Stars Always Shine (19 page)

In the quiet darkness of Miwok Creek, Place and Mitch stood and stared into the coagulated vein of semi-still water and thick earthly flesh. Slow steam rose from the heaped and still warm bodies of the destroyed ducks and behind the fences of StarRidge Ranch, Rosa and Coquette whined for their blood. Place reached into the wheelbarrow carefully for each body and respectfully laid them along the bank of the creek. Silently, Mitch prayed for the ducks—and for Place too. Quietly and quickly they climbed back over the fence and into Joker’s corral. They stood at the fence as they stared down toward the creek just as Joker had done when he had anticipated the earthquake. In the thick night, Place and Mitch could hear cautious quadrupedal steps and the ripping of flesh as others benefited in a much more natural way from the deaths of the ducks.

Mitch stroked Joker’s neck gently and turned to head back toward the house. “He’s a gentle one, a less anxious one because he doesn’t live with others,” Mitch said as she and Place walked down the dirt road with the two dogs tentatively behind them. “It’s good to live alone with just those who know you or at least try to know you.”

“We gotta do that, Mitch,” Place said sadly as he wiped his nose with a sleeve. “We gotta live alone, honey.”

I
n the chilled early morning, Place sat frozen like a barn cat waiting for a gopher to blindly poke its head through the freshly dug earth and into the unsuspecting air. He watched intently waiting on the deck for Salvador to emerge, and started toward Salvador’s home when the front door wavered and Gatita slithered through to take care of her morning business. As he approached Salvador’s house, he could smell the stale drunkenness that reminded him of his father’s lonely room, a room off limits to the family when their father was muy enfermo.

“¿Pues qué te pasa, hombre?” Place yelled after knocking on the fluttering door. And not waiting for a response, he shoved the door open like a cop without a search warrant. “Salvador!” he shouted as he stood with fists clenched, but not sure why.

From the bedroom, he could hear Salvador slowly rustling about, seemingly struggling to make his way to the living room. He could hear a bottle plop to one side and slide across the floor from an inadvertent kick, and Salvador emerged to face Place evenly.

Place knew, and at the same time he had hoped that what he suspected wasn’t true. “Too drunk to work, Mexican?” he said in his finest commanding English.

Sheepishly, Salvador looked back at Place and uttered a pitiful, “Yesss. Sí, hermanito. Too borracho para trabajar.”

“Stupid Mexican!” Place shouted as he lunged toward Salvador, grabbing him by the front of his already torn shirt. “You have no right! ¡No tienes derecho, cabrón!” he continued. “Now that you have your green card, you think you can be like us, like any other wasteful American or mournful Mexican?” And not waiting or allowing for Salvador to understand or even answer, Place stepped closer to his bleary-eyed foe. “Get your things and get off this ranch! We tried to help you, you dumb-ass mule, and this is what you want to do with your life? Well, you’ll do it somewhere else!”

Place turned quickly, and with the movement of a martial artist, he kicked the dangling door from its only hinge of support and walked toward the hay barn to feed the animals.

Salvador followed Place and attempting to offer a plea, began, “Por favor, Plácido—”

Place turned on him with tight fists and snarled, “Come on, Mexican! You want chingazos, that’s the only other thing I can give you, and the only thing you people seem to understand.”

Salvador stood straight, not flinching, not defending, but ready to take his punishment, and he dolefully explained to Place that he was an alcoholic. Dreary days made him feel desperate. He missed his family. He missed his country. And his music lured him to drink. To feel the sadness of his situation, who he was, who he might be, and where he might be going was something he knew Place couldn’t completely know. How could Place know? he asked. Place was a lucky one. He had the suerte to be born in this country. He could move between cultures but have the benefit and the citizenship of the one that mattered more. The one that was more valuable. Salvador could only have that with an envy-colored card that always reminded him he was only a corralled member of this society. Stamped for approval, if only on a limited basis.

“Lo siento. I sorry, Plácido, y me voy prontito.”

Place threw the flakes of hay at the animals, hating them for reasons he could not explain to himself. “Eat shit!” he yelled at them as they ducked and dodged and cowered in confusion, poking at the feed as if under fire. He wanted to blame somebody for the futility that he and those like Salvador felt and lived. He was embarrassed for dreaming what he now saw as stupid little dreams, realizing too that that was the only place his voice was really heard—in those stupid, little, drunken dreams. He heaved an overabundance of feed at animals that were both hungry and cautious.

“What’s your problem, Place?” Mitch asked as she stood a safe distance and calmly drew him around with the patient voice of a negotiator. “You don’t have to treat these dumb beasts like that. If you have a problem, I’ll feed them.”

Place faced Mitch with the same anger he had faced those whom he thought had wronged him in a world he felt was naturally unfair. He knew why he was angry with Salvador and he felt that Salvador now contributed to his mounting frustration and that StarRidge Ranch itself had an agenda aimed at defeating him. His anger at Mitch was based on jealousy, a jealousy that envied Mitch’s composure, her ability to handle situations that made his stomach churn and his knees quiver nervously. And at times he felt that he was a parasite, clinging to Mitch because she was capable of doing the things for which he lacked the fortitude.

“I’m leaving, Mitch. I’ve got to leave this ranch for a while. And if I don’t come back, there’s always another Mexican who can step in and do the work. We’re everywhere, like cockroaches,” he said and dropped a flake of hay as he headed for the ranch house.

“Are you leaving to do the same thing your father did to himself?” she asked, her tone detached, but knowing that the question would pierce Place’s anger and make him think about what he always claimed he wouldn’t be or do.

“Don’t worry about it, Michelle!” Place sneered as he walked past her.

“Place, I’m not doing anything to hurt you and you know it!” she said. “I understand a lot more than you think I do. I’m not culturally ignorant, and I’m not against you.”

“I don’t care!” he shouted back as his stride grew more deliberate. “I’m tired of this ranch, and I’m tired of people like you. You know, you’re confident because people look at you expecting you to be confident. Those same people look at guys like Salvador and me and they expect us to be subservient and desperate. They see our ridged noses and round faces with big, scared eyes, and we just look like hired help.” Place felt good that he had said that. He justified his thinking and his anger by recalling what people had told him, never realizing what their messages said, or never wanting to realize. He remembered the professor in college who told him not to worry about finding work because “if anything, you’re the right complexion.” But in the end, it wasn’t true. Things didn’t really happen the way many angry Anglos said they were happening. Jobs weren’t really being taken away from them to be given to swarthy people. It was a world of connections, and to be connected professionally was much better than being connected spiritually. Relying on your own goodness and hard work, and hoping the universe would reciprocate, Place had come to realize, wasn’t a smart thing to do. There is no law of reciprocity, as one minister had suggested to him in a preemptive and encouraging moment during a time of posthumous and paternal mourning.

As Place approached the deck to the ranch house, Rosa and Coquette scurried from the anger they could sense. Peering from a cautious distance, both dogs tilted their heads in confusion.

Place wept heavy tears of regret. Regret for who he was, about which he was never really sure. He threw random clothes and his father’s gun into a box and strode from the ranch, heading north on Sweet Wine Road. His father had walked down a country road on his last day. It now seemed easy to Place. Just walk till you get there and wait for God or the devil to claim you. They know how to sort things out.

Place walked the right angles of the road, feeling a sense of relief and appreciating the free, unrestricted air. He considered the box of clothes he had blindly gathered, and after a few more moments of peripatetic thinking, he grabbed the gun and stuffed it into his belt. He dropped the box of clothes, and continued to walk into a nebulous distance.

Place’s itinerant migration led him down the reflective road. He shivered with guilt as he thought about Mitch and the ranch, and his fleeting thinking bucked him from extreme paths of indignation to empty arenas of remorse. He walked hard, each step a defiant kick at the earth that he now hated. As he turned another right angle of Sweet Wine Road, Place surveyed an old tree that had withstood the actions of men and Mother Nature, and shaded those who came to rest at its sloping, sheltering trunk. Salvador and Gatita sat at the bosom of the trunk and silently watched Place as he slowly discovered them.

Salvador stood respectfully, as if welcoming Place into his new home. He could see from the way Place walked as he approached the tree that Salvador and Gatita nested under that he was leaving StarRidge Ranch. Salvador could see too in Place’s detached gaze, a gaze aimed at the road in front of him, that only Place knew of his destination. His eyes seemed to indicate that his mind had turned off, and with it so had his heart. Salvador stared at Place with clear and honest eyes. When he noticed the gun in Place’s belt, he gulped slowly and nodded at it to wordlessly ask why Place would have such a thing with him.

Salvador apologized to Place again and explained that he was resting before moving on. He reached down to grab his own box of clothes and with Gatita faithfully following, they continued walking down Sweet Wine Road.

Place called out to Salvador, and when he turned around he asked him where he was going.

“Pues, no sé, Plácido,” Salvador answered, and explained that he came to this country with no place to go, no place to belong. So things weren’t much different from what he had experienced before. As he spoke, Salvador walked back slowly toward Place. He told Place that in spite of his ignorance, it seemed to him that one of the most regrettable things a person could do was walk out on his family. Salvador pointed to himself and explained to Place that yes, he was walking out on a lot of responsibility because he had made a mistake, but his family, his Gatita, was with him. It wasn’t a good thing to be alone, Salvador offered.

Carefully he suggested to Place that he needed to go back to the ranch to help Mitch. He apologized again for his drinking and for any other trouble he might have caused and asked Place for one more chance. With a calming wisdom he explained to Place that they were all tired and frustrated. It was like the earthquake. The earthquake didn’t happen to hurt people; there just happened to be people where the land shook, rolled, and waved. The earth is just tired, he explained, and so were Mitch, Place, and he. What made it more difficult, Salvador continued, was that they were working land that would never belong to them and it had always been that way. Place listened uneasily as Salvador spoke to him about the life of his people—their people. It was a futile existence; they both knew that. It didn’t matter what side of the border you came from. For some reason, God didn’t like them as much as he liked other people. But that didn’t mean they simply quit living or trying. In fact, the more we try, Salvador suggested, the more we might win God’s favor. But the worst thing they could do, he continued, was to just leave as both of them had now done.

Place breathed heavily as he stared at Salvador. Gatita now stood close to the tree, watching both men and waiting for them to move one way or the other. Softly, Place said, “Vámonos,” and turned back toward StarRidge Ranch with Salvador and Gatita following silently.

Place slid into the ranch house quietly. He walked from room to room looking for Mitch, and when he didn’t find her, he stepped out onto the deck.

Mitch sat at the picnic table with Rosa and Coquette positioned on either side of her. She looked over at Place casually and smiled slightly. Her expression exuded understanding and with it she seemed to allow for the frustration they were all feeling. Place stared for a few moments as if to study Mitch’s profile. He wondered why they had ever met, and he concluded that it meant something more than just a relationship that eventually fizzles into the dull embers of familiarity and convenience.

“What are you doing?” Place asked politely yet curiously.

“I’m looking at the stars,” Mitch answered as a lone tear streaked down her face. “Stars always shine, remember?”

Place sat beside her as Rosa and Coquette jockeyed for his new affection. Silently they stared out at the panoramic pastures of StarRidge Ranch. Mitch squeezed Place’s hand tight and Place nuzzled his head on her shoulder. Quietly he offered, “But you can’t see them from here, honey.”

“I can imagine them from here,” Mitch answered.