by Rishi Reddi
Ram felt immune from the effects of this possibility. After all, he was going home, wasn’t he? He could return whenever he wanted to, just as soon as he could extricate himself from the allure of the western money, from the prestige it purchased at home, from his involvement with Adela. That most of all. Still, Ram felt that the creature that had hunted the Japanese was coming for the Hindustanees too. He felt it when he saw the scar on his leg from the beating in Hambelton. He felt it when he thought of the San Francisco shoreline and remembered the vision of Padma holding Santosh, far away on the ship’s deck.
With the failure of the cotton market, Karak began to speak about trying a new crop. In mid-March, Clive drove out to the farm and asked if Karak and Ram would like to farm Moriyama’s former acres. They were sitting together near Jivan’s back porch, like the old days. Karak had opened a bottle of whiskey. Nearby, Kishen Kaur sat cleaning the chimneys of the kerosene lamps. Leela was inside with her school books. Jivan was quiet, listening to their talk.
“Yes,” Karak said, without hesitation. He had told Ram of the same idea weeks before, and Ram had not liked it then.
Ram was indignant. “Too much land for two men,” he said in English.
“We can hire the workers to do all we cannot do,” Karak said.
“Consolidated will help you boys any way we can,” Clive said. “Get you pickers, planters, wagons, anything.”
Ram did not understand how the decision could be made so quickly. Clive was looking at him with a strange expression.
Ram turned to Karak and spoke in Punjabi. “It is wrong to farm that land after Consolidated threw Moriyama out.”
“Tomoya told to me,” Jivan said in English. “It is good if you and Karak take his land.”
“It’s Consolidated’s land,” Clive said.
Jivan looked at him calmly, one landowner speaking to another. “That is not how we think of it,” he said.
BY ANY MEASURE, lettuce was not like cotton. The cotton plant was coarse and hardy and could be picked several times over eight or nine months. After harvest, the cotton could be stored until it was time to sell, used long after it was grown.
Lettuce had a growing season of only 120 days. It was delicate, required harvest during a peak window, needed ice for shipment within hours of picking. In urban markets in the east and west, upstanding citizens paid top dollar for it in posh restaurants, reputable groceries. If a Valley farmer had the right amount of acreage, if he picked at just the right time, he could make tens of thousands of dollars off a field of lettuce.
Ram and Karak prepared the fields over the summer and fall and planted during Thanksgiving. Weekly, Clive came to check the crop, sometimes alone, sometimes with Jonathan Hitchcock, the vice president of Consolidated Fruit. One day in early December, the four men sat on the back porch and Clive and Hitchcock asked to look at the books; they asked about how Ram and Karak had negotiated prices for seed and workers. Ram thought this was strange. He went inside to fetch the ledger. He returned with the book to find the three men talking lightly about the weather, but his eyes met Karak’s and Ram read his irritation. Karak shared his sense of insult. In the old days the accounts were theirs. When Clive worked for Eggenberger, all that he had wanted to see was the slip of official paper with the broker’s quoted price, the amount of produce shipped.
The men looked at the records carefully. Clive pulled the ledger close and pointed out entries to Hitchcock without addressing Ram and Karak. Hitchcock took out his own notebook and a silver fountain pen, and copied numbers in a neat script. He noted dates and names of suppliers. His fingers were too slender, his nails too clean; Ram knew he had never farmed. Karak and Ram glanced at each other again. Karak licked his lips, clenched his jaw. Ram noted the redness framing his tired eyes.
“We will be using our own harvesters,” Karak stated.
“That is how we do things,” Ram added.
“If your Mexicans can put aside their mañana persuasion, they might get the lettuce out while still fresh,” Clive said. They all laughed at the joke, except for Hitchcock, who smiled patiently, folding his pen away in a leather case. His eyes were so blue, Ram thought, so pale. They talked about Clive’s children’s expectations for the Christmas holiday. He had promised his daughter a pony. Later she hoped to take it to the midwinter fair. The conversation lapsed. Their goodbyes were cordial.
Karak and Ram stood at the jackrabbit stone and waved as Hitchcock and Clive Edgar drove off in Hitchcock’s cream Packard.
“Why do they need to see the books in that detail?” Ram said.
“They are a corporation, bhai, a big conglomerate; this is the way they do things.” Ram wondered at Karak’s support of them.
“They spoke between themselves, without addressing us,” Ram said.
Karak hesitated. “As long as they give us our money, I don’t care how they talk.”
Something in his tone made Ram turn to face him.
“Tell me—what has happened?” Ram said.
Karak hesitated again. “Rosa—” he said.
“Yes?”
“Yesterday. She moved out of the house with the children and left me alone.” He took a deep breath and rubbed his face. “What should I do now? She says I have not been a good husband to her. After I bought her all those things.” His expression was bitter, shocked. “She is crazy,” Karak said. But Ram did not agree.
THEY WERE BECOMING TRUCK FARMERS, like the Japanese. The lettuce crop was beautiful, if ever truck could be beautiful—lime green, fragile as a flower, traveling east in refrigerated carloads to early markets in Boston and New York and Philadelphia. The price was high. When Clive came to see them, he could not hide his pleasure. “You boys still bringin’ it in. Bringin’ it in!”
The day the money was wired to them, Karak came home late. He told Ram that he had gone to the Chinese store on the east side and purchased a gold ring. He visited Rosa that night at Alejandro and Esperanza’s home. He came back without her, but he was smiling.
RAM THOUGHT OFTEN of the old distinction that he had heard since childhood: there is a land of one’s birth, and there is a land of one’s work and action. Janma bhoomi and karma bhoomi. Separate places. The distinction was meant to explain the pain of being broken in two. As if using words to describe the separation made it natural. But it was not. He knew that now. He existed in two places at once. America, Punjab, Adela, Padma. These worlds would never merge. It was impossible. His son was almost nine years old now, and Ram did not know what he looked like. Ram’s uncle knew him better than he. The boy’s teachers, the neighbors, the vegetable vendor in the village market knew him better too.
That February, for the first time, he kept most of the profit from the harvest for himself. He did not know why. He could not hide from himself a resentment, a sense of disappointment . . . in what? In Padma? Because she had returned to her parents’ home? Because he now sent money to that home as well? Yet all the failure had been his; he could not decide to return. Or perhaps it was his fate, written on his forehead. He had been in the States for a third of his life. To divide the world into janma bhoomi and karma bhoomi explained nothing. He would be forever suspended between two lands, never whole.
30
February 1923
A RIDER CAME BEARING A TELEGRAM FROM AMARJEET, IN THE MORNING, when Kishen Kaur was wrapping their lunches for the field. Amarjeet sent telegrams so rarely that Karak tore it open and read: “Supreme Court decision Bhai B. S. Thind-ji’s citizenship rescinded because of his race. Hindus are not white.”
They had been about to go out in the field, to prepare the ground for planting. But now they sat back down at the table. Finally, Jivan spoke. “They think they are telling us who we are,” Jivan said. “Instead, they have told the world who they are.”
At work in the fields, Karak spoke to no one. Later, Ram drove into town and brought back the evening’s newspapers. For a few hours, the papers sat abandoned on the table on the porch. Jivan and Ka
rak returned from the fields. They bathed. They ate. The lamps were lit and Jivan played the phonograph.
“Father of Leela,” Kishen finally said, looking at Jivan, “we must read it.” Jivan did not meet her eye. Kishen nudged her daughter forward.
The girl picked up the paper and held it under the circle of lamplight. Her voice was low. Her accent was American. “Supreme Court rules that high caste Hindus are not free white persons within the meaning of the naturalization law.” Leela cleared her throat. “Therefore, under a recent decision of the court excluding the Japanese, they are not entitled to citizenship. Hindus will now come under the Alien Land Laws and are subject to all the restrictions that apply to an Alien race.” She put down the paper. For a moment she looked merely puzzled, then tears welled in her eyes. “I am sorry, Pita-ji,” she mumbled.
“For what are you sorry, Leelu?” Jivan asked.
“I— I don’t know.”
“It is not your fault.”
The cicadas droned in the night. “We are in the same position as the Japanese now,” Jivan finally said. But Ram could see the guilt conveyed in his eyes. Jivan was not in the same position as Ram and Karak or Tomoya. His acres had been bought before the land law was passed and were held in Leela’s name. Leela had been born in Fredonia; she was a citizen by birth. Leela could not be stripped of citizenship. The law would not affect Jivan at all.
WITHIN WEEKS, many Hindustani men took their blankets and left for Texas, for Arizona, where the land laws had not yet been passed. Some returned to the lumber mills in Washington and Oregon. Others found work laying track for the Southern Pacific in the few places where track had not yet been laid. A few, like Jivan and Karak and Ram, stayed on. Now, on Sundays, the park was sparsely populated. The grower-shipper corporations bought up the land that the Hindustanees had leased from their absent landlords. The companies hired Filipinos and Japanese to supervise and Mexicans to harvest. The Hindustanees with Mexican wives remained, the ones with children and dreams of children, the ones who had wished for a home as soon as they left their old unsatisfactory one. When they met each other in the streets, they recognized in each other’s eyes the challenge that they had accepted. They were to be “strange” so that the Anglos could be normal, they were to be dirty so that the Anglos could be clean, they were to know their place so that the Anglos could be sure of theirs. If their sons and daughters sat in the same classrooms as the Anglo children, they were to consider themselves fortunate, so that the Anglos could feel generous.
They used to drink with their white land agents and neighbors, they used to gift credit at the clothing store for the wives of their bankers and lawyers, they used to buy candy for these men’s children, but now the Hindus stayed on the east side, shopping in Japantown and hiring farmhands from the Negro settlement. Times had changed.
IN THE FABRIC ROOM, Adela looked at him intently, as if she knew that something was wrong. She kissed him softly and he immediately loathed himself. What was he doing in this town, among strangers, with a woman who was not his own, so far from everything that he knew and loved? Suddenly he could not stand the textiles, the scent, the dust motes floating in the sunlight.
“Shall we walk?” he asked.
He could see she was puzzled. It was not often that they stepped into the open together. But truly, who would care? Perhaps the men in the barrio, but they did not matter to him. The Hindustanees in the park? Their gossip did not matter either.
Just walking with her in the open air made him feel a stranger. She belonged here; she was of this desert land and he was not. They were both of no consequence, but now, with the new laws, he was less than she. Everywhere they went, he sensed it. He was no one; he did not exist, coming to California had meant his death.
He stopped walking to face her. “I will go now, Adela,” he said, not knowing clearly his own meaning.
She looked confused. “What is it?” she said.
How could he tell her? How could she understand?
He remembered something that Karak often said: western women had too much power.
CLIVE EDGAR VISITED RAM AND KARAK the next week, and they sat near the back porch, just like the old days, except that Hitchcock was with them. They had just finished another lettuce harvest; it had done well. The Anglos were jovial, easy.
“Mr. Hitchcock and I were considering what to do now.” Sitting next to the vice president, Clive had become something that he had not been before. “You boys are fine farmers and all. We don’t want to lose you.” He stretched his arms behind him, cradling his head in his hands. Ram saw the revolver that Clive’s father-in-law had given him years before, lodged in a holster by his left arm. Clive had shown it to them on the day he announced his engagement. Pearl inlays in the grip, his initials engraved on the barrel. For years, Clive had not carried it, saying that it was too fancy.
Ram and Karak were quiet. Hitchcock was observing them. He was a handsome man. Tall, slim-hipped, a straight nose, long and delicate fingers. A smattering of gray on his temples. Light blue eyes. He walked with a limp from an unknown injury. He used a cane with a silver duck’s head handle. The limp, the cane, the handle, all added to his dignity. Everyone at the table knew that the Punjabis’ lease would run out in three months. The time to make decisions was now.
“How about we just keep the terms of our contract?” Clive said.
“Without a paper lease?” Karak asked. They had never had a paper lease with Eggenberger, but they had signed one with Consolidated on the very first day.
“We’ll just run our operation like we’ve always run it,” Hitchcock said. His voice was smooth, cultured. “County won’t know. Attorney general won’t know. Lettuce market is so high now.”
No one asked the obvious question. What if the contract wasn’t honored? The entire enterprise would be against the law.
“We’ve trusted each other for years, haven’t we?” Clive offered. “Done business on a handshake?”
“We think. We think on it, Clive,” Ram said, before Karak could say yes.
Hitchcock and Clive climbed back into Hitchcock’s car and Clive tilted his head out the window. Clive and Karak exchanged a glance. Ram felt them united against him.
Later, Ram found Karak out in the field, repairing a leak in the main irrigation ditch. He had flooded the small canal and was lifting soil from the trench to fortify its wall. He did not turn, even though Ram called his name as he approached. “I don’t trust Clive,” Ram said sharply. He had brought along a shovel but did not stoop to help.
“Clive is an honest man,” Karak said. His shoulders and back were wet with perspiration. He worked the shovel with a soldier’s bearing. “Hitchcock is right. The market is so high now. If we make a success this season, it will save me from ruin. You cannot do this little thing for your friend, after all the money I have helped you make?”
It was true, Karak had helped him make a lot of money. But he had helped Karak too.
“Three hundred twenty acres in lettuce, bhai,” Karak said. “Both fields. A fortune. Rosa will come back if the crop goes well, if I pay every debt. The children will be back.” He paused. Something caught in his throat. “Don’t you miss them, Ram? The way they used to run and laugh here.”
So that was Karak’s hope.
“I barely know the twins and already they are three years old. At least Federico remembers a little.”
Yes, Ram had missed the children. Without them, the farm seemed a place of misfortune.
“We need more protection,” Ram said. “We can keep a written lease in someone else’s name.” He knew he was stepping on unsteady ground.
Karak snorted. “Whose?”
“Rosa’s,” Ram said.
“Are you mad?” Karak said.
“She doesn’t come under the Land Law,” Ram said. “The lease can’t be taken from her.” But that was not the only thing. “She’s white,” he added, knowing the statement would enrage Karak.
“We are white,�
� Karak snapped, spinning to face him.
“They don’t think so,” Ram said.
“What is white? What is white!” Karak’s eyes had grown wide.
“What?” Ram said, not understanding.
“It is not only the color of skin!”
Ram was exasperated. “The children, then,” he said. “Put the lease in Federico’s name.”
“She would have full control still,” Karak said. “Women have too much freedom in this country.”
“You want her to return to you, but you will not allow her to hold the lease?” Ram asked. Four years ago, before Adela, this would not have seemed absurd to him. But now it did.
“I will not,” Karak said.
“Then Jasper Davis at the bank! Or the lawyer! Damn it! Someone who will protect us. Do you think we will survive just going on as before?”
“I won’t go to another man and beg him to protect me.”
“How do you think some Japanese have stayed?” He did not mention the Moriyamas.
“I am not so desperate. You think the sheriff would kick me out? Do you think Clive would betray me? For all these nine years he’s made a living only because of me. I grow the crops from which he profits.”
“It is not about the sheriff. It is not about Clive,” Ram said. But he could not name to Karak what it was. It was how Clive acted differently when he sat next to Jonathan Hitchcock or Roubillard. The man who could be easily swayed, the man who was not himself unjust, but easily joined in another’s injustice, that was a man not to be trusted.
“You have always supported Rosa,” Karak said.
“What?”
“Your sympathy is with her. Do you think she will come be with you?”
“What?” Ram said again, then he understood Karak’s meaning. Had the man lost his senses? Ram had never wanted Rosa. “I want to go back home, Karak.”