Eddie shook his head. “You read a lot of books, gringo.”
“What I meant was, what they’re doing, charging the workers more than they make, that’s wage slavery. Slavery in America was supposed to end with Lincoln.”
Eddie looked at me darkly. For the first time I saw a glint of anger in his eyes. “Slavery in America never ended, gringo. There is still much. I have seen it.”
“Where?”
“Two years ago, I met a man from Nicaragua. He came to America like me, looking for work. He went to Florida and one day he was sitting on the curb with other workers and a man came. He said they needed workers. He said they would pay double what the other farms paid, and his mother was their cook, so the food was good. He said there would be a nice place to stay, even if they charged them a little for it. The nicaragüense thought darle la vuelta a la tortilla.” He looked at me to see if I understood. “You know what that means?”
“No.”
“It means to flip the tortilla. This man thought maybe his life had finally changed for the good. He got in the truck.
“The farm was very far away from any city. The place they were to stay was only the back of a truck. There was no bed to sleep on, only the picking bags. They charge him two hundred dollars a week for his house. They charge for everything. To stand under a hose to shower was five dollars.
“The food was not good. Sometimes just old tortillas, but they charge everyone one hundred dollars a week. If they were caught eating the fruit in the field, they would have to pay five dollars for every fruit. Sometimes they just said they saw them eat fruit when they did not and did not pay them for a full day of work.
“No matter how hard this man worked, he could not make enough money to pay the farm back. After a worker was in debt, the farmer would lock him up at night, sometimes with chains. They would tell him that because he owed them money, he was now their property. I think it is no different from the slaves that came to America from Africa.”
“Why didn’t they just leave?”
Eddie laughed. “You make it sound easy, gringo. It is not so easy. The farms are far away from the city. If they run, they go after them. They beat them up. He said that one man was beaten until he died. They brought his body back and left it near the workers’ place so the others would be afraid. He said the birds came and ate the body.”
I set down my food. “How did you meet this man?”
“He was working with me in South Carolina. He was brave and he escaped in the night and a car picked him up. He was a lucky one.”
“Those people should go to prison.”
Eddie nodded. “Yes. They should. But they won’t.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
What a thing it is to be looked down upon by people I once would have looked down on.
—CHARLES JAMES’S DIARY
That evening we went to the store. I felt dirty walking inside. Or maybe I just felt dirty because of the way the other shoppers glanced at us and kept their distance—like we were untouchables. I wanted to shout at them, “I could buy and sell you!” I wanted to but I didn’t. They would have just thought I was crazy.
I gave sixty of my hard-earned dollars to Eddie so he could buy our food. He knew better than I did what to buy to stretch our money. It was all so bizarre. I had eaten in fancy restaurants where the tab for my meal was at least ten times that. Still, I was glad to not be living off Eddie anymore. I indulged in several treats. I bought a large Dr. Pepper with ice (there was no ice back at the farm; actually, there was nothing cold), a chocolate bar, a can of almonds, and a six-pack of Dos Equis. I shared the beer with my roommates when we got back to the shack. They were very happy. Truthfully, they were happier than McKay and I were opening a three-thousand-dollar bottle of twenty-year-old Pappy Van Winkle’s bourbon.
Over the next week, every day was a replay of the last, although on the third day, someone brought a radio into the field and there was music. It was Mexican music, mariachi stuff with guitars and trumpets, but it was music. It helped pass the time.
There was no day of rest. The workers—at least we migrant workers—worked seven days a week, which made it more difficult to remember what day it was. In the fields, it didn’t really matter.
On the seventh day, Eddie and I were eating lunch when he looked at me with a serious expression.
“Gringo, I want to ask you something.”
“Yes?”
“Why are you here, gringo?”
“You invited me.”
He shook his head. “You are smart. You read many books. You are American. I think there are other things for you to do that are not so hard. Maybe you could make more money. If I had papers, I would look for another job.”
“I know,” I said. “The thing is, in some ways, I’m like you. I don’t have papers.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s hard to explain.” I looked at him. “I don’t know why I said I would work with you when you asked. Maybe it really was just for the money, but I think there’s something else. I come from a family of sharecroppers and migrant workers. I think I wanted to understand them. To really see what their life was like.”
“You came from a family of migrant workers like us?”
“Sí. My great-grandfather was a sharecropper in Oaxaca. My grandfather was a migrant worker. He crossed the border back when it was easy to cross. He picked whatever he could. Potatoes in Idaho. Tomatoes in Florida. Strawberries in California.”
“Strawberries,” Eddie said, shaking his head. “La fruta del diablo.” The devil’s fruit.
“Why do you call it that?” I asked.
Eddie reached around and touched his back. “It is so low to the ground. By the end of the day, your back is on fire. It is difficult even to walk.” He shook his head. “Every crop has its maldición. You understand?”
I nodded. “I understand.”
“This is dangerous work, amigo. We are exposed to the weather. There is poison on the plants. It gets in our skin. There is much sickness. Even if they say there is a doctor, we have no way to go to him. Many times I have a sickness, maybe the flu, but still I have to work. Picking fruit all day with the flu, in the rain, you do not care if you die. Sometimes you hope you do. This is hard work.”
“I’m sorry,” I said softly. “Do you regret coming to America?”
“No. It is hard, but it is worse where I came from. Much worse.”
“Where are you from?”
“Michoacán.”
“How long have you been here? In America.”
“Three years the first time. Then eight years. I was sent back the first time.”
“What made you decide to come?” I asked.
He flinched at the question. Then he took a long breath. “My wife and I had a baby. One day there was a flood in our village. It carried dead animals in our water. Our baby got sick with the diarrhea.” His eyes watered. “We could not pay for a doctor, so she died. I could not let that happen again.
“We work for eight dollars an hour. It is not much to you, but in Mexico I worked for maybe sixteen hundred pesos a day. That is only eight dollars a day. It is barely enough to eat. Here we can eat and send money back home and sometimes buy American things.
“We want American things with American names. Like shoes. The Nike shoes are very good. And iPhones. Many come back from America with these things, and we all think they are rich. We make much, much more money, but it is also more expensive here. If we did not eat some of the fruit we pick, we would sometimes starve.”
“The farmers let you eat the fruit?”
“Sometimes. If the crew leader is cruel, he will not. He will humiliate you. Maybe he will hit you.”
“He can’t do that.”
“If you are without papers, he can do whatever he wants, gringo. Or he will call immigration and they will take you away. But many are not mean. They understand us. They cannot say we can eat, but they look away and pretend they do not see us ea
t.” He frowned. “But still, there is poison on the plants.”
“Do you think Legree is mean or nice?”
Eddie glanced over at him. The crew leader was sitting in his truck drinking a beer. “He is both.”
I hadn’t seen the “nice” part of him yet. More than once I had been tempted to punch him. “Is it hard to get into America?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes not. Everyone has their own story. But it is always dangerous to cross the border.
“My first time, I was caught. La migra tied me up and threw me into a jail and left me until they had caught enough others to send us all back.”
“La migra?”
“The border patrol. There is not just la migra; there are many other dangers. There are Mexican bandits. There are sex traffickers. My sister and others crossed the border. They were found by bandits. They raped some of the women and took everything they had, even their clothes. They were all made naked, then left in the desert.
“My sister was not raped because she was pregnant. They had to make their way across the desert without shoes or clothes or even water. There are much cactus and their feet were bleeding when they were found by la migra. They were happy to be found by la migra.” His expression darkened. “They are very lucky that they were banditos and not traffickers. I would not ever see my sister again.”
“You said before that you have a wife.”
“Yes. I have a wife.”
“Where is she?”
“She is in Florida. She is a nanny for a rich family. She does not make much money, only a thousand dollars a month, but it is a much better life for her. She is in a house with air conditioning and good food. And the people she works for take her to the doctor if she is sick. They are helping her get papers. She is learning how to drive a car.”
He nodded. “It is a much better life for her there. It is not safe for her with me because she is pretty. A pretty woman is not safe working the farms. One foreman had her work inside the building; then he tried to take her.”
I frowned. “How often do you see her?”
“Once a year during the orange-picking season. That is when I go to Florida. I see her then for a week. We rent a hotel and make love and drink wine. The family she works for will sometimes make a gift for us. I wait all year for that week. Then I give her my money and she puts it in the bank. We are saving our money. Someday we will be together. Then we will have a baby. And she will have a better life.” He looked up. “Do you have a wife?”
“I had one,” I said.
Eddie frowned. “Did she die?”
“She divorced me.”
He looked down. “Is that her ring you wear around your neck?”
“You noticed that.”
“Sí. It is a nice ring.”
“It was my wife’s ring.”
“Why did she leave you?”
“Because I cheated on her.”
He frowned.
“I know. It was a long time ago.”
“I am sorry.”
“So am I.” I looked at him. “That’s why I’m walking. I’m walking to her. She lives in California.”
“You are walking a peregrinación,” he said thoughtfully. “In the old days, they would walk for punishment. Sometimes they would even walk naked to show humility.” He breathed out heavily. “That is a very hard walk, gringo.”
“Your life is a very hard walk.”
“Everyone has a hard walk,” he said.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Sometimes plans, like our opinions, must bend so as not to break.
—CHARLES JAMES’S DIARY
That night, as I lay in that moldy, lumpy bed, I thought about Eddie and his wife and how much he loved and sacrificed for her. Then I thought about my own wife. I had told myself that all my traveling and hard work was a sacrifice for her. But that was a lie. I had done it for my own glory. Or maybe for my fears. My greatest fear should have been losing her. How could I have let her go?
Next my thoughts turned to my grandfather and what he must have gone through and all he had suffered so I could live the life I had. My thoughts continued to my father as well.
I had always hated my father for his cruelty, but my mother had once told me that his father had treated him as cruelly as he treated us. The victim became the aggressor. That’s how it worked sometimes.
But I hated him for more than his cruelty; I hated him for his smallness. As I thought about that, it occurred to me, for the first time, that maybe that was what I should have respected him for most. His life was small. It had few payoffs, few downhill coasts, few—if any—moments of glory. It was all straight up the side of a rocky mountain to a barren peak, with nowhere to go from there. But he had dug in. He had made a foothold in this country, one that I was able to summit from. I had never given him credit for that. Not once.
As I thought about it, I realized that this was, perhaps, the true reason I had joined Eddie on the farm—to truly understand what had been done for me. And to start to forgive. True understanding often opens the door to forgiveness.
At that moment there was a breakthrough, in my heart as well as my mind. It was the first time I had thought about my father without hate or anger. In fact, it was the first time that I had thought about him with any measure of respect. It was a huge breakthrough. I had learned what I had come to Plainview for. It was time for me to get back to my trek.
I was still stuck without money. But as I considered my situation, I realized that there was a solution that wouldn’t require my return to public: I could return to just one person. The one person whom I could trust my life on. I smiled at the thought. Amanda was going to have a complete mental meltdown. I was kind of looking forward to it.
The next day at lunch Eddie said to me, “What is wrong, gringo? You are very quiet today.”
“Nothing is wrong,” I said. “I’m just thinking.”
He laughed. “Do not think too much. It will kill you.”
“Probably.” A few minutes later I asked, “What day is it today?”
“It is Friday, gringo.”
“Friday,” I repeated. “Friday is a good day to celebrate.”
Eddie looked up at me. “Celebrate what?”
“My resurrection, Eddie. Tonight I’m taking you to Perlita’s Taqueria to get some of that chili verde you told me about.”
“You have gone loco,” Eddie said. “You have worked one week and you think you are rich now?”
I smiled. “I am rich, my friend. I’ll arrange a ride to Perlita’s with one of the truck drivers.”
“You are loco, gringo.”
“Maybe. So the question is, will you have dinner with a crazy man?”
He shook his head and grinned. “At Perlita’s, I would be a crazy man not to.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
A tortilla with a friend is greater than a feast eaten alone.
—CHARLES JAMES’S DIARY
I made an arrangement with one of the farmhands to give us a ride to the restaurant. Eddie was quiet for most of the drive. I had noticed that he was usually quiet around the non-migrants, but I think tonight it was more. I think he was trying to figure out what I was doing.
Perlita’s Taqueria looked like a warehouse because it had once been one. In its previous incarnation the building had been an industrial machine shop, and several remnants of its past remained in place like fossils—hulking, galvanized, and riveted contraptions that still leaked oil.
The floor was concrete and oil-stained, here and there covered with rugs. The walls were adorned with some of the worst artwork ever produced. It was so bad that it was actually borderline cool. Kitsch. There were black-velvet portraits of a mariachi band, bullet-belt wearing banditos, a busty Mexican beauty with a rose in her hair, and, of course, Elvis. An acrylic painting of the Virgin Mary hung above the cash register.
The restaurant’s motif made me happy. I had learned long ago that when it comes to Mexican restaurants, the quality of t
he décor is inversely proportionate to the quality of the food. Based on that equation, Perlita’s food was going to be remarkable.
Music was playing and the restaurant was almost full, its patrons mostly Hispanic. A young Mexican woman with a nose piercing and a rose tattoo on her neck greeted us as we walked in.
“Buenas noches, señorita,” Eddie said.
“Buenas noches,” she replied. “There are two of you?”
“Sí.”
She grabbed two salsa-stained menus from the front counter and led us to a table beneath a painting of a gaucho at sunset.
I looked over the menu. “The chili verde is good?”
“It is all good, but the chili verde and the tamales are muy bueno,” he said, kissing his fingers. He dropped his gaze to my pack, and his brow furrowed. “Gringo, why did you bring your backpack? You can trust our friends.”
“I know. I just thought I’d keep it with me.”
A moment later our waitress appeared. She was short, barely five feet and nearly as wide, with a pleasant face. She set a yellow plastic basket of tortilla chips in the middle of the table along with a small, colorful bowl of salsa.
“What may I get you gentlemen to drink?” She spoke without an accent.
“Agua, por favor,” Eddie said.
“Do you have Bohemia?” I asked.
“No Bohemia,” she replied. “We have Dos Equis and Corona.”
“Two Dos Equis, please.”
“Dos Dos Equis. Do you know what you would like to eat?”
I glanced at Eddie. “Have you decided?”
“Sí.” He looked up at the waitress. “Me gustaría el burrito de chile verde y un tamal de ají verde. Gracias.”
She turned to me. “And what will you have?”
“I’ll have the same as my friend,” I said. “And the cheese-stuffed jalapeños for an appetizer.”
“Thank you,” she said.
After she walked away, I turned back to Eddie. “Tell me about your wife.”
He looked broadsided by the question. “Felicia,” he finally said, speaking the name almost reverently. “She is my sweetheart.”