The Orchard Keepers

by Robert Pepper-Smith

  They would outlast me.

  I thought of all those trout I caught when I was eleven years old. I knew the ones on the outside of the pile were already dead: all the light had gone out of their eyes. No light, no life.

  When I got back to town, I went over to the Burnham house. I’d heard that work had stopped there and I took along A Catalogue of Unrecovered Items, Volume Four: Pottery and Clay Figurines, a train book that I’d found in the carton of books Michael Guzzo had left with me when he went travelling. It was published by the Allied Powers after the war. In the introduction it says that the catalogued items, some of them identified by insurance photographs, were never recovered during the occupation of Japan, and the purpose of the catalogue, in several volumes, was to pass on the work of recovery to future generations.

  The kitchen was still filled with unpacked boxes, the green cushion from the sofa in the downstairs hallway was still on Mrs. Giacomo’s bed. I could hear the garden hose dripping in the kitchen sink. I ran my hand along the plaster walls, smooth as a yew wood drying board. They gave off a soft glow and they smelled like chalk. There were footprints up and down the hallway in the plaster dust, some of them my own. The propane heaters stood collected at the doorway. The camp stove still had a pot on it, a thin skin of dust on the bottom of the pot. The two clay bowls that Mr. Giacomo wanted to drink from in celebration were still on the counter. I leafed through the book, found the photo I was looking for. Those bowls were from the Tokugawa period, just as Mr. Giacomo had said, the potter’s mark incised in the base. His wealth hadn’t come from logging in the Nachako country. His wealth had come from artifacts he’d stolen at the end of the war. He had worked as a translator on Shido Island and used his knowledge to profit from the war.

  I hated him then. I hated his lies, the sham way he’d gone about making a place for himself in our life. I hated him and Mrs. Giacomo, too, for the way they were trying to wall Rose in with their grief.

  I pocketed one of those bowls. I stayed for an hour or so, lit candles that sputtered and crackled. I looked through Mrs. Giacomo’s dresser drawers for her clothes and I looked under the foyer bench for any sign of recently worn shoes. I found out later she had left, maybe soon after the birth, moved back to their house on 4th Street, where she stayed alone in her room.

  I went to look for Rose in the Giacomo café. She was disinfecting the kitchen counter where the fish would be prepared; her hands and arms, flushed to the elbows, smelled of bleach. Mr. Giacomo asked me to help him carry glass panes and the winter door up from the café cellar. We unhinged the sidewalk shutters, unscrewed the hinges from the cedar sash and fitted in winter storm panes and the pine wood door. Watching us, some passersby stood for a moment under the awning, under a darkening sky.

  All the storefronts were lit up and the sky had turned a dark grey. Trees on the mountain stirred. In the café washroom, I folded and rolled an evening’s fresh towels and placed them in the v-shaped rack by the sink.

  When I came into the dining room, Rose was standing by the bar.

  “I’m going back to the Big Bend to live with my parents,” she announced.

  “Oh, you’ll not be leaving,” Mr. Giacomo said and he touched her ducked head, laughing and smiling at me. “This is where you belong.”

  I couldn’t imagine Mr. Giacomo touching me like that; it just seemed impossible that you’d allow him to touch you.

  All of a sudden I felt very tired, and I went to sit in a chair by the window. It smelled of varnish because Mr. Giacomo had varnished the sill. I was wearing a loose-knit sweater that I’d bought in the Grizzly Bookstore. It felt like the weight of an extra blanket, because in one pocket there was a folded page torn from A Catalogue Of Unrecovered Items and in the other a Japanese bowl.

  Rose came up behind me, to drape her arms over my shoulders. I couldn’t see her eyes and I couldn’t imagine the expression in them. I could feel the light weight of her forearms on my shoulders, the stillness of her gaze. I could see the freckles on the back of her hands and on her wrists that smelled of bleach. Under her resting arms I felt like a bundle of tense sticks.

  To free myself, I leaned forward to rest my fingertips on the sill. The varnish gripped my fingertips when I touched it, like frost on a metal door handle.

  I have to get ready for the supper, Rose said, and she went back to the kitchen.

  I went over to Mr. Giacomo’s table. I laid out before him the book page from my pocket and the Japanese bowl. I placed the bowl very tenderly, gently before him, quietly, like in the stillness when the hawk comes. I smoothed out the page with the photograph on it as though it were a precious sheet, pure washi. I felt that something inside me was just about to break. He stared at them, and then at me.

  I didn’t want him to have the whole book, just that page. Maybe he had other things that were in that book. But I only knew about the bowls, so that was all I could accuse him of.

  The crinkles at his eyes deepened and paled, but he smiled.

  “So you know,” he said, and I nodded.

  “They had lost the war,” he smiled, “the ones we interrogated. The crown prince, the naval officers. We only took from them what they’d already stolen during their retreat.”

  He paused, and a shadow drew into his eyes. “That happened so long ago,” he said, a softness in his voice. “It’s not something I think about often.”

  I started yelling at him then. I told him not to waste his confident smile on me. It might look like he was trying to help Rose, but he was just hemming her in with his deceit. And nothing he had to offer was worth one touch of her freckled hands, one moment of her dancer’s grace.

  Just then Rose came out of the kitchen. “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “Nothing!” and he quickly balled up the sheet and pocketed it, put the bowl on a glass shelf behind the bar, by the upturned wineglasses.

  That was almost the last time I spoke to Mr. Giacomo.

  I left, didn’t stay for the parish supper. I was shaking, exhausted, and yet I felt a kind of joy. I walked down our main street towards the tracks, hating his complacent smile, hating the fact that he didn’t seem to care about what I felt. He was going to have his family his own way, at whatever the cost. But I wasn’t going to let him.

  What if Michael Guzzo found out that he was a father? With all the loss that he’d had in his life, maybe this was one loss he wouldn’t allow to happen, pushed out of the life of his son. Maybe it would be important for him to say to the Giacomos, Enough, this you can’t take from me.

  17

  Yesterday, when I got back to the fire tower from my days off, I brought along the plane ticket I’d bought to San Diego. From there I’d take a bus through Mexico to save money. I knew that Michael Guzzo was somewhere in Guatemala. The photo that he’d shown me was of a sacred lake in the district of Huehuetenango, in the western highlands of that country. I’d decided to go find him.

  As soon as I got in the door I saw that the cabin was not as I’d left it: my bed had been pushed to the north wall, the chrome-legged chairs had been moved from the east to the west window, my basil plants shuffled along the banister, the cutlery switched in the hutch, the stacked dishes pushed back on the counter. Nothing was where it was and I felt terrified, as if this place were not mine, as if I’d lost my life.

  One book was missing from my collection on the east sill, the Catalogue of Unrecovered Items.

  Just at dawn, the sound of dripping water. Everywhere I could hear melting snow. Today the cabin is to be boarded up for the winter, plywood nailed over glass, the doors locked. Through the window by my bed, I see snow water flowing over frost on a rock outcrop that looks like strands of a girl’s hair. Lightning storms that used to sweep through this valley go on the other side of the foothills. Now I see smoke from campfires on Olebar Lake.

  Below in the village, people are turning on their breakfast lights.

  The logging fires are still smouldering on the Palliser Ridge, a white,
drifting smoke that reminds me of washi paper.

  When I applied for this job, the Forestry Service questioned my young age, my ability to be alone. That age and loneliness go together is not questioned.

  When I was younger, I was more sure of myself, and now I feel porous, less contained, like a sheet of my father’s washi. I go out of here in dreams and when I nod off I sometimes can’t tell the difference between dream and memory and when I awake I look on myself as a stranger.

  There is a squirrel sleeping in the wall; during the day it raids the bird feeders.

  The pines below the ridge are singing. I can smell the resin in the swaying trunks. Last night’s stars have a scoured midwinter sharpness. Outside the west window, one last star shows its grape petal rays.

  There really are so many ways to be a little more gentle in this world.

  SANCTUARY

  Chiapas, Mexico 198_

  1

  For two weeks they have waited to cross the border into Guatemala, to return to their village. They number over three hundred men, women and children. School buses have sat for days on the other side of the checkpoint, waiting to take them home. Despite reassurances from the Capital and from the army that they will not be touched, they refuse to cross.

  Among them is Bernabe Mateas, a teacher in a one-room school in the highlands of his country. The events that have led him here go way back, to the town of his birth. It is often true that we cannot leave behind where we have been, the events and relationships that have shaped us, because they are already coming toward us, out of the future. Memory is like a beacon that now lights up the past, now the future.

  He grew up in Jacaltenango. His parents owned a store in town and his mother was a seamstress. On festival days his family went to Tzisbaj and San Antonio Huista, to set up their stall, their manteado. They sold the blouses his mother made on her old manual Singer sewing machine and typical skirts brought from San Sebastian, Huehuetenango. They were a very religious family and Bernabe loved to go to the festivals, especially the one in San Miguel Acatan, because of the famous marimba. It was a long climb to get across many arroyos and rivers and over many hills that were very steep, and once his father, who was not well, became gravely ill. There was no doctor or clinic in San Miguel. Through great difficulties they managed to return to Jacaltenango, but his father died shortly afterwards. Bernabe was fourteen and his brother Carlos twelve. Their father’s death was devastating for their family: they sank into a depression that lasted for months, and eventually their mother had to give up their store in town. In the nearby aldea of El Tablon she had a small plot of land that she tended, and now and then, to keep her sons alive, she’d make blouses to sell to the Jacaltec women. She hardly spoke and spent most of her waking hours alone in the fields or with her medicinal plants — it was her way of dealing with her grief.

  Bernabe became angry — at her for her silence, at his father for leaving them so poor. He took up with some kids who were running cocaine from Honduras to the Mexican border. Soon he had money in his pockets, and he left to join a gang in the Capital, where he’d heard there was even more money to be made. The gang was called Barrio 16. Even now he won’t say much about that time, except that he was involved in things that still shame him and give him nightmares.

  For two years he had almost no news from home. Once he heard that Canadians were planning a gold mine in his Department, and he hoped that the Canadian mine would bring his village some measure of prosperity.

  He hung out in the streets of zone 18. Because there really wasn’t a lot to do most of the time, he learned to play marimba. He was particularly good at the music of his highland mountains that he’d heard since childhood, and was often called on to take a place beside others at the marimba. Soon he found he loved playing marimba more than the money and prestige that came with being a member of Barrio 16. His dream was to return to San Miguel, to play during the festival there. One morning he got up early, the gang members all lived in a house in the 18th district, quietly gathered his things and left, caught the bus to Huehue. From that city he caught another, regional bus to El Tablon, the village of his birth where his mother lived on her small plot of land.

  His mother was overjoyed to see him. She led him into the house to cook some kale and beans for him. She looked much better than he remembered her from two years ago. There was new light in her eyes and she had put on weight. The house was surrounded by tall corn, a healthy green that he’d never seen in the family crops before and her little garden of medicinal plants was flourishing.

  He asked about his younger brother Carlos. It turned out that, a year earlier, he’d attended a demonstration against the Canadian mine in their Department.

  In order to accommodate the mine’s need for land, many people were forced to leave their small farms.

  Carlos had received a warning that he had been photographed at the demonstration and that it would be best if he left the country.

  He’d gone to Los Estados. He was established in Florida and was sending home money regularly.

  Because his mother was alone, Bernabe decided to stay on to help with the crops. The festival in San Miguel was a few months away. Besides, he remembered how his father had loved his milpa, how every year he’d give each plant careful attention, and he wanted to know what it felt like, to really care from day to day for the crops you grew. Besides, he was ashamed at abandoning his mother in her grief and wanted to show her that he was worthy of her love and forgiveness.

  He was not prepared for the hard work.

  He’d grown soft in the Capital during the many idle hours and days of gang life and his hands soon blistered wielding the azadon. His family didn’t have the best soil and his azadon would often strike stone, blunting the blade. Soon he was frustrated and angry. One morning he threw down the hoe and his mother, who was working ahead, looked up at him out of her mild, kind eyes. He’d quickly recalled something of the technique of hoeing from his childhood, but his uncalloused hands resisted what they were once capable of. He realized that even a humble task like hoeing takes patience, a lifetime of patience, and he was hoping to impress her with his willing usefulness.

  No land welcomes you right away, she said to him then, smiling. The soil takes its own time to trust you, and it’s a long time. She picked up the hoe that he’d tossed, carefully brushing the handle and then she handed it back to him.

  She tried to teach him about the medicinal plants that she grew. In their village she would help sick children or poor women with food or natural medicine. She was considered a good curandera with a good heart.

  He learned about the use of encino to cure skin infections and el eucalipto for coughs. However he was too impatient to really learn what she wanted to teach him, mainly because he could see no use for such knowledge in his life: he didn’t really want to become a curandero. Soon she sensed his boredom and impatience and stopped talking of her precious plants.

  One day they got word that a telegram from Los Estados was waiting for them in Huehuetenango, a city four or five hours by bus to the southeast of their village. They knew that it was either from or about his younger brother Carlos and that it was very likely bad news.

  Bernabe immediately caught the bus to Huehue. The telegram announced that his brother had been in a car accident in Indiantown, Florida and that he was in hospital. Four others in the car had died, including two young men from their village, Juan Vargas Lopez and Juan Soto.

  His mother agreed that Bernabe would leave for Los Estados immediately. To pay for the journey, she mortgaged her land to Pedro Lopez, a store owner in their village. If Bernabe didn’t pay off the loan within a year, his mother’s land would be forfeited.

  In La Trinitaria Mexico he caught a bus to Mexico City. He got off before the bus entered the outlying districts of the city and walked the backroads north, then caught a bus farther on. He’d heard that it was dangerous to go into Mexico City, that he would be easily spotted by the police or the city
gangs as an undocumented migrant. He could be robbed, kidnapped or even killed. In a small Sonoran town he waited for the weather to clear to cross the border. The guides who do business there told him when it was safe to cross and how to find his way. He walked toward a mountain peak that he was told was in Los Estados.

  He was crossing the Arizona desert at night when it began to rain. In an arroyo, he came to a wooden shelter at the entrance to what looked like an abandoned mine. Some traveller like himself had left a stack of ocote there and there was a well-used fire pit carefully ringed with stones, with some charcoaled pieces of ocote in it. To dry his clothing and warm himself, he made the mistake of lighting a fire. Soon the Border Patrol — La Migra — were on him, flashlight beams stabbing in the dark: they must have been watching from the hills.

  They took him to the federal detention centre in Florence, Arizona. There were other captured men and women in the back of the van: from Huehuetenango and San Marcos in the northwestern highlands, K’iche’ Maya from Quetzaltenango and Mixteca people from Oaxaca, Mexico. What had been their mistake? In the rain, they had lit fires where the Migra expected them to light fires, had even left caches of ocote for them to use.

  In the Detention Centre there were 425 beds, 100 for non-criminal aliens such as himself. Two weeks later, to determine asylum eligibility, he was led into a room where an officer asked him questions:

  “What would happen if you were sent home?”

  He explained that in his absence the army would assume he’d become a subversive, as they had accused his brother. His life was now in danger.

  When he was released with a petition for asylum, he headed for La Huerta, an orchard near Ft. Smith Arizona.

  In that orchard Bernabe made a shelter out of a piece of plastic draped over the branches of an orange tree and rags and blankets spread on the ground. Rain had been steady for a week. A woman from El Tumabor in San Marcos gave him the plastic; men from San Juan Ixcoy and San Rafael la Independencia in Huehuetenango gave him the rags and blankets. When the Migra showed up that afternoon, they vanished into rows of orange trees that looked like any other row, under thick foliage. Many in the orchard lacked the appropriate papers and even those who had them feared that their papers would be torn up, that they, too, would be deported.