Passage West

by Rishi Reddi

  “Ma’am,” Clive said, but his knee hit the table and it toppled, spilling the bottle and his half-full glass. Whiskey splashed on his pants, Ram’s arm, Karak’s foot. A liquor-fueled cry went up from the group and Kishen jumped. Ram stood quickly and righted the table.

  “Oh, such charms, Clive!”

  “So good with ladies!”

  “Yah, yah,” said Tomoya. “Mrs. Singh, you come just right time!”

  Kishen’s face was half-hidden inside her chunni, but Ram could see her smiling as she retreated to the house.

  They sat again and ate the biscuits and popped corn.

  “Sorry about your whiskey, Karak,” Clive said.

  “Don’t worry, old man,” Karak said. “More is there.” He spoke gently, but Ram could see he enjoyed Clive’s bumbling.

  Tomoya stood, called to his son in Japanese—it was time to go home. Clive rose too. He mounted his mare first, and the Japanese and Hindustanees watched him set off at a trot, raising their hands silently.

  “He will get marry,” Tomoya said after a while. He exchanged a knowing glance with Jivan. Ram had not realized the extent of their friendship.

  Tomoya nodded, once, and Jivan returned the gesture. He put his palms together—then the men clasped hands.

  Father and son mounted their horses. Ram felt peace descend. All was simpler with just his countrymen present. They sat at the table that Kishen set on the porch, eating rotis while the night surrounded them.

  Moments later, they heard hurried hoofbeats on the dirt path and Clive reappeared. He slipped off the saddle. “I left my satchel,” he said, his face flushed. “And my ledger. I forgot to put in the totals.” Amarjeet gave him the book. Clive made hurried notations and slapped it shut. His horse started, ears up.

  “See you boys,” Clive slurred, tucking the ledger and satchel into his saddlebag. “Thanks for a good time.” He turned the mare and trotted off.

  He was past the turn when Jivan said in a low voice, “The boy is a fool.”

  “He drinks too much,” Karak said. “But he doesn’t interfere. That is the important thing.”

  “Eggenberger is satisfied,” Jivan said. “That is the important thing.”

  “The important thing,” Karak countered, “is Ram should learn Americans do not give sweets to announce a wedding.”

  “I have learned it,” said Ram.

  10

  November 1914

  THE LAND THAT KARAK AND RAM LEASED FROM EGGENBERGER HAD BEEN planted in alfalfa, then left fallow for long enough that it would once again need leveling; the ditches would need to be redefined. First they plowed, then they borrowed Jivan Singh’s team of mules, drove them out to their new cotton fields, and hitched them up to the Fresno scraper. Ram told Karak how much they should slope the soil, how to subdivide the tract to irrigate efficiently; he insisted on digging a pond to receive water from the delivery ditch before it was dispersed to the fields. He argued that 160 acres half-cultivated was less desirable than 40 acres closely cultivated. Karak deferred to him but he questioned why certain things needed to be done. Ram was surprised at how little Karak knew. Ram had steadied a leveler behind a mule since he was a child.

  One morning Jivan and Amarjeet came with them, driving a second team, attaching another scraper borrowed from Tomoya. Karak was grateful, but Ram felt unsettled: now he owed something to the man from Japan. He did not like that feeling.

  When the work was finished, the land lay neat, raw and pungent, sloping away from the canal headgate where the zanjero would meet them regularly to dispense water. Jivan Singh returned the borrowed leveler to Tomoya. Ram never acknowledged the loan; that way he did not have to feel indebted. Through the winter chill, he and Karak plowed and disked. When the threat of frost was past, they were ready to plant. Then the early March winds grew strong and warm. Wildflowers dotted the scrub and desert prairie, and the earth was crusted with alkaline. Soon it was time for Jivan and Karak to harvest their cantaloupe. Of course, Ram would help. He had become part of them now.

  This season, they were lucky to find help easily. The men were building crates in the packing shed when pickers arrived one evening, nine men and two women kicking up dust along Rural Route 9, wearing sombreros, leading two burros weighed down by burlap sacks. One of the men carried an accordion, another a guitar; two teenage boys leaned against the weight of bags slung on their shoulders. There was an older man too, of unknowable age, with wrinkled skin but a strong back.

  Both Jivan and Karak rose when they saw them.

  “They are here already?” Karak said.

  “I told them to come after two days. Not now,” Jivan said.

  “Buenos días,” one of them called in a cheerful voice. Jivan and Karak ducked out of the packing shed to meet him, a rough man scarred on his right cheek. The others waited under a tree by the field. The burros stamped at the flies. Karak and Jivan spoke with the man in rapid Spanish. Ram felt a surge of his own ineffectiveness. He stacked the finished crates with Amarjeet. “They are angry at the harvesters for coming early,” Amarjeet said, translating for him.

  “The crop will not be ready for a few days,” Ram said.

  “But they want to harvest tomorrow and then leave for another job. Chacha-ji does not like that foreman, that man with the scar, Carlos Guerrero. He beat one of his boys last year, then argued about payment.”

  “We’ll find others.”

  “There are never enough workers, Ram-ji,” Amarjeet said.

  Outside, the argument went on, Karak’s voice rising and Jivan’s remaining calmer, but still insistent. There was a break in the stream of words. The Mexican man glanced back at his workers and spat nonchalantly, as if relishing the upper hand. Jivan and Karak returned to the packing shed.

  “These people want to come a week early and be paid for doing nothing,” Karak said.

  “Not a week. A few days. Better to be early to market than to be late and caught in the glut,” Jivan said.

  “I would have found the workers if you had just allowed me!” Karak slapped off his work gloves.

  Ram looked for Amarjeet’s reaction, but the boy had returned to stacking crates. The crop was one-third Karak’s, two-thirds Jivan’s; Jivan was the older man and would make the decision.

  “What will you say now?” Karak asked Jivan.

  “I will accept.”

  Karak turned and strode out toward the house, his footsteps shaking the shed.

  Jivan’s face showed no expression. He returned to the foreman, pointing to a patch of clear land bordering the field.

  “What are they saying?” Ram asked Amarjeet.

  “Chacha-ji is asking why he brought only nine men, when he had asked for eleven. He said that only eight seemed capable and one is too aged. The older woman only cooks for them but the younger one wants to pick too.”

  The girl stood at the edge of the group, wearing a large brimmed hat that shaded her face, her skirt shifting in the breeze. She glanced at them and looked away, round-faced and stoic. She was pretty, Ram thought. More plump than his Padma, yet not delicate. She was fair-skinned like an Anglo. He could see her youth: the smoothness in the cheek, the clear eyes. She pursed her lips as the men talked about her, her eyes fixed on the ground. The other woman spoke to her but she did not respond. The old man stood near her protectively.

  Ram agreed with Jivan; perhaps he was too old to work in the heat. Another man joined Jivan’s conversation with Carlos Guerroro. The talk bounced quickly back and forth.

  “It will be too hot for the girl,” Ram said. He would not have allowed Padma to work in this way.

  “They told her,” Amarjeet said. “But she wants to work anyway.”

  By evening the workers had erected tents and unpacked their belongings. Sitting near the settling pond, sifting lentils for Kishen, Ram watched them: three tents for the men, one for the women. Karak explained the contents of the fifth: a statuette of the blue-robed Virgin of Guadalupe, a wooden cross, pictures of
Villa and Hidalgo. In a clear space outside they placed a small stove.

  The Hindus went to bed early. Lying on his cot, before sleep came, Ram could hear the sound of the accordion from the workers’ camp. He closed his eyes and listened. The notes rose in the night air and were distorted by the wind. He heard laughter, the clipped sounds of Spanish. A guitar strummed and for a brief moment the camp seemed cheery, as if before a celebration, and then everything lay quiet. On his uncle’s farm, it would have been the same: workers sleeping near the fields, plants waiting for harvest, the rest before the coming hard work.

  The Mexicans gathered near the jackrabbit rock before the sun rose, before Jivan called them. Kishen had given them eggs from the coop and the women had cooked them quickly on their stove, boiled coffee and poured it into tin cups in the morning dark. It was cold now but they were dressed for the midday sun: loose pants, long sleeves, gloves, and wide-brimmed hats. The women’s faded skirts fluttered in the predawn gray. The sun broke over the horizon. Immediately, the air warmed. Emerald rows alternated with lines of sandy loam that converged in the distance. The workers spread out to the first rows of plants, seated themselves on the measured space between them. Leaves huddled near the ground and shifted in the tepid breeze. Ram pulled on a pair of gloves that he had found in a corner of the packing shed. The musky smell of the fruit filled his nostrils and satiated him.

  “Those will not be strong enough,” Karak said.

  “No matter,” Ram said. He did not think that harvesting cantaloupe would be as difficult as picking cotton or cutting and bunching wheat.

  Dastars and sombreros dotted the field; Hindustanees and Mexicans bent low and removed the brush covering each fruit. Jivan had told Ram that it was a technique that Tomoya had perfected; it hastened the ripening process, prevented the sun from burning the cantaloupe’s skin. He had shared the technique with Jivan only after Amarjeet and Haruo had become friends.

  The workers walked the rows with sacks slung behind them, bending low, twisting and pulling the melons. The east side of the field was not yet ripe and fruit was left on the vine. Other fruit was not at full slip but Karak told the pickers to break it off anyway, it was still ripe enough to pass inspection. Ram felt bad for Jivan and Karak; any fruit that could not be easily twisted off was not at its sweetest. Would the agricultural inspectors comment on this? He did not know. When a bag was filled, the picker walked to the waiting crates and pulled the drawstring at the bottom, gently emptying the fruit.

  Later, the March sun beat down on them, slowing their movements, scalding bare skin. Bandanas were tied to shield eyes from perspiration. Sweat poured down temples, necks, backs of thighs. Kishen arrived with jugs of water laced with lemon juice and sugar. Leela followed her mother, stared wide-eyed at the workers, handing out cups. Gracias, gracias chiquita.

  Ram’s gloves tattered and finally tore. He threw them aside. Twist and pull. Twist and pull. Sometimes, pull and cut. The cantaloupe skin grew painful to touch; the fine hairs rubbed his palms raw. Still he clasped the roundness, the sandpaper skin and pulled toward him. He kept his eye on the fair-skinned girl. She was fast and worked hard, carrying more fruit in her sack than the teenage boys. He knew where she stood, when she drank water, when she emptied her sack, but their eyes never met. Her skirt rustled around her legs. Her hand swept the hair from her face. All of this disturbed him. He forced himself to think of Padma.

  At noon, they stopped to rest. The workers knelt at the pond and splashed water on their faces. They sat under the ramada or inside their tents with the flaps thrown open to the breeze.

  They did not resume work until three thirty, long after the sun had begun its descent. Even so, one of the teenage boys approached Jivan when the foreman could not see, holding his head. “Me voy a desmayar, señor.” Jivan noted the wan face, how the boy swayed unsteadily on his feet. He told him to rest for a while. He would still pay him the wage. At nightfall, the workers prayed inside the Virgin’s tent. The accordion and guitar remained silent and the lamps were snuffed out soon afterward.

  High above them, cool air from the Pacific lay atop the warm wind rising from the Superstition Hills. Thunder rumbled. Lightning jittered through the clouds, flashing a shadow of Mount Signal on the soil of Baja, but no rain reached the Valley’s soil or the Colorado’s waters.

  In the dark of early morning, a tent collapsed in a warm gust. The Mexican men righted and pinned it again, but they did not return to sleep. They ate breakfast quickly and joined the Punjabis in the field. The wind blew in their hair like a blessing. But when the sun broke the horizon, they felt the burning finger of its first ray.

  Before lunch one of the workers leaned over a vine, convulsed, vomited, stumbled, then collapsed in the eastern field. Ram dropped his sack and ran to him. Amarjeet reached him at the same time. He is too old to work, Ram thought when he realized who he was. Grabbing the man’s ankles and armpits, they carried him to the shade of the packing shed. Other workers ran to see. From a distant corner of the field, crouched over a vine, Karak yelled, “What is happening?”

  They laid the old man on the shed’s wooden floor and Ram slipped a folded sack under his head. One of the workers came to kneel by the old man. With shaking fingers, he unbuttoned the man’s shirt. “Ángel, Ángel . . . soy yo, Alejandro. Le habla Alejandro.”

  “Amarjeet, get us more water,” Jivan directed in Punjabi. The workers formed a circle around Alejandro and Ángel. The fair-skinned girl knelt beside them.

  “You do not watch your people!” Jivan said to the foreman. “Has he been ill?”

  “He has a mouth to speak! I told him this morning that he is an old man. That it would be too hard for him to work today,” the foreman said.

  A few moments later, Karak appeared in the doorway.

  The old man made a small noise, a short intake of breath. His shirt was open now, revealing deep creases carved by years in the sun. His body told the stories that he would not tell himself, that the others did not know: an ancient scar on a forearm from a rattlesnake’s bite, a line chiseled on the belly by a Villista’s blade. Alejandro took off his own bandana, wet it, and wiped Ángel’s face and chest. The skin was dry, red. His chest heaved.

  “Is he your kin?” Jivan asked Alejandro in Spanish.

  “He is a friend. Ángel Cruz. He told us of this job with you.”

  The foreman, Carlos Guerroro, stood to the side, gripping his sombrero in his hands, his face stoic.

  “It is not right,” the girl said, crossing herself. Her eyes were tear-filled, luminous. Carlos was watching her intensely. He did not care about Ángel Cruz, Ram thought, but he cared about the girl.

  “It is not right,” agreed Jivan. “Where is his family?”

  “His nephew lives in the barrio,” Alejandro said. He gave Jivan the man’s name.

  Alejandro’s wet rag did not revive Ángel Cruz. Jivan felt the skin on his forehead, on his neck and hand. “Karak, go and get the doctor,” he ordered in Punjabi.

  Karak was standing beyond the circle of people. “Let us wait and see,” he answered. “Perhaps he will awaken.”

  “If Karak does not go, I will,” Ram said. Karak glared at him. But Ram had touched the man’s skin, had seen the anguish on his face when he collapsed.

  Jivan hesitated. “The doctor knows Karak,” he finally said.

  Ram’s face flushed. Didn’t the doctor know Ram too? He stared at the girl, kneeling now near the fallen man, wiping his forehead. She had taken off her sombrero and the bandana covering her mouth; she fingered a string of wooden beads in her hands. Her lips quivered as she whispered the prayers, her eyes luminous. Her hand brushed the crucifix that hung at her neck.

  Ram looked away and saw that Karak was staring at her too.

  Amarjeet appeared with the saddled mare. “Ride to the barrio and tell his nephew too,” Jivan commanded. Ram could see Karak clench his jaw, angry but compliant. He mounted quickly and rode off at a gallop.

  They co
vered Ángel Cruz in wet bedsheets. They brought the kerosene-powered fan from Jivan’s bedroom. The doctor came quickly, but when he saw Ángel Cruz unconscious, lying under soaked sheets, he told them he could do nothing more for the man than what had already been done.

  Later, the nephew arrived and entered the shed, tightly clutching his hat. Alejandro and the fair-skinned girl rose to meet him. Ram noted the lad’s ragged clothing, his desperate eyes. When he saw Ángel Cruz lying on the floor of the shed, his eyes widened in alarm. He crossed himself quickly. He spoke quietly to Jivan in Spanish, looking at his feet, at the wall, anywhere but Jivan’s face. Ram could not understand his Spanish.

  “No,” Jivan said, his palm held up, shaking his head.

  The boy said something in response, but Jivan walked away. To Ram, his manner seemed brusque, impatient.

  Ram and Alejandro shifted Ángel Cruz onto a blanket, then lifted him onto the bed of Jivan’s wagon. The man’s breathing was light. He did not awaken. The nephew said nothing more.

  Later Ram asked Amarjeet what had happened.

  “The nephew wanted to pay Jivan for the doctor, but he had no money, and said that he would bring it later. But Chacha-ji refused payment at all.”

  Ram’s eyes met Amarjeet’s. Jivan Singh was a good man.

  His mind went back to Karak, riding off on the horse, with that pretty Mexican girl watching. How beautiful he had looked in that moment, Ram thought: the sinews in his arms as he gripped the reins, his roughness with the horse’s mouth, the scarlet of his turban. He had played the hero without shame, when he had not even wanted to go.

  11

  March 1915

  THEY TOOK THE HARVEST INTO TOWN WITHOUT KNOWING WHAT HAD happened to Ángel Cruz. Each man drove one of the four wagons, weighed down with crates and melons. Clive met them near the railroad depot and climbed onto the driver’s seat next to Jivan. They stood in line behind a string of other wagons leading from the inspection booth. They were under contract with Consolidated Fruit Co., and the company’s refrigerated boxcars stood waiting to take the early-season cantaloupe to market in Los Angeles.