A So-Called Vacation (18 page)

Where they did differ was in their intellect. Victor would not express an original thought even if it struck him from the sky. Chori, however, avoided the clichés and folk sayings that passed for wisdom in the camp, even though his thoughts took longer to express.

Yet like many of the other migrants, he did have his share of superstitions. When Gabriel asked for more details about the lightning strike, Chori added that they had found two cavities where the bolt had passed through the woman and deep into the ground, as if someone had plunged a pitchfork with two enormous tines into the earth.

“My old man and I started digging to see what had made the holes.”

“It was lightning, of course,” said Gabriel.

He looked at Gabriel like a child with a more mysterious explanation. “There was something else, though. We kept digging and digging, but the holes kept running side by side, deeper and deeper. Finally we got tired and had to stop. My old man decided it was the Devil's doing.”

The ensuing silence left Gabriel a little nervous, not about supernatural threats but about natural ones. An occasional flash still split in two in the distance, and he was sitting on the highest open ground as far as the eye could see.

Chori noticed him watching the sky. “You like nature. Right, buddy?”

Gabriel nodded but kept his eye on the horizon. “I'm also a little scared of it. That's why I'm checking for lightning.”

“That's all right.” He gestured downstream. “The guys who went under over there weren't scared, and they bought it.”

One of the boys said, “It's good to feel a little scared, like when a nice girl gives you butterflies.”

Something about the cautious way he glanced at him left Gabriel wondering whether he was referring to Paula. He said nothing, though, especially after the other boy added, “You know why you get scared? Because something inside tells you she can really mess you up.”

Gabriel half-followed their conversation, but mostly he lost himself to the hues of green and the distant drone of insects. At that moment the fatigue of fieldwork gave way, and he began telling the boys how even after all the colors and sounds were blotted out at night, he liked to pretend that the fireflies all around him were like aspiring, infant stars. At other times he imagined them as embers of ancient stars returning to die.

He added how different life at camp was from the one back home, where he frittered his summers inside the house, like cabin fever in reverse, even though their house was infinitely more comfortable than the shack. Here each day felt different, despite the tedious fieldwork. An early morning might begin with a huge flock of birds rushing out of the bushes, so that afterward every boom box was turned off, hoping to witness a second sudden whoosh. Another morning might bring such a contagious silence that every worker grew quiet, as though passing through a place of worship.

By the time Gabriel finished, Chori was smiling the way old friends do. Gus was smiling too, but with a tinge of teasing. Before Gus could say anything, Gabriel added loudly, “So anyway, that's how I spent my summer. I discovered that lightning bolts are the Devil's death rays and that lightning bugs are stars in disguise.”

“Don't feel ashamed,” said Chori. “I admire people who work outdoors all day and can still appreciate it.”

“Not me,” said Gus. “Our summers back home are too hot to go outside. I even thought of working part-time as a lifeguard, but then decided, Who needs this!”

“And the rest of the year,” Gabriel added, “we're cooped up in the classroom.”

“In that case,” said Chori, “you should ask your dad to pull you out early in May, and bring you back late September.”

His comment, intentional or not, stopped Gabriel's complaints cold. He had known since first grade that some migrant parents did just that, shaving months from their kids' schooling each year. That had never bothered him before, but now, listening to Chori, a bright and sensitive young man who might have gone far otherwise, it seemed almost criminal. Gabriel wondered how often he had dismissed anonymous migrant students like him.

“So you guys came all the way up from the Rio Grande Valley, right?” added Chori.

“You've heard of that hellhole?” Gus asked.

“Sure. I've met lots of workers from there.”

Gus started to add that the area had more than just farmworkers, but before he could continue, one of the other boys asked, “Aren't the Borrados from there, too?”

“Give these two guys a break,” said the other one. “Next you'll ask if they're related.”

“The Borrados are all right,” said Chori. “They just never stop to …”

One of the boys laughed, “Smell the strawberries?”

“As a matter of fact,” said Chori, “strawberries do have a smell. Just take the time to find out.”

“I'll tell you after I find one. Those Borrados tear through the fields like locusts.”

Chori gazed idly at the countryside. “This is nice, but I like Michigan better, with all those cherry orchards. At
least you work in the shade. But they're pretty much using machines now. I even like the sugar beet fields if they weren't such a pain to weed.”

He glanced at both brothers, assuming they were in the know, but Gus immediately distanced himself from the migrant stream. “Never been there, never done that.”

“What about New York?”

Gus assumed Chori was pulling his leg. “Oh, sure. New York City?”

“No, around the Finger Lakes area. Cayuga, Canandaigua?” He waited awhile then added, “Well, some parts of Michigan are a lot like that, but I guess you haven't been there either.”

Gabriel tried to fill the awkward silence by wondering out loud, “Say, do you suppose that right now there are migrants over there doing the same thing we are?”

“Shooting the breeze?” said Chori. “I guess, if they're having bad weather too.”

Gus suddenly stretched his arms high. “Forget other guys. Forget Mother Nature. Where are the girls?”

Chori nodded in the direction of the town. “You mean the local talent?”

“Who else is there? To get to the ones here you have to go through more interference than at a football scrimmage.”

Chori pointed at the dark cloud over the town. “The locals are probably hanging out by the town pool, even with that storm over them. But they're off limits too, at least to us.”

“Tell me about it,” said Gus, who watched the black cloud linger like an ink stain over the town. “Maybe they'll get zapped in the pool then.”

“Let's just hope the weather clears up,” said Chori. “Around harvest time anything can mess up these
berries. A strong wind rubs the leaves against the fruit and leaves them bruised. If there's too much rain it tears up the skin, and the berries get moldy. Hell, a few days of steady rain can wipe out an entire crop.”

A little later, Chori dressed and slipped his work boots back on, saying he had promised to go into town and buy groceries for his mother.

M
inutes after Chori left, Victor showed up, leaving Gabriel to wonder whether Chori had sensed him coming. He was certain the two had crossed paths, yet Victor's sole remark about his hike was that he had seen several hares on the way. “I should have brought my father's four-ten,” he said.

“You'd have the grower here by the third shot,” said one of the boys.

“So? I'd pop his cottontail too.”

He immediately stripped to his briefs and dove in. The water level had dropped enough since the last time so that Gabriel could no longer dip his feet. Victor splashed around awhile until he tired. Then, unable to secure a foothold on the slick cement, he tried hoisting himself up the high bank by grabbing a shrub branch that grazed the water. Everyone ignored him, even as he cursed his impotence, and no one reminded him of the gunnysack rope behind the river's edge. Finally he had no choice but to ask for a helping hand.

Back on dry land he pretended that nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Still, when he glanced at Gabriel, this one said, “I didn't help because I can't swim well.”

“Then what's the point of buying new swim trunks?” He suddenly remembered the gunnysack for submerging six-packs and pointed to the other end of its frayed rope, tethered to a blunt peg on the bank. “Just hang on to that.”

Gabriel did not like overbearing people, so now he had yet another reason to dislike Victor. “I don't think that rope can hold me.”

“A puny kid like you? Sure it can.”

“I didn't see you use it yourself.”

“Suit yourself. You don't know what you're missing.”

“Yeah,” replied Gabriel. “You sounded like you were having a great time in there.”

Victor held his temper only because Gus was there. “There's nothing like a cool dip after a hard day's work.”

“What hard day's work? Everyone quit after lunchtime. And you're as laid-back as we are,” continued Gabriel.

“Are you calling me lazy?”

“I said laid-back.”

“That's not what I heard.” Victor looked around, but nobody backed his version.

“Maybe your ears got plugged.”

This time Victor's tone was stripped of any polite pretense. “Good thing your brother's here to protect you.”

“Cut him some slack,” said Gus. “He meant the laid-back stuff as a compliment. What, you'd rather be a Borrado?”

The comment distracted him for the moment. “No way! In fact I had a couple of cousins like that. Fieldwork or schoolwork, it made no difference. They worked their butts off. Before hitting the road up north, they'd get their hands on next year's textbooks.”

“What for?” Gus asked.

“Since they missed most of September, they caught up during the summer. When they came back in the fall they wanted to hit the ground running.”

“Well, good for them,” Gabriel said.

“A lot of good it did them. A few years ago, they were heading home when my uncle fell asleep at the wheel.
Most of the family bought the farm. The only one who survived is mental. Every now and then he'll ask why he can't join the family up north.”

“Well, that's not going to happen to us,” said Gus. “Not with my kid brother's good-luck charm.” He tapped Gabriel's soles with his own toes to prompt him. “Show them Don Pilo's candy.”

Gabriel retrieved his shirt from a bush and carefully pulled out the wrapped lozenge. He handed it to Gus, who passed it on to Victor, who in turn scrutinized it with such intensity that he must have thought it indeed had special powers.

“It's not a good-luck charm,” said Gabriel, bothered by the attention. “It just caught my eye, so I picked it up.”

“Looks like that old cheapskate wrapped it himself,” said Victor. Suddenly he bit into it but just as quickly spit it out. “Jesus, it tastes like chalk!” He wadded what was left and flung it into the canal.

“Hey!” said Gabriel. “That's our secret weapon. We planned to beat them at their own game.”

“Don't cry over it. I'll get you a lock of their hair. Fair enough?”

The other boys laughed while Gabriel pretended not to mind. He watched the bright cellophane bob downstream and then disappear.

“Like chalk,” said Gabriel, pretending to ponder Victor's reaction in order to dissimulate his own anger. “It just goes to show those Borrados are too dumb to tell the difference. No wonder they work their butts off for candy and warm Cokes.”

“Gabi, I don't care if those candies are cheap knockoffs from Mexico. We don't even get
that
crap. After all, it's the thought that counts.”

“Don Pilo buys them everything in Mexico,” said one of the boys, “including those funky sombreros the size of beach umbrellas. That's why they're so white.”

“Think of it,” Gus told his brother. “They're more Mexican than us, but whose butts got kicked out of the public pool? Ours! And we're as American as any of the locals!”

“Well,” said Victor, pulling up the waistband of his soggy briefs, “nobody's kicking me out of this watering hole.”

Expecting him to plunge back in, Gabriel inched away from the edge to avoid getting soaked, but Victor simply stood his ground. Thinking he needed more clearance, Gabriel moved another foot or so. “Aren't you going to jump in?”

“Sure,” said Victor. “Right after you.”

“Gabi's fine where he is. He can help us climb back up.”

“Like he did with me?” Victor stared straight at Gabriel as if struck with a sudden insight. “I get it. You're afraid of those guys who drowned, right?”

“I never knew them.”

“I didn't ask if you knew them. You're scared of their ghosts, right?” Victor immediately had everyone's attention. “Someone told you about that fat guy from camp.”

One of the boys asked, “The huge guy who used to swim here all the time? How come he never comes around anymore?”