She sighs and glances at Wes Tannock, who has the porch swing to himself. He wears cutoff jeans and loafers without socks; one foot kicks at the porch to make the swing go back and forth. He is alone tonight; his girlfriend is at a sorority party. But alone doesn’t mean available. Wes has never treated Cass as anything but Ron’s little sister.
Ron Jameson leans against the porch railing, his long legs extended, poised as if to walk away any minute. His face is shrouded by his Australian bush hat, which he takes off from time to time to use as a fan.
Paul Tarkanian perches on the railing, defying gravity as he balances his bulk along the thin wooden rail. His long black hair and thick beard make Cass think he should be leading a donkey with one hand and holding a gold pan in the other.
On the floor, cross-legged, sit the two cousins, Jan and Kenny Gebhardt. The silly grin on Jan’s face tells Cass that the beer in her hand is far from her first, and probably isn’t the only substance in her bloodstream. Kenny, the kid, the sixteen-year-old science nerd who tags along with the older students, sits silent as usual.
One member of the group is missing: Ted Havlicek, Cass’s almost-boyfriend. She tears her eyes away from the others every so often to glance along Monroe Street in hopes of seeing his pale blue Valiant chugging toward the house.
The students are foot soldiers in the war Lyndon Johnson declared on poverty. They are volunteers at Amigos Unidos Center, a social services agency for migrant farmworkers.
The migrants who work the fields of northwest Ohio come for the most part from South Texas. They are Mexican-Americans, U.S. citizens, who pile their belongings and their kids into cars every spring and drive north to hoe pickles and beets, to pick tomatoes and cherries. They live in whatever ramshackle housing the farmer provides; chicken coops and old trailers and tiny plumbingless cabins dot the countryside behind the big white farmhouses. They work for less than minimum wage, doing backbreaking labor in the fields.
“Is she still in a coma?” Dana demands. She raises her head from its resting place on Rap’s shoulder and leans over to catch a glimpse of Jan’s face.
Jan nods. The strand of hair she twirls in one finger finds its way into her mouth; she brushes it back with an impatient gesture. “The doctors said she might die.”
Cass Jameson leans back against the pillar, hiding her face from the cruel clarity of the streetlamp on the corner. She’s supposed to be filled with righteous anger over the injury inflicted on four-year-old Belita Navarro, but all she feels so far is numb. Somewhere in the vicinity of her stomach, there is a huge, gray blob of fear, and somewhere behind her eyes are tears she doesn’t want the others to see. Radicals don’t cry. Radicals don’t get mad—they get even. Jan and the others want to get even for Belita; Cass just wants to cry.
But then, she’s the one who spent the most time with Belita. She’s the one whose mornings were spent at the Migrant Ministry day care center, playing with toddlers while their parents and older siblings worked the fields. At first she resented the assignment, sullenly announcing she’d come to Lucas County to organize a union, not to baby-sit. But one afternoon with the children changed her mind. She met six-year-old girls who woke before the rest of the family to get the beans ready for breakfast. She met little boys who would be expected, when the family moved on to Michigan for the cherries, to climb to the top of the trees and shake down the highest fruit. She met children who had never had a teddy bear, never gone swimming or had a picnic with their families.
And she met Belita, whose round, solemn brown face could light up with a tiny-toothed smile. Belita, who called her mi Casi and laughed at her pun. Belita, who laughed when her baby brother wet himself, putting her little hand over her mouth and giggling silently. Belita, who loved playing Candy Land, even though she spoke not a word of English. She didn’t understand the rules, or even that there were rules, but she loved moving the little pieces along the track to the gumdrop mountains. Cass brought real gumdrops one day, and the child was amazed to find that the colored mountains were pictures of real things you could actually eat.
Now Belita lies in a coma, near death. And all she did was play in a field near her makeshift home. A field that had been sprayed with a deadly pesticide called parathion.
Cass bites down on a lower lip that threatens to tremble into humiliating tears. She tries to tune back in to the discussion, but finds it hard to concentrate.
“Are you sure this will work?” Wes Tannock’s normally self-assured baritone rises at the end of his words, which are half challenge, half doubt. He steadies the swing with his foot, preventing it from swaying with his every movement.
Rap’s hand slices the air. Since his is the hand holding the joint, his gesture is punctuated by an orange streak across the face of the night. He takes a deep drag and sucks in every ounce of smoke. His answer rides the exhale: “It’ll work, man. Blow those fuckers away.” He passes the jay to Dana. “We’ve got to seize the time, that’s all.” Rap speaks with a lateral lisp that could make him sound like Daffy Duck. Instead, it adds spice; he never bothers to avoid sibilants.
Dana, who leans against Rap’s chest in spite of the heat, holds the dwindling joint to her lips and takes a hit. She leans her head back and blows the smoke out slowly. She lifts her hand and pushes her long, black, Indian-princess hair off her neck, then passes the joint to the thin, nervous girl who sits on the floor, her back propped up against the porch rail.
Jan takes the doobie. “But what if somebody gets hurt?” she asks. The jay sits in her hand, unsmoked. “Somebody besides the farmers and the pigs, I mean.”
“Hey, you’re the one who got all psyched up about what happened to Belita,” Rap reminds her. “You were the one who said we had to do something.”
“And don’t bogart that joint,” Tarky adds in a low growl. His black Armenian hair is shoulder-length; he looks like a Dutch Master. He perches on the porch railing, his hairy hand reaching for the marijuana. Jan hands it over without a word, without taking a drag herself.
This is unusual; Jan passing up a chance to get high.
“You agreed to it ten minutes ago,” Dana reminds her. She passes the ice cream to Cass without eating any. This is not unusual; Dana is always trying to lose weight, to coerce her stocky frame into hip-huggers.
“Besides,” Cass adds, plunging the spoon deep into the melting peach mess, “how could anyone get hurt? It’s not like it was really poison or anything.” She is not certain whether she’s trying to convince the others, or to convince herself that what the group wants to do is the right thing.
“Yeah,” Rap echoes. “Not like the stuff they used on that poor kid. You were the one who found her, Jan. You were the one who called the ambulance. So what’s this fucking shit about maybe someone will get hurt? Someone’s already been hurt, and it’s a kid. If she comes out of the coma, she could have permanent nerve damage, remember?”
“That really sucks,” Dana murmurs. Again her hand reaches for her long hair and shifts it to the other side of her neck. She puts out a hand and wiggles her fingers at Tarky, who passes her the remaining joint.
“Hey, what about my turn?” Wes says. He reaches into his jeans pocket and pulls out a hemostat. He moves the swing forward to meet Dana, who leans forward on the glider. She holds the joint between her fingers, and Wes clamps it with the medical instrument.
“‘Plunk your magic twanger, Froggy,’” Rap says, imitating Andy Devine’s gravel voice. “I don’t see why you can’t take your roaches straight, like the rest of us.”
“It burns my fingers,” Wes replies. He brings the hemo to his lips and takes a deep drag.
“And it leaves those telltale burn marks,” Rap adds. “We wouldn’t want anyone to suspect that straight-arrow law student John Wesley Tannock might smoke dope, now would we?”
Tarky fixes Rap with a black-eyed Armenian stare, a stare that promises horrible revenge in some future incarnation. A stare that has Rap’s vulpine lips stretching into an
ironic smile that bares canine teeth.
“Oh, shit, not this again,” Jan mutters. She puts out a thin arm and takes the hemo from Wes. She opens the clamp and takes out the roach, then hands the instrument back. She holds the remaining quarter inch of butt to her lips and sucks deeply. She closes her eyes and seems to float away on a cloud of self-absorption until the males sort out which is to lead the pack.
The radio station plays a long, dreamy Iron Butterfly tune that has Jan swaying to guitar riffs and Rap beating a tattoo on the glider with his long fingers.
A hand touches Cass’s shoulder; she turns and looks up at Ted Havlicek. He motions for her to move over and she shifts herself on the porch floor to make room. Part of her is annoyed at his proprietary air, and the other part—the stronger part, she has to admit—takes pride and pleasure in being someone’s girl. If she can’t have Wes, she’ll settle for Ted.
“So, Clark Kent,” asks Rap, “they gonna put this story on the front page or what?” Rap has the bluntness of the New Yorker, but they’re used to him by now, so Ted takes no offense.
“Afraid not,” Ted replies. “The city editor said I’d get three graphs on page three of the local section. That’s if there isn’t a four-car pileup out on Secor Road. Face it, folks, an injured migrant kid isn’t big news in this town.”
Ted reaches into his shirt pocket and pulls out a soft pack of unfiltered cigarettes. He lights one and offers the pack to Cass, who shakes her head. Jan accepts the offer even though it wasn’t made to her; she reaches across Kenny to take one and nods her thanks.
“Let me bring you up to speed,” Rap offers. “We have an idea that will put what happened to that kid on the front page, but Wes here, after we’ve talked about it all fucking night, after we’ve planned and argued and reached a consensus, now, now”—he stops, faces Wes, and slams a fist into an open palm—“now we’re ready to reach the final stage and Tannock here is starting to lose his nerve.”
Rap’s deep-set eyes, illuminated by the light from a garage across the alley, narrow with suspicion. His voice, which had been sharp and high, now goes flat as he throws out the challenge: “I’m not sensing fear here, am I, Wes? You’re not starting to think this isn’t going to look too good on your résumé, are you, because if you really want a job on Wall Street when this summer’s over, then you can get up right now and walk—”
Interrupting Rap in full rant is never easy, but Ron Jameson cuts in, “Let the man talk, Rap. I’m sure that’s not what he’s getting at.”
“Let me play devil’s advocate here,” Wes says. He gives Ron a glance that holds no gratitude; he can’t maintain his leadership role if someone else does his fighting for him. He leans forward on the porch swing, which lets out a squeak of protest. “We want to make the point that pesticides kill, right?”
Universal nods. Even Kenny, Jan’s young cousin, who sits in the corner of the porch and hopes no one will remember his presence, gives Wes the compliment of an acknowledgment.
“We want to make them understand how their poisons hurt the migrants, right?” More nods. “We want to bring Belita’s pain home to the people who caused it. We want to give the farmers a little taste of what they did to that kid.”
“Easy, John Wesley,” Tarky murmurs from his perch. “You’re preaching to the choir.”
Wes cuts a look at his fellow law student, then takes a breath and continues. “But we don’t want to hurt anyone. Not really. So we take a can of parathion, empty the stuff out, and replace it with hot pepper oil.”
“Capsicum oil,” Kenny murmurs under his breath. He’s a skinny sixteen-year-old wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt. Bony boy-knees and hairless legs protrude from under his cutoff jeans. He’s a kid genius, a college freshman majoring in chemistry.
No one even glances at him. Rap finishes what Wes started. “We take the canister to the county fair, spray the stuff all over the farmers waiting to see who gets the blue ribbon for the fattest pig or whatever, and they all go bananas. Then we tell them it’s only pepper oil, but the stuff they poison the migrants with is the real thing.”
“Guerrilla theater,” Cass murmurs. She realizes she’s still holding the sodden carton of ice cream and passes it to her brother.
“Will there be any parathion left in the canister?” Jan asks.
Ron Jameson’s voice overrides Jan’s. “Just how poisonous is this stuff, anyway?”
“A little dab’ll do ya,” Rap replies.
Wes looks down from his porch swing throne at Kenny, who swallows hard and murmurs, “It’s an organophosphate. One of the most poisonous chemicals known to man. A few drops can kill you.” He warms to his topic; the only time the others listen to him is when they need scientific information. Which doesn’t happen often, so his chest swells with pride as he shares his knowledge. “It comes in different strengths. The growers usually buy it in concentrate and then make an emulsion. A spray canister contains about fifty percent parathion, and—”
Jan translates her cousin’s words into English. “All Belita did was run through the field after the spraying. She didn’t even touch the plants. The fumes were enough to put her in a coma. The doctor at the emergency room told me that if she had touched anything, she’d have been dead in minutes.”
“God,” Cass says under her breath. She herself isn’t sure whether it’s a curse or a prayer. All she knows is that the lump in her stomach is heating up. Her tears are turning into rage, just the way Jan wants them to.
In the background, Simon and Garfunkel sing that “the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls.” And, thinks Cass, they’ll be written on the signs we’ll carry when we spray that pepper oil. The words of the prophets fill her with the anger she needs to cement her purpose.
“What did that grower say when you told him what happened to her?” She knows the answer, but wants to hear it again, wants to fuel her anger with accounts of the farmers’ indifference to the welfare of the people who work their crops.
“He said the fields weren’t a playground and it was Belita’s parents’ job to keep their kid at home. He said it wasn’t his fault if these people didn’t understand English.”
Jan’s words do their intended task. The students all shake their heads in disbelief and disgust. Rap says what most are thinking: “Truth is, I’d love it if we could hit them with the real thing. Put them in a coma just like they did to Belita.” His big-knuckled hands weave webs of intrigue in the night air.
“But no,” he continues, “we’re going to make damn sure there’s no parathion left in that canister. Kenny here is the chemistry maven, so it’s on him to get every bit of the stuff out of the canister and put in a neutralizing agent. So when we fill it with pepper oil there’ll be no trace of poison left. Right, Kenny?”
Kenny nods. “Right.” His boy-voice cracks on the word.
“There’ll be no screwups like there were on the Fourth of July, right?” Rap takes the carton of ice cream from Ron. Holding the soggy cardboard carton aloft, he lifts it to his lips and drinks the melted pink mess.
“That wasn’t my—” Kenny begins, but Tarky’s black-eyed stare silences him.
Tarky’s black brows lower like thunderclouds. He fixes Kenny with a stare intended to intimidate. “You’d better not fuck this one up, kid.”
The radio has gone into a commercial. A jingle tells the listeners that if they want a used car, they’ll be “on the right track at Nine Mile and Mack” in nearby Detroit.
Cass looks at the others one by one, loving the intense passion in their faces, the clear empathy they show for little Belita. They are, she is certain, on the right track.
CHAPTER THREE
August 21, 1969
Ted Havlicek sits at his desk in the Amigos Unidos Community Action Center. He is a recent graduate of Toledo University’s journalism program and acts as press liaison for the center and stringer for the local paper, the Toledo Blade. His desk is covered with half-finished press re
leases; a sign above the portable typewriter reads NOTICE: THIS PROGRAM IS SET TO SELF-DESTRUCT DUE TO LACK OF FUNDS.
On the wall are an unframed Peter Max poster of Bob Dylan and two Blade stories on migrant workers with the byline underlined in red. An avocado-green radio on the desk thumps out “Duke, Duke, Duke, Duke of Earl.”
“But what do you need a notebook for?” he asks the slight boy with the long, serious face. “I use them for reporting, but what do you need with one?” It isn’t that he can’t spare a steno pad; hell, he’s already rooting around in his desk drawer for a fresh one. It’s that in the depths of his journalist’s soul he has to know the who, what, where, why, and how of everything that comes his way. And that includes knowing why Kenny Gebhardt wants to play reporter all of a sudden.
The kid’s sixteen-year-old voice cracks as he replies, “I’m sick and tired of what’s been going on around here. I want to find out who’s been doing this to me.”
“Doing what?” Ted’s blue eyes are guileless behind his wire-rimmed glasses. A jolt of annoyance rips through Kenny; Ted can be a real pain in the ass when he pretends not to know something everybody knows he knows.
“Setting me up. Making me look bad.” Kenny shoves his hands into the pockets of his bell-bottoms. “Like the time I brought the wrong flyers to the rally. The ones in English instead of Spanish. I opened the fucking box back at the office. I checked them before I put them in the station wagon. Then when I get to the rally, they turn out to be the wrong ones. But would anybody believe me when I said I checked?” Kenny’s voice rises to a boyish pitch; he drops his eyes and contemplates his worn hightop sneakers.
“They think I’m a dumb kid,” he mutters. “Like I’d really pull that stunt at the radio station.”
Ted stifles a smile. “Yeah,” he agrees, “that was pretty stupid. We’re supposed to be airing a tape in Spanish about applying for food stamps and instead all we get is Donovan singing ‘Mellow Yellow’ about twenty-five times.”
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