The Perk

by Mark Gimenez

  J.B. gestured at the crowd of men gathered around Niels Eichman and said to Beck, "Those old boys are the richest Germans hereabouts. Goat ranchers, every one of them. They own most of the land in the county … and they own all the politicians in the county. Including the judge, until Stutz retired. Now they got to buy a new one."

  "They can't buy me."

  "But they can buy the D.A."

  "You saying I can't win?"

  "I'm saying you won't win."

  "Why not?"

  " 'Cause you're standing here talking to me and he's over there talking to them."

  "I didn't get into this to lose, J.B."

  "Then go over there and do something about it."

  Beck looked down at Meggie holding the doll in one hand and a cotton candy on a stick in the other.

  "Honey, you stay close to J.B. Daddy's got to go kick some … talk to some folks. Okay?"

  "Okay."

  J.B. said to Meggie and Luke, "Come on, kids, let's go over to the Show Barn for the swine futurity."

  Meggie looked up at her grandfather. "J.B., what's a swine?"

  "I'm fixin' to show you, darlin'."

  They walked off, and Beck strode over to the group of old men—he felt like he had when the Notre Dame coach had him glad-hand rich alumni—and stuck his hand out.

  "Hidi, boys—Beck Hardin. Good to see you again. So what's this I hear about winning a state football championship this year?"

  They all turned his way and their faces lit up like he was LBJ himself walking in with their mohair checks. Beck glanced over at the D.A. and winked. The D.A.'s face wasn't lit up. His face was red, and he was frowning.

  Thirty minutes later, J.B. said, "How'd it go?"

  "We talked football."

  J.B. chuckled. "Well, at least they talked to you."

  "Yeah, but I saw it in their eyes, J.B. They're not going to vote for me. They've been living a certain way all their lives. They're not changing now. Doesn't matter if the election is for county judge or county fair queen, result's the same. Always has been, always will be."

  The Gillespie County Fair Queen had just been announced to the crowd in the grandstand. Another pretty German girl had won this year. One hundred years the county fair had elected a queen; one hundred years the queen had been German. Always had been, always would be.

  "Beck, if you quit—"

  "Quit? Who said anything about quitting? This game's not over yet, J.B."

  ELEVEN

  Two weeks later, the game was all but over. The D.A. was leading Beck in early voting by a five-to-one margin. Jodie had coaxed the latest results from Mavis Mooney; she was not happy.

  "How many football games did you lose?"

  "A few."

  "How many trials?"

  "None."

  "Well, you're going to lose your first election in one week … unless …"

  Beck turned to her. "Unless what?"

  "Most people around here are married by eighteen and parents by nineteen—nothing else to do in a small town. The D.A. is thirty-two and single."

  "You saying he's gay?"

  "No. He's a daddy."

  "But he's not married."

  "That's not a requirement."

  "Explain."

  "He's got a child in Austin. Seven years old now. He was in law school at UT, the mother was in college. He sends her money."

  "How do you know this?"

  "Mavis. Stutz told her one day, she thinks he was drinking. Stutz knows everything about everyone."

  Beck shrugged. "Half the movie stars in Hollywood have children out of marriage."

  "She's Latina. The mother. That makes him a hypocrite."

  "Most of the politicians in Texas are hypocrites."

  "Maybe, but the old Germans, they won't elect a judge with a Latino child."

  "You want me to use that to win?"

  "Yes."

  "I never won that way."

  "Thought you were a lawyer."

  "Oh, I played hardball, but not sleazeball."

  "Beck, you haven't lived here the last ten years, seen how it is. I'm tired of living in a town where people are afraid. If you're the judge, you can change that. You can change this town."

  Beck shielded his eyes from the low sun. The eighth day of September was still hot, but by five the sun's heat had played out for the day. The heat was bad for humans but good for grapes.

  "Jodie, you're expecting a lot from me. You might be disappointed."

  She turned and looked up at him.

  "I don't think you'll disappoint me, Beck Hardin."

  They were standing in the vineyard watching Meggie and Josefina carry a basket of grapes between them over to the bins manned by Luke and Danny, Janelle's twelve-year-old son. Luke dumped the grapes into one of the bins sitting on a small trailer. The girls carried the basket back to their picking spot, where Butch was waiting. Meggie's goat followed behind like a duckling following its mother. It was last harvest at the Trail's End Winery.

  "They're cute," Jodie said.

  "She named the goat Frank."

  "Odd name for a goat."

  "Especially for a girl goat."

  "Is she still having accidents?"

  "The goat?"

  "Meggie."

  "Yeah. I read the books, but nothing's worked."

  J.B. drove past on the green Gator. He stopped at Luke's trailer, backed into place, and hitched up.

  "You boys hang on."

  He gunned the Gator and drove off with the trailer and boys in tow. Hector was in the winery overseeing the grape processing, and his wife was up at the house cooking for the fiesta. The winery hands were helping Hector, and their families were spread out over the vineyard, handpicking the grapes. Aubrey was picking alongside Janelle; the Goats had won their first game the night before, 56-0 in San Antonio. Slade McQuade had thrown for five touchdowns.

  Beck and Jodie were picking together.

  "She didn't think I could raise the kids alone. Said I was a lawyer, not a father."

  "Annie?"

  Beck nodded. "In her emails to J.B."

  "Beck, she—"

  "Was right."

  By the time they had filled their baskets, J.B. had returned with the trailer and the boys. Beck carried the baskets over to the bin. He heard Danny say, "My dad left us."

  "But he's still alive," Luke said.

  "Not to me."

  When the boys saw him, they went mute like lawyered-up suspects. Luke emptied the baskets into the bin.

  "You're doing good, Luke."

  He gave Beck the baskets and a half smile.

  An hour later the picking was done, and all hands had gathered on the patio for the grape stomp. J.B. had dumped grapes into a dozen barrels cut in half; the kids were now giggling and stomping the grapes into mush and getting purple in the process. With the destemmer and press, the stomp was just for fun.

  Jodie jumped into the barrel nearest Beck. She was wearing a wreath of purple grapes and green leaves on her head and a traditional grape harvest outfit, a colorful shirt and long skirt, which she now hitched up thigh high. Her legs were muscular and soon purple with grape juice. The setting sun caught her face like it had Annie's on that Hawaiian beach. She was quite beautiful. She bent over, and Beck caught the briefest glimpse of her black panties—and he felt a slight stirring, something he thought had died with Annie. Something he hadn't thought about in a long time. He looked up at her face and saw her looking at him. He felt his face flush. He turned away.

  Jesus, you're pathetic. Your wife's been dead eight months and you're looking like that at a lesbian.

  "She's a looker, ain't she?" Aubrey had sat down next to Beck with a beer. "How old you figure she is, thirty-five?"

  "I don't know."

  Aubrey drank from his beer.

  "Seems a shame, a good-looking woman like her going to waste."

  "She's not a dead deer rotting on the side of the road, Aubrey. She and Janelle, they're
happy in their own way."

  "Aw, I'm just jealous, I guess. They both got something we don't."

  "What's that?"

  "A woman." Aubrey again drank from his beer then said, "So what was Grady holding back from me?"

  A lawyer has an ethical duty to disclose to his client all the information he learns in the course of his representation of that client. Beck Hardin had never failed that duty. But he had never before learned that a client's daughter had had sex with two men on the same night. So he didn't answer his client.

  "Did Heidi have a cell phone?"

  Aubrey shook his head. "Wouldn't let her have one. So you ain't learned nothing? Beck, we only got three months and twenty-two days to find this guy."

  "Aubrey, the election is a week from today. It's not looking good."

  "I never figured you for winning. Hell, those San Antonio boys had a better chance of winning against Slade—he played like a man among boys. He was a man among boys." He chuckled. "But you're still my lawyer, Beck. I'll find a way to pay you."

  "I don't want your money."

  A lanky older black man walked up with a beer in his hand. Beck reached over and shook hands with him.

  "Mr. Johnson, how're you doing?"

  The man shook hands with Aubrey then sat.

  "Beck, I reckon you're old enough to call me Gil now. Course, this time next week I'll have to call you 'judge.' "

  "Doubtful. Gil, you still build the best rock I've ever seen."

  The patio had been laid out like a courtyard. The rear limestone wall of the winery formed one side and a four-foot-high limestone wall the others; the walls joined to form a fireplace constructed of river rock. J.B. had built a roaring fire that didn't seem out of place on a warm September evening. The patio was covered by a pitched cedar roof supported by thick logs fixed in rock beddings. The floor was stained concrete. Every piece of rock had been hand-laid by Gil Johnson.

  "Why, thank you, Beck. I'm kind of proud of this patio." Gil Johnson shook his head. "Hell of a thing, ain't it? Saturday night and none of us got a woman. What we should do is, go over to the auction house and buy us one. They got the Fall Female Replacement sale going on. And boys, we need replacements."

  "Shame it ain't as easy as buying a heifer," Aubrey said.

  "Life is better with a woman," Gil said. Then in a softer voice: "I was married once."

  "I never knew that," Beck said.

  "Her name was Doris. She died in childbirth. Baby was coming out feet first, midwife couldn't turn it. Lost both of them, her and the child. Boy."

  "I'm sorry, Gil."

  "I'm sorry about your wife, too, Beck. But they're in a better place now. It's us that are left here to suffer. Don't know why the Good Lord keeps me around." He downed his beer and stood. "Now I'm getting melancholy on a Saturday night. Reckon I'll go help Lillianna with the food."

  Hector's wife had pulled up in J.B.'s black pickup truck. Everyone sat at the picnic tables on the patio and ate enchiladas, tacos, guacamole, rice, beans, and handmade flour tortillas until Hector began playing his guitar and singing a Mexican ballad. J.B. grabbed Jodie and pulled her up to dance. Gil and Janelle were next, then Libby dragged a reluctant Luke out. Beck lifted Meggie and danced with her in his arms. Aubrey tapped his cane on the concrete floor. The winery workers and their wives and kids joined in, and they all danced until Hector's hands were too tired to play.

  Julio Espinoza was invisible.

  He stood right there, yet no one saw him. He was like that movie poster on the wall: an inanimate object. He had often thought of jumping onto the counter and stripping naked, just to get someone to acknowledge that he existed. But he never had, because that would have brought trouble to his family.

  His parents were illegals. They had come to Fredericksburg nineteen years before from Piedras Negras to work in the turkey plant. And that was to be his life as well, twelve hours each day killing and gutting turkeys for the Mexican wage. But Julio wanted more, more than the life he had been born into, the life the world told him to accept as his own. Julio was seventeen, he would be the first Espinoza to ever graduate from high school, and he would be the first to go to college.

  He wanted to build rockets at NASA.

  He was a senior, he made straight As, he had scored 2350 on the SAT, and he had been accepted at the University of Texas at Austin with a full scholarship—but only because he was Latino. Because he served their purpose: "Oh, look, we have found a smart Latino. Let us help him and show the world what good Anglos we are." They wanted to display him like a rare species, as if finding a smart Latino in Texas were some sort of great anthropological discovery—like finding a dinosaur bone!

  The school counselor had told him, "Julio, take the free ride. Sure, they're giving you a free college education just because you're Latino, but that's no different than dumb jocks getting free rides just because they can play football." But it felt different to Julio. If felt wrong to get a scholarship just because his skin was brown, just as it felt wrong to walk down Main Street and be viewed as a crime waiting to happen just because his skin was brown.

  Julio did not want the Anglos' help. He did not want to go to college on the Anglos' money. He did not want to live his life on the Anglos' terms. He wanted to go to college and live his life on his own terms with his own money.

  But he had no money.

  So he worked weekend nights here at the theater and weekend days with his father. Rafael Espinoza worked at the turkey plant during the week and built rock for the rich Anglos' new houses on weekends. Julio's hands ached this night from his work that day. His father was from the old school; he spoke only Spanish at home and in his native tongue he had often said, "Julio is not going to build rockets—he is going to build rock!" But his mother, Maria, always replied in her sharp Mexican tongue, "No, Rafael, building rock is not to be his life! Julio must have the education so he will have a better life and so he may help his brothers and sisters to a better life!" Rafael Espinoza was the hombre of the house, except when Maria Espinoza was home.

  Home was the barrio on South Milam, just five blocks off Main Street but in the part of town the tourists do not see. Tourists drive south on Milam, cross Baron's Creek, and turn right on Whitney Street to dine at the Herb Farm on—and Julio had read this in the newspaper—"Herb & Coffee Bean Crusted Tenderloin Served with Rosemary & Garlic Potato Mash & Grilled Asparagus with Lemon Herb Hollandaise" and after dinner to purchase aromatherapy bath salts in the gift shop. They do not continue just one block farther south on Milam into the barrio to dine on cabrito cooked over an open pit and drink Tecate to the sounds of Tejano music and after dinner to purchase marijuana, cocaine, and meth from El Gato, the neighborhood dealer.

  Julio lived in the barrio but he hoped one day to taste a Coffee Bean Crusted Tenderloin.

  His was a casa pequeña: living room, kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom. His father worked the night shift, so his mother slept in the bed with Juan, the baby, and Rosita, the two-year-old. Margarita slept on the couch, and Gilberto and Jorge slept on pads on the floor in the living room. Julio slept in the bathtub. Each night he dried the tub with a towel then placed a pad and his pillow in the tub. Sometimes he would wake with a crick in his neck. But he could shut the door and read by flashlight after the others were asleep. He had read many books in the bathtub.

  But Julio did not complain. Other houses in the barrio were home to three and four families each, often twenty people in four rooms. All Mexicans. All illegal. All invisible. Careful to stay in the shadows so as not to bring trouble to their families. When the girl had been found dead in the ditch, the Anglos blamed the Mexicans; and the Mexicans had been fearful of a raid in retaliation. One phone call could bring ICE into the barrio, immigration agents wearing black jackets and pointing guns and ordering everyone into buses for immediate deportation to Nuevo Laredo. Fear of a raid never left the Latinos; they carried the fear with them always just as the Anglos carried their cell phones.

&
nbsp; If trouble came to the barrio, it would come to the Espinoza family. Julio and his siblings had been born in America; they were citizens. But if their parents were deported, they would have to move to Mexico with them. And there were no universities in Nuevo Laredo; there were only the narco-traficantes.

  So Julio stayed out of trouble.

  He did not hang out on the Latino porch during lunch at the high school with the other Latinos, their arms and necks wrapped with white bandages that covered their tatts; gang tattoos violated the school dress code, so tatts had to be covered with long-sleeve shirts or bandages. On hot days when the boys wore short-sleeves and bandages, the Latino porch looked like the burn unit at the hospital.

  Of course, Julio also did not hang with the sk8rs, the socialites, the jocks, or the rednecks with the Long Live John Wayne bumper stickers on their new Ford F-150 pickup trucks. He wasn't a skateboarder, he wasn't rich, he wasn't a football player, and he wasn't German.

  He was invisible.

  Julio was invisible in town, at school, and here at work. He was just the brown boy selling snacks to Anglos, just as invisible as the brown men roofing Anglo homes and the brown women cleaning dishes at the Anglo restaurants. He was as invisible to the Anglos as the hot wind on their faces, and far less important.

  Julio did not want to live his life invisible.

  His parents had long ago resigned themselves to such a life; it was the trade-off a Mexican must make for a better life in America. An invisible better life. But Julio was an American citizen. He should not have to make that trade-off. He should not have to live his life invisible.

  But it would always be so here.

  He had often wondered, what is it about a brown face that brought anger to the Anglos? But he had never found an answer, until Juan was born. Julio had walked to the hospital just down the road and gone to the nursery to see Juan lying there in his crib wrapped like a papoose. And Julio then looked at the other new babies; they all had brown faces. His eyes met those of the Anglo nurse; and in her eyes he saw the knowledge that with each brown baby that came into her nursery, her world was changing.

  The Anglos' world was changing.

  Now when Julio walked downtown and the Anglos looked upon him with disdain, he just smiled, because he now understood: his brown face did not make them angry; it made them afraid. They did not hate him; they feared him. They feared the future. Because his brown face was their future. Because change was upon them.