Passage West

by Rishi Reddi

  Clive would speak for him; that was what Jivan always preferred. He pulled up to a booth staffed by a tall man with a full head of gray hair.

  “Howdy, Will,” Clive said.

  The inspector glanced up, not too friendly. “Howdy, Clive.” He signaled for random crates to be brought off. Amarjeet took off the ones he indicated, handed them to Ram and Karak. The inspector rolled up his sleeves and picked through the fruit. Clive stood near him, Jivan was at Clive’s elbow. Karak and Ram sat in the shade on the platform where the cars loaded up. Consolidated shippers’ men waited there for Jivan’s load. They wanted to make the evening train to L.A., which left in two hours, or Jivan’s cantaloupe would have to wait until morning.

  “Too many greens in these two,” the inspector said, signaling the last of Jivan’s four wagons. “You boys need to sort those again.”

  Karak opened his mouth to speak, but Jivan silenced him with his eyes. Clive stepped forward. “Aw, come on, Will. They don’t look that bad.”

  “Commission’ll have my hide if I let a bad one through. It’s the new law. You know that.”

  “Check this one again,” Clive said. “This one’s just fine. Just fine.”

  The inspector looked at him. A glance of impatience.

  “Come on,” Clive said, laughing. “Check it.”

  The inspector climbed on the platform again. Jivan wanted to tell him, The workers could not wait two more days, but he said nothing. The inspector nosed around the melons. “I’ll let this one go. Only just. If you weren’t here”—he looked at Clive—“I’d pull it.”

  Amarjeet led the third wagon through. Consolidated’s men waited on the platform, chewing tobacco, busy not looking at him. One of them spat onto the rail. “Bring ’em up! Bring ’em up!”

  “But this one ain’t going,” the inspector said, indicating the fourth wagon.

  “Willy,” Clive said, jovial.

  The inspector glared at him. “Our wives are sisters, but that don’t mean nothin’ here.”

  Clive’s face shrank.

  “Pull it over,” the inspector commanded Amarjeet. He did. Behind them, a hundred yards down the line, two other farmers had been pulled over too. Amarjeet told Jivan he recognized them from his old high school. Anglo families who lived even farther outside town. Jivan shrugged.

  “You got to educate your sharecroppers on the right time to harvest,” the inspector said, “or be runnin’ afoul of the standardization laws.”

  “I do what I can, Will,” Clive said. He hitched up his pants. “I know about ’em new laws. I ain’t the best farmer around, but I know when to bring in a crop.” He drifted off toward Consolidated’s men, talking with them as cantaloupe from Jivan’s first three wagons were loaded.

  The Punjabis sorted through the fruit from the fourth wagon and tossed out the green melons, leaving them loose and wasted in a pile on the side of the road. Cantaloupe broke open, oozing pink. Flies buzzed around them. The next wagon in line had passed them and pulled up at the inspection station. The farmers stood in the shade, staring at the Singhs as they worked. Consolidated’s manager walked by, slowing as he passed the Punjabis. “Out of the ground too early, Singh,” he said. Jivan felt the words like a kick in the belly.

  Clive approached them when the culling was nearly complete. “I got a close enough count to know how much we’re sending out,” he said. “I’ll be getting along now.” He looked down the line at the other farmers. Jivan followed his gaze. Consolidated’s agent was sharing a laugh with a farmer a few wagons away.

  The Punjabis returned the wagon to the line and trundled up to the inspection shack again. Clive walked toward the shops on Main Street. The inspector opened the crates again. Jivan wished Clive had not left, but he would not have asked him to stay.

  “What game you boys playing? There’s still too many green. Resort these again.” His manner was harsh now; Clive was gone.

  Jivan was quiet. Karak said, “They are good.” Jivan’s eyes flashed at him.

  “I’ll tell you when they’re good,” the inspector said.

  The Punjabis pulled over again. They threw out more fruit.

  When the Consolidated agent walked past again, Karak asked, “How many minutes to the train?”

  “You missed it already. Last load been hauled.” The men could hear the engine building up steam. It rose in a cloud, gray against the desert sand. The Singhs’ fruit would have to stand in an iced car overnight, waiting for the morning train.

  When they coaxed the mules back into the line, the inspector let them through. “They’re on the green side,” he said, “but they can go.”

  The Punjabis watched as the cantaloupe was hauled onto the waiting refrigerator car, number 417.

  “Don’t worry, Singh,” Consolidated’s agent said as he wrote Jivan a receipt. “We’re nice and early in the season. Can’t see nothing bringing the price down—not unless there’s another glut.” Jivan kept his face expressionless. He had lost a fifth of the crop by the side of the road.

  THE MORNING TRAIN CARRIED four carloads of cantaloupe to the market in Los Angeles. Jivan knew his finances would be determined at the exchange in the ag pit, by men in a large room smelling of sweat and adrenaline. They negotiated fortunes and failures by a show of fingers, by gestures of hands. A raised index and middle finger meant his family would have meat five days a week for the season. Two arms held skyward meant that he could buy the seeder from Hanson’s Implements. Two thumbs down, and they would skimp on the cumin and turmeric that Kishen purchased in Brawley. They had to trust Consolidated to take their cantaloupes to market safely. They had to trust the sales agent too.

  Other carloads would converge on the stock exchange, from the San Joaquin fields and the Central Valley and Palo Verde. That week, it was too many. The men in the ag pit showed thumbs down, thumbs down, thumbs down. Sweat trickled down backs inside starched shirts, beaded on foreheads wiped by silk handkerchiefs. A certain trader representing Consolidated Fruit, representing other shippers too, made a single phone call to the vice president of the company.

  Afterward, that vice president of Consolidated Fruit called an operations officer of Southern Pacific. When the engine pulling car number 417 steamed into the depot the stationmaster checked his roster. Carloads 417 and 420 were disconnected and left on a siding in the afternoon heat. They were picked up thirty-six hours later by another engine. By then, the soft flesh of the fruit had turned to water. All of this, Jivan did not know.

  In the newspaper, Amarjeet showed Jivan the list of violators of the standardization laws. Jivan Singh’s name was included. FEE IMPOSED FOR EARLY HARVEST AND SHIPPING, the headline said. But he could not find the names of the Hamiltons and the Proutys, who had also been sorting green fruit that day.

  A letter arrived from Consolidated Fruit three days later. Payment was being made for three of the carloads, but one carload, number 417, had contained only overripe melons when it arrived. Sale at the exchange had not been possible and no money for that carload would be forthcoming. Mr. John Singh, the letter said, should take note that fruit should be shipped at the appropriate time.

  On the porch in the late afternoon, the men listened as Karak read the letter to them twice. His face was dark with sarcasm. “Our melons were overripe when they arrived, but they were too green when they were shipped. How can it be?” He did not have to explain the calculations to the others. The fourth carload—417, the lost one—contained the whole of the Singhs’ profit.

  “We will go to court,” Karak said.

  “What is the use?” Jivan said. “Who will side with us?”

  “You will just accept this, bhai-ji?”

  Jivan knew what Karak hinted at. “They treat all the farmers like this. Not just us,” Jivan said. “It happens to everyone.”

  That evening Jivan found an envelope of cash on the bureau where the ledgers were kept. It contained the wages Jivan had paid Ram for his work during the harvest. Jivan approached him late
at night, when he was lying on his cot. “What is this?” he asked. His voice was soft, but he could not hide his disgust. He thought the boy had better judgment, more pride.

  “You insult me,” Jivan said, leaving the envelope on the cot beside him.

  SHERIFF FIELDING ARRIVED on horseback the following week, in the midmorning. Kishen saw him first, through the window, then drew her face back quickly. Karak, Ram, and Jivan gathered around the sheriff on the porch, anxious about the reason for his visit.

  “Ángel Cruz is dead,” the sheriff said.

  “Who?” Karak asked.

  “The Mexican you hired for the cantaloupe harvest.” He looked around at the men. They were too stunned to speak.

  “You understand, Jivan, it’s my duty to inquire.”

  “Of course,” Jivan said, looking away.

  “We don’t usually do this just for migrants, but after the coroner’s notice, I have to file something. I know you all run a good operation here. I know you look out for people working your land. It was a hot spell of days. Poor bastard shoulda known better.”

  “He needed to work,” Jivan said. “Like all of us. He needed the money.”

  “Have a seat, Sheriff,” Karak said.

  The sheriff sat. “Shoulda known when to stop.”

  “The foreman contracts with Consolidated Fruit,” Karak said. “Nobody allowed to stop.”

  “This didn’t come from me—but I can’t say you’re wrong,” the sheriff said. The Punjabis were surprised at his sympathy, but they did not show it.

  “We had a bad time with Consolidated last week,” Karak said.

  “No need to bother the sheriff—” Jivan said.

  “They knock a carload over,” Karak kept on. “A quarter of our crop.”

  Jivan shifted his weight.

  “You wouldn’t be the first, I don’t reckon,” the sheriff said. “Still, it hurts. I know you boys work hard. You don’t make no trouble for me. I ’ppreciate that about you. You don’t shout about unfairness and make a ruckus neither.”

  “We know our place,” Jivan said, looking at Karak, at Ram.

  “You know your place,” he repeated, with a chuckle. “Goes a long way in keeping law and order. Like I said, I ’ppreciate that.” He was holding his hat casually, amiably, dangling it between his legs.

  Silence.

  “How’d the melon do, anyway?” the sheriff asked. “If they knocked over a quarter of your crop, sounds like you boys got caught up in that glut.”

  Karak snorted. “We did,” he said. He kicked the dirt with his foot. “That’s what happened.”

  12

  RAM KNEW COTTON WAS NOT LIKE CANTALOUPE. IT DID NOT HAVE TO be shipped off at a certain time, at a certain temperature. It was not delicate. If market prices were low, a farmer could hold until prices went up; hard work, labor, aching muscles, and scorched afternoons need not dissolve in a puddle of rotted produce by the roadside.

  Karak and Ram’s land was perfect for cotton. The papers reported the big ranches—Timken, McPherrin, the C. M. ranch across the border—were growing cotton despite the falling price, banking on the future needs of Europe’s war that, through its colonies, had become the world’s war.

  At Fredonia Park on Sunday afternoons, sitting in the shade of planted trees, lying on benches with hats covering their faces, twenty-five or thirty Hindus discussed the blockade of the European ports. Cotton was needed to manufacture the wings of warplanes, to stitch uniforms. But how could its price rise if it could not reach the markets in Europe?

  “We have decided to plant anyway,” one of the Khan brothers said.

  “Another ten test acres,” Gugar Singh said. “Just last like year. No harm.”

  “Foolish,” Harnam Singh insisted.

  In the wagon going home, Ram thought of his promise to Padma. He had given her his word that he would return soon. But the sacrifice of his absence must prove worthwhile. Something tugged inside him. Longing for her? Ambition? Many men who had left behind their wives did not need justification, but he did.

  “We are still planting cotton,” he said to Karak. “All one hundred sixty acres to cotton.” His voice—the tone, the confidence—did not sound familiar to himself. Karak looked at him with surprise, as if he thought so too.

  “Of course,” Karak said. “Who said we are not?”

  JIVAN TOOK THEM to the Fredonia Bank to meet the young vice president, Jasper Davis, a nephew of the mayor, and nephew of a local magistrate judge too. Jivan knew him through Stephen Eggenberger and his early days in the Valley. Karak and Ram filled out forms, shook hands with him, and left with money for seed, a newly invented seeder, another team of mules.

  Next morning, Karak woke Ram before he wanted to be woken. “It’s time, Ram, the time has come!” Ram found the mules already harnessed to the wagon in the morning dark.

  At the field, Karak jumped down and hitched up the seeder. “The crop will not grow any faster if you plant quickly,” Ram said, irritated.

  Karak turned to look at him. “It will, Ram.” He grinned. Ram did not know if he was joking. They planted in long rows, the furrows stretching to meet at an invisible point in the distance. Ram took pride in their neatness. The first time they irrigated, they stood together near the supply ditch as the zanjero opened the headgate. The water swept in. The scent of the soil as it dampened made Ram’s mouth water. Near them, a scorpion sidled under a rock. Farther away, a gopher scrambled into his hole. Karak put his arm around Ram’s shoulders. “It is done, bhai,” he said.

  “There is still more to do, Karak Singh,” Ram said jovially.

  The plants grew. Ram wrote to Padma about the acres under his care, how he had shaken hands with the vice president of the bank. When the green shoots broke through the loam, he showed Karak how to use the cultivator. He boasted to Padma of teaching Karak to clear the weeds so the roots would go deep. White flowers appeared and disappeared. Ram wrote to Padma of learning to speak English, and even Spanish too. The bolls came forth, plump and beautiful, and burst open, revealing the fresh white substance underneath. He told Karak they should pick early; if they let the cotton sit for too long, they would not get a third harvest off the plants.

  When Ram held the first fibers in his hand, he felt he held a part of himself, but it was not the cotton of his boyhood. That cotton had come into being through the people who had lived before him for thousands of years on Punjabi soil; they had selected what seeds to plant, they had played with pollen and stamen and pistil to make what had not existed before. That cotton was the offspring of that soil and the people who lived on it, bound together.

  The cotton he held now was new, like the settlements of the Imperial Valley itself. It had come from the experimental station in Arizona. It bore the name of people who were of this land—the Pima who worked for the American government to create it. It was new like the American people, built upon the backs of the original dwellers.

  When the cotton plants were waist high, the banker Jasper Davis came to look at the field. Ram could not understand their quick English talk to know if Karak had given him credit for his work. He was surprised that it mattered to him.

  But the banker looked pleased. Ram understood his words “fine-looking field,” which he said while nodding at both Karak and Ram. Next to them, Roubillard’s cotton, on land also leased from Eggenberger, stood short and gray and dry. No one stated the comparison. Jasper Davis walked the length of a row dressed in a three-piece suit and polished shoes. He had arrived in a cream Packard, smart and gleaming even though it had been driven on the dusty road. For the first time, for a fleeting moment, Ram felt that he wanted to know English well enough to understand the man. As if he were going to stay and become a part of the land. The Anglo’s visit, his smile, his goodwill defined the crop as a success. Ram and Karak stood together and watched him drive off. Ram realized then: The cotton field had changed them. He and Karak were equals.

  They hired pickers and cleared the plants in a
week, piling the cotton in three wagons. Ram thought of his Padma, his mother, his uncle. “You did good,” Clive said, as the loaded wagons stood at the edge of the field. “If those workers picked as clean as it looks like they did, we’ll get a great price.”

  EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, the men set off in a caravan of three wagons to Jake Smiley’s gin. Karak took the driver’s seat on the lead wagon. They felt buoyant, happy. Jivan, unexpectedly, slapped the rump of the last mule as they left and gave a yell, like a boy.

  The air had not yet begun to grow warm. The mules trudged along the dirt road that lay southwest from the ranch. It was a distance of thirteen miles, the gin strategically placed near the railway that would haul the cotton to Los Angeles. On the way, Ram could see other cotton fields in their various stages of harvesting. There were other camps, with tired pickers working the fields.

  Ram knew all the other farms now, fields running off the same road that led to the Eggenberger farm: The Kinsey farm, which had the advantage of five able-bodied sons. The Myers Ranch, the Gergen Dairy, the two-thousand-acre spread owned by Hutchins Ranch. He could see the clear line in the fields where the plants stood unpicked and where the task had been completed.

  At the gin, they pulled up in a short line behind two farmers—others who had tried to beat the heat and rush. The Khan brothers had told them to come as early as they could. The previous year, the Khans had grown ten experimental acres of cotton and ginned them at Smiley’s. He’d quote you a price on shipment and sale. He couldn’t guarantee it, but it would be close. There were two gins in the Valley now; even so, the lines were long and grew longer through the day.

  It was so early that two boys were still watering down the dirt road to the gin. Smiley came out and walked the line to see who was waiting. When he saw Jivan, he gave a curt nod. “Howdy, Jake,” Jivan responded. “Your boys have grown tall.”