Forty-Four Book Eleven (44 series 11) Page 9

  Maybe he was gone for good. And maybe that was for the best. I didn’t need him. I didn’t need anybody.

  But if it was true that he was gone, then where was Jesse?

  During my break I sat down under a small grove of trees next to Lupe and a few other workers. I propped myself up against a cottonwood, took off my sweat-soaked cap, and stretched my legs out in front of me.

  “Good morning,” Ernesto said as he got up to go back to work.

  “Buenos días, Ernesto,” I said. “¿Cómo esta el?”

  Lupe shook her head and laughed. Ernesto answered in Spanish but I had no idea what he said. I nodded and held up my palms and he smiled before walking away.

  I sat there staring at the field in numb exhaustion, knowing that if I didn’t get up it would only get harder. Plus, I could see one of the bosses, the jefes, looking my way. I staggered up and got back to it.

  There was something about these men here that put everyone a little on edge. There was no friendly banter as there had been on the first farm. In fact, there weren’t many words exchanged at all beyond the most basic and essential. They insisted on being addressed as mister instead of señor. I could see everyone’s energy tighten up as they roamed through the fields, telling the already hard-working pickers to go even faster.

  When it was finally time to turn in our tokens, I stood in line, silently giving thanks and thinking about how it never seemed to get any easier. I stepped up to the table when it was my turn and placed the tokens down in front of one of the white-haired men in charge.

  “Seventy-three dollars,” he said, like it was his least favorite number in the world next to seventy-four.

  “You work here before, miss?” he said from under the rim of his Stetson.

  I shook my head.

  “You seem awful familiar.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Awful familiar.”

  I kept my breath steady and smiled.

  “I’ve worked other farms, but this is my first time here.”

  “Hmmm,” he said.

  “I’ve got a cousin that looks like me, works the fields,” I added quickly. “Maybe you’re thinking of her.”

  “Okay.”

  I wasn’t sure he bought it, but he wrote down the amount next to my name and I walked away, my tired heart beating as fast as it could.

  On the way to the cabin I looked out at the horizon, tracing the dirt road that led to town with my fingers. I wondered if the man had recognized me and whether I needed to take off before he called the cops. There was probably some kind of reward for my capture. Yeah, I thought, that ree-ward money would go a long way in easing his seventy-three dollar pain.

  I sighed and shook my head. I wasn’t going anywhere tonight. Tonight, the cabin was the end of the line for me.

  CHAPTER 37

  Even though I didn’t understand most of what was said, with each passing day I felt less and less like an outsider. I wasn’t one of them, but it wasn’t like it had been in the beginning either.

  “Llorona, here’s some advice for you,” Lupe said, uncorking a bottle of wine. “Stay away from our language. You hurt my ears.”

  But her words didn’t have their usual hard edge to them. She laughed as she poured some of the red into small paper cups and passed them around before handing the bottle back to Abuelita, who dumped the rest of the contents into the pot on the stove.

  “How am I supposed to learn if I don’t practice?” I said.

  “Es cierto, Dolores,” the old woman said, looking my way and then at Lupe. “Así se aprende.”

  She lifted her cup into the air.

  “Salud!” everyone said, joining her toast.

  We had all chipped in and the old woman had brought back a couple of bottles from her shopping trip. The wine was cheap but after another killer day in the fields it tasted fine. Just fine.

  The sun had left the sky and it was clear, a few stars appearing in the fading twilight. It felt like it was going to be another cool night.

  As the kitchen came to life, the women spoke rapidly, as if they had been saving it up all day. It was quite the contrast from the silence of the fields. Lupe translated sometimes and even tried to teach me a few words and phrases.

  After a few minutes Abuelita handed me a knife and said, “Cuchillo.”

  “¿Cujosho?”

  “Cuchillo,” she repeated.

  “Cuchillo,” I said. “Knife.”

  She pointed to a pile of carrots, sweet potatoes, and onions.

  “Knife,” she said.

  I started peeling the vegetables at the small table that served both as a work station and dining table and Lupe came up and poured me some more wine.

  “Hey, D,” she said, “So how come you never took Spanish in high school?”

  I noticed that for the first time, she hadn’t called me mensa or llorona or weepy.

  “I don’t know. I took German.”

  “Oh, good choice.” She laughed. “Cuz this country’s full of Germans. They sneak across the ocean and swim to shore.”

  She laughed, but it was good natured and I smiled.

  “Well, these days my German is probably as bad as my Spanish,” I said. “But where did you learn to speak English so well?”

  “Connecticut.”

  I squinted at her.

  “I was born there. Mexicans will show up in the craziest places, huh? Tobacco, D. My parents worked the farms there for several years when I was younger and I got myself a seventh-grade Hartford education.”

  I wanted to ask her more but figured she would tell me if she wanted to.

  The large knife was dull and it slowed me down some, but my hands were better than the last time I helped and I was able to go faster. The old woman sat at the table, removing the bones and cutting up the meat that had been stewing since early this morning.

  “What kind of meat is that?” I asked Lupe.

  “Goat. She’s making birria de chivo. Ever have it?”

  “No,” I said, flashing on the goat farms I always drove by on the way to the airport back home.

  “You’re in for a treat.”

  Lupe went back outside and I focused on chopping the vegetables into bite-size chunks, losing myself in the work. After a time I noticed that it had gotten quieter. When I looked up I found Lupe and the others staring at my hands.

  “Híjole, look at you go, white girl,” she said. “You may have found your true calling there, D. Watch your fingers now.”

  I slowed down, but it was too late.

  “Where you learn to chop like that?” she asked.

  “My mom,” I said.

  “No way. Not unless your mother was a chef. That’s no home-style chopping. That’s professional right there. Don’t be trying to pull the wool over this Mexican’s eyes. I know cuz I have an uncle in Houston who works in a restaurant. He went to school for it. He cuts potatoes the same way you do.”

  Ah, hell.

  It was a stupid mistake. I should have remembered that unlike the knife blade Lupe was sharp and seemed to always be watching me. I could see her mind working, adding this last little bit of information to what she already knew about me, fitting in another piece to the puzzle that was Callie “Dolores” Walker. Always wondering who I was and what I was doing there. I was pretty sure she was just naturally curious and wouldn’t do anything with the information, but it had still been sloppy.

  I brought my speed down even more.

  “Don’t go slowing down now. We’re hungry!”

  I nodded nervously and finished. Abuelita then added the vegetables into the pot along with the goat meat before starting work on the tortillas. The smell in the little cabin was something else and I took another sip of wine and started to relax again.

  I helped Lupe put out the spoons and paper towels along with the bowls on the little table. It was too small for all of us to use at the same time, so we took turns, a few people sitting on the porch. Except that out of respect for her age and how hard
she worked, the old woman always ate at the table and in the same chair.

  “So how long have you been coming here to Hatch?” I said.

  “Me?” Lupe said, sitting down. “Five, six years. But Abuelita’s been coming here for over forty years.”

  “Forty years?” I said, shaking my head.

  “Since this farm opened. When she was younger, she worked up at the house all year, cleaning and ironing and cooking. But that was a while ago. Now she just works in the fields so she can return to Mexico after the season.”

  I couldn’t conceive it. I had been doing this for almost two weeks and, in its own way, each day seemed to get harder than the one before. I couldn’t imagine one year of this type of work, let alone forty. And someone her age.

  “That’s such a long time,” I said.

  “Too damn long,” Lupe said. “I tell her she’s gotta stop, but she’s stubborn and refuses to listen. She’s going to be seventy-two this year.”

  Seventy-two. She seemed at least ten years older than that. Maybe twenty.

  The old woman stopped stirring and looked at us.

  Lupe said something to her in Spanish and Abuelita seemed to grow angry. They argued for a few minutes.

  “Está bien,” the granddaughter said finally. “Whatever.”

  “She says that once you stop working, you stop having purpose in your life,” Lupe said, turning back to me. “And that’s when you begin to die. She says out here, working under the sun, she will live a very long time.”

  The old woman nodded and then added a few more sentences, which she punctuated with a deep laugh.

  “She doesn’t care if she dies out here in the fields. She says her spirit knows the way home. Her only request is that her body be buried on her farm back in Mexico. Otherwise, she says she will haunt me.”

  I laughed.

  “Where’s home?” I asked.

  “Jalisco.”

  It was quiet for a moment.

  “Hey, Lupe, tell me about la Llorona,” I said, not wanting to let the conversation die.

  Paloma had mentioned the story once in passing, but I couldn’t remember too much about it.

  “It’s just a story, D. Things you tell kids, like the bogeyman. ‘Be good or la Llorona’s gonna get you.’ Stuff like that.”

  “But what’s it based on?”

  “Well, like with all these things, there’s lots of versions. But basically she was a woman named María who drowned her children to be with the man she loved. When he rejected her, she drowned herself, too. Of course, after what she did she couldn’t get into Heaven, so now she roams the earth weeping and searching for her dead children.”

  “Basta,” the old woman said. “Es malo hablar tanto de estas cosas. Es hora de comer.”

  “She says it’s not good to talk of such things for too long,” Lupe said. “And that dinner’s ready.”

  Abuelita ladled the stew into the bowls and said a blessing. It tasted even better than it smelled. I slurped down spoonful after delicious spoonful.

  “Delicioso,” I said to the old woman, finishing the bowl. “Muy delicioso.”

  “It will be even better tomorrow,” Lupe said. “When the flavors have more time to come together.”

  After dinner we went outside and once again sat around the fire.

  There was something very special about all of it. Magical, even. For the first time since I had left Bend, I had been able to relax, if only for a few minutes. I didn’t think of Ben Mortimer, I didn’t think of Ty or Kate or Samael or Jesse or my picture in the paper. I didn’t even think about the ghost of the little girl.

  I sat there listening to the rolling of the r’s, to the rhythm of a language I didn’t understand, and almost felt something resembling gratitude. Grateful to not be in jail, or on my knees in the fields. Grateful for those precious moments where all I had thought about was chopping and cooking and the food and the good people I was lucky enough to share it with.

  Grateful to just be sitting in front of a warm fire with them, under the dark, endless sky.

  CHAPTER 38

  When I woke up the next morning, I decided that I would stay.

  I would have to keep alert, but the field boss who thought I looked familiar must have been thinking of someone other than Abby Craig. Sure, if he took my fingerprints they would match up. But short of that, in the light of day I felt relatively safe behind the exhaustion, mud, and short hair. I looked nothing like Abby Craig. And with each passing day, I felt less and less like her, too.

  But after work I saw a figure coming down the dirt path toward me that made my heart skip a beat.

  But I didn’t run away. Instead I ran toward him.

  “Nice hat, Craigers,” Jesse said, smiling. “I love L.A.”

  I looked up at him and touched his face. Like always, he seemed so real.

  “How’re you doing?”

  “Not bad,” I said. “I won’t lie to you, it’s hard out here. But I’m staying out of trouble. That’s the main thing.”

  “Glad to hear it.” He sighed. “I just wish you could be working at a used bookstore or something. I don’t know, maybe a record store.”

  “A record store? Do those even exist anymore?”

  “You know what I’m saying.”

  “That I do,” I said, taking his hand in my rough fingers and kissing it. “But it won’t be for much longer. The season’s coming to an end.”

  He smiled.

  “What?” I said.

  “Ah, it’s nothing. It’s not something I’m, well, especially proud of and I don’t think I ever told you, but long before there was Metallica, there was Eddie and the Cruisers. When I was little I would watch that movie all the time. I even had the soundtrack and the last song is called ‘A Season in Hell.’ You just reminded me of it, that’s all.”

  “Welcome to my life, huh?” I said.

  “Yeah, but like you said, the season’s coming to an end and you’ll be leaving here soon.”

  “I wasn’t talking about harvest season.”

  We walked slowly next to the gurgling stream beside the dirt path. He gave me a hug and held it for a while, not saying anything.

  “I feel your pain, Craigers. But your whole life has been one big comeback story. Remember that game in the playoffs against Hermiston that year? Remember how you almost singlehandedly brought the team back after being down 3-0? And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. You came back from being dead, for Christ’s sakes. Did I do that? No. I’m living proof that it’s not so easy. You don’t think I would have come back if I could? There’s not one day that passes where I don’t wish that I could have done what you did. But that was no accident. Pardon the pun. It just shows what you’re made of, how strong you are.”

  I took a deep breath and wished I could bottle what he was selling.

  “You can do this,” he said, his eyes blazing like a fire in the night. “You’ve got it in you. You may not have the details yet. But that’ll come. I know you don’t feel it right now, but you’re bigger than this. When you look back, you’ll see that it was no contest.”

  He was so passionate that it took me back to the dream, or whatever it was, when we had been together. Jesse had carried me to bed. As I looked into his eyes now, I was almost positive that it had been real.

  “Thanks, Jesse. I want to believe. I do.” I smiled up at him. “By the way, I found that Eddie and the Cruisers DVD stuffed between the sofa cushions one day. I don’t think it’s anything to be embarrassed about. It’s a good movie.”

  “Well, I had a reputation to maintain.”

  “So what do you think became of Samael?” I said.

  “He’s still around. Otherwise, you know, you’d be seeing a lot more of me.”

  “It’s just that I haven’t seen him in a while.”

  “Well, I can’t tell you what he’s up to. I just know he’s still here.”

  A deep line formed between his eyebrows.

  “What?” I sai
d.

  “Well, I never told you this, but I’ve seen him before.”

  “Who? Samael? You’ve seen Samael before? When?”

  Jesse stuck out an arm and pulled up his sleeve, revealing that mark that he had had for a few years. He didn’t ever talk about it, but I knew that he had gotten it while fighting Clyde Tidwell, the evil spirit that had possessed me several years ago.

  Jesse’s tattoo was similar to the one Samael had on his hand. The characters were different and smaller, but it was in the same font, the same style. Like they had been done by the same artist.

  “Samael was there that day with Clyde,” Jesse said.

  “You mean, he was helping Clyde?”

  “No, the opposite. Clyde was coming at me and all of sudden he was on top of me and his darkness was closing in from all sides. I don’t really remember too much more after that, except that the next moment, Clyde was gone and I had this tattoo. And Samael was there standing next to me.”

  “So you’re saying Samael helped you?”

  “Yes, but it’s not as simple as that. Behind those eyes, there’s something dark, something that’s, I don’t know, the opposite of light.”

  I stared at Jesse for a long moment.

  “But why didn’t you tell me all this back when I was trying to help Charlie Modine and chasing Samael around Bend, thinking he was a killer?”

  “I never got a good look at him then. I never saw his eyes. But now that I have, I know it was him that day. No question in my mind.”

  “So if he helped you defeat Clyde, and helped show Charlie Modine the truth, doesn’t that mean that there is a part of him that represents good? Can’t that be the part that’s here now? Maybe he really is trying to help me.”

  Jesse swallowed and nodded slowly.

  “I hope so, Craigers. I hope to God. Because you wouldn’t want that other part of him here. Believe me.”

  CHAPTER 39

  Later that night, I was down at the bottom again, the water moving gently around me. But there was nothing gentle in the way my arms and legs fought to get free from whatever was binding them. The water was colder down here than at the top and despite my struggle I still began to shiver.