Ray said something to James and then punched him in the arm when James didn’t respond. As she scolded Ray, Mary noticed that the company truck was parked twenty feet away. She shouldn’t have looked that driver in the eye. Now she’d been marked as someone to watch. She cursed herself for her bad attitude, warned Ray to stop bothering his brother or else, then went back to work so that she wouldn’t be accused of agitation. A group of pickers had set out demands for better pay and conditions. The next day, those same men and their families were gone, replaced by people who were so grateful for the work that it would be a while before they would cause trouble.
The driver got out of his truck. He wore clean slacks and a shirt that still bore the creases of pressing. The cleanliness set him apart. That and the skin on the back of his neck, which was so pale it seemed to reflect the sun. He gestured with unscarred hands as he spoke to the field manager. Mary’s fingers looked like carrots just yanked from the ground. The dirt was so deeply encrusted in the lines that scored her palms that a fortune-teller would have had no trouble seeing whether her life was lucky or not. After years in the fields, her skin was beginning to darken, as if her mother’s Cherokee had finally surfaced to offer its protection. A few months earlier, Mary had gotten word that Doris had died of pneumonia. She had lost the farm in Tahlequah, and Mary’s brothers had taken her with them when they moved to the western part of the state. Just in time for all that dust that made it impossible to go from the house to the privy without tying a rope to your waist so you didn’t get lost. A life of throwing water on a dirt floor and beating sheets with a broom twice a week, and it was dust that got Doris in the end. There’s nothing I can do about that, either.
The man took off his hat and ran his hand over his blond hair, which fell just below his ears, a length that would have been a tease to the lice that made women in the camp take razors to their children’s scalps. There were days when Mary thought her kids were of a race of bald, alien creatures from the funny pages who had landed on a citrus farm in California. The sun picked up the golden hairs on the man’s forearm, reminding her of the wheat fields back home, and then of Toby. It had been four years since his death, but she could still summon the feeling of his hand on her calf when she climbed the ladder to unload her sack of cotton onto the bed of the truck. Her skin had been a magnet to his fingers no matter how tired and sore and sick he was. But when she tried to summon his face, she could see him only as he was at the end, his lips nearly black, his eyes sunken in their bruised sockets. It was painful to see untouched beauty in the form of this golden man.
One afternoon, she walked some distance from the camp to find a place to go to the bathroom, leaving Ellie and Trevor in charge of the others. She knew it was vain to crave privacy, but it irked her that the things in life that should belong solely to an individual—what a man and woman got up to at night or what a body had no more use for—became the day’s news to strangers. She heard a voice behind her. “Excuse me, ma’am.” It was no more than a hoarse whisper. She’d heard of women being raped by desperate men and quickened her pace, but his footsteps trailed hers. She knew she would not be able to outrun him if it came to that. She spun around, screamed, and clawed at his face. He cursed and jumped back. With horror, she realized she’d attacked the man from the truck. He would fire her for certain. She would not be able to collect for the work done so far that week, since the agreement was for six days’ work or no pay at the end of the day on Saturday. She would pack up before dinner. The children would complain; they were hungry all the time now and they waited for her to feed them the way her old farm dog used to wait by his bowl with a craven look in his eyes. She would be hard-pressed to find another camp before nightfall, but the kids were used to sleeping in the car. How much gas was in the Hudson? She had been planning to fill up on payday. Her fingernails had scratched the man’s cheek. Would he have her arrested?
“You oughtn’t to sneak up on someone that way,” she said, her adrenaline making her unaccountably brave.
“I didn’t expect to be attacked.”
“If I’d really attacked you, you would be bleeding.”
“I’ve seen you,” he said.
“And now you see me again.”
“My name is Charles Dodge. Charlie . . .”
Dodge Farms, she thought. “Good for you.”
“I don’t know who you are.”
“My name is Mary Coin, and if you’re going to fire me, just let me know it. I got kids back there who don’t need me to linger with strangers.”
“I’m not a stranger. We’ve just now exchanged introductions.”
“Knowing the name of a man doesn’t count as familiar.”
He had a careful smile, as if he were waiting for someone to ask him what there was to be happy about. Maybe he would let her work through the end of the week.
“Do you mind if I walk with you?” he said.
“You want to escort me while I take care of my needs?”
His face colored. “I’m sorry that you don’t have more privacy at the camp.”
“Are you going to do anything about it?”
“I don’t see how it’s possible,” he said apologetically.
“Then don’t be sorry. Except about your bad timing.”
She turned and walked on. She found some high bushes, lifted her skirt around her waist, pulled down her underwear, and squatted. Suddenly, the situation struck her as funny and she started laughing. Her urine spluttered in fits and jerks, which seemed still more amusing as it brought to mind James standing with his pants pulled down, his sweet, dimpled bottom so carelessly exposed while he concentrated hard on his pee.
When she headed back toward camp, the man was still by the side of the road, staring into the brambles as if he was studying something important there.
“I was just . . .” he said, but he had obviously not thought up a reasonable excuse.
“Some people would think it a queer thing to wait on a woman when she’s doing her business,” she said.
“Do you always say what you mean?”
“I’m not clever enough to make things up.” She started walking toward the camp, and he walked alongside her.
“I envy you,” he said.
She stopped and looked at him. “You know what? If you’re going to insist on talking to me, you cannot say things like that.”
“I don’t understand.”
“When you say that you envy me, you’re putting me down.”
“But I’m not.”
“You think I haven’t read my Bible? Blessed are the meek? There’s nothing blessed about having to empty yourself in the bushes.”
“I just wanted to talk to you,” he said quietly.
“You won’t get what you came for.”
His expression fell. “You think so little of yourself?”
“The opposite,” she said. They had reached the edge of the camp, and she walked away from him quickly in order to put distance between herself and gossip.
• • •
He was in the grove again the next day. She felt his eyes on her as she climbed up and down the ladder, knew that he could see the sweat stain that ran down the back of her blouse and the dark half-moons of wetness underneath her arms. She refused to meet his gaze. She felt enraged that he had so easily taken control of her thoughts, as if she were simply part of the land over which he had rights. But at night she found herself restless and irksome, each child doing or saying something that annoyed her. She could not sleep and spent hours outside the tent pacing here and there and nowhere, just walking to stop her body from feeling itself. The next time she saw him in the field, she looked right at him and did not turn away. When she walked out of the camp that evening, he was there.
When they were finished, he stayed on top of her. His spent weight anchored her in a way she liked. She never stopped moving fr
om one farm to the next, and when she reached a new place, she had to set up the tent and get the children settled and prepare food and keep them as clean as she could, and get them to go to school if there was a school nearby, and then she went to work and picked and pulled and climbed up and down ladders. Except for her few hours of restless sleep each night, there seemed to be hardly any time when she wasn’t in motion. Now came the relief of his body making it impossible for her to move, this solitary moment of not having to make a decision. But she immediately distrusted the feeling realizing it was a figment of loneliness and knowing, too, that there was nothing to be gotten from this more than what she had already received—a little warmth and that blessed moment afterward when her thoughts were caught in the space between seconds and she just hung there, momentarily free until it passed. She pushed him off her, lifted her hips, and tugged down her dress.
“You’re beautiful,” he said.
“I know what I am.” She stood up, straightened herself out, and walked away.
They met each evening for two weeks. When she started to bleed she did not come to him. During those days she could feel his eyes on her but she didn’t look up. If she passed him at the weighing truck she struck up a conversation with another woman so that he would not try to talk to her. When her week was over, she felt the familiar agitation in her breasts and thighs and, the next time she saw him, she made sure to catch his eye.
“I thought you’d given up on me,” he said when she met him on the road that evening.
“I never counted on you to begin with.”
“You always do that?”
“Always do what?”
“Decide what a thing is before it’s happened?”
“I don’t have the luxury of chance, mister.”
“Don’t call me mister, like I’m some man you bumped into on the street.”
“But that’s who you are. Exactly that man.”
He stood close enough to her so that she could feel his breath on her face. She felt self-conscious, ill-equipped for what was happening. “I haven’t washed,” she said quietly. “I stink of dirt. Of your dirt.”
“I don’t care.”
“Of course you don’t.”
“Please, Mary,” he said. “Please.”
• • •
He wanted to know things about her. Where was she from? Who were her parents? He was intrigued that she was a half-breed, and he studied her face, looking for the Indian in her. He never asked about the man who gave her six children, and she was relieved not to speak Toby’s name. The omission allowed her to pretend that what she was doing was separate from her real life, and that the comfort and excitement she felt were in her control. She could walk away at any time. It would be as if these tussles in the weeds had never happened, as if this man were just a character from a dream.
“How many brothers and sisters do you have?” he asked one night. He was lying on top of her and he gently blew strands of hair off her forehead.
“What do you want to know all these things for?” she asked.
“I want to know you.”
“Why?”
He laughed. “What do you think we’re doing here?”
“Fucking.”
He rolled off her and lay on his back.
“What?” she said. “Are you courting me? Are you going to marry me?”
“You have a hard heart, do you know that?”
“Look at me,” she said.
He stood up, buttoning his shirt, adjusting his trousers.
“I said, look at me.” Her dress was open, her chest exposed. “You know what I think when I see myself, when I see these?” She slapped her hand over her breasts. “I don’t think of you kissing them. I think, I wish I still had milk coming and that one of my kids was young enough to drink it, ’cause then it would be one less hungry child at dinnertime.”
“Sometimes I don’t understand you at all,” he said.
She stood up, buttoning her dress. “I don’t need you to know what my favorite flower is or the name of my first dog. That doesn’t do me any good.”
“You want me to pay you?” he said angrily. “Is that what you’re after?” He reached into the back pocket of his pants and took out his wallet. He tossed some bills on the ground between them.
“I’m pregnant,” she said.
She could tell by his reaction that although he was curious about the particulars of her past, he would not be interested in her future.
18.
Bakersfield, California, 1935
Earl said “These kids of yours” when they were making too much noise in the back of the car or when a virus of giggles ran from one to the other inside the tent when they should have been bedding down for the night. Still, he smiled when Della put her head on his shoulder during a long car ride, and he loved to make a penny disappear in his sleeve just to elicit Ray’s awed surprise.
“You don’t have to tell me they’re mine,” Mary said, to let him know that she had no expectations of him.
She met him in December, a month after the baby was born. Driving as far from the Dodge groves as her gas would allow, she found day work picking beans and cabbage. The jobs were scarce. The roads were filled with trucks and cars. Families with no cars walked on foot. Some people simply sat by the side of the road as if they’d finally decided to remain in one place and see if the hard times would pass by like bad weather. In Bakersfield, she left Ellie in charge of the others and joined a hiring line. When she reached the front, the foreman looked her over, judged her wizened frame and her bone-thin arms, then pushed the air with his hand as if the wind he created would be enough to blow her away.
The car was nearly out of gas. Her kids hadn’t eaten anything to speak of in two days. “Sign me up,” she said.
“We need to get this harvest pulled before the cold weather comes in.”
“I know what the work is.”
“Move on, ma’am.”
“You’re paying thirty-five cents an hour and you’re turning me down? Bet you won’t let me work for free, neither.”
A man behind her laughed.
“We don’t need troublemakers,” the foreman said. “I’m telling you to move on.”
Two goons stood behind the foreman, cradling rifles. She wasn’t surprised. She’d seen a man leap across a table and try to strangle a bursar on payday because he didn’t think he was getting his due. Armed men patrolled the fields now, watching who was talking to whom.
“Move on where?” Mary said. “To the not-hiring farm down the road? Or the one after that?”
“Lady . . .”
“I’ve got seven kids and no gas in my car.”
“You know how many times I hear that story every day?”
“Well, it’s no story. It’s my life. If I say I’ll do a job, I’ll do it just as good as anyone.”
The goons shifted their guns, but she would not back down. She couldn’t. Finally, the man held out his pen and she signed. When she walked away she did not sense her victory. Since giving birth, something had weakened in her, and not only in her body. It was a faltering of her spirit. Each day it was harder for her to pretend that somehow life would turn out all right despite illness and hardly any food, and the grinding noise that came from underneath the car hood, and the sores on Trevor’s lips, and the baby’s angry diaper rash, and having to camp in ditch banks where the water was too dirty to drink. Even Della and June, those two silly girls who could sit in a half-broke Hudson and pretend they were Cinderellas going to the ball to meet their Prince Charmings, had lately grown somber. Mary hid the fact that she didn’t eat most nights, claiming that she needed to wait until the heat of the day wore off to find her appetite. Her tongue would grow thick with longing as she watched her children chew and swallow. They hadn’t seen the inside of a schoolroom in months. Ellie and Trevor
worked in the fields with her now. June brought the baby when he needed feeding, which left Della in charge of James and Ray. Mary might as well have poured gasoline on a fire.
“He’s right, you know,” a man said to her as she headed back to the car. He was tall and broad-shouldered and he would have filled out his clothes in another time. He had a wide face, and when he smiled, his cheeks creased in dimples, and lines spoked out from the corners of his eyes.
“Right about what?”
“You look like you could break in two.”
“Think what you want. I don’t have time for conversation.”
“Can I at least thank you for giving me a good laugh back there?”
“You can thank me for whatever you want as long as it doesn’t cost me.”
“Saying you’re welcome don’t cost.”
“You’d be surprised,” she said.
She reached the car. Ellie and June were changing the baby on the front seat.
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