by Rishi Reddi
“But in the meantime you can enjoy—”
“Now. I want to go back now.” Ram had not known this truth. It had slipped from his mouth without warning. To return to a place where everyone spoke his language, where he need not explain history or food, or be trapped in the cage built of people’s stares. He had held his breath for a decade. Could he finally exhale?
Karak paused, but only for a moment. “What about Adela?”
Ram’s muscles tensed. He had never discussed Adela with Karak.
“What concern is that of yours?”
Karak’s eyes met his. Ram glared at him, daring him to continue.
Karak took a breath and his expression shifted. “Think of one last crop,” he said. “All of Moriyama’s land and ours together. It would fetch enough money to reestablish me. It would win back my wife and children. And you will go back like a warrior dragging a treasure chest.”
Ram said nothing.
“It is only one more season. You don’t mind living here,” Karak insisted. “You never have. That’s why you tried to bring Padma.”
“That is also none of your concern,” Ram said. He threw the shovel, unused, on the ground and walked to the house. The days went by and Ram did not pack his things or buy passage or close his bank account.
He had a feeling he could not name. That things could never be the same. That when he went back home, there would be another leave-taking, another death, a hole of ten years in his life’s fabric.
Clive returned three days later. It was Ram who met him first, near the roadway. “We will need seed for the entire field,” Ram said loudly, as Karak approached. He did not meet Karak’s eye.
31
July 1923
HE WOULD STAY FOR A LAST LETTUCE CROP, THAT IS WHAT HE TOLD himself. Eight more months, maybe nine. Everything could remain the same until then. He need not even tell Jivan until later.
The next Sunday Ram went to the dressmaking shop at lunchtime, as usual. The street was deserted. He knocked softly and Adela opened the back door.
There must have been guilt on his face—or something else. She pulled away from him. “What is it?” she asked. Her eyes expressed his own worry. He was surprised at how well she knew him. The decision was an intangible thing, but he could feel the truth of it come between them, as if it had shape and form.
“After the harvest next spring, I will go home,” he blurted out. It was a relief to say it out loud.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, then the knowledge settled. Her face flushed, slowly. “You never cared for me, did you?” she said.
This way of speaking about care was strange to him, as if care were an active thing, not prescribed by the situation. Who were they to each other, after all? Neither Punjabi nor Mexican society recognized them; how could they define themselves? They stood in a borderland, belonging to no one, to neither side, undefined. He wished he had said nothing.
“I do not get your meaning, Adela,” he said. A torrent of water was rising around him. He was about to drown. “We can continue until I leave.” He hoped she would be satisfied, perhaps smile just as she had when she had greeted him at the door.
“Continue what?”
“Continue—like this.” His glance took in the fabric room, the clouded window and shabby curtain, the sewing machine wedged in the corner. He felt a surge of shame, then of fear.
“There is nothing to continue,” she said.
“What is the matter?” he said. But she had already thrown her shawl around her shoulders, opened the door, and left him alone in that cluttered room.
He did not allow himself to go after her. There were people on the street now, and the future had just opened in an uncertain direction. He did not have the courage of the weekend before, when they had walked together outside. He waited until the people were gone, and by that time, she had disappeared.
In the days that followed, he thought about what had happened but could not understand it. For the four years they had visited that sewing room, she had known that he was married. By accepting him, she had accepted this fact. It was a simple issue—Mexican women were peculiar. Why had she run off like that?
The next Sunday he went back to the seamstress shop. Standing on the dry earth, he tapped his knuckles against the wooden door, but no one answered. He did the same the following Sunday. Then a great emptiness overtook him, and for a half hour he wandered about the town, not knowing where he walked, not caring if he was on the west side of the railroad tracks or the east. He hated her for not understanding his duty, for not understanding that he was not free. He asked himself, over and over: In a few months he would return to his real life in Punjab, as if he had never existed in this place, so what did it matter? And yet, he could not escape the feeling—there was something of real life here too.
HE AND KARAK PLANTED BOTH FIELDS in orderly rows of lettuce seed, fertilized with chicken manure, irrigated with care. They hired Alejandro’s team to weed, to thin the seedlings so the roots could go deep, but whenever the crew came, Adela was not with them.
Clive and Hitchcock came to visit as the plants turned bright green and glistened in the sunlight, as the crucial days approached for the lettuce to be harvested and packed into crates and loaded onto iced boxcars. Standing on Jivan’s farmland, gazing out at Moriyama’s field, Ram felt at peace. It was his last work in California and it was beautiful. Ram knew Karak thought so too. A week before the harvest, he woke to find Karak sitting on the jackrabbit stone with an expression Ram had never seen before—something between hope and fear. If all went well, the field could be worth tens of thousands of dollars. After giving Hitchcock and Clive their share, after paying back loans, they would once again have money to spare, money to buy things, money to win back a wife and family, money to say enough was enough, money to go home, dragging a treasure chest.
32
April 1924
AS AN OLD MAN, RAM WOULD BELIEVE THAT IF DIFFERENT WORKERS HAD harvested that season’s lettuce, on that day marking Karak’s official birthday, Ram’s life would have been different. For his journey was no different than any other; one small choice led to another and another, until the large thing was decided, the one that could not be avoided, a moment that determines a life.
The lettuce from Moriyama’s field grew ripe first. Alejandro’s crew of twelve workers arrived on Tuesday evening. A woman was with them. When Ram saw Adela, he felt a hand clutch his heart. She did not look at him. Perhaps she would cook for them, perhaps she would pick lettuce too. He promised himself that he would not approach her.
They woke the next morning before the sun rose. Hot gusts blew in from the west. The workers spread out in the first rows as sunlight leaked over the horizon. Adela was among them.
Across the acres of flat land, the view to the roadway was unbroken. Ram saw a cloud of dust rise behind a motorized vehicle. His gaze followed the truck as it moved past the packing shed, and the tool shed that stood near it, then turned off the roadway onto their land, doubling back to the structures on the farm’s dirt road.
“Who is that?” Karak said.
A group of men jumped from the bed of the truck like an invading army. Ram counted about twenty of them, but could not tell who they were.
“I will go see,” Karak said. Ram caught up with him and they climbed into the Model T together. By the time they arrived, the men had taken over the yard outside the packing shed, stacking crates that Ram and Karak had assembled the week before. Others moved wooden boards off the truck, taking axes to the wood to assemble more crates.
Now they could see a group of pickers that Ram did not recognize on the western edge of the field, heading down the rows with their bags. They must have accessed the field from the back path, a little-used turnoff from the roadway.
Clive stood in the packing shed with his back to them, although he must have heard them approach. He was inspecting the crates that Karak and Ram had assembled the day before.
“Clive,” Karak said. Th
e man spun around to face them.
“Who are these people?” Karak asked.
“Who do you think they are?” Clive asked lightly.
“We are using our own pickers. You know—”
“Not this time. We gotta get it outta the ground fast.”
“Already my workers are here,” Karak said. “Tell these people to leave.”
“That ain’t how we’re doin’ it now.” Clive’s face had begun to darken, a shadow under his sunburned skin traveling from neck to cheek. There was pleading in his voice, as if he wanted Karak to agree with him, to see it his way and make things easy.
Suddenly Ram knew. “Clive, you are stealing this crop from us?” he said. Outside the packing shed, they heard an axe crash through wood.
Clive’s eyes darted between them. A large blond-haired man carried in a stack of board and knocked against Ram, and Ram stepped forward to regain his balance. “Stealin’,” Clive said, looking relieved, as if it were easier to be indignant rather than sorry. His tone grew defiant. “You callin’ me a thief?” The blond man stooped to lay the planks against the wall. When he rose, he walked past without acknowledging them. Ram felt a surge of anger. “It ain’t stealing when Consolidated Fruit owns the land,” Clive said.
“Two-thirds of crop is ours,” Karak said.
“Two-thirds!” Clive snorted.
“What trick you are pulling here, Clive?” Karak said. They were alone again; the three of them. For a moment, after Karak asked the question, Ram saw a glimmer of the man they knew. Then he went back to unstacking the crates again, and the expression vanished.
“Best tell your pickers to leave,” Clive said, “so you don’t have to pay ’em too.”
Ram and Karak looked at each other. Clive slammed down a crate extra hard. Karak stepped toward him but Ram held his arm. “Let’s go,” he said in Punjabi. “There is another way.” Karak shook his arm free.
Ram took the driver’s seat now, and on the eastern edge of the field he called to Alejandro. “Clive has brought over some men on his own,” he said in Spanish. “Don’t pay them attention. Just do your work.” He was surprised to hear the command in his voice. “Don’t let them take our crates, even if you have to guard them.” Alejandro’s confusion showed on his face.
“Force them off if you have to,” Karak added.
Alejandro raised his eyebrows. He nodded. “Sí.”
Ram turned the car away. “Get to the sheriff!” Karak said.
“We cannot go to the sheriff,” Ram said.
“But how else—”
“What can the sheriff do, bhai? It is not legal for us to own that crop.”
Karak was quiet. Breathing hard. Ram stopped at Jivan’s house and Jivan stepped outside immediately.
“What is happening? I saw the truck—”
“They are seizing the crop, bhai-ji.”
Jivan’s expression grew hard. “Clive?”
They did not answer.
“I knew he would do something like this—” Jivan said.
“Should we go to the lawyer, to the sheriff, who?” Karak asked.
“Go to Hitchcock himself,” Jivan said. “He is giving the order. Tell him that if he does such things, no one will work for him in the future.”
“He doesn’t care,” Karak spat out. “He wants this crop, now. What does he care about who works for him in the future?”
“What else can we do, Karak?” Ram said.
Karak took a deep breath, as if to push away his panic.
THEY PARKED ON THE ROAD in front of the Consolidated Fruit offices. Karak was out of the car first, striding through the door. They found Hitchcock standing at an open file cabinet.
A clerk sat at the counter in front of him.
“How can I help you boys?” Hitchcock said, before the clerk could speak. He was wearing reading glasses, and he tipped his head forward so he could peer at Karak and Ram over the frames. Pale blue eyes assessed them. Ram felt numb.
“Hitchcock, what is the meaning of your workers in my field?” Karak said.
The clerk looked at Karak, then at Ram.
Hitchcock raised his eyebrows. He walked toward the counter. “Your field? Last I knew, the Consolidated Fruit Company owned that farm.” His lips curled into a faint smile.
“You know our agreement,” Karak said, his voice straining.
“You plant and irrigate, and you get paid for that,” Hitchcock said.
Karak’s words failed him.
“We get two-thirds of the crop. For months we have been working.”
“And you brought in a good field too,” Hitchcock said. “We’ll handle it from here. Harvest and shipping are more complicated matters.”
Karak lunged forward and put his hands on the counter. The clerk stood and stumbled backward. A paper floated to the floor. Karak’s face was two feet from Hitchcock’s. The vice president’s foot edged backward.
“You are lying,” Karak hissed. “From beginning, you have been lying only.”
He glared at Hitchcock, and Hitchcock gazed back. They stood, frozen, for a long time, Karak’s face contorted in rage. He spun on his heel and threw open the door. It slammed against the wall as he left.
“You act this way,” Ram said. “Very bad.”
But Hitchcock had already lost interest in them, turning quietly to his work.
“Very bad.” Ram repeated. He beat his fist on the counter. Hitchcock and the clerk flinched at the sound. He had a vision of jumping across the countertop, smashing Hitchcock against the file cabinet. But he took a deep breath and followed Karak to the car. He had not known he was capable of so much anger.
RAM DROVE THEM BACK. Karak sat beside him, staring at the road, unseeing. “Clive has been drinking my whiskey, sitting at my table, laughing at me for years.”
“Hitchcock is the boss,” Ram said. “He made this decision. Not Clive.”
“Is that so?” Karak said, in a tone that made it clear that he did not agree.
Clive was not at the farm, but his people were out in the field, in the packing shed, working at a furious pace. Acres had been cleared while they were away. Before the vehicle had come to a stop, Karak jumped out and ran toward the workers. “Get out!” he screamed, his face flushed, his voice desperate. “Get out! Get off my land!”
Ram turned off the engine and ran after him. In the field, two or three workers straightened up and began to back away. Ram caught up with Karak and grabbed his arm, led him back to the car. “That is not the way, bhai,” he said.
“Even if you run one off, there are twenty others. What can we do?”
Karak’s breathing slowed, but he didn’t seem to be listening.
On the east side of the field, Alejandro’s crew had filled a wagon full of crates with the morning’s harvest. It was parked far from the packing shed, behind their camp, and the workers were gathered around, as if protecting it. Ram felt a surge of gratitude. “Look,” Ram said. “We have that load and we will have at least another before all is done.” Karak sat on the car’s running board, gazed out into the field, and did not move.
The packing shed was still full of Clive’s crew. When Ram approached, four Filipino men stood inside, staring at him suspiciously. It was his shed, Ram thought. “I need water,” he said in Spanish. They said nothing. It was his olla, his water. He poured it into a tin cup and drank. An axe leaned against the wall. A saw, hammers, boxes of nails sat on a table. The men had been busy. More crates had been made, stacked all the way to the ceiling. “Where is Señor Clive?” Ram asked in Spanish.
“He left a few minutes ago,” one of the men said. “He said he would return soon.” Ram felt a slight alarm but did not know why. The four men lingered, staring at him silently, although their crewmates had already stopped work to eat.
When Ram returned to Karak he saw Jivan approaching too. Together, they coaxed Karak up, and the three of them walked toward Jivan’s house.
“Kishen Kaur says that we will not s
olve this problem on an empty stomach,” Jivan said. “I agree with her.” He smiled faintly, but his voice was sad.
As they walked, they passed Alejandro’s camp. Adela was crouched near the kerosene stove by a tent, making tortillas, and the men sat eating nearby. Ram felt a pang of jealousy. At Jivan’s home he turned back to see her, to see the land. There was an unbroken view to Consolidated’s motorized truck, parked with authority near their packing shed. In the other direction, mules stood hitched to the Singhs’ wagons, their heads slung low. The midday sun beat down on them.
THEY SAT AT THE TABLE on Jivan’s porch and ate without speaking. Kishen brought out plates of fresh rotis and dal. The truth hung heavy in the air around them: they were being robbed, slowly and painfully, while they watched, knowing there could be no retribution. Karak did not look up from his meal. He ate vigorously, his jaw working, but his expression was vacant. He rose to leave before Kishen had sat down to eat.
“Where are you going?” Jivan asked. “To rest?”
“I will go for a drive. How can I sleep today?”
“That Hitchcock is one mean fellow,” Jivan said. “Everyone knows it. Our people and the Anglos too. Clive could not have worked for a worse person.”
Ram knew the words were meant in sympathy, but Karak did not answer, and neither did he.
“Where are you going to drive?”
“To hell,” Karak mumbled. Then, as he turned away, “It does not matter; I’ll be back.”
Ram watched as Karak climbed into the car. The food sat uncomfortably in his stomach. He wished he had not eaten at all.
“Bad business,” Jivan said. He sucked his teeth. Suddenly, a wave of weariness overtook Ram. He said goodbye to Jivan and Kishen and walked to his cot to lie down. He was grateful to close his eyes, to escape, for just a moment.
HE SLEPT MORE DEEPLY THAN HE MEANT TO. He regained consciousness slowly, lying on his side in the heat. Ram’s throat was dry. His shirt clung to his stomach, his back. The air about him did not move. The ramada’s shadow lay sharply outlined against the dirt. The cow lowed from her stall. Then a shriek shattered the stillness. An animal sound, high and desperate, like a flash of light in darkness. He leaped up in a sweat. He could not breathe.