"Catherine," the girl said, pointing at herself. Then she put a hand on Ben's arm. "Este es el Doctor Ben Givens. No habla mucho español. Comprende?"
There was no answer. They didn't look at her. The one with the Dole cap in his lap began to finger its bill a little and pulled on his ponytail. The one with the pomaded hair looked studiously out his window. The sick boy began to cough again. He leaned forward and gagged.
"Qué le occure?" said Catherine. "Hace cuánto tiempo que está usted así?"
"No me siento bien" said the boy. "Estoy enfermo. Tengo escalofríos. Tengo fiebre. Me duele la cabeza y la espalda y todo el cuerpo. Me cuesta respirar. Pero no quiero un doctor. Muchas gracias."
"He's really sick," said Catherine. "He says he's got a chill and a fever and his head and back hurt a lot. Plus, it's hard for him to breathe. But he doesn't want a doctor."
"Tell him he doesn't have to pay," said Ben. "Tell him we won't ask to see papers. We won't even ask his name."
Catherine translated these things. They all three looked at Ben again. "Un ángel de Dios " she assured them again. "Un buen hombre. No es nada como para preocuparse. Un médico de Dios."
The boy with the Dole cap studied her face, then began to speak in a whisper. Catherine leaned toward him.
Ben recognized place-names: Boardman and Milton-Freewater, Pasco and Walla Walla. The boy spoke evenly, rapidly, until Catherine stopped him with the palm of her hand. "Its his brother," she said. "The sick one's his brother. He hasn't worked in three weeks. It started out he had a cold. Anyway, they thought it was a cold. They bought him some aspirin in Walla Walla. Still, he's always coughing and sweating. He can't work, he's always tired, he gets hot, his body aches. They've been all over looking for work. Pasco, Milton-Freewater."
"The coughing," asked Ben. "Does it hurt?"
She translated. "Si," said the boy. "Me duele mucho el pecho." He patted his chest. "Aquí."
"Ask him if he's coughed up blood. Even just a little. Ask him."
She did. The travelers conferred among themselves. The answer was no, no blood, none anyone could recall.
Ben massaged his forehead. The night sweats in particular interested him. He guessed it was a case of tuberculosis, though he could not rule out pneumonia, or coccidioidomycosis, or a host of other possibilities.
He stared out the window. They were passing a dirt yard, carved from bench land, where a thousand cows thronged a feed trough, yellow tags stapled to their ears. Beyond was the old Fisk orchard, which was now Bartlett pears. Then came his family's old orchard. The house had been torn down and replaced. The Lombardy poplars were stately sentinels. In the south orchard, the ladders were up. The bins stood between the rows. He could see someone picking in the wind.
"That's where I was raised," he told Catherine. "That was our orchard, there."
"Really great," she answered. "But this guy's kind of suffering. You can't just look out the window."
Ben sighed. "I was a heart surgeon," he said. "I'm sort of shooting in the dark here."
"Well, keep shooting," Catherine said. "What should we ask them next?"
"Ask them what kind of work they've been doing."
"What's that got to do with anything?"
"Maybe he ingested a pesticide, or maybe they've been working around barnyard animals. I don't know, just ask."
She asked them about the nature of their work. The one with the ponytail answered at length. Asparagus at first, for almost four weeks. Then, in June, no work for a while. They lived at the bottom of an onion field, waiting. In July, three weeks of sweet onions. They went into Oregon for raspberries. Afterward, no work again. Then, finally, hoeing potatoes. They waited more. They picked apples near Yakima. Now they were heading north.
"De dónde es usted?" asked Catherine. "Sonora? Chihuahua? Jalisco?"
The one by the window answered. "Tejas" he said. "Somos de Tejas."
"De qué parte de Tejas es usted?"
There was no answer. The boy shrugged and looked out his window. "He says they're from Texas," said Catherine. "But he can't say what part of Texas, or maybe he didn't understand me."
"They're here without green cards," Ben said. "They're afraid they're going to be deported. Tell them again we're not the police. We're not going to turn them in—stress that. Promise them or something."
Catherine turned again to the travellers. "No somos policía," she said. "Les prometo. No se preocupen."
There was no answer from the one by the window, but the one with the Dole hat in his lap faced her earnestly.
"Ask them," said Ben. "Before they came here. Was anyone sick at home?"
No, none had been sick at home, not especially.
"What about in their travels?" asked Ben. "Have they met others sick like him? Anywhere? Picking raspberries in Oregon? Somewhere? Hoeing potatoes?"
Yes, there had been others ill. But there were always a few ill workers in the fields. Colds, fevers, it was to be expected. Nothing that stood out.
"Sprays," said Ben. "Pesticides. Chemical fertilizers."
"Líquido para rociar" Catherine tried. "Cebolla. Papas. Espárragos. En la hacienda ... abono para la tierra. I don't know. Químicos. Respiraba químicos, acaso?"
The one by the window seemed to understand. In animated fashion, he explained it to the others. They nodded in their understanding. But no, they said, there had been no chemicals, none that they could recollect.
"All right," said Ben. "What about skin rashes? Ask him about his skin."
There had been no rashes, no stiff, sore neck, no swollen throat. He had no lumps in his neck or armpits. He didn't smoke cigarettes and never had. He did not eat much, but in the last few days he'd had refried beans, a ham sandwich with salsa and onion, a stew of chicken backs, tortillas. He'd had coffee with sugar and milk that morning, some Kool-Aid and a Pepsi Cola. As much water as he could drink. Yes, they drank irrigation water at first. No, they didn't often wash their hands. Yes, they had all felt ill at times, mildly ill, from traveling. But the sick one had really begun to suffer about three weeks ago. He began to ache in his muscles and joints and was light-headed in the fields. He felt sleepy most of the time. Now he couldn't keep from coughing, especially in the night hours. They didn't know what to do with him.
"This is a mystery," Ben said. "If I had to guess, I'd say TB, possible TB versus pneumonia. But there are all kinds of viruses around out here, fungal infections, bacterial diseases, any number of things."
"Still," said Catherine. "We have to do something."
"He needs care," Ben told her. "He needs a clinic or a hospital. Myself, I can't make a diagnosis, much less offer treatment. I'm out here on this bus without anything—I don't even have a stethoscope. Tell him this is serious. Tell him he should go to the hospital as soon as we reach Wenatchee."
"Now wait a second," said Catherine. "If he goes to a hospital, they'll ask for papers, won't they? Identification. A visa or something. And then he'll maybe get kicked out of the country. We can't do that to him."
"Look," said Ben. "He's seriously ill. If he doesn't get some help soon, he's going to get even worse than he is. He could even die from it."
"We promised him," said Catherine. "We promised he wouldn't get deported."
"He won't get deported," said Ben. "The main thing is, he needs treatment right away. That's all there is to it. A hospital. As soon as we get off the bus."
"You have to help him from outside the system."
"There isn't any help outside the system."
"Then what'll we do?" asked Catherine.
The boy threw another coughing fit, which brought her exhortations to a halt. He lurched forward spasmodically, whipping his head against the seat back before him, and brought up a bolus of blood-tinged sputum that spattered his blanket, red.
It was as though a demon had seized his chest. He wheezed and labored to move air through his lungs. His brother put a hand around his shoulder. "Angelito," he said. "Quédate tranquilo
. Ya va a pasar. Dios nos va a ayudar."
"What did he say?" Ben asked.
"He said God will help them."
TEN
The bus went past the Rock Island Dam, a silicon plant, and an aluminum smelter, and on the east side of the road a cherry orchard barren in this season. The apple orchards, though, were laden heavily, the pickers filling their canvas bags, the tractors busy pulling bins, the apples waiting at pull-outs and sidings, the branch props stacked in the crooks of trees, and everywhere on the road to Wenatchee the haul trucks ran fully loaded. Along the river course the wind blew downstream: the flag on the basalt island just south of Hurst Landing stood stiffly battered by it. The river here was a frothing lake with a few fall whitecaps blown up like tufts of scudding ocean foam.
The bus passed the Rock Island Hydro Park with its ball fields silent this time of year and its stark NO SWIMMING signs. It passed a trailer park laid out formally above the river. Across the water lay South Wenatchee with its dingy railroad freight yard, poplar trees, and more mobile homes. The rail yard had once been thronged by apples, but now it was desolate and little used, its buildings skeletal. Fruit pickers squatted in makeshift camps. One had a warming fire sparking in the wind. Children sat by the rivers edge.
The bus crossed the bridge to Mission Street and came into Wenatchee. Some of the passengers began to stir and gather their belongings. It was a prosperous town—more than twenty thousand people—the preeminent city of the apple country. It sat in a bowl between bleached hills that rose a thousand feet above the river. To the east they were colored in auburns and tans, their summits and ridges forming the rim of the vast wheat plateau. To the north the hills fell steeply to the river in rippling, undulant, shadowed draws, and the river ran with the sun on it, its sinuous surface broken by bridges and by the dams at Rock Island and Rocky Reach. Everywhere on the edges of town were orchards ascending into arid heights, including the Wenatchee Pinnacles, summits Ben had scaled as a boy—Castle Rock, Squaw Saddle, and Old Butte, sun-beaten peaks of eroding basalt, tall spires against the skyline. The outlying neighborhoods were tidy and quiet, the homes with deep porches and sheltering willows, but downtown were stoplights in inordinate number, hamburger and taco joints, crowded parking lots and strip malls. The streets ran wide, two lanes in each direction. There were more trucks than passenger cars. Wenatchee hummed with fast-moving vehicles, with tractor-trailers, four-wheel-drive cars, and late-model crew-cab pickup trucks riding high above the asphalt. On the sidewalks some men wore cowboy hats, shambling along with their hands in their pockets or cupping cigarettes against the wind; they were ranchers of the sort Ben remembered from childhood, basin men with leathery faces, pearl-button shirts, cowboy boots, and emaciated backsides.
At First Street the bus careened into a covered loading bay with a broken skylight in its high roof. The driver announced a fifteen-minute pause and suggested that passengers use the station bathroom, buy coffee at Cecil's Cafe, or simply stretch their legs outside before taking to the westward road again at 2:55 P.M. He swung open the cargo compartment as the passengers filed off. The apple pickers put their heads together and spoke in a soft, rapid Spanish. From under their seats they pulled grocery bags overstuffed with their belongings. The sick one, Angel, waited wrapped in his blanket, his mouth open, sweating. His brother slipped his Dole cap on, adjusting its bill to throw a shadow across his eyes. "Donde estamos?" he asked.
"Wenatchee," answered Catherine Donnelly. "Wenatchee, Washington."
"Guanache," he repeated. "Cuándo vamos a llegar a Orondo?"
"Este bus no va a Orondo. Usted tiene que tomar otro bus para ir a Orondo. Es necesario bajarse aquí y cambiar de bus."
"Ho-kay, muchas gracias," the picker said, rose and took up his bags. The one by the window stood up, too. They helped Angel to his feet.
"They say they're going to Orondo," said Catherine. "What do you think we should tell them?"
"Ask them why they're going up there. Ask them about Orondo."
"Tienen ustedes trabajo alii?"
"Si. Acaso."
"Cosechando manzanas?"
"Si."
"Y su hermano? No puede trabajar. Necesita ir al hospital."
"No. El está bien. Por favor, no se preocupe."
"He says," said Catherine, "that in Orondo they have a job. They're going up to Orondo to pick apples. He insists Angel is doing fine. We shouldn't worry about him."
Ben looked at Angel now, directly into his eyes. "No hos~pi~tole" he said to him. "Muerte, si? Comprende, Angel? No hos~pi~tolemuerte."
Angel, in answer, drew his blanket closer and turned his bloodshot eyes to the floor.
They filed off the bus with the other passengers, the fruit pickers with their plastic bags, Catherine with her sunglasses on, Angel shrouded in his stained blanket, Ben with his rucksack on his shoulder. The wind blew loud, a sudden whirlwind hurling dust down the loading bay. The driver stood with his back to it, clutching his cap to the top of his head, his pant legs billowing and his coat flailing, so that he looked as if he might blow away. A garbage pail fell over and rolled toward Chelan Street, refuse spilling onto the ground—cans, bottles, candy wrappers—and they, too, were wind-whipped north and up against the brick facade of the Labor Union Temple.
"El remolino" said one of the pickers. "El viento del Diablo."
"I'm calling 911," said Ben. "They'll take Angel to the hospital here, and that'll be the end of that."
"I don't know," said Catherine. "I'm back on the bus in fifteen minutes and heading over the mountains."
"You are?" said Ben. "I didn't know that."
"I just hope you're doing the right thing and all. I hope you don't get him deported."
"Better deported than dead, you know."
"That's true," said Catherine.
In the station, a girl in a pink, oversized shirt worked the joystick of a video game. A map of the country displayed Greyhound's routes as an arterial system of blue lines. Beside the map was a lost-children poster; beneath it, at the corner of the counter, sat a box of baggage tags and a stack of Gospel tracts. There was a ceiling fan, inert and dusty, a soft-drink machine, and three telephone booths, two with the phones ripped out. A hand-scrawled sign was taped to the bathroom door, NO BEER: THIS IS NOT A TAV ERN, and at the fountain counter—Cecils Cafe—the stools were bolted to the floor. From behind the ticket and baggage desk, feeble radio strains could be heard, a melody Ben faintly recognized, a homely ballad, a love-gone-wrong song, a country lament from the fifties.
Angel collapsed on a wooden bench, coughing incessantly. His brother put a hand around his shoulders and spoke softly in his ear.
Ben called the emergency operator. He said he was a doctor traveling on the Greyhound, had come across a young man seriously ill, and was now in the bus station at First and Chelan. In his opinion as a thoracic surgeon, the situation was an emergency, the young man in question had coughed up blood and needed immediate assistance. The operator dispatched an ambulance and kept Ben standing by on the line to answer plodding questions: Bens name, the sick persons name, Bens address, more about the sick persons symptoms, more about Bens credentials as a doctor, more about the Quincy bus ride. In three minutes, an ambulance pulled in, lurching to a halt in the loading bay. "They're here," said Ben, and hung up.
Everyone in the station gave their attention to the ambulance, a spectacle to break up the boredom. Ben raised a hand at the emergency technicians as they came through the door with their medical bags. "Over here," he called. "Right here."
They were stalwart-looking, both of them, in blue uniforms and polished shoes. Their name tags read COLEMAN and ODLE. Coleman stood as tall as Ben, at least six-foot-four. Odle was short, with tight curls at his brow and thick, veiny forearms. Ben pointed to Angel and said he suspected tuberculosis. The boy had expelled a bloody bolus and needed a workup immediately, and good hospital care. Coleman, listening, set his medical bag down. "What happened to your eye?" he asked.
"Car accident," Ben said.
"Looks like you should have had it stitched," said Coleman. "Its going to leave a scar."
"The boy," said Ben. "Come on now."
The apple pickers whispered among themselves, their bags against their legs. Catherine squatted on the floor with them, as if she were a picker herself. "No se preocupe," she said. "No es la policía. Les prometo."
Angel's brother replied, at length, eyeing the EMTs.
"They don't have money for a hospital," said Catherine, coming across the room. "He says he won't let Angel go. He's Angel's brother, he can't let him go. He feels responsible for him."
"Tell him they don't have to pay," said Ben. "Tell them it'll all be taken care of. It won't cost them a dime."
"But they do have to pay," said Coleman. "We'd better be clear about it."
"No, they don't," Ben said. "There's federal assistance for this. But anyway, that's irrelevant. The important point is to get him treatment." He put a hand on Catherine's arm. "Just tell them they don't have to pay anything, that's all they need to know."
Coleman shook his head emphatically. "There's no federal assistance for wetbacks," he said. "I've been through this before."
"Now wait," Odle countered. "That isn't really right, is it? The hospital can apply for welfare assistance with the Emergency Medical Office."
"Not for these guys," Coleman said. "These guys are wet, it's obvious. They don't have permission to be in the country. Like I said, I've been through this."
"They still get assistance," said Odle.
"All right, forget it," Coleman said, snatching up his medical bag. "Fine with me. Let's go."
The technicians slipped on filter masks and pulled on rubber gloves. Odle eased Angel down against the bench, put a thermometer in his mouth, and took a blood-pressure reading and a pulse while Coleman wheeled in a chrome gurney. The passengers in the station watched in silence. "The bus for Seattle waits for no man," the driver announced from the doorway. "Let's wish this fellow the best of luck and hit the westbound highway."
East of the Mountains Page 22