Thin Gray Lines Page 9

  “Hell, we oughta write to Nelson Mandela and say, Nelson, if any of your farm boys are causing trouble, send a few this way.”

  The men laughed.

  Their conversation ambled on to other topics, and Corus set to thinking with half of his brain, while listening to Teddy’s stories with the other. He’d momentarily moved on from military stories and was talking about a dust-up he’d had at a backyard party a few months previous.

  “…And then this little Mexican pulls a knife, and my buddy Chad yells, ‘Hey there’s a tiny Mexican behind you with a knife,’ basically.”

  “Chad sounds perceptive,” Corus said.

  “My other buddy threw a hammer at him and he backed off.”

  Corus blinked and poised his hand on the bar. “Teddy, how’d you know he was Mexican?”

  “He looked Mexican, talked Mexican. And he had a knife.”

  “Could you be certain he wasn’t from Puerto Rico, or Venezuela or Paraguay?”

  “Guess I couldn’t. Sorry, I should say Hispanic or Latino, huh? You aren’t gonna turn me in, are you?”

  Corus laughed. “No, I just wanted the complete mental picture.”

  “Anyways, so this tiny Mexican gets on the roof somehow…”

  While Teddy launched back into his stories, Corus peered back at the old timer farmers and wondered if any of them would fare better than Teddy at distinguishing one Hispanic from another.

  He decided with reasonable certainty they wouldn’t.

  SEVENTEEN

  Corus knocked on Pineda’s door.

  Pineda answered in his undershirt and boxers.

  “Put your trousers on,” Corus said.

  “Better be a good reason.”

  “Do you want to go groveling back to Nelka tomorrow?”

  “No.”

  “Do you want to explain to Ruiz why we didn’t learn anything because we pissed of our liaison?”

  “Hell no.”

  “Then get your trousers on.”

  Pineda let the door close and appeared a minute later dressed.

  Corus drove them to the nearest CheapValue.

  “So, what are we doing here?” Pineda asked, as they walked inside.

  “Outfitting. I need your expert eye.”

  “That supposed to be some kind of joke?”

  “It’s growing tiresome how you interpret everything as a slight.”

  Corus led them to the “men’s fashion” section, which seemed like stronger wording than the selection on the racks warranted.

  He rifled through hangers of shirts.

  “I need to look Mexican.”

  “Mexican?”

  Corus furled a hand. “Or what any farmer around here will interpret as such.”

  “Speak fucking English.”

  Keeping one hand on the shirts, Corus stepped closer to Pineda and whispered, “I need to look like a migrant laborer. You do, too.”

  “Me? I ain’t no field hand.”

  “They’re hiring on the Tanner farm. Sounds like they get the pick of the litter. We want to make a good impression but dress like hard workers.”

  “We aren’t doing anything. You feel free.”

  “It doubles our chance to get an invaluable look into the farm.”

  “You’re talking undercover work? I’ve never done that.”

  “Undercover work is sanctioned. This is just a couple guys putting in a hard day’s work. Completely legal. You speak Spanish, right?”

  “Do you?”

  Corus pulled a shirt off the rack. It was thin, cottony and collared with pearly snaps. He held it up for Pineda to see.

  Without waiting for an answer, he found a likely pair of jeans, straight legged but loose enough for lots of bending and kneeling.

  Once dressed, he stepped out of the fitting room and did a turn for Pineda. “How do I look?”

  “You look whiter than you did ten minutes ago.”

  “I’ll break in the clothes, make them look worked in. But…”

  He examined his face in the mirror on the changing room door, considering his relative paleness. Winter had just ended, so maybe his lack of pigment would be less noticeable, and besides, there were light-skinned people from Mexico. Either way, there was nothing he could do about it.

  His fingers brushed the hair above his ears, which was longer than he’d seen it in ten years.

  Back at the hotel, Corus sat shirtless on the edge of the bath tub, while Pineda plugged in a pair of cheap clippers he’d bought with the clothes.

  “You ready?”

  “Make me look as Mexican as possible.”

  Pineda grimaced, looking his head over. “The kids like to shave the sides but leave the top wide, then slick it back. But that’s a style thing. Maybe we should just leave yours as is.”

  “No, do it. Anything is better than feeling hair touch my ears.”

  Pineda switched the clippers on. His hands moved with trepidation at first, then a bit quicker once he got the hang of it.

  “Hair dressers always talk to you,” Pineda said. “Now I know why. It’s fucking creepy to just stand here looking at your head.”

  “And it’s how you get a good tip.”

  Pineda shot him an angry glance in the mirror, then narrowed one eye in thought.

  “You ever been overseas?” he asked. “Traveling and such?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “Europe, mainly. East Africa. Russia and Ukraine. Let’s see… India, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines…”

  “Okay. I get it.”

  “You?”

  “I ain’t ever even been to Mexico to see family.”

  Things grew silent again except for the buzzing of the clippers. Hair fell in clumps on Corus’ bare shoulders.

  Hot pain erupted in his ear. He jerked away and pressed a hand over it then dabbed a finger behind the ear, where the clippers had bit him. His finger stung the spot and came away with a little sheen of blood.

  “Shit, my bad,” Pineda said.

  “Goddamn CheapValue clippers,” Corus said. “Watch the ears, would you?”

  “Yeah, my bad.”

  Pineda flashed a guilty look in the mirror, an emotion Corus was surprised he was capable of. Pineda spoke again, changing the subject.

  “Ever met anyone famous?”

  “A few.”

  “Like who? Gimme the most famous.”

  Corus thought for a second. “I guess it would be the pope.”

  “The what?”

  “The pope.”

  The clippers went silent. Pineda stood straight, jaw hanging, doubling his chins. “You did not.”

  “The last one. John Paul II.”

  “I didn’t know you was Catholic.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You got to meet His Holiness, and you didn’t even have the decency to be fucking Catholic?”

  “Sorry. It wasn’t a prerequisite.”

  “You saw him speak, or you actually met him?”

  “Kissed the ring and everything. We talked.”

  “You talked?”

  Corus nodded.

  Pineda stared at him in the mirror and down at his head. “Well, fuck you, then.”

  Corus nodded again. “How about you? Ever met anyone famous?”

  Pineda turned the clippers back on. “Saw Snoop Dogg at a Burger King once.”

  “Oh, yeah? Did you talk to him?”

  “Tried to, but his body guards shoved me in the bathroom. I mean, excuse me. I thought it was a free country where you could express an opinion about the arts.” He brushed the side of Corus’ head. “There.”

  Corus stood up, hair tumbling from his body onto the floor and sink, and examined his look. It was certainly like nothing he’d ever go for. He’d have to hope that was a good thing.

  “It’s symmetrical, at least.”

  “Do we need to do anything to me?” Pineda asked. “Just kidding. I know I look Mexican already.”

&nbs
p; EIGHTEEN

  Corus and Pineda woke early, dressed in the clothes they’d frayed and distressed the night before and double-checked themselves of any markers of law enforcement, then drove to an abandoned lot behind the Finch Feed store. They parked down the street and went over the plan one more time. Then Corus got out alone and slouched his shoulders and stuck his hands in his jacket pockets to soften his bearing.

  A man and a woman had beaten him to the lot.

  “Hola,” he said, as he approached.

  The two said hello in return. “For work?” the woman asked.

  “They said to come early,” he said in Spanish.

  “You got a smoke?” the man asked.

  “Sorry. I don’t smoke.”

  “Yeah, me either,” he said with a smile.

  “Haven’t seen you here before,” the woman said.

  “My father used to work around here. He just died. So I came.”

  “You got papers?” the man asked.

  Corus hesitated, unsure how to respond.

  The two shared a glance, and the man spoke up. “Because if you want to find work today, you have no papers. Understand?”

  Corus cocked his head.

  “The Tanner farm,” the woman said. “They’re the only ones who will come today. They like to hire people without papers.”

  “Got it. I don’t have papers.” He thanked them and introduced himself as “Diego.” The woman was Miriam, and the man was Antonio. They weren’t married but had grown up together in the same small town in Sinaloa.

  Soon, more people arrived, mostly men, but women too, and a couple of teens. Pineda stepped out of the dark and found a place to wait amongst them. All told, twenty-five or thirty people shivered together in the cold morning before the break of dawn.

  As the first light of day touched the hills in the distance, a black truck pulled in near the line-up, and a cargo van parked on the curb in the wrong direction. A Latino man in a gray hooded zip-up sweatshirt and a Broncos cap got out of the truck followed by a white guy in a well-worn cowboy hat and thick jacket. Corus had seen him the day before, picking something up out of the field next to the Phillips house. Nelka said his name was Randall Pieterse.

  “Hola todos,” Randall said. Then in English: “We need four for distribution, six for the farm. Pay is the same.”

  The man in the hoodie translated.

  Only a few people shuffled over toward the van. Miriam and Antonio stayed put.

  The man in the Broncos cap noticed Miriam and Antonio.

  “Hello, Moses,” Antonio said.

  Moses motioned with the pen he held. Miriam and Antonio hopped in the back of the truck.

  Moses’ gaze fell next on Corus, who felt suddenly self-conscious.

  Moses looked to Randall, who gave a slight nod, then stepped closer. “You have papers? Green card? Registered Alien? Social Security?”

  “No papers,” Corus said.

  “Get in the truck.”

  Corus breathed a sigh of relief as he hopped in the bed. Antonio gave him a nod of congratulation.

  Moses spoke up. “Hey, there’s more room in the Distribution Center.”

  Still, no one moved.

  Corus looked to Miriam for explanation.

  “Not safe,” she mouthed.

  Moses got to Pineda and asked for papers. Pineda produced a driver’s license.

  Moses examined it as well as he could in the dim light.

  “Is this really what you weigh?” Moses asked with skepticism.

  “What the fuck business of yours is it?” Pineda said in English.

  Moses handed it back. “Not today, amigo.”

  Pineda mumbled a curse to himself and stalked off toward the road. “Get my ass up at the crack of five am for nothing?”

  Corus averted his gaze as he passed by.

  Moses picked three more workers, then announced, “We will need more help soon. Come back tomorrow.”

  He and Randall got back in the cab and pulled out of the lot. As they passed by the van, Corus got a look at its driver, a bulky man with a bald head. Arlo Falcone dressed differently now, but Corus recognized his shape if not his face. Corus had knocked him silly and disarmed him, and Chu choked him out in the side yard of Rayne “Flip” Crooks’ house. He’d fled in the ensuing scuffle, but with a bicycle handcuffed to one wrist.

  Growing more self-conscious, he searched the truck for any watching eyes. No one was concerned with him, plenty occupied by their own thoughts and concerns. Some even had their eyes closed, getting a last bit of rest before a long day of toil.

  Daylight broke over the rolling countryside, giving it a different palette of hues than at dusk the day before. Corus imagined the thin sunlight slowly warming the cold earth until it was ready to come alive again. Today was the day the earth had to groan and hit the alarm clock, roll out of slumber and put its shoes on. Maybe it would need to be cajoled into doing so. Maybe that was their job.

  They pulled into the Tanner complex about a hundred yards from a large house. It sat upon the apex of the gentle rise the farm occupied, sporting low-sloping roofs and gabled windows. The agricultural complex consisted of a dozen or so buildings of different shapes and sizes, reminding Corus a bit of a fairground. The largest building was furthest away from the house to the east. The stacked pallets, forklifts and shipping containers nearby indicated it was the distribution center, from which the Tanners and their onion farming cohort shipped their crops.

  They hopped out and stood quietly while Moses and Randall conferred. The white van rolled past them toward the distribution center. This time Corus didn’t bother averting his gaze. He watched Arlo Falcone keenly, daring him to look back. But he didn’t look, because there was nothing remarkable about one more new farm laborer.

  Moses and Randall walked off, and the workers all waited by the truck. Corus stood with his arms crossed, asking himself if expectation was the greatest camouflage known to man.

  Moses returned holding something under his arm and a paint can which appeared empty by the way it wobbled on the handle. He motioned for them all to come with him and led out into crop land with nothing else visible except for the horizon and a line of poplars to the southeast.

  “Antonio, run this out there. Put it on the ground.”

  Antonio took the paint can and jogged over furrows in the tilled soil. After thirty yards he looked back, but Moses didn’t stop him until he was about eighty yards out. Antonio planted the can atop a furrow, and Moses waved him in.

  The workers exchanged a bemused glance. Corus wasn’t the only one who didn’t know what was going on.

  As Antonio got close, Moses pulled an oil-stained sleeve off a small rifle. It looked like a Marlin .22. He handed it to Miriam, but she held her hands up.

  “I don’t know how.”

  “You?”

  The man in the white hat next to Corus stepped up and took the .22.

  “See if you can shoot that can,” Moses said.

  The man peered through the small scope and took a shot.

  “Again,” Moses said.

  The man missed again.

  “Someone else.”

  No one seemed keen. Moses pointed at Corus.

  He looked the weapon over, then shouldered it with no idea if the scope was zeroed properly, nor to what range. He aimed just above the top of the can and exhaled as he squeezed the trigger.

  The can toppled backward to murmurs of delight.

  “Again.”

  The can was resting on its side now, making a shorter target, but Corus aimed just a little high again and drilled the can off the furrow and out of sight.

  “Thank God, I have someone who can shoot.” Moses clapped him on the back and smiled. “I hope you’re not a fan of rats.”

  NINETEEN

  Olive lay on her cot, curled under a rough wool blanket, fists clenching and unclenching, teeth grinding, stomach churning with anger.

  Something had changed in her family ar
ound the time she graduated high school. Her father had been drinking more and, one evening, confided in her his utter desperation and their financial doom. The anxiety this wrought in her had been debilitating. She missed school with stomach aches. She didn’t sleep. But the doom never materialized. In fact, things rather suddenly improved. Her father stopped drinking so much and returned to his usual cheer. More shocking, her mother even seemed happier.

  Whatever their financial problems, they’d gone away, and her father stopped laying his worries on her, stopped talking to her about the farm entirely. All of that suited Olive just fine. She spent as she liked on her credit card without ever hearing complaints. Like many area kids, she went to WSU and learned how to do a keg stand. She majored in literature and learned how to use a semicolon. While other kids went home to Walla Walla or Spokane on the weekends to get their laundry done and eat home-cooked meals, Olive learned how to do that for herself and only visited home when she had to. Each time she arrived home, she’d find a new sign of her parents’ growing wealth: a new car, another farm acquisition, a remodel on the house, the massive distribution center.

  None of it caught more than her passing interest.

  Until Randall came along.

  He was rugged and handsome and had an accent from the other side of the world. He’d left a home torn apart by strife and poverty, but he was kind and relentlessly hard-working. She was overjoyed he lived on her parents’ farm in the middle of nowhere, certain that if the rest of the world knew he existed, they’d never give him back.

  Randall became her primary emotional link to the farm, easily surpassing her family. It was he who taught her the beauty of farming. It was he who showed her the magic of coaxing sustenance out of the earth, without ever making her feel stupid for not knowing or spoiled for having a better upbringing than him. But she did feel spoiled for never before appreciating the thing that had clothed and fed her all her life. Randall made her want to be a better person.

  Even though he was a foreigner, it was as if the ground loved him, as if everything that grew there grew for him.

  She loved him. She loved him as if she’d always loved him, long before they’d ever met. And that great love had completed her distraction.