The Orchard Keepers

by Robert Pepper-Smith

  Church people brought food in the evening: pots and tubs of steaming beans and stew, sandwiches, sweet rolls, coffee and juice. They drove up quickly and just as quickly, forty or fifty men, women and children appeared out of the trees. Bernabe looked around, astonished: these were all people from his country, from Departments that he’d only heard of or sometimes passed through on a bus to the Capital.

  He watched a nurse listen to the chest of a sick child, hand out medications to the parents. Six young men from Barillas, speaking softly in Q’anjob’al, lined up before her and she gave them injections.

  “What is that for?,” he asked.

  In Spanish she replied, “Vaccinations against measles, typhoid, diphtheria.”

  She gave him a black garbage bag to use as a raincoat.

  Just as the church people were leaving, vans with Florida or North Carolina plates began to circle the orchard. Bernabe flagged one down. He made a deal with others to get to Indiantown, Florida. They made the trip in two days, the van only stopping for refuelling, the two drivers taking turns sleeping.

  Indiantown: El Pueblo de los Indios, easy enough to remember — a town for Indians in Florida.

  Early in the morning they let him off on Magnolia St., where men and women were already gathered, to be picked up for work. The air was humid, still, and he could smell the nearby lemon groves. The street was swept clean and reflected the fading lavender light of a Florida night sky.

  He wanted to get to the hospital to see his brother immediately. He asked a migrant worker where the Martin Emergency Centre was. This man was talking with others, laughing over some joke they’d shared. Something in his kind, gentle face, in the humour in his eyes, something also in the way the others listened to him with deference made Bernabe think that he was both liked and a man of authority.

  The question about the location of the hospital extinguished the smile in the worker’s eyes.

  He became very grave and took Bernabe aside to ask why he wanted to go there. The others looked on in silence. Bernabe replied that many weeks ago he had received a telegram saying that his brother Carlos Mateas was in a car accident, that he was in Martin Emergency Centre and that he’d travelled thousands of kilometres to find him.

  He could see that this man was torn between going to work and helping him: already vans were pulling up to take these men and women to the citrus groves and into the winter vegetable fields.

  He spoke to the group he’d been joking with, saying he’d be along later if he could find a ride. Once again they looked on Bernabe in silence, their faces expressionless.

  “My name is Andreas Tomas. Come with me,” he said, and they walked south down Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, past the New Bethel Church, past a low, tin-roofed house made of blue-painted bricks. Many of the houses were on scrubland, hardly tended, and south of there Bernabe could see the well-tended lemon groves.

  He took Bernabe to an apartment block called Blue Camp, named after an ancient layer of peeling paint.

  The walls of Andreas Tomas’ room were covered in family photos, pictures of saints and a magazine photo of the local San Miguel festival. On one wall he had carefully hung a child’s traditional blouse and sash in the pattern of his region. He opened a closet to show Bernabe rows of audio cassettes that contained messages from friends and relatives back home: news of baptisms and weddings and warnings for people who lived in Indiantown that they should not return home because the army was looking for them.

  He showed his guest the rest of the apartment: the tiny kitchen, the living room and the one other bedroom, both of which were divided into many sleeping quarters by blankets hung from the ceiling. The only common area was a large plank table off the kitchen where the people who slept and ate there could visit. He showed Bernabe a place in one of those divided rooms where he could sleep that evening.

  Bernabe protested that he had to get to the hospital immediately and that, not knowing how far away the hospital was or his brother’s condition, he didn’t know if he would return that evening.

  “You don’t need to go to the hospital,” Andreas said.

  He took Bernabe outside to show him his brother’s grave.

  Andreas explained that Carlos had died of his injuries shortly after the telegram was sent and that he himself had sent the telegram. He had founded the Aguacatan burial society, to help pay the funeral expenses of illegal immigrants who died there and, when possible, to send the bodies home.

  “We are not permitted to use the local cemetery,” Andreas said, “so we bury our people here, under this hickory grove, or we send them home.”

  Bernabe was beside himself with grief and disappointment.

  It felt like he’d come all that way for nothing. Still, when you’ve suffered such a loss, you’re less likely to get confused. He knew he had to accomplish two things: pay off the loan on his mother’s land and send his brother’s body home for proper burial.

  That day he wired a telegram to his mother, saying that Carlos had died and that he would ship his body home soon. He imagined the grief this would cause her and he felt anguish at the thought that he couldn’t be there to comfort her.

  The next few weeks passed in a blur. He worked long hours in the winter vegetable fields, picking cucumbers and tomatoes that grew on stakes. In the evening he negotiated a loan from the Aguacatan society to send his brother home so that his soul could dwell in their village where it would be properly honoured and remembered. Every waking hour he worked hard to numb his grief and at night when the vans came to take them from the fields when it became too dark to see, he fell into bed, into a sleep of exhaustion. Every day he calculated and worked, calculated and worked, reckoning how he was to pay off the loan on his mother’s land before it was forfeited, knowing that she had already suffered too much loss in her life.

  That was the winter of 1962. On December 12th, a bitter frost descended on southern Florida. The silence woke him, a silence more silent than he’d ever heard. A sudden night cold that falls on the world absorbs all sounds. Stepping over sleeping bodies, making his way through the hanging blankets that partitioned the room, he went outside to see what was going on. The sky was alight with the harsh glitter of the Southern Cross and the constellation called Gemini. The grass crackled underfoot and the street power lines glittered in the moonlight. He walked to the Becker groves. The oranges that he touched there were as hard as stone. The leaves rattled like glass. All breath had gone out of the silent trees.

  Then all of a sudden it began. The whole grove was filled with a muted splintering. Bernabe put his hand on a trunk. He felt it trembling; from inside he could feel the freezing sap tear the heart wood.

  After that terrible night in which thousands of trees died, they worked every day and long into the night picking any fruit that could be salvaged for juice.

  After that there was nothing — no work.

  One day he went down to Magnolia St. with Andreas Tomas and stood there among dozens of others and no vans came to pick them up. They realized then there would be no work for months, till a new crop of winter vegetables ripened.

  Bernabe stood by Andreas Tomas, thinking that he would be one to get work, if anyone could. He was desperate: though he had sent down regular payments, he hadn’t paid off the loan on his mother’s land. Several workers waited long past the time when many others had given up and returned to Blue Camp because Andreas Tomas waited, telling them of his life in Aguacatan.

  Finally a van with North Carolina plates drove up. The driver introduced himself as a Mr. Beecher.

  “I heard there were people like you here,” he said. “I’ve driven all night to find you.”

  “Better pay,” he said. “Inside work. That’s what I’m offering you.”

  Bernabe climbed into the back of the van with nine others. Andreas Tomas stayed behind. He explained that many people in Blue Camp depended on him and that he couldn’t leave on such short notice: he had to ensure that people without work were
fed and attended to when they became sick and he had to ensure that the Aguacatan burial society continued to function. He closed the van door, gave it a rap — a kind of blessing I suppose — and they drove away.

  Twenty hours later Bernabe stepped out of the van into Morgantown, North Carolina.

  He rubbed his eyes, looking around. He saw mountains. On one he recognized oak and pine. Storm clouds were blowing over it, trailing rain.

  Those mountains reminded him of the ones that surrounded his home village, though the clouds were different. Here they were heavy, grey with rain, and they turned like a river pool in summer, muddy and slow. The North Carolina mountains shouldered them and drew them in close and laid them over the forests. To the east he could see the sky clearing. Wind and sunlight and rain.

  That night, after he was set up in a trailer on Jefferson St. with three others, Bernabe went out to walk the back streets. On telephone poles he saw flyers telling of work in Athens, work in Cumming, work in Canton: Trabajo. Pollo. Llamada 549-6006. $3.50 par hora. He saw a line of four children with a man trailing behind them, twitching a long stick at their heels.

  Something in his walk reminded Bernabe of the men of his Department and he called out in their native language,

  “How long have you been here?”

  “I don’t remember,” the man replied. He was wearing rubber boots, corduroy pants and a plastic apron. He wore a capixayes — a black woolen tunic typical of men from their region.

  “I’m on my way to work. I work on the Perdue trim line.”

  “What do they pay you?” Bernabe asked.

  “Three dollars an hour.”

  “You can make $3.50 in Athens,” he said, pointing to a flyer.

  The Perdue worker laughed. “Sure,” he said, “and when they take off money for your apron and your gloves and for housing and your boots, you’re lucky if you have anything left.”

  “Who are you working for?” he asked Bernabe.

  “Mr. Beecher,” he replied.

  “Cargill,” he warned. “They’re okay. But if you get hurt, they won’t stand by you. You’ll be out the door in no time. Be careful.”

  Then he turned to walk away, twitching the stick at the heels of his children.

  “What are you doing?” Bernabe called after him.

  “Teaching them to walk,” he replied.

  The next morning at 4 AM a van pulled up outside the trailer Bernabe shared with three others. They were taken to the processing plant. The cold, damp air smelled of rain and of pine. Though it was still dark, he could feel the mountains nearby. He felt they would protect him.

  Because he worked hard for long hours and wouldn’t turn down any work, no matter how difficult or tiring, he was given many relief jobs in the plant. Sometimes he worked in the blue room, where he pulled live, scratching chickens out of crates to hang them on a line that dipped them into a vat of cold, electrified water, to stun them; sometimes he worked on the trim line, slicing meat from carcasses that went by on metal cones. After a few months of this, his fingers grew numb and his wrists flared with pain.

  Still, he would not stop working; he cursed his body for its softness and he grew heartsick at the thought that he would not be able to pay off his mother’s loan or the loan he’d taken from the Aguacatan burial society to send his brother home.

  Though he was exhausted, he was also restless and could hardly sleep.

  At night, so as to not disturb the others in the trailer, he’d go out to walk the back streets of Morgantown, and sometimes he’d walk into the mountains that smelled of pine and oak.

  One night he came across the man from his region who was teaching his young children to walk, twitching a stick at their heels. He asked Bernabe how his work at Cargill was going. Under a street lamp Bernabe showed him his swollen hands and wrists.

  The Perdue worker said that his condition was serious, that he’d seen many end up like Bernabe, and that soon he’d have to give up work in the plant because he would no longer be able to work at the necessary speed and with the necessary precision.

  “You’ll see,” he told Bernabe. “The pain will become too much. Then they’ll replace you with someone else they’ve picked up on the streets of Indiantown.”

  He told Bernabe that his name was Claudio Perez and that his eldest daughter had turned fifteen. Perhaps out of pity, Claudio invited him to her quinceanera, her coming-out party.

  He went to the Perdue worker’s house the next day.

  Claudio and his wife lived on King St., in a wooden house that they’d rented. Two blocks away, Bernabe could hear the marimba they’d hired for their daughter’s party. The joyful music, a son de entrada, convinced him to go in. He had not heard marimba like that since the festival in San Miguel.

  Claudio Perez met him at the open door. In his arms he cradled a plastic tub of soft drinks and cans of beer that he was handing out to his guests. He invited Bernabe in to join them. From the kitchen he could smell the sweet, acrid odour of corn tortillas on a hot plancha, the odour of black beans, kale and epizote. Many men were standing around in small groups, talking softly, and the women were sitting on the sofa and in chairs. Colourful streamers and balloons hung from the ceiling and were taped to the walls. Three men were playing a marimba that stood against the back wall.

  Though the music was wonderful, out of shyness no one danced. The men spoke to one another without looking in the direction of the marimba, as if ignoring it. The women, too, speaking to one another and going into the kitchen to help prepare the food, didn’t look at the marimba.

  The party started at 4 PM and went on till four or five in the morning. When one marimbista grew tired, another would get up to take his place; only then would the tired one smile, talk, go to sit among his friends with a plate of food. The one who took his place immediately assumed the expression of the other players, solemn and grave. Their austerity and restraint were a sign of respect for Claudio Perez and his guests and for the souls of the dead for whom they were also performing.

  Bernabe had forgotten this: in his region, this music was accepted like a heartbeat, sacred but never looked upon or singled out for special attention.

  Around 1 AM, when he began to hear music of San Miguel Acatan that he knew, music that he loved, Bernabe asked to take a place at the marimba and he played the centre position for awhile.

  Fortunately he didn’t make a fool of himself by stepping on the feet of the other players or hitting their sticks with his own.

  Josephina Perez danced with several men and her comare Rosenda Bravo danced. The few other women who remained looked on the dancers in shyness.

  Soon the burning in the wrists made playing impossible and Bernabe reluctantly gave up his place to another.

  Claudio Perez took him aside to speak to him.

  He said that Bernabe had honoured his daughter, his family and his house with his playing, that he had played the music of San Miguel Acatan in a way that Claudio had not heard since his childhood and that he wanted to do Bernabe a favour.

  He said that he ran a small business delivering personal letters recorded on cassettes, videotapes of baptisms and marriages and small goods to their home region. He offered Bernabe a job as a carrier. He said that the work was dangerous because Bernabe would have to cross two borders without the necessary papers, but that it was well-paid and that he had reliable contacts.

  Bernabe asked him why he was willing to do this for him. Claudio said that his music, which was the music of San Miguel Acatan, had touched him deeply, that it had brought back many good memories of his childhood in their region and that he would not let the work in the plant to continue to ruin Bernabe’s ability.

  He did not fear the work that was offered. His life as a member of Barrio 16 had taught him everything he needed to know about running goods under the eyes of the authorities. He was very familiar with that way of life, the things you had to pay attention to, the tricks, the dress, where to go and where not to go, the exp
ressions and the ways of looking upon others. Within a week he was heading south, his bags loaded with audio cassettes, videotapes, small gifts and envelopes of American dollars for relatives in Huehuetenango. And he returned with cortes, huipiles and pan de festa, a kind of festival bread.

  He made that trip several times a year.

  He was so reliable that in their home region and among their people in North Carolina he became known as El Cartero, the mailman, and he was often greeted with an open smile.

  When Bernabe had paid off his family’s debts, he began to save to return home permanently, to live with his mother who was alone. Through relatives that he’d helped with his deliveries he formed contacts in the army, to guage the risk of his returning.

  When he got word that he would not be harmed if he returned he went to Xela to study to become a teacher.

  After three years, when he’d received his certificate, he returned to El Tablon. His first school, a tin roof goat shed, was in the neighbouring aldea of Lupine. He stayed in El Tablon with his mother and on school days travelled to Lupine. He taught there for a few years and married one of the women of Lupine — Helene is her name, and they had a son, Manuel Mateas. He had just turned seven when they were forced to leave El Tablon and cross the border into Mexico.

  The troubles in Bernabe’s village began in early 1970, a few months after he’d left Lupine to take a teaching position in Tzibaj, an aldea north of El Tablon. These troubles were marked by the arrival of a young woman. Her arrival itself seemed insignificant at the time, but later he realized that the events that followed her were a mark of things to come.