“It’s critical to beat the rush,” Ruby turned to explain. “Otherwise, the bosses will go out of business. It’s a big worry for these mom and pop grows,” she said. “So much competition and if we’re late, then, basically, we all get paid a whole lot less per pound.”
It was hot and humid. Ruby rolled down all four of the truck’s windows in an attempt to keep us all as well as the supplies she’d picked up in town, as cool as possible. “Forget about air conditioning,” she said. My skin was sticky, the truck cabin as muggy as the inside of an oven. The still air from outside barely cut through a potent aroma of body odor, liquor, sunscreen and whatever assortment of perishable foods Ruby and Miguel had stashed in the back.
Ruby pulled up in front of a high fence with a heavy set of double gates positioned a long ways up a steep green, rocky mountain-logging road several miles off the paved road. Miguel jumped out to unlock the gates by tapping a code into a black metal box. I felt a mixture of something like fear and relief run through my veins.
Bruce and Bonnie’s place appeared pretty basic at first sight, a small ranch house with a bunch of sturdy looking cherry trees set around, the type that would burst into fluffy pink blossoms come April or May.
A group of tarp-covered camper vans, six or seven tents, four-wheelers and water tanks were scattered around the far side of the house, backing onto a barnlike structure. A young, dark-skinned guy was hanging laundry on a line tied between two trees.
“This is home sweet home for the next couple of months, ladies,” Ruby announced. “We have a whole bunch of tents and air mattresses, not all of them occupied, take your pick, you’ll find it comfortable enough. Mia watched the laundry guy at work. “Look at that, Jazmin,” she remarked: “the men do their own laundry here.” She laughed. Ruby turned: “Something you’ll learn here pretty quick,” she said. “If you don’t pitch in, you’re out.”
They took off out of the truck ahead, leaving me with Miguel.
Barking dogs and a flock of chickens roamed free. “Where do we wash?” I asked, thinking back to the cool brown waters of the river earlier that morning.
“There’s a single shower stall and toilet off the drying barn,” Miguel answered. “We take it in turns, it works out.”
I overheard Ruby talking to Mia up ahead.
“Real nice bunch of guys, Miguel and his buddies,” Ruby said. “Otherwise, let me tell you, sweetie, if they were dicks, they’d have been outta here by now.”
We met Bruce and Bonnie that afternoon. First thing they asked us was if we were eighteen.
“We want you to feel welcome,” Bonnie said. “Our place is as good as it gets.” Bruce told us that we would be working long, hard hours but we would be treated fairly, fed well and made to feel comfortable, safe. I noticed that Bruce took no pains to disguise the pistol he carried in his belt.
“They are doing as best they can,” Ruby explained. “They’re cool and they give us trimmers a fair deal.” We learned that Fern, their daughter, was running the family’s sideline business, a hemp boutique in a neighboring town. “There’s little point in the family obtaining any medical grow permits,” Ruby explained. “If shit goes down with the Feds, it’ll make no difference if they’re legalized or not.”
Miguel had sectioned off a pullout bed big enough for Mia and me by hanging up a sheet in the same rusting RV he slept in. He had staked out his own tiny bedroom with sheets on the windows. Two more guys shared a small bedroom in the front.
I spent most nights in Miguel’s bed soon after we’d settled in, the sound of others snoring a steady reminder to keep our make-outs on the down low. Though it was the first time I had spent the whole night long with a boy, to be real, Miguel was not the first guy I’d slept with in that sense. There’d been some minor action in high school. I’d kept it fully undercover from my folks. My dad would have blown a fucking fuse. This was different. I’d run away from home in part for this. And boy, at least he was worth it — while it lasted.
Part of me couldn’t believe he’d waited for me. Miguel is as good to look at on the outside as he is every bit as kind and gentle on the inside. I was shocked some other chick hadn’t cornered him by the time I dragged my ass up there.
It was more like we were away at camp. We were housed and fed, mostly the simple, tasty Mexican food I’m used to, tortillas, a whole load of rice and beans with fresh salads, fruit and eggs from the farm. Yes, the days were long and the work monotonous, fifteen to sixteen hours once we started trimming, but the company and the music kept us going and we were happy.
We laughed and talked and drank beer by the campfire ‘til the early morning hours. I kid you not, though I do not partake, the joints they passed around were the size of beer bottles. For once in my life I felt myself growing more confident, freer by the day.
“We don’t allow any funny business with our girls,” Bonnie had told us, after we’d arrived. “We never hire trimmers from the street and no outside boyfriends. Anyone bothers you, uninvited, you come straight to Bruce or me.”
A lot of us were hooking up. Hey, what else was there to do up there but have some fun when the long day’s work was done?
Mia held off on a couple of contenders of both sexes. “Not my type,” was all she’d say.
She was a little pissed at me for making it more of a thing with Miguel than she’d bargained for.
At first, I was intimidated by the speed in which the others were trimming weed into neat little nuggets. The days were hot and it stunk to high heaven of pungent skunk in the trimming shed. The only sound above the chatter of the trimmers was the whir of large ventilation fans.
A thousand pounds or more of weed was strung up inside the shed, waiting to be trimmed. We never took a single break during trimming sessions except for if we needed to pee. It was Ruby who gave Mia and me our first lesson. She handed us our own tubs and sewing scissors, aprons and a pile of plastic gloves.
“Clean off the scissors after you trim each and every bud so as not to transfer any insects or mold,” she instructed. “Look out for bugs — spiders, caterpillars, they’ll eat through after if you don’t spot them.”
It was a seriously sticky business. The first day it was all in my hair, green flakes of itchy, dry weed down my bikini top, messy goop on my shorts. The smell intensified during the trimming process once we broke open the more pungent buds.
The best way to describe being in the barn was like being on another planet, someplace where time stood still and we were the only ones. We sat in a circle as we removed the protruding leaves, carefully and slowly trimming around one dried flower bud after another.
“Make it look like a tidy, little hedge,” Ruby further instructed as she kept a close eye on our early efforts. “No leaving stems too long. It’s very important that each one looks the same.” We watched intently as she rotated a raw bud slowly between her fingers, demonstrating the perfect shear.
Gloves kept the brown, sticky resin off our hands and we soon got the hang of dropping each trimmed bud into a big plastic container before we started in on the next one.
It was muscle aching work as far as sitting down so long. My legs ached when I stood up. I coped better with the boredom of repetition than Mia did. She never had the training I’d had in getting my head around the business of all that routine mopping and scrubbing. That girl was ill-prepared for manual labor, doing the same thing over and over, hour after hour.
Miguel was my incentive at the end of those long first days. “Hang in there, Jaz,” he’d encouraged, as we lay together looking up at the moon in the early hours. Miguel told us it was almost time to start shipping it out in order to get ahead of the game. There would be bonuses involved if we trimmers worked hard to beat the rush.
Mia and I had settled into the general routine with the goal of making even more money than we’d dared hope for.
Less than two weeks into our trimming initiation, though it felt like months, we awoke in the middle of the night to
the sudden sound of whirling helicopters swooping overhead. An intense search beam probed the barnyard, at once flooding the RV with a white, blinding light.
“Shit! Fuck! Wake up, everyone up,” Miguel yelled, shooting out of bed, spilling a half empty box of condom packets across the floor. He grabbed his jeans and boots in an instant. “Throw some clothes on.” His face was lit up by the search beam that moved on, leaving me to fall over myself as I hurriedly readied as best as I could in the dark.
“Mia”, I yelled — that girl could sleep through an earthquake. She murmured in her sleep as I rushed towards her, Miguel screaming in the background ordering the others to run and leave it all behind. I shook her awake and she sprung up, slipping her feet into her dirty old tennis shoes in her half-awake confusion. We stumbled out of the RV, holding hands. It was pitch-black outside. The others were tumbling out of vehicles and tents, rubbing their eyes and looking up into the night sky. Thumping blades chopped through the star-studded darkness.
“It’s a fucking bust,” one the guys yelled. “Run.”
I lost sight of Miguel. Mia pulled me back in through the door of the RV. “Grab your stuff,” she said. “Quick.”
Picture a stampede of wildebeest in one of those Netflix documentaries with the old British guy doing the voiceover. It was like we were racing through the plains of Kenya, not Northern California, running together in a group formation in our panic as we left. We ran with some of the farmhands and Ruby to start off with, Ruby, Mia and me splintering away into the trees as soon as we were out of the gate.
One of the farmhands tripped on an exposed root, howling. Ruby slowed. “Shit, we might as well face it,” she said. “We always knew this could happen.” Mia shook her head no and motioned at me. “She doesn’t have papers,” she cried. I didn’t realize ‘til then how much I was shaking. I had broken out in a cold sweat. Ruby stood as tall as she was able, seeming at once fully in control of her surroundings even now. “You two run, we’ll distract them,” she said before turning to face the law.
A bunch of U.S. Marshalls were waiting at the entrance to the property in a handful of trucks and a U-Haul van.
We watched, wordlessly, from our hiding spot as officers searched the buildings. Others set up floodlights. An officer walked in our direction and we froze. We looked back over our shoulders one last time, taking off as fast as we could run. Two officers took down Ruby and several of the guys and were handcuffing them on the ground. I looked over at the house. Bruce and Bonnie stood, watching, helplessly from the kitchen window. I guessed there was no point in running when it was your place that was under attack.
The low hovering helicopter swung its search beam through the area, casting menacing shadows amongst the trees.
I spotted a narrow clearing in the brush by the outside of the gate, and, yanking Mia by the arm, we turned back on ourselves, squeezing into the shadows of the brushy hillside as we slipped down a densely wooded dip.
Mia scraped up her knee and she whimpered slightly. The bloody rash glistened in the glow of the search beams that continued passing over us.
“Shush,” I whispered. “We’ll wait it out here ‘til the last of them have gone in,” I said. “Once they’re all on the property, we’ll make another run for it.”
We huddled together hardly daring to breathe for fear our hiding place would be discovered. It was chilly. Mia was shivering. Rummaging around in our backpacks we pulled on our hastily gathered sweatshirts, covering our heads with our hoods.
We crawled through the forest for as long as we could stand the rocks and scratches from tree branches, resting at daybreak, when we were sure we’d escaped capture.
There was no sight of any of the others. I was worried for Miguel but my feelings for him didn’t stop Mia and me from acting on survival impulse and getting the hell outta there.
~ We made it back down to some sign of civilization in the form of a nameless, one block scrappy little town, later the following afternoon. We must have looked a mess, our hair all crazy and full of leaves and other random bits of tree bark and sticks. If Mia had not managed to grab our metal water canisters from the RV the night before, we’d have been in a lot worse shape. We’d filled them before going to bed, as was our routine, ready for a day of trimming come morning. Neither of us had a dime to our name. We had needed nothing at the farm while we’d awaited the payday that now would never come.
We’d worked our butts off for two weeks and we weren’t about to head home emptyhanded. “Shit. How much do you think we would have made if the Feds hadn’t bust in?” Mia asked. “There’s no use in even guessing,” I said. “That money is gone.”
“What an adventure, you have to admit,” Mia grinned, brushing leaves from my hair. “Are you fucking kidding? You nearly got my ass killed, or deported,” I snapped. We watched as the cars and trucks on the highway sped past, each of them with their
separate lives, homes to go to, families waiting, sacks of food for their refrigerators. “Still,” Mia said. “We have time to get on another grow-op, like, immediately.” It
was her idea to hang out at the gas station on the edge of the town we’d stumbled into. I was feeling increasingly anxious by then, famished, my hollow stomach rumbled
and my hands shook. I scratched at my head and feared for Miguel. What would happen
to him if he’d been arrested, along with Ruby and the others?
“We’re headed for another night outdoors,” I said, resigned to it. Now I wished we’d
stuck with Miguel, whatever the consequences.
Mia hushed me. She held me by my hands as she looked me in the eyes. “Come on,
J,” she said. “You’re tougher than this.” Besides, she added, “Miguel will catch up with
us eventually.”
I readied for tears as a shiny, newer-looking, big-ass truck pulled up at one of the
tanks. The truck’s hood blazed blue red in the castoff light of the setting sun. A Latino
dude my dad’s age hopped out from the driver’s seat.
He tipped his hat that was half the size of him in our direction. Dude looked like he
was making the big bucks from the size of his vehicle.
We watched him pump gas and fill a second 50-gallon portable tank. It was starting to get dark. The florescent lights above the pumps flickered on at
once. All the while we kept our eyes on his every move.
Mia pushed me forward. “Speak to him in Spanish,” she said. “Tell him we’re fast
trimmers and we’re neat.”
I asked him the time. “Señor, me podría dar su hora?” He looked me up and down,
slowly enough to creep me out. I noticed that the buckle on his belt was a painted metal
with thorny roses engulfed in flames.
Please, Jesus, no, I said to myself. If this guy turns out to be a creep we’re in serious
trouble. Mia continued on with her nudging. His eyes were tired and his deadpan face
gave nothing away. Just like my uncle on poker night.
“We’re looking for trimming work,” I announced, in Spanish. “We’re ready to start
today — um, now, I guess.”
It was almost dark out, except for a few pockets of yellow light quickly fading
behind the redwoods on either side of the gas station.
He was a man of little words. Nodding and without so much as breaking a smile, he
opened the passenger door by the driver’s side and motioned for us to get in. Without a word ourselves, we climbed up and into the truck, hauling in our
backpacks and our rolled up sleeping bags.
A little ways out of town, Jefe Hombre, the boss man, as we would call him, pulled
over into a dirt turnout at the side of the road. He kept his eyes on us in the rearview
mirror breaking his silence by announcing there was no need for concern. Still,
something in his voice made me uncomfortable, des
pite his urging us not to be afraid. He
informed us all matter-of-fact that he was about to cover our eyes for the remains of the
route. It was for our own safety, he said.
“It’s OK,” he repeated. “No hay de qué preocuparse,” — there’s nothing to worry
about. And we sat there, a pair of dumb ass idiots, despite the distinct warning in the form
of a sharp prickle in the hair on the back of my neck as he reached over and promptly
blindfolded us with a pair of weed scented bandanas.
I’d heard the trimmers talk of it being a common thing for workers not to know
where they are.
I figured we were headed along a vague northwesterly route away from town. I’m
weird that way. My sense of direction is one of my few natural gifts, for all the good it’s
done me.
We kept quiet, Mia and me. The whole time we were in the truck the fucker never
said another word. An hour passed, maybe more. Belted, blindfolded and bumping
around in the back, I searched for Mia’s hand, digging my nails into the skin on her palm
as I held on tight.
He swapped through several Spanish music CDs as he drove. One was a ranchero
CD my dad used to play when he picked me up from school. I missed him. He was a half
forgotten memory already.
It was late when we reached what I figured was a winding dirt road. Night owls
hooted and big birds screeched. My ears popped, an indication of a high climb, altitudewise. I’ve been to Lake Tahoe with my family, once, it was the only other time I’ve felt
my ears pop like this. I kept them peeled, though I never heard a single truck pass us in
the time it took to get where we were going.
Another 15 minutes went by after we’d turned onto the bumpy road. The chills were
creeping up on me; man it was cold. I could feel the goose bumps on the back of Mia’s
hand. The temperature had dropped big time since sundown.
It was what we’d planned on, I kept on reminding myself, so as not to frickin’
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