Footloose in America: Dixie to New England (41 page)

“No! I know it’s not them,” Chooey said.

He and Jose were on the floor in our room watching the news with us. One of the guys they were expecting was Jose’s best friend. They grew up together, and he was wiping tears as the network showed immigration officers opening a cargo trailer with dead Mexicans in it.

Two nights later the call came from the Coyote. “We’ll be there tomorrow. Make sure you’ve got the money!”

They showed up during lunch in a mini-van with Pennsylvania plates and tinted windows. The yard was alive with excitement, and while I didn’t understand what was said, I’m sure it was along the lines of “Thank God you’re here! We’ve been worried to death.”

“You have no idea what we’ve gone through!”

“Come have a beer and tell us about it.”

“This country could not survive without Mexicans!”

I heard that from Chooey, Chris Watt and every other farmer we met. Chris said, “I’d hire nothing but Americans if I could. It would be a lot less hassle. But Americans don’t want to work. They’ll pick for a day or two, then we won’t see ‘em until payday.”

“Nobody thought you’d last a day,” Chooey said. “But when I found you picking in the snow storm, well–”

I interrupted. “You thought I was one loco gringo! Right?”

He had that boyish Chooey blush. “I guess so.”

“Hey, it was fun! Tough work, lousy conditions and the money stinks. What more could I ask for?”

It was Chris Watt who said, “But you know what? The Mexicans not only make a living doing this work, they all send money back home.”

You’d think our biggest problem living with the boys would have been the bathroom. Even with the toilet solid on the floor, the walls patched and painted, the fact remained: Eight young Mexican men, two middle-aged gringos and just
one
bathroom.

But the bathroom wasn’t the problem. It was the kitchen. Someone was always cooking. Especially after we got it all spiffed up. And with them, it was always Mexican food. Never Italian, or Chinese, or even good ole meat and mashed potatoes. Not that they didn’t like those kinds of food. The boys were crazy about Patricia’s lasagna, but everything they cooked was Mexican.

When they made tortillas, everybody got in on the act. With two presses, a couple of pans on the stove and a bunch of hands in the mixing bowls, the boys would crank out a mountain of tortillas in an afternoon. Tortilla time called for lots of loud music and plenty of beer.

It was also party-time when they roasted peppers, which always kept the back door to the kitchen busy. Usually it was open because the fumes so overwhelmed the kitchen that you had to go out for fresh air. And when they burnt one, the smoke would even drive us out of our rooms upstairs.

“Hey Butt!” Pedro never did get the “D” on the end of my name. “Have a beer?”

A few times I wondered if they didn’t burn some of those peppers on purpose, just to get us to come down and party with them–especially one
beautiful mid-May evening. The air inside the house was caustic. Outside the back door they’d set a piece of plywood across two saw horses and it was loaded with tortillas, refried beans, fried rice, all kinds of peppers and fish soup. And of course, a few cases of Bud Lite.

“It’s beautiful, eh?” Pedro said.

His head was tipped back so he could see the full moon. It was amazing how much English he’d learned in the past two months. Scarcely a day went by that he didn’t ask me or Patricia, “How you say in American?”

“Yes, Pedro, the moon is beautiful.”

He laughed, then repeated the word “moon” three times. Each time he stretched the word out longer. We both laughed. Then I said, “You sound like a cow.”

“Hey Butt. Why you no talk like other Americans?”

The boys had been roasting peppers since they came in from the orchard, so Pedro was pretty well intoxicated. When the boys drank, seldom were they serious. And even though he was in a festive mode, I sensed something pensive in Pedro’s question.

I asked, “What do you mean?”

“You drink with us, but you no yell and want to fight. You laugh and have good time. When I drink with Americans in town, they get mean. They call me ‘Wet back.’ Tell me go home. They always want fight. You no do that. Why?”

At first, I didn’t know how to answer. Patricia and I had really become attached to the boys, some more than others. Pedro was one of my favorites. He was a gangling, funny, lovable character that didn’t have a malicious bone in his skinny body. The only thing I could think to say to him was, “Because I love ya, man!”

In the morning, when I went downstairs to feed Della, I found Pedro, Jose and Chooey in the kitchen. The night before, after a couple of beers, I went upstairs to bed. Their pepper party was still going on when I fell asleep. Now, all three sat at the table. Their heads were in their hands, with steaming cups of coffee in front of them.

“What’s the matter boys? A little too much fiesta last night?”

Pedro babbled something in Spanish. Chooey looked up at me and said, “Pedro said your stomach pills didn’t work for him.”

“What stomach pills?”

After Chooey translated, Pedro reached over and picked up a plastic medicine bottle from the middle of the table. When the Watts left town, we took care of their Golden Retriever, Kobe. He was an old arthritic dog. The bottle in Pedro’s hand was Kobe’s arthritis medicine. I said, “He took some of those?”

Pedro held up three fingers. Chooey said, “He took two before he went to bed. Then another one an hour later. But it didn’t do him any good.”

“Those are Kobe’s pills.”

Chooey’s face lit up. “What? Dog pills?”

He busted out laughing as he pounded the table. It took him a few moments to compose himself enough to tell the other two what I said. Pedro jumped to his feet and pointed at the bottle. “Kobe?”

I put my arm around his shoulders. “Si, amigo. Dog pills. Chooey, tell him they make Kobe bark.”

From then on, every time I saw Pedro, he’d bark at me. My friend, the barking Mexican.

When we traveled, a lot of our meals were prepared in a pressure cooker. A small one with a knob that wobbled on the lid and sounded like a steam engine when it was cooking. On the road, we eat a lot of brown rice and nothing cooks rice faster.

The boys were intrigued with it. The first time Chooey walked in and found the cooker chugging he stopped, then quickly backed out the door. “What is that? A bomb?”

My wife laughed. “It could be.”

She explained how it cooked rice, beans, meat and just about anything else faster and healthier. “Want me to show you how to use it?”

“We don’t cook like that. That’s not Mexican way.”

However, nearly every time they heard that knob wobbling, they’d would come in and watch us use it. Jose was particularly impressed with how fast it cooked rice. Patricia said, “Want me to show you how to use it?”

“No. I see how.”

A couple of days after Pedro took the dog pills, Patricia and I drove to Batavia to shop, then dine at a great little Chinese buffet. We got home about an hour before sunset, and when we walked into the kitchen it was obvious something big had happened.

Around the table, as if in a daze, stood Chooey, Jose and Pedro. On the table was the pressure cooker, lid off with cooked rice splattered everywhere. All three of them wore sleeveless undershirts, and their faces, shoulders and necks were bright red and shiny. One of Jose’s eyes was swelled shut, and each of them had a hang-dog expression.

Patricia exclaimed, “Oh my God!”

None of them said anything as my wife slowly stalked around them saying, “What did you guys do?”

They were like three little boys braced for a lecture from mom. No one said a word as Patricia set her bags down and slowly turned Jose toward her. “Chooey, what happened?”

“We used the pressure cooker.” Dread dripped from his voice.

“I see you used the pressure cooker. But what happened?”

It was obvious Chooey had practiced what he would tell her. “We did just like you do. We put one part rice and two parts water in, and then we put on the top and the knob. Five minutes after the knob started moving we took it off the stove, but we couldn’t get the lid off. I thought maybe I put it on crooked. So we all grabbed hold and pulled on it. It blew open like a bomb.”

“Are you telling me you took it directly off the stove and forced it open? You didn’t wait for the pressure to go down?”

Chooey said, “Huh?”

“Holy Jesus, Mary and Joseph, it’s amazing one of you didn’t get killed!” Patricia turned Jose toward me so I could see his scalded skin and
swollen eye. “Honey, they’ve all got second degree burns. We need to get you guys to the hospital.”

“We’re okay. We took care of it.”

“Chooey, these are bad burns. They’re going to blister and may get infected. Look at your brother’s eye. That has got to hurt.”

Jose piped up. “It’s okay. Chooey fix.”

“We know in Mexico.” Chooey picked a plastic bowl off the table and handed it to Patricia. “Egg. That’s the Mexican way.”

“Feel good.” Pedro said.

They had cracked open half a dozen eggs and separated the yokes. Then they smeared the raw whites on their skin, including Jose’s eyelid. When we walked in they were standing still so it could dry.

“If we do it right away, it don’t hurt.” Chooey said. “Leave it on for two days and it will be okay.”

He was right. None of them blistered or peeled, and Jose’s swelled eye was nearly normal the next morning. Five days later, none of them even had a red mark. Lends a whole new meaning to the question, “How does it feel to have egg on your face?”

Our plan was to leave the farm a few days after Memorial Day. But the third week of May, I hurt my back when I bent over to pick up a piece of trim. It just went out on me. I have broken my back twice and neither time did it feel as bad as when it went out at the Watt Farm. It took a few trips to the chiropractor and three weeks to get over it.

So it was mid--June before my back was strong enough to get Della’s feet ready for the road. On the summer solstice, we moved out of the house and into the cherry orchard down by the pond. We camped there for ten days, which gave us a chance to get used to the new tent, spruce up the cart and finish a few projects around the farm house.