by Rishi Reddi
Amarjeet’s eyes began to well up, unexpectedly. He did not blink the tears away. The mare’s last act had been to save his life by taking the blow of the impact. “Am I crazy, Harry, to cry for that horse when all those fellas were dying around us?” Amarjeet asked. He was whispering, so that the flu-sick around them would not hear.
“Naw . . . you weren’t crazy, Jeet. You weren’t the one who was crazy.”
“You saved those boys and I’m still cryin’ for my horse.”
“Come on, Jeet.”
“What made you?”
“Made me?”
“Save that jackass Jed Smith?”
“Well, there’s nothin’ wrong with Jed. He’s just a fella like us. Why wouldn’t I pull him in?”
“What about Pinkerton, then?” Everyone knew what Pinkerton thought about Japs.
“Oh, that’s easy!” Harry said.
“To show him what a Jap could do?” Amarjeet had grinned.
“Hell no. I saved him ’cause I hate him. I had to save him. Weren’t no other way about it.” They laughed then, because Harry would always have something to hold over Sam Pinkerton, and there was no getting around that for their whole lives. But Amarjeet felt that something more had happened. There was a bond between Sam and Harry, even though one of them was dead. They had crossed a boundary together, a line, to a place beyond love and hate.
THE NEXT TIME he was at the Moriyamas’ home, helping to mend the fence that ran along the western border, Amarjeet told Harry’s father what had happened at the American Legion meeting. They were nailing together wooden boards, hoisting fence posts into ditches they had dug the day before. He could not talk about it at home, where his uncle might, with a glance or a word, remind him that he had warned Amarjeet this would happen.
Mr. Moriyama was kneeling in the dirt, pushing hard against the wood, making the slats fit into the fence post. Sweat dropped from his forehead into his eyes. He was pushing harder than he had to but remained quiet during Amarjeet’s telling. Amarjeet thought he had not heard him. Suddenly Mr. Moriyama sat back on his haunches. “You did right thing and leave,” he said. “Keep your self-respect. You did right thing not go to restaurant and wait.”
Amarjeet felt the comment like a slap on the face, though Mr. Moriyama had meant to be kind. “Yes,” he said without conviction. Because he hadn’t told Mr. Moriyama what happened after. He had gone to the restaurant. He had to know, for this once and for all time, whether he could trust those fellas or not.
Sam and the others never came. Amarjeet sat by himself for an hour, watching the door, like a dog waiting for his master. That’s what humiliated him most.
AMARJEET BEGAN TO VISIT the Moriyamas regularly, helping them with chores that Harry would have done. Harry’s sisters returned to their husbands, believing their parents to be settled in their grief, and the Moriyamas were glad to have Amarjeet’s company. He helped build an addition to the barn. He helped Mr. Moriyama frame Harry’s Distinguished Service Cross and hang it in the parlor. Mrs. Moriyama fed him Harry’s favorite food. Perhaps they knew how much he had loved their son. It was a relief to be in this bubble, protected from the world by the density of their conjoined grief.
He no longer wanted to leave the farm as he once had. When the Valley gathered for the Armistice Parade, he did not march, he did not even watch from the sidelines. That part of him was in the past. The future rose up before him as a whiteness, as a blankness through which he could not see. What Amarjeet wanted he could not name. He thought he desired to belong to something bigger than himself, to have good work that was not farming, to have children, to love someone again, to not always protect himself from something he could not name.
IT WAS MR. MORIYAMA who told Amarjeet what he should be scared of, when Amarjeet visited him on a Sunday in April 1920. Mr. Moriyama had heard that Assemblyman Jones had taken the podium at city hall to declare that almost three thousand Orientals had cultivated farmland in the Valley. “Take heed!” the assemblyman warned. “Take heed those numbers don’t increase!”
In May, the Fredonia newspaper ran an editorial titled “The Hegemony of the White Race.” The California Oriental Exclusion League moved into an office off Main Street and began lobbying to restrict access to farmland. They hosted dinners, convincing the county supervisors to write a letter to the governor. The old 1913 law excluding the Japanese from farmland had been ineffectual, they argued. Now the state legislature introduced a new bill. Behind fancy legal jargon, behind its show of fairness, it closed the old loopholes. All that was needed was for real Californians to vote in the November election to approve it.
A few days later, the paper ran a headline that read: “Tri Color Map Shows Asiatics.” A red, white, and blue map segmented the Valley with blade-sharp lines, showing the land that the Japanese and Hindus farmed. Red depicted Moriyama’s farm, blue for Jivan Singh’s next door. Lands cultivated by Anglos appeared in white. The colors splashed like an indictment beyond the boundaries of Fredonia to Brawley and El Centro, Calexico and Calipatria.
The red and blue sections cover more than 75,000 acres, the article under the map stated. It is known that a large portion of the Oriental Holdings have escaped observation. Amarjeet first saw the map at the feed store, but soon he would see it everywhere: behind the counter in the General Store, in a pamphlet for Senator Phelan’s reelection campaign, on the windows of the barbershops and the Chamber of Commerce and the Western Union office.
“Time to fight,” Amarjeet said, sitting at the Moriyama’s kitchen table, reading the article for the third time.
“For what is there to fight?” asked Mr. Moriyama.
Wasn’t it obvious? “Time to fight for your place in the Valley,” Amarjeet said. “Your home.”
Mr. Moriyama said nothing, merely looked at him. Amarjeet knew what he was thinking. If Harry were alive, they wouldn’t have been in this situation. Harry had been a citizen. He would have been immune to an Alien Land Law. He would have protected them.
LATER, EVERYONE WOULD REMEMBER IT as the year that changed everything. They would say it was because the war had ended and the markets were devastated; cotton prices plummeted from thirty-five to sixteen cents a pound. The cotton farmers had been patriots, people said, heeding the country’s call; they provided fibers for the fighter planes, for the uniforms, for so much more. They did not deserve this fate when peace returned, even if they had made a fortune. But what could be done now? Europe was slowly recovering, fighting had stopped even among the colonies and protectorates and dominions around the planet, and American cotton was not needed as before.
It was not only cotton. The entire country had fallen into bad times and everyone felt it. Banks refused to loan money. Shops fired employees. Workers went on strike. Women in the fields and factories were pushed back to their homes, relinquishing their dignity so the menfolk could reclaim theirs. Race riots erupted in cities across the country.
Crime increased across the Valley. Entrepreneurs smuggled whiskey from wet Calexico to dry El Centro, where Karak would go to shop; Anglos spirited Japanese and Chinese across the border. Butter and milk and eggs were often stolen from boxcars at the train depot. The sheriff told Jivan that his deputies ran more hoboes and drifters out of the Valley every week. They were found everywhere now, in town and in residential districts, begging for money, food, clothing, shelter. Many claimed to be ex-servicemen. The Valley jails began to fill. The American Legion issued a warning: Beware these fake beggars! They had not truly served in the military! Neither Fredonia nor any other community owed them a living.
Karak and Ram looked for other crops to grow instead of cotton: alfalfa through which to rotate, perhaps barley. They learned from Clive that Southwest Cotton Company had contracted to take $2 million worth of Pima cotton at sixty cents a pound. It was a special price for a special commodity, not mere regular cotton. They visited their ginner, Jake Smiley. Could he include them in that deal? They had twenty-five acres in Pima, it would
help offset the loss they would take on the other fifty-five. He told them he would buy only five acres’ worth. Every cotton grower in the Valley was coming to him. “I feel for you boys,” Smiley added, as they left. “I know how it is. It ain’t easy.” Karak began to drink more, visit Mexicali often, to argue, or yell, if Ram questioned him on anything.
27
June 1920
ON A WINDY MORNING, RAM WATCHED AS A LARGE WAGON PULLED BY A team of four mules stopped at the Eggenberger house. Two men knocked on the door; four more waited near the wagon. He had seen Karak leave the house after breakfast and knew Rosa was inside with the children. He walked toward it, feeling protective. As the men stood at the door, she opened it a crack and peeked out. Ram watched as the men entered. Surely she would not have let them in willingly.
“Hello! Hello!” Ram yelled, running toward the house. By the time he had reached the walk, the men had lumbered back outside, two of them hoisting between them the refrigerator, four others rolling the piano along.
“What are you doing here?” Ram asked.
The men barely looked up as he approached. “You Karak Singh?” the largest of them asked. He spat a stream of tobacco into the dirt.
“No.” Ram hesitated. Perhaps he should have said yes.
“Don’t know why it’s your business.”
Ram sped through the open door and found Rosa collapsed in a chair. “What happened?” he asked.
Tears streamed silently down her face. She held a handkerchief in both hands, wringing it, pulling it apart with trembling fingers.
“¿Qué pasó?” he asked more gently, kneeling so he could face her. From the bedroom doorway, Federico stared at them with unblinking eyes. In the back, one of the twins was wailing.
“Karak couldn’t pay back the loan.”
“What loan? He bought from Sears with cash,” he said.
“I do not know! I do not know!” she said in Spanish. “There is something he could not pay back. I don’t know!”
The statement was a jolt, a jumble of information. Then Karak’s recent behavior suddenly fell into place. He had sold farm implements back to Hanson’s. He had wanted to hire a family of workers that included eight adults and seven children, but Ram had refused. They may have had children working for them in Punjab, Ram said, but he would not do it here. And what if the sheriff discovered them?
“What if?! What if?!” Karak had yelled, his eyes bulging. “You are talking what-if and we are facing disaster!” He had sped off in his car, leaving Ram to negotiate with the workers alone.
Ram looked now at Rosa, holding her son tightly against her. “Where is Karak?” he asked in Spanish. Federico had started to cry too, and Rosa let his tears fall; the handkerchief remained wrapped around her hand.
She shook her head, her features contorted. “He left early this morning. He never tells me where he is going.”
Might he be at the bank, Ram wondered, asking Jasper Davis for help? But he could be anywhere . . . at the ginners, at the Consolidated Fruit offices . . . even Mexicali. His marriage had not stopped him from going there. Had he known these men were coming today? Had he told Rosa?
He heard the men calling to one another outside. Through the window, he saw they had rolled the piano up a ramp onto the wagon and tied it down, along with the new Victrola. The mules pulled forward under the weight. Karak had bought the piano through the Sears catalog when the store on Main Street would not sell to him. Rosa had played it every evening after the day’s work was done. Ram would hear the notes drifting through the space between the two houses, changing the air, making the farm—its people, animals, plantings—part of something grand and rich.
“Come and stay with us today, Rosita,” Ram said. “You can help Kishen in the kitchen. The children can play together.”
He helped her carry the twins to the Singhs’ home. Federico followed behind. Rosa had never needed an invitation and came to visit the Singhs almost every day. But he could see the gratitude in her eyes.
Karak arrived in the car that evening, after Rosa had returned home. Ram stayed away; one must spare a man humiliation whenever possible. After dark, he heard Karak’s yelling across the clear distance between the houses. Rosa shouted back. Their sounds were like animal noises. Ram sat up on his cot. Yellow light leaked from the windows of the Eggenberger house. On his own cot, Amarjeet was already asleep a few feet away. Karak and Rosa were shouting words—Spanish, Punjabi, English—but Ram could not make out a single one.
There was no moon and the stars were alarming, like needles piercing velvet sky. The mountains loomed. Through the dark he heard the crash of breaking glass. Ram leaped up, slipped on his shoes, and ran toward the house. Inside, he heard screaming and the distressed shrieks of children. He banged his palm against the door. “Karak! Karak!”
The sounds fell silent. The door opened slowly. Karak’s eyes locked on Ram’s, round and savage. His shirt was open at the collar and his chest heaved.
Blood thundered inside Ram’s head. Rosa was slumped on the floor, leaning against the chair in which she had sat that morning, miserable, holding her head in her hands. Pieces of glass lay near her.
“Bhai, I want to see the books,” Ram whispered in Punjabi, his gaze unwavering. “May I look at them?” Karak stepped away from the door, glaring at him for the lie. When he went to fetch the ledgers, Rosa began to sweep up the glass with her apron, her head bent. She did not look at Ram. Karak shoved the books into Ram’s hands and grabbed his jacket in one swift motion. The door slammed behind him. Ram bent to help Rosa. They heard the motorcar’s engine spark at full throttle, and the fading sound as it sped off.
Karak still had not returned when Esperanza came to visit the next day. From Jivan’s porch, Ram saw Rosa and the children climb into Alejandro’s wagon. Rosa did not return for three days.
When Karak came back the morning after she left, Ram asked him where he had been. “At the lawyer’s office,” Karak said, refusing to acknowledge how long he had been away. Ram stared at him, but said nothing. After dinner that evening, Karak asked Jivan to buy his automobile. “For any amount—five dollars, ten dollars, one hundred dollars,” he said, ignoring Ram, who sat by silently, listening.
“I’m giving five,” Jivan said. “I am merely keeping the car safe for you, nothing else.” Jivan handed him the money without meeting Karak’s gaze. The men did not look at each other; their feeling was too great. Karak signed over the title and handed it to Jivan, along with a receipt. He drove the car behind Jivan’s house and tucked it away from view. It was important that the authorities not find the document or the automobile on the property that he leased, in his home. Everything must be kept with Jivan on Jivan’s property. That was how the automobile would be saved, though the refrigerator, the Victrola, and the piano were not.
The following morning, Karak met the lawyer at the courthouse and filed for bankruptcy.
STEPHEN EGGENBERGER BOARDED A TRAIN in Los Angeles to come visit them. Jivan, Karak, Ram, and Amarjeet sat on Eggenberger’s porch and the Swiss man broke his news: Times were very bad for everyone, and that was true even for him in the city. His business needed cash, his wife’s health was poor, and he greatly regretted it, but he needed to sell his land. He said the words so quickly that the other men seated around the table almost did not understand. “Consolidated Fruit Company is interested in it for purchase,” Eggenberger said. “The same company for which Clive has been working.”
“Clive is working now in Consolidated Fruit?” Jivan asked.
“For two months now. He added them as a large client.”
Jivan exchanged a glance with Karak, with Ram. “We did not know.”
“I have not yet an agreement with them, but they tell me that you would be kept on the long-term lease. Just like sharecropping: one-third to two-thirds. You will not have to go. You may stay in your homes. I wished that you know. For all these years the cost and the profits from this land we shared. You and Moriyama a
nd Roubillard. I would like that you know first.”
“When you will be selling?” Karak asked.
But before Eggenberger could answer, Jivan said, “Sell to me eighty acres, Stephen.”
Eggenberger blinked in surprise. Both men knew that Jivan had put more work into creating this farm than anyone else. Jivan had helped build a wing of the house. He had leveled the eastern field. He had helped harvest every crop and had raised the second shed for the animals.
“I had not thought that you have the money,” Eggenberger said.
“I have money,” Jivan said. Ram’s eyes traveled from one man to the other. Karak clenched his jaw.
“You are—” Eggenberger hesitated. “You are Hindu. I thought it was not allowed.” He said the words with no malice.
“I will buy and hold the land in Leela’s name. She was born here. Or I will place it in Amarjeet’s name. Right now, one hundred percent legal, it is legal. What happens after election, no one is knowing, but if you sell now, no question will be asked.”
Eggenberger nodded. “Ja. I will sell to you, my friend.” His eyebrows flashed up in admiration. “Naturally, I will sell to you.” He hesitated again. Eighty acres was a lot of land. “I am in need of mon—”
“I will not haggle with you, Stephen.” Jivan cut him off. “Not after all that has happened between us. Whatever Consolidated Fruit is paying, I am able to pay the same.”
28
October 1920
IN SIX WEEKS, JIVAN HAD SIGNED THE NECESSARY DOCUMENTS AND OWNED 80 acres of land that he had been farming for thirteen years. The other 80 acres, on which the Eggenberger house sat, were transferred to Consolidated Fruit. Moriyama’s land was sold to the company also. Two miles away, the 160 acres on which Karak and Ram had grown cotton were also transferred, as was the adjacent land on which Roubillard competed with them. The company kept all the leases. Overnight, reality had changed, the stability of the earth seemed lost.