. You’re big enough to run a crew, but I didn’t figure you for a hard man.”
“How do I get to his farm?”
“You don’t want to go out there tonight. He’ll be down at the farmers’ market in the morning around five. I’ll be there too, buying produce, and I’ll point him out. I think once you talk to him or his foreman you’ll come back here with me.”
“I’ll be there.”
Marilyn and Hoke went out the back door, and Sileo barred it from the inside. Sileo left by the front door and double-locked it. Hoke said good-bye to Marilyn in the parking lot. She squeezed her body into a fenderless whale-shaped VW Beetle with oversize tires and drove away. The sun was down, but there would be at least another hour of daylight. The western sky was a mass of purple clouds, each of them edged in gold, and there was a slight breeze from the Glades.
The Filipino woman Hoke had eaten lunch with rose from a wooden crate beside the Dumpster. She came over and plucked at Hoke’s arm.
“You come home with me now?”
“Sure. In fact, if you’ve got a beer at home, I’ll even share my sandwiches with you.”
10
MRS. ELENA OSBORNE, NÉE ELENA ESPENIDA, LIVED IN the Lucky Star Trailer Park with her son, Warren, about nine sparsely settled blocks away from the cafeteria. As they walked together, Elena told Hoke a few things about her life. She was from San Fernando, Luzon, in the Philippine Islands, and had married a retired army staff sergeant. One of her friends in San Fernando had obtained a copy of a magazine called Asian Roses. The magazine was published and edited in Portland, Oregon. The subscribers were Americans, Australians, and New Zealanders who wanted to marry Asian women. Girls and women from Hong Kong, the Philippines, Japan, and Hawaii sent in their photographs, short biographies, and five dollars and were listed in the magazine. She and her girlfriend both had sent in snapshots, biographies, and five-dollar money orders. Her girlfriend had received three letters, and Elena had received only two. Her girlfriend was too timid to answer her letters, but Elena had answered one of hers. She hadn’t answered the other because it came from a seventy-one-year-old man who had recently lost his wife, and he had merely wanted a young woman to keep him warm at night. But the other letter, from Sergeant Warren Osborne, was very persuasive. He was a very handsome man who wanted a mother for his children and a companion to share his life in Immokalee, Florida. He had been retired from the army for two years, owned his own mobile home in the Lucky Star Trailer Park, and worked as a checker for Sunshine Packers. He also owned a Toyota pickup, only two years old, and he had never been married before. His mother had lived with him in the mobile home, but she had been dead for more than a year, and he was very lonely. He also felt, now that he was forty, that it was time to get married and have a son to carry on his name. He had told the truth about Immokalee, explaining that the town was in a rural area, with the same climate as the Philippines and that there were cities nearby—Naples and Fort Myers—where they could go and shop on weekends and see first-run movies and major-league baseball games during spring training.
They had corresponded, and after a few airmail letters back and forth, and discussions with her mother, Elena had agreed to marry him. She was twenty-one years old, and although she had an eighth-grade diploma and could read and write English very well, her opportunities to find a husband in San Fernando as well-off as Sergeant Osborne were nonexistent. When she agreed, he made all the arrangements for her visa through a lawyer in Fort Myers and sent her two hundred dollars and her airplane ticket from Manila to Fort Myers, Florida. She had given her mother one hundred dollars of the two, packed a suitcase, and made the long flight, changing planes in San Francisco. He met the plane in Fort Myers, and they were married three days later in Immokalee. Her son, Warren, Junior, was born ten months later. Her husband began to drink then, after her son was born, and, after three or four months, was fired from his job at Sunshine Packers. After he lost his job, he drank even more than he had before, and when he got drunk, he would sit at the little table in their trailer and cry.
One morning he went to the bank, drew out all his savings, and gave her five hundred dollars. He was going to drive upstate, he told her, and look for work. When he found a job, he would come back for her, Warren, Junior, and the trailer. No one in Immokalee, he told her, would hire him now, so they had to move away. That was almost three years ago, and she hadn’t heard from him since. His army retirement checks were no longer deposited electronically in the bank, and the teller at the bank didn’t know his new address.
When her money was exhausted, she had applied for welfare, and she got an extra allowance because of Warren, Junior. She also got food stamps, but there was very little cash left to live on after she paid her mobile home space rent and utilities. To make extra money, which she needed for Warren, Junior, she occasionally turned a trick.
Hoke was puzzled mildly by her story. But not for long.
There were twelve trailer homes in the dusty park. A barbed-wire fence surrounded the lot, which had a single entrance gate. Only residents had a key to the gate, and those residents who owned cars parked them outside the fence in a graveled lot. The manager lived in the first trailer beside the gate, and when Elena opened the gate with her key, he poked his grizzled head out of his front door to see who it was and then slammed his door again when he recognized Elena.
Elena’s trailer was small, with one bedroom and a double bed, a combination living room and galley, and a short corridor to the bedroom. There was a bathroom off one side of the corridor and an alcove closet across from the bathroom door. The furniture was mobile home standard, with an eating nook and cushioned seats. A window air-conditioner labored away above the table. A thirteen-inch black-and-white TV set was bolted to the wall beside the entrance door, and Elena switched it off when she ushered Hoke inside. There was a nose-tingling odor of urine and feces, but the trailer was clean. A framed black-a
nd-white photo of Warren Osborne in his uniform was on the wall. The man was handsome enough, Hoke noted, but the photo of the soldier had been taken when he was nineteen or twenty years old.
Warren, Junior, was in a quilted box in the closet alcove, and Elena pulled the box out so Hoke could take a good look at him. The boy was wearing a Pamper, but nothing else. He moved his thin arms feebly within the box. His tiny legs had atrophied. He had thick, curly red hair, bulging green eyes, and a protruding forehead. The head was much too large for his short body, and he was obviously retarded. His mouth was full of overlapping teeth, and the harsh sounds he made in his throat resembled the caw of an aging crow. The retarded child, Hoke figured, undoubtedly explained the serious drinking and the disappearance of Sergeant Osborne. As Hoke looked at the boy, he wanted a drink himself.
Elena took a two-liter bottle of Diet Coke out of her refrigerator, filled a baby bottle, added a nipple to it, and gave the bottle to Warren, Junior. She poured two glasses of Diet Coke and joined Hoke at the table. Hoke gave her one of his roast beef sandwiches, and she brought two plates to the table from the rack beside the sink. She cut her sandwich in half and then cut up one of the halves into small squares. She fed the bite-size pieces to Warren, who chewed greedily and sucked at the nippled bottle between bites. Hoke took her knife and cut his sandwich into bite-size chunks as well, and gummed them as well as he could before swallowing. When Elena finished feeding Warren, she sat across from Hoke and began to eat her own half sandwich. Hoke got up from the table. With his foot, he pushed the box containing Warren back into the alcove out of sight. He was no longer hungry, and looking at this deformed kid gave him a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.
“How long will he live? Warren, I mean?”
Elena shrugged. “I don’t know. We are all children of God, and God decides how long we will live.”
“That’s one way of looking at it. If I don’t get a job with Mr. Bock tomorrow, I’ll be going back to Miami. If you want me to, I can find out where your husband went. I don’t think he’ll come back to you, but there’re ways to make him send you child support.”
“No.” She shook her head and smiled. “When Warren finds a job, he will send for me.” She crossed herself. “But sometimes, I think, maybe he is dead.”
“He isn’t dead, Elena. When he dies, you’ll be told, and the government’ll give you a VA pension and an American flag to hang on the wall beside his picture. I can find him easily enough, if you want me to.”
“You are a good man, I think. I change Warren’s Pamper, then we fuck, okay?”
Hoke went outside to roll and smoke another cigarette while Elena changed the helpless boy. He had never changed the diapers on his daughters (there had been no Pampers then) and had always gone out into the yard when his wife changed them. He didn’t mind changing Pepe, however, so he thought he had gotten over this hang-up. He could not understand why, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to watch Elena change her three-year-old without getting sick.
Hoke’s initial problem had been solved, however. If Tiny Bock asked him how he knew about the job opening for crew chief, he could tell him that a Mexican at the pepper tree had told him about it, and also Mr. Sileo. He would talk to Bock at the farmers’ market, and then, when he was turned down, as he would surely be, he could return to Miami. On the other hand, if Bock and his foreman came to the market every morning, it might be possible to visit Bock’s farm and look around while they were at the market. That would mean staying over another day or two, but then he could at least tell Brownley that he had nosed around and found nothing.
Elena opened the door, and Hoke took one more drag before stripping his cigarette and going back inside. Elena had taken off her elastic top and denim skirt and was removing her panties and bra when Hoke sat at the little table to finish his Diet Coke. Without her high heels she was much shorter—about four-nine—and despite her small breasts, she had long dark brown nipples. Her short legs were noticeably bowed. She had an abundance of pubic hair; but it hung straight down, like a lamp fringe, and there wasn’t a single kinky hair. Hoke had never seen straight pubic hair before, and he found it exotic but not erotic. That was all he needed, he thought, a case of AIDS to take back to Miami with him.
Hoke took out Adam Jinks’s wallet, removed the five-dollar bill Mr. Sileo had given him and put it on the table. He weighted it with the catsup bottle so the breeze from the air-conditioner wouldn’t blow it away.
“I’d like to fuck you, Elena,” Hoke said, “but I’m a married man. I’ve got a sick wife up in Lake City. Are you a Catholic?”
She nodded.
“Then you understand why I can’t make love to you. But I’ll give you this five if you let me take a shower in your bathroom and sleep here tonight. This table pushes up and the cushions make into a bed, right?”
She nodded again. “But bed is too short for you. You take back bed, and I’ll sleep here.” She went to the alcove closet and pulled out a gray-and-white seersucker wrapper. “You go ahead. Shower. I’ll stay up and watch TV.” She slipped into the wrapper and tied the sash into a bow. “No hot water in shower, but it’s not too cold.”
Hoke took off his shirt and went into the bathroom. The zinc-lined bathroom was cramped, and so was the narrow shower, and the water came out in a drizzling trickle. There was a brown bar of Fels Naptha soap in the dish, and he soaped his body and his hair. Elena opened the door and came in.
“You want a slow hand job in shower? Hand job not the same as adultery.”
“No, thanks, Elena. If I wanted a hand job, I could do it myself. Women don’t know how to do it right anyway.”
“I know how. You like?”
“No, but thanks anyway.”
The lukewarm water felt good on his body, and Hoke took his time rinsing away the thick suds. After drying with Elena’s clean pink bath towel, Hoke took his clothes to the bedroom and lay down on top of the bed. There was a sheet on the bed but no covers. None was needed. The chilly air from the air-conditioner didn’t reach this far back in the trailer, and he was soon perspiring again. Hoke set his mental alarm for 4:00 A.M. and fell asleep immediately on the rubber mattress.
HOKE AWOKE WITH A START IN THE DARK, FEELING UNEASY, not knowing where he was for a moment, and then he sat up and dressed. As he pulled on his white socks, he regretted not washing them when he showered. The toes were sticky, and they were still stiff with sweat. The living room-kitchen overhead light was on, and Elena got up from the couch when she heard Hoke open the sliding door to the bathroom. When Hoke came out of the bathroom, she was stirring a pot of oatmeal on the tiny two-burner stove. She put two slices of white bread into the toaster.
“What time is it?”
“Four-fifteen,” she said. “It’s too early to get up.”
“I’ve got to find the farmers’ market, and I’m not sure where it is.”
“In the big lot behind Golden Packinghouse. You’ll see all the lights.”
Hoke rearranged the seats in the eating nook, pulled down the Samsonite tabletop, and locked it in place. He had slept well, but he was still sleepy. He rolled a cigarette. “Aren’t you going to make coffee?”
“No coffee.” She poured a glass of Diet Coke and brought it to the table. She then served Hoke a bowl of oatmeal and handed him a spoon. Apparently she was out of milk as well. Hoke crumbled his toast into the hot oatmeal. Cawing sounds came from the closet, and Elena gave Warren a nippled bottle of Diet Coke. The caws stopped, and she filled a smaller bowl with oatmeal for Warren and placed it on the counter to cool. She sat across from Hoke and watched him eat.
“You want to shave? I’ll boil some hot water for you.”
“No. Yes, I want to shave, but I’m trying to see how I’ll look with a beard. Aren’t you going to eat anything?”
“Too early for me. I’m going back to bed.”
“I’m sorry I took your bed, but there was room enough if you wanted to sleep with me.”
; “You said you no like me.”
“I didn’t say that. I said I didn’t want to fuck you, that’s all, and I explained why.”
She shrugged and made a face.
“Have you got a social worker? D’you take Warren to a clinic for checkups?”
“Sometimes. You want more oatmeal? Toast?”
“No, but thanks for breakfast.”
Elena got up from the table and picked up the small bowl of oatmeal and a teaspoon. Hoke didn’t want to watch Elena feed Warren or even take a final look at the kid in his box. He patted Elena on the head, said good-bye, and left the trailer. There was a buzzer on a post that opened the gate from inside. Hoke pressed it and walked down the street. The city was dark, except for a brightly lighted area down by the tracks. Hoke headed for the lighted area.
THE FARMERS’ MARKET WAS WELL LIGHTED, AND THERE WAS a great deal of activity in the large lot. Stalls were set up, and there were overhead strings of light bulbs crisscrossing the area. The larger hotels and restaurants from Naples, Fort Myers, and Marco Island sent cooks to buy produce in the market, and small farmers had regular booths. The buyers prodded and squeezed produce, and there were excellent bargains. Cantaloupes that sold for $1.39 apiece in supermarkets could be purchased here for thirty-five cents apiece. There were lugs of lettuce, tomatoes, turnips, and other vegetables that sold for only a fraction of the prices they sold for in supermarkets, Hoke noticed. Eight cents’ worth of broccoli could be transformed by a Naples nouvelle chef into a $5.95 side dish. An old lady was selling doughnuts and coffee in a booth, and Hoke bought a twenty-five-cent Styrofoam cup of coffee. Carrying his cup, he strolled slowly through the lot, looking for Mr. Sileo. He found him in the parking lot. Mr. Sileo was hefting a fifty-pound sack of potatoes into the back of his Impala station wagon. The back was already loaded with vegetables. There was a dead naked child on the passenger side of the front seat. Startled, Hoke took a closer look and recognized that the body was the carcass of a dressed lamb.
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