Borderlands (10 page)

IV

Its little bell tinkling, the faded-orange lunch wagon came down the road and parked in the roadside shade as it did at noon every day. The owner and driver of the wagon was a thin-haired fat man named Harold who sweated constantly and had a wall eye. The wide serving window was attended by his busty but plain daughter, Georgia, who never smiled or scowled or showed any reaction to the fieldworkers’ pathetic attempts at flirtation except boredom and occasional impatience when one of them slowed up the line. Harold accepted cash or field tickets for his wares, the full range of which consisted of hot pork sausage on a bun, cold cheese sandwiches, corn chips, unchilled cans of soda pop, moon pies, cigarettes and candy bars.

The crew chiefs’ whistles shrilled up and down the fields, signaling the half-hour lunch break. Julio was not hungry nor even sure his stomach would accept food without throwing it right back up. But he had to eat something to give himself strength for the afternoon, the longest and hardest portion of the day. As the line advanced toward the serving window it was engulfed by the heavy smell of hot pork grease and Julio fought down a surge of nausea. He paid six tickets—two dollars and seventy cents—for a cheese sandwich and a can of Dr Pepper.

He crossed the road and sat in the grass in the shade of a mimosa tree. He stared morosely at his lunch. Six tickets. He had five left in his pocket. Never before had he picked so few baskets in a morning’s work—not even three days ago when he did not arrive at the fields until after nine o’clock in the morning. If he did not do better this afternoon …

But of
course
he would do better. Didn’t he always do better in the afternoons? By then the pain of his head would have eased and he would have food in his belly and the return of his strength. At the moment, however, he was tired to his bones, more tired than he had ever been after a morning’s work. He did not understand it. This was not the first time he had worked in the sun with a tequila hangover. He wondered if he would be able to work through the afternoon without dropping from exhaustion. Then realized it was the first time he had ever wondered such a thing.

The sandwich tasted strongly of oily mayonnaise on the verge of turning rancid, but he forced himself to chew it, swallow it, keep it down. He spied Alfonso de la Madrid standing in the lunch wagon line—and then Alfonso saw him looking and quickly averted his gaze.

Julio’s belly tightened in anger. The five tickets in his pocket, together with about eighty cents in coins, represented all the money he had in the world, and the reason for that sad fact was an unfortunate incident on the Sunday just past. And the cause of that incident—and thus the true cause of his present poverty—was Alfonso de la Madrid.…

V

“
Stop
for him, man—he’s a Mexican!” Alfonso shouted as Diego’s rusty, smoke-trailing Plymouth rumbled past a hitchhiker. “Give the poor fellow a ride. Don’t be a bastard.”

They were on an isolated stretch of State Road 82, a two-lane blacktop flanked by cattle pastures and pine stands and citrus groves, returning to Immokalee from a day in Fort Myers. The red afternoon sun was almost down to the trees. Pine shadows touched the road. The sweet scents of orange blossoms and new-mown grass swept in through the car windows. Squalling blackbirds lined the telephone wires, and a scattering of cattle egrets fed on insects in the pastures.

They had been to a movie and then eaten at a Burger King and then stopped in at several bars. Alfonso sat in the front seat with Diego, both of them wearing new straw hats they had bought at the Edison Mall. Julio rode in the back with Francisco, who was not feeling too well. His eyes were bruised purple and swollen nearly shut, his lips cut and bloated, his nose hugely broken. These disfigurements had come to him in an alley behind a Fowler Avenue bar, by way of a shrimp boat captain at least twice his age. The shrimper had disputed the legality of a shot by which Francisco sank the eight ball to beat him in a pool game and win their bet of a beer. Francisco had said, “It is a technique much admired in Piedras Negras. I will accept a Budweiser as my prize.”

Although he had learned his English in Mexico, Francisco spoke the language quite capably, better even than Diego, who had been born and raised in Colorado and learned both English and Spanish in childhood—but unfortunately did not learn either very well. His pronunciations in both languages were often perplexing, and it was an old joke with his friends that no matter which language Diego used to call his dog, the confused animal would simply stare at him. from a distance and scratch its head. “Julio and me, we don’t even speak English,” Alfonso had once remarked, “and we speak it better than Diego.”

“Well, we ain’t
in
no fucken Perras Nigras,” the old shrimper had said to Francisco. “Around here that’s a illegal shot and you lose. Make mine a fucken Michelob.”

Francisco winked cockily at his friends at the bar and said to the shrimper: “Maybe you wish to discuss this disagreement outside, eh, old man? Under the eyes of God?”

“Fucken A John square,” the shrimper said, tossing his cue on the table and heading for the back door.

And now Francisco was not feeling so well.

Diego brought the Plymouth to a stop and the hitchhiker came running. Diego looked at Alfonso and said, “Maybe I should get rid of this car and get a bus, eh? To all the time pick up the damn people you always want me to pick up?”

“Your kindness has put a smile on the Holy Mother’s face,” Alfonso said. “You are ten feet closer to heaven.”

The hitchhiker was breathing heavily when he got to the car. Julio moved over, permitting the man to have the seat by the door.

“Many thanks,” the man said as Diego put the car in motion. He was tall and lean and hatless, his hair cropped short, like a soldier’s. His jeans and jacket still held the smell of new denim, and though his low-cut brown shoes were smeared with mud, they looked new also. On a band slightly too large for his wrist hung a gold watch. He said his name was Luis Blanco. Alfonso introduced him all around. Julio thought the man had eyes like a policeman—quick-moving, taking note of everything.

In answer to Alfonso’s questions, he said he was a baker in Fort Myers and was going to Immokalee to visit his girlfriend. He had a car of his own—a nice little Chevy only five years old—but it was being painted this weekend and so he had to use his thumb to get to Immokalee. He didn’t have to work tomorrow and would take the bus back to Fort Myers tomorrow night.

He asked about Francisco’s battered face and laughed together with everyone else—except Francisco, who glared at them all—when Alfonso told the story of the fight. Julio noticed a small dark tattoo on the webbing between the thumb and forefinger of Luis Blanco’s left hand, a symbol shaped like an arrowhead. When Luis Blanco saw him looking at it, he casually covered it with his other hand. His Spanish was much like Francisco’s, a borderland region singsong. He was, he said, originally from Mexicali.

When he learned that all of them were pickers but for Diego, who worked as an auto mechanic in a garage, he asked if the pay was good for pickers at this time of year. Did they get paid every day, as he had heard? They must be doing very well to have a car and spend Sunday in Fort Myers and be able to buy new hats. Did they think he could get work in the fields? He missed his girlfriend and wanted to live closer to her.

“Hey, friend, any poor fool can work in the fields,” Diego said. “All you need is the strength of a burro and the brains of the same burro. You don’t want to quit a clean nice bakery to work in the fields.” He glanced at the man over his shoulder. “Pardon me for so saying, my friend, but that would be very stupid, even for love.”

“But pickers
do
get paid every day, right?” the man asked.

“Damn right we do,” Alfonso said. “We always have money in our pockets. Not like this poor fool”—he gestured at Diego—”who gets paid only on Friday and by Wednesday is broke again.”

Diego glared at him and said, “This poor fool has a car. And my friend Luis the baker here,
he
has a car. The only ones I see in this car who
don’t
have a car are ignorant pickers.”

“You have a
car
?” Alfonso said, feigning surprise. “Well, why don’t we use it next time instead of going to town in this donkey cart?”

Diego showed him a middle finger.

The Luis fellow turned to look at the rear window and Julio looked too, his curiosity roused. There was no traffic in sight in either direction. The man now looked at Francisco slumped against the door with his eyes closed, then looked intently at Julio as if he were trying to read his mind, then reached under his jacket and withdrew a small chrome-plated pistol. He held it in his right hand, on the side away from Julio. Julio gaped.

“Stop the car,” the man said. “Pull over to the side of the road.”

Diego looked at him in the rearview mirror. “
What?
Why?”

The man raised the gun where Diego could see it. “Do it,” he said.

“Hey, man, what the hell are you—” Alfonso began, but the man pointed the gun at him and snapped, “Shut up!”

“Oh, God,” Diego sighed and slowed the car, eased onto the shoulder and shut off the engine.

“Who told you to cut the motor, you idiot?” the man said.

“What?” Diego said, wide-eyed in the rearview. “I don’t know … nobody. I always do it because sometimes the motor, it gets a little too hot and—”

“Quiet!” the man ordered. He held the gun low, out of sight of anyone who might drive by, but pointed vaguely at Julio’s chest. Francisco had now come awake and seen the pistol and gone pale under his bruises. He sat utterly still against the door.

“I don’t want to shoot anybody,” the man said, “but I have done so before, so don’t try anything foolish, any of you. Understand?”

Diego and Esteban and Francisco nodded. The man looked at Julio and smiled tightly. “Do
you
understand?” he asked. Only now did Julio realize he had been wondering if a bullet from such a little gun would hurt very much. The man angled the pistol so that it pointed up at his face. The muzzle was small and dark and Julio’s mouth suddenly tasted of copper. He nodded.

“Very good,” the man said. “Now you two”—he gestured at Diego and Alfonso—”take all your money out of your pockets. Do it
now
! And you two”—looking now at Julio and Francisco beside him—”hand it over.”

Julio worked his hand in his pocket and extracted a few small bills and some coins and handed the money to the bandit, who accepted it with his left hand and stuffed it in his jacket pocket. Wincing with pain, Francisco leaned across Julio and gave his money to the man.

“For the love of God,” Alfonso said plaintively as he handed his money over the seat. “Why are you doing this to us? We are not rich. We are Mexicans, the same as you. If you want to rob somebody, why not rob the gringos? They have all the money. That’s what
I
would do.”

The bandit stuffed Diego’s money in his pocket with the rest. “Oh sure, sure you would. Pancho Villa, that’s you. Now, pull your pockets inside out, all of you! Do it quick!”

He leaned forward to look into the front seat and saw that Diego’s and Esteban’s pockets were showing whitely. He glanced across at Francisco and saw that his pockets, too, hung limply from his pants. Only Julio had not reversed his pockets. The bandit narrowed his eyes at him.

“I gave you all I had,” Julio said. “Truly.”

“
Truly?
” the bandit echoed, arching his eyebrows. “Well, forgive my lack of trust, my friend, but”—he wagged the pistol at Julio’s pockets and showed a large grin—”I insist.”

Julio glanced down at the pistol, then stared hard into the man’s eyes. If he had been asked at that moment what was going through his mind he could not have said. But something in his face made the man lose his smile. He pressed the pistol against Julio’s right side and cocked the hammer. Julio had never heard that sound except in the movies and he marveled at its chilling effect in the world of mortal flesh. He felt his heart beating fast against his ribs.

“
My friend …
” the bandit said softly, almost sadly.

A van with dark-tinted windows whooshed past.

Julio pulled his pants pockets out and the rest of his money fell on the seat.

The bandit looked at the clump of bills and then at Julio and then gathered the money with his free hand. “Oh, truly,” he said in a mimicking voice. “That’s all of it …
truly
.” He laughed and hefted the fistful of money as if trying to guess its worth by its weight. Julio knew exactly how much it was. Seventy-nine dollars. Five of which he had won at the cockfights on the previous weekend and the rest was all the money he had managed to save during his time in Florida.

“Jesus Christ, Julio,” Francisco said thickly through his swollen lips.

“Have you been robbing banks?” Diego said.

“Listen, man,” Alfonso said to the bandit, “the rest of us are not so rich like this one. Those twelve dollars of mine are all the money I have in the world. Leave us some little bit of money, eh? Please. Enough for a beer and a taquito tonight, eh?”

“Is this one always so stupid?” the bandit asked as he finished tucking money into his pants pocket.

“Always,” Diego said. “But look … can’t you leave
me
with some money? I’m not like these pickers, man, I have a wife, I have little children. I have—”

The bandit shook the pistol at him. “You’re going to have another hole in your goddamn head if you don’t shut up.”

Diego’s eyes widened and he threw up his hands.

“Put your hands down, stupid!” the bandit said, glancing quickly along the road to see if any cars were passing by. “Sweet Jesus, what did I do to get a bunch like you? You fools think you’re the only ones with troubles? If I told you pricks
my
troubles we would all drown when this car filled with your tears. Now leave the keys in the ignition and get out, all of you. Out! Now!”

Diego looked stricken. “You are not going to steal my
car?
” He had recently paid one hundred and twenty-five dollars for this ancient six-cylinder Plymouth, having saved the money for it over a period of nearly a year. It had not been easy. Almost every penny he earned went toward the support of his wife and seven children.