All You Get Is Me

by Yvonne Prinz

  Chapter 10

  The morning sun in my eyes wakes me. I forgot to close my curtains last night. I lie there listening to familiar voices floating in through my open window. The clock on my bedside table says seven fifteen. My bedroom already feels warm. We’re in for a hot day. Rufus has vacated the rug next to my bed, where he was passed out the last time I saw him. I kick off the covers and make my way to the window, yawning and scratching. The first thing that strikes me as bizarre is Forest’s car. It’s parked on the driveway in virtually the same place that it was parked yesterday. I did say good-bye last night and he did leave, didn’t he? The voices I heard belong to Forest and Steve and Tomás. They appear to be loading the pickup for the local market today. Forest is carrying a box of beets over to the truck, his pale, lean arms straining. He and Tomás are laughing about something, which is also strange since they don’t even speak the same language. I watch Forest hand the box off to Tomás. I am absolutely lovesick for this boy. As I watch him, I relive the kissing, the real kissing we did late last night when I walked him to his car. When he finally left I was dizzy for him.

  And then he looks up and he sees me and he smiles.

  I pull on my grass-stained jeans and a clean T-shirt and brush my teeth in four seconds. My hair is hickory smoked and tangled and my lips are pink around the edges from Forest’s kisses. I yank my hair back into a ponytail and run down the wooden steps and out the front door as though the house were on fire. The boys watch me, amused.

  “Hey, sleepyhead, nice of you to join us,” says Forest.

  “That’s pretty big talk for someone who says that he never gets up before ten.”

  “I just thought I’d come over and help out. It’s such a beautiful day.”

  I look from Forest to Steve, who shrugs. He looks a little bleary-eyed, possibly from polishing off half a case of wine between the four of them last night.

  “Whaddya mean ‘help out’? You came here voluntarily?”

  “Well, yes, but a coffee would be nice.”

  “Okay.” I’m mystified. Why would Forest just show up here, wanting to work? Does he need something to do or is this some sort of male bonding thing that girls aren’t supposed to understand? It also occurs to me that this could be some form of penance he’s serving on behalf of his mother. To sweat alongside Tomás might somehow make him feel better about everything.

  “Where’s Jane?” I ask Steve.

  He heaves a box of Early Girl tomatoes into the back of the truck. “She went back to bed when Farmer Forest here showed up. She’s a little under the weather.” He mimes drinking wine.

  “I’ll bet.”

  “She’ll be up shortly. That tent turns into a solar oven as soon as the sun hits it. You could roast a chicken in there.”

  I automatically glance over at the chickens. As a rule I don’t like them to hear stuff like that. They’re busy mumbling and pecking, oblivious.

  “Okay, well, I’ll go make that coffee.” I glance at Forest again, confused.

  I pull open the screen door and go back into the house and fire up the espresso machine. The machine was already used this morning and the remains of breakfast sit next to the sink. How did I sleep through people eating breakfast in my kitchen? I grind the espresso beans and fill the little cup with fragrant grounds, click it into place on the machine, and yank the heavy handle all the way to the right. Thirty seconds later, thick, foamy coffee sputters into the mug below the spout. I fill a metal pitcher with cold milk from the fridge and open up the steamer knob, frothing the milk to three times its original volume. As I’m doing this, I watch out the kitchen window. Forest is following behind Tomás, pushing a wheelbarrow toward the zucchini and eggplant patch. Tomás seems rather amused by all this.

  As I’m spooning the hot, foamy milk onto the coffee, I notice Forest’s book bag slumped on a chair. I glance out the window. Forest is busy in the patch. My curiosity gets the better of me. I walk over to the book bag and flip it open, peering inside without touching anything. There are five notebooks, identical to the one I saw him writing in that day at the tar pits. I carefully slide one out. It’s thick with writing. I slide it back into place, too overcome with guilt to open it. I also think for just a second about that scene in The Shining where Jack Nicholson has spent every day typing his “novel” and every line on every page of a huge stack of paper reads: “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” I look behind me. No crazy person with an ax.

  Next to the notebook there’s a paperback: Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski, Forest’s email address, I get it now. I open it to the first page and read the opening sentence: The first thing I remember is being under something. I close the book and put it back in its spot. There’s also a thin, white, official-looking book in there. I slide it out and look at the cover. It’s a class schedule for NYU, New York University. Clear across the country, a million miles away. You don’t carry class schedules around with you for nothing. He must be thinking about applying there. He hasn’t said anything to me about it, but then why should he? Maybe this thing we have is just a summer fling to him; maybe if it weren’t me it would be some other girl. After all, he’s only here for the summer and then he’s back in L.A. so it’s not like a big commitment or anything. But then why would he be in my garden picking zucchini right now?

  I dump a couple of spoons of brown sugar into the coffee and stride outside with it. On the way over to Forest, Steve tells me that he and Jane are going to do the market today so I’m off the hook. It’s been ages since I’ve had a Saturday off. I wonder if Forest wants to do something with me or if he’s planning hard labor for the rest of the day, or the rest of his life.

  I catch up with Forest and hand him the mug.

  “Caffeine at last.” He takes the mug and sips it eagerly. A foamed milk mustache appears on his upper lip. He licks it off but doesn’t quite get it.

  Tomás tips his hat a bit and wishes me a good morning. “Buenos días, Aurora.”

  “Buenos días, Tomás. How are you?”

  “Muy bien, very good.” He says the English words quietly just as I do with my Spanish words.

  I turn my attention back to Forest. “So, I have the day off. Jane’s taking my market shift. How long till farm life loses its appeal for you?” I notice that his pale skin is starting to turn slightly pinkish. I poke him in the arm with my index finger. It leaves a white dot. “You’re burning, by the way.”

  “Let me just finish loading the truck and then I think I’ll have a whole new appreciation for farmwork, okay?”

  “Sure.” I walk away as Tomás has a good laugh at Forest’s expense. He doesn’t need to speak English to know what’s going on here.

  After I put Band-Aids on Forest’s blistered palms and loan him a long-sleeved T-shirt, we’re ready to go back outdoors. Jane and Steve are long gone and Miguel and Tomás are off with the tractor somewhere.

  “Where are you taking me? You know I’ve already put in a good day’s work so let’s not get carried away,” says Forest, following me.

  “It’s nine a.m., you worked for exactly two hours.”

  “Really? It’s only nine a.m.? I could use a nap.”

  I roll my eyes at him. Out behind the greenhouse, I look for a sort of trail where I’ve tamped the grass down. I finally find it and set out. Forest walks behind me. Rufus quickly loses interest. He trots back to the house to pretend he’s a guard dog.

  We walk along in silence. I don’t ask him about why he came over this morning to work. If he wants to tell me, he will; otherwise, it’s his business. I’m more concerned with prompting Forest to talk to me about NYU and his plans for the future but I’m afraid he’ll think I want more than he’s prepared to give. I’m also afraid that if I say anything, he’ll know I went through his things, which I’m feeling a little ashamed about.

  In a few minutes we arrive at the stand of trees, the impromptu forest. How could I not take Forest here? He’s named after it.

  “Wow. What
is this place?” asks Forest, his mouth agape, looking up through the trees.

  “I don’t know. I think it used to be cleared ranchland and the rancher must have kept this little place intact so that his cattle had a place to stay cool and drink water. There must be a spring or something underneath us because I found some little pools of water.”

  “It’s sort of like a natural cathedral, isn’t it?”

  I snap a photo of Forest looking up at the shards of light streaming down through the trees. It looks a bit like he’s watching an alien spacecraft come in for a landing.

  “How often do you come here?”

  “Just sometimes. When I want to be alone.”

  “Do you ever come at night?”

  “No. I bet it’s supercreepy at night.”

  “No, I bet it’s really cool at night.”

  “Maybe.”

  We hear a loud crack and follow the noise upward. It’s a hawk, taking off from the limb of a pine tree. He’s so close and well lit that you can see his giant talons lift off. Broken twigs flutter to the ground. His wingspan is enormous and he seems to fly so slowly, like a prehistoric bird in a film about dinosaurs. We can even hear the air rushing under his wings. I photograph him in full flight.

  “Okay, that was pretty surreal.”

  “It was, wasn’t it?”

  We walk to the center of what I imagine to be a circle, where the moss is bright green and soft.

  “Lay down next to me. It’s really incredible.”

  We lie down next to each other, shoulders touching, and look up at the sky.

  “You’re right,” says Forest.

  He takes my hand in his. We stay like that for a while and then he rolls over and rests his head on his elbow, watching me.

  “Roar, you’re about the most amazing girl I’ve ever met.”

  “Get outta here.” I laugh.

  “I mean it. I don’t know anyone else like you.”

  “When do you have to go back to L.A.?” I ask, completely destroying the moment, like an idiot.

  “I don’t know. I mean I do know but I don’t want to think about it.”

  “I need to know how much time we have left.”

  “Fair enough. I’m supposed to go back on August thirtieth.”

  I do the math lightning quick. “That gives us six weeks.”

  “Yeah. I guess we’d better not waste a moment.”

  He leans over and kisses my neck. I close my eyes and let the light through the trees dance on my eyelids. Six weeks doesn’t seem like nearly enough time to get to know absolutely everything about someone. Plus, August thirtieth is my birthday.

  Chapter 11

  My dad arrives home late Monday night with a case of organic maple syrup and a head full of new ideas that he’s only too happy to share with me the next morning as he savors his first good latte in days. (I think he missed that machine a lot more than he missed me.) While my dad dazzles me with his discovery of eight new varieties of heirloom potatoes, I flip through the mail and make a small stack of bills in front of him just to remind him that we’re running a farm, not a potato museum. In among seed catalogues and a Slow Food quarterly, I discover a big manila envelope addressed to my dad. The return address says Ned Levine, Attorney-at-Law. Around here we call him Uncle Ned. He’s a lawyer by day and a banjo player by night. He lives in the next county with a woman named Arden who shaves her head and keeps honeybees. Ned looks about as much like a lawyer as my dad, which is not at all.

  “Hey, Dad. What’s this?” I slide the envelope across the table.

  My dad peers at the return address. “Oh, that must be the civil suit we’re filing.”

  He says it like it’s an L.L.Bean catalogue.

  “The civil suit? You’re going ahead with that?”

  “Yes, of course. Did you think we’d just forget about it?”

  “You mean Tomás and Wanda said it was okay?”

  My dad tears the envelope open and pulls out a thick stack of papers. “Yes, they said it was okay. But the suit was filed in Tomás’s name, and Rosa’s, the baby. It’s better that way because Rosa was born here so she’s a citizen.”

  “Wait, so Tomás can file a civil suit even though he’s not American?”

  “Sure, anyone has access to our legal system. You don’t have to be a citizen.”

  “So, what happens now?” I ask. All the moisture in my mouth seems to have disappeared.

  “Well, Tomás lost his wife and the mother of his baby because Connie Gilwood was driving recklessly. They have a very good case. I’m pretty sure that the insurance company will want to settle out of court and the settlement will be enough for Tomás to go home and raise his daughter, and Wanda can quit her job at that factory farm where she’s exposed to pesticides all day.”

  “Dad, are we doing a good thing here? I mean, it’s about more than the money, right? It’s about getting rights for the farmworkers . . . isn’t it?”

  “Of course it is, Roar. The farmworkers aren’t disposable. You can’t just kill a human being and hope it all goes away just because that person isn’t in the country legally. There has to be some kind of retribution.”

  “So, those papers are the same ones that are going to Connie Gilwood?”

  “Yup, she’s probably reading them right now.” My dad tips his mug and drinks the last of his latte.

  My stomach drops. I have to talk to Forest. He’ll think I knew all about this and I have no idea why I didn’t. It all happened right underneath my nose but maybe I was too busy sneaking around with Forest to pay attention.

  It’s not that I don’t understand that this lawsuit is the right thing to do for Tomás and Wanda. I know that a settlement will make their lives better, but it won’t bring Sylvia back. My dad is doing something that’s rarely, if ever, been done. Mexican farmworkers just don’t sue Americans. I know that this lawsuit will bring a lot of attention onto us, attention I don’t want. My dad, on the other hand, lives for stuff like this. He’s been fighting for the little guy for as long as I can remember, and he usually wins, but I don’t know about this one. This one could be different. We live here now. These people are not like city people. They’re not likely to take kindly to being told what’s right by some hippie lawyer, fresh from the city, who now calls himself a farmer.

  My dad gets up and puts his mug in the sink. “Oh, and another thing, you’ll probably get called as a witness.”

  “What does that mean?” I ask, wide-eyed.

  “It’s no big deal. You just go to a sort of interview and tell them what happened that day in your own words.”

  “Why can’t you do it? You were there too!”

  “They’ll probably consider me too biased to be a reliable witness. I’ve defended farmworkers in court. Don’t worry about it. It’ll be a breeze.”

  My dad walks out the door whistling and leaves me sitting there, stunned. It’s bad enough that my boyfriend’s mom is being accused of wrongful death by my dad, but now I’ll be the one pointing the finger at her when the lawyer asks if the woman who killed Sylvia Rodriguez is in the courtroom. At least that’s the way it happens on TV.

  I go upstairs and check my email. There’s nothing from Forest but there’s another email from Storm, who I’ve been neglecting terribly. She’s quick to point that out.

  To: Photogirl@earthlink.net

  From: Stormyweather@AOL.com

  Subject: I hate you

  Roar,

  This is the third (and final) email I’m sending you. I haven’t heard from you in days. Where the hell have you been? BTW, I’ve met someone, a ranch hand from Stockton. He thinks I’m nineteen. He rides bulls in his spare time . . . BULLS! My parents HATE him, naturally. Call me if you haven’t been abducted or something.

  S.

  P.S. Are you still extra-virgin?

  I grab the phone and dial Forest’s cell. There’s no answer. I dial his home phone even though I don’t want to. It rings seven times and then a man picks up
. Jerry, I presume.

  “Hi, may I speak to Forest?”

  “Did you try his cell phone?” He sounds annoyed.

  “Yes, there was no answer.” I swallow, embarrassed at admitting that maybe Forest is avoiding me.

  “Hang on.” He covers the phone and yells.

  I hear a click on the line. “I’ve got it,” says Forest.

  Jerry hangs up after sighing audibly.

  “Hi,” I say quietly.

  “Hi,” he says, same volume.

  “Sorry to call you on this line but I really needed to talk to you.”

  “It’s okay. We just got home.”

  “From where?”

  “The hospital. My mom took a bunch of sleeping pills.”

  “Oh no! Is she all right?”

  “She will be. The doctors say she’s resting comfortably, which seemed rather obvious to me, considering she just swallowed a handful of sleeping pills.”

  “This is all my fault,” I say, pulling myself into the fetal position on top of my quilt.