Big Green Country

by Frances Rivetti

  Hell no, I’d said. I’ll go.

  My family, they’re the brave ones. I mean, would you have the guts to cross a border with your kids for a better life the same way they did? Would you hold on tight to their little hands, all the while afraid of ‘em being ripped apart from you, forced as they are being today into some unknown child custody facility, those hideous camps in empty Walmart buildings in some unknown hellhole of America? I was just a small child at the time, yet I remember our crossing as if it was yesterday. Who could forget such a thing? We all know by now that horrible stuff happens all the time to families like mine, those who are so desperate for a chance to live a good life they’ll go so far as to sign up for some shit-show smuggling operation through the rugged border terrain.

  We were the lucky ones. I’ve had plenty of time this past winter to think about the sacrifices my parents made for me to be here. All I’ve dreamed of these past months is walking back into our tiny apartment or waiting at the gates of the elementary school for my brothers and sisters to get out of class and gather them into my arms, spill my warm tears of regret into their soft hair. I would have given anything to turn back the clock and go back to working those goddamn early mornings with my mom. If my foolish actions bring an end to all their hopes and dreams I will never forgive myself. That’s why I have to fight it out. Be smart.

  Those first, happy-go-lucky summer months after graduation, they were the last of our childhood, Mia and me. Before the shameful, screwed-up introduction to adulthood we’d naively gone looking for. There is no going back. I’m sorry to say it all happened for real and it went from being a stupid idea to truth when I grabbed my backpack from under the bed in the dead of night.

  “Pack your cut-offs and a bikini top.” Mia had been clear in her instructions. “We won’t be needing a whole bunch of clothes where we’re going.”

  I’d never owned a bikini. Not in my house, no way, no how. My dad, he’d have been madder than hell at me showing myself off in a skimpy two-piece like the one Mia bought on sale from Target. She gave me an old one she’d worn in the summer of junior high, poking fun in that it was: “Small enough for your little boobies.”

  Mia’s a whole lot bigger than me in that department, she’s taller and sturdier in general, which proved a good thing in a way given what she in particular has been put through. To think how she’d claimed her stack would prove our security in getting us hired. How we’d laughed, so fucking clueless, I tell you. I, for one, had planned on keeping my chest semi-covered, at least until I met up with Miguel.

  “There’s extra pay for trimming topless,” Mia had only half joked. “Don’t worry, J, we’ll keep ‘em undercover,” she promised.

  Mia packed a few pieces of basic makeup in the front zipper pocket of her backpack. I did the same, even though our drugstore mascara and lipstick stash was not on her official list. We planned on looking good for the hiring. “In case there are busloads of bitches jostling for the best pay and conditions. Scissor drifters,” she’d heard. “Trim bitches” — paid by the pound of pot, trimming up to sixteen hours a day.

  We’d stolen off while it was still dark, two hours before my folks woke up. I’m sorry to say there was barely a thought between us for the chaos we were about to cause. We managed to hitch a ride up the coast to Jenner at daybreak with few questions asked by two chicks not much older than us who were driving to work at one of the lonely old inns on the side of the ocean.

  I was stoked at the thought of making big money for the first time in my life. And there was the extra bonus of having Miguel to myself with no parents and no curfew to keep us apart. We’d done the deed already, Miguel and me, two times, me lying on his jacket in the dunes on the beach and him fumbling about in the dark.

  One of the girls who’d given us that first ride reckoned the quickest way up north to the big weed farms was to get off the coastal road and cut across to the main highway. We’d walked a fair ways beside the Russian River before scoring a second ride to Santa Rosa. It was an old couple that picked us up in their beat-up station wagon that was so full of junk we barely fit. We took in the early fall scenery as we wove through redwood groves and alongside fields of grapevines, heavy with low-hanging fruit.

  We soon changed our minds on hitchhiking all the way up to Humboldt, foolishly blowing most of our cash on a forty dollar apiece Greyhound ride all the way to the small town of Garberville, which, we discovered that evening, straddles the south fork of the Eel River.

  I’ve never in my life seen a place as strange as this. Guys, girls, most of them a few years older than us, were hanging out in big, rowdy groups, some of them stringing up a mess of jewelry for sale along the main street, others juggling or playing guitars as they sat around in circles of dusty backpacks with scary-looking dogs. The stink of weed was everywhere.

  “This is what they call a one-horse town,” Mia said. Population just shy of around a thousand according to the first city limit sign we saw, though that number looked to have swollen by who knows how many with so many hopeful trimmers in town.

  We’d landed in a crazy cowboy movie gone wrong. I’d best describe it as a mix of a western set meets hobo-punk/zombie apocalypse.

  The crowd made a racket, a competing mix of live and recorded beats loud enough to wake the dead. How many ukuleles and banjos and covers of Somewhere Over The Rainbow can you fit into one city block?

  Mia and me, we stuck out like two sore thumbs, though neither of us said so, but I knew she was thinking the same thing as me by the little she was saying and the look on her face.

  The music and sounds of all these mismatched free spirits and stoners carried on the wind that rushed through the mass of redwood trees. It’s easy to act like you’re too big for your boots ‘til you’re forced to fend for yourself. For the first time since we’d made our plan, the hair rose on my forearms. I felt small and vulnerable.

  “Who the heck’s gonna hire all these wild looking dudes? What if Miguel never shows?” I started to panic. I couldn’t figure how in hell we’d ever manage to get ourselves noticed in such a mob scene. I suggested we head into the restroom in one of the coffee shops on the main street to make ourselves up, maybe if we were more appealing looking, older, we’d have a better chance of fitting in.

  “No backpacks,” barked a ropy-looking woman with a bony face and a long, thin, ponytail that hung, limply, like a rat’s tail from under her purple faded baseball cap. The coffee shop was half empty and despite the late hour and its sketch proprietor, an aroma of powdered donuts and fresh coffee was hard to resist. We were hungry and tired and left with little choice but to make an about turn and walk back outside into the mob. We didn’t have a chance to pee, let alone fill our faces before applying the battle paint.

  Handmade signs filled the bustling street scene. A crowd of loudmouths jostled for position on the sidewalk in front, spilling us into the street. Mia announced if Miguel was a no-show the next day, we’d have to work on finding ourselves an attention-seeking gimmick to set us apart.

  “I’m not sure about this anymore, Mia,” I admitted, tears welling. “Let’s just forget it happened, head back on board the next bus south.”

  She looked at me like I was a dumb-ass: “Do you have a stash tucked away somewhere, babe, ‘cuz I sure don’t?”

  We’d splashed the last of our cash on sandwiches for the bus and a couple of cheapo sleeping bags in the hardware store when we’d arrived. All we had was a few dollars left between us. We’d been foolish to think it would all be so easy and now we were stuck. I missed the little ones, already, their small hands reaching out for me to comfort them at bedtime, pleading with me to tell them one more story.

  “Buck up, Jaz. If Miguel is a no-show, there’s always the bikini top move,” Mia said, eyeing me for my reaction.

  It didn’t sit right with me, chicks of all shapes and sizes, their suntanned bodies barely covered, bouncing around in the street in broad daylight for anyone to see. I felt sick. As muc
h as it was making me uncomfortable, Mia didn’t appear to be as bothered as me.

  “Chill out,” she urged. “And don’t you dare cry.” She could see I was getting myself into more of a state by the advancing hour. “We’ll stick to the mom and pop farms, it’s fine, J, I promise, don’t get cold feet.”

  She made me pledge, palm to palm that we’d stick together, whatever. She said I’d be sick of the sight of her by the time we were done making the big bucks.

  At dusk we scoped out a spot down by the river, setting ourselves up with a makeshift camp on the rocky shore. All I could think of was home and my cozy bed where, if I’d had any sense, I should have been cuddled up with the little ones.

  Giant redwoods lined the distant horizon. I felt even smaller than I had earlier and lost and far from home.

  After dark, the bugs had bit at us so bad we covered our heads with our towels. People were partying while a few around us looked at least to be attempting to sleep.

  “We’d best be on a farm and undercover by this time tomorrow,” I told Mia, “or I’m outta here, even if I have to walk back home.”

  I thought about the clerk in the hardware store and how he’d asked us if we wanted to buy a raffle ticket for a rifle draw. He must have been my grandfather’s age. And he had to know what we were doing here. We’d wandered wide-eyed through aisles stacked with two-way radio sets, propane stoves, canteens, knives, guns, camouflage, all sorts of shit, every type of military gear imaginable.

  “You never mentioned us being headed for the jungle,” I whispered to Mia in the store. It had never occurred to me to pack a weapon of some sort and anyway where would I have got ahold of one? After dark, I’d found myself wishing I’d slipped a pocketknife into my backpack for self-defense without the store clerk catching me pilfering the stock.

  Some time during the night I woke to the sound of footsteps crunching on the rocks at the foot of my sleeping bag. There was just enough moonlight for me to make out the silhouette of a dude with long, matted hair as he set his blanket and a ratty old sleeping bag way too close to mine. Seeing as we were not alone on the riverbank, I hoped to God there was safety in numbers.

  Still, I wasn’t sure what to do, make a fuss and piss him off by asking him to move over or simply try to fake sleep? I decided if he dared come even a step closer I would bash him in the head with the nearest rock. I slid myself down deeper into my sleeping bag and turned slowly, uncomfortably onto my side, placing my back to him so that he could not see my face. The slow murmur of the running river and the wind in the trees failed to drown out the noise of partiers downstream. I barely slept a wink.

  People were in the river in their underwear soon after daylight, a few of them naked, others semi-clothed. I’d never seen anything like it, guys and girls dipping their dreads in the cool, murky, river water, washing the dust away from another night on the rocky riverbank.

  Mia said we’d best take a dip ourselves as soon as the morning fog rolled off. “Wait until it warms up a bit,” she said. “And don’t worry, we’ll keep our clothes on.”

  I watched a heavyset woman wearing nothing but an oversized white Grateful Dead shirt and dingy white panties wash her face at the river’s edge. Here was another crucial thing I hadn’t thought about. I can barely swim. I’d been in the Russian River only once or twice in the summer months, just often enough to learn basic dog paddle and that was it.

  My mom, she stayed home on all those Labor Day holidays when my dad would take us kids to the river. I remembered with a pang how she welcomed us back at sundown with Champurrado — a warm, thick and delicious drink she made with corn masa, milk and hot chocolate. How tired and sun-kissed and happy we’d been from our splashing about in the water. It made my heart ache to think of it, that morning. What I wouldn’t have given for a warm shower and a mug of hot chocolate.

  “Today’s the day,” Mia declared. “Miguel or no Miguel, we’re going to get ourselves hired.” She broke a granola bar she’d dug from her backpack in two halves and we scarfed our meager breakfast. “We can’t last long like this,” she said. My tummy grumbled in agreement.

  We washed beneath the green, swaying grasses of the river, in our shorts and Tshirts, underwear and all. I stayed close to the edge so as not to slip into the stronger current of the deeper water. The river was cool and refreshing under the warm sun.

  “Let’s look for a bush to change into our bikini tops and shorts,” Mia instructed, as we balanced barefoot on the slippery rocks of the riverbank. We watched out for each other’s privacy as we put on dry clothes in turn.

  After we’d freshened up and dressed, or half-dressed, more like, we readied for another attempt in tackling this strange and mysterious place, not the Northern California either of us were familiar with. We walked into town and searched out a shaded spot in the company of a couple dozen or more hopeful kids closer to our age.

  Hours passed. It was a hot and airless day. No sign of Miguel.

  A girl in a sundress with a shaved head and a full sleeve tattoo of multicolored butterflies announced she was headed to a soup kitchen a couple blocks away. “First timers?” she asked. I nodded, nervously, expecting her to laugh, but she only smiled.

  “If you’re hungry, you’d best make it zippy,” she said. “Food runs out fast.” We tagged along with her and a couple of Canadian chicks, blonde and athletic looking in comparison to the butterflied skinhead who was busy inviting us to meditate and do yoga on the riverbank later. Mia looked up at me and rolled her eyes. I barely stifled my giggles.

  One of the Canadian girls directed her attention at Mia and me. “Free food is free food, honey,” she said. “A rare gift in the U.S. being given something for nothing.” Mia and me wolfed down the chicken salad sandwiches we gladly accepted from the outstretched hand of a kindly old guy serving from the shadowy inside of the soup kitchen window. We stuffed our faces in minutes, half way down the block.

  Shortly after noon as we anxiously awaited Miguel’s showing up, we practically willed it so. We had arranged to meet outside of the hardware store the previous afternoon and he’d said if there was a problem with his schedule, we were to wait there again the following day. I hoped to God he wouldn’t let us down that second afternoon, me, especially.

  I can’t tell you how relieved I was when I spotted him springing out of a truck parked a little ways down the block. He stood there in the shade of a tree on the sidewalk, stick thin in his big old cowboy hat and boots, scoping out the scene like he owned the place.

  “Jesus, are you kidding? This place, Miguel, oh my God, it’s so freaky,” I said, throwing my arms around him. Hot tears welled in my eyes. I linked my arm through his. I could’ve jumped for joy I was so happy. Miguel’s lean, tan face broke into a broad smile. “Let’s go, Bonita,” he said, grabbing my backpack.

  There was no dust on us, Mia and me, as we hopped up into the back of the truck that was being driven by and belonging to a chick named Ruby, a coworker of Miguel’s who he introduced to us as having been at the farm with him the previous year.

  “Bruce and Bonnie and their daughter, Fern, the folk who own the farm, you’ll see, they’re real good people,” Miguel said. “They’ve been growing the good stuff, plenty of it, mostly indoors in greenhouses, for years. There’s nothing to worry about. It’s real safe.”

  She was totally rad looking, Ruby — real small, with spiky, violet hair shaved off at the sides. From my seat in the back, I was able to checkout the gages in her ears, her lip and nose piercings visible from the rearview mirror and the tattoos that were etched on the backs of her hands as she turned the wheel. A small half moon and star was inked on the back of her neck. This short boss chick in her big ol’ truck was something else and for the first time since we’d made it to Garberville, I was excited to be invited to be a part of their scene.

  Ruby was raised on the East Coast, Boston area, she said. She was real open with us, though we’d never even asked as much as she hauled ass around th
e corner onto the main street and out through town, rattling on, all cheerful, telling us how it was she’d made her way out West to study art in Santa Cruz two years prior. It was there that she’d discovered the weed-trimming gig soon after she arrived.

  “First year I trimmed in the Santa Cruz Mountains,” she said. “Last year, I met Fern through mutual friends and me and a bunch of girlfriends came up to trim at her folk’s place for a working vacation. As soon as school is set to start at the end of September we take off back to Santa Cruz.”

  Mia said, smiling like she got it: “We’re planning on heading back to school ourselves.”

  “Gro-hoes is the game in the meantime,” Ruby said. “Beats stripping in order to pay for school.”

  It was Ruby who outlined the lay of the land as she drove a good half hour on a super intense series of twisty turns through heavy forestland. “Bruce and Bonnie hire the guys to harvest and haul. It’s us girls who trim,” she said. “A sexist industry and culture some might say, for sure. But I prefer to think of it as making serious inroads as women getting into the business, building our nest eggs, biding our time.”

  Miguel turned his fine head and grinned at me, the sunkissed skin around his eyes crinkling at the corners. It was a massive relief to be with him at last. And he seemed just as pleased to have made it happen, more or less as planned. “Bonnie and Bruce have been at it so long they grow their crop in record time,” he said. “It’s a lot of work.”

  “Growing indoors speeds up the process,” Ruby explained. “Right now, as we speak, the guys are harvesting the early crop, hanging the branches up to dry. We’ll be trimming shortly,” she said. “Good timing, girls, we’ll be needing your help.”

  We listened, though we knew so little of it, as Ruby and Miguel discussed the value of being ahead of the market when it came to moving product south.