Beau and Bett

by Kathryn Berla

  “Would you accept a trade?” I asked in a voice that threatened to betray my weakness. “I can come around and do odd jobs for you until I pay off the debt.”

  He stared blankly at me again. The old lady nudged him in the ribs with her elbow. “I’m not so sure Bettina had nothing to do with this,” she said.

  “Mother, please. Give it a rest and let us work this out man-to-man.”

  Nice of him to give me at least that much.

  “I’ll tell you what,” he said again. “Even if I could find some work around here for you, and even if I paid you a lot more than I pay my hands, that’s still fifty, sixty hours of labor you’d have to give me.”

  “Yes, sir. I can handle fifty hours. It’d have to be on the weekends ’cause school days I have to help around the house with my two brothers. And help with the chores at home and homework and all. But I could come Saturdays and Sundays until it’s paid off. Would that be okay?”

  “I’ll tell you what . . . ” He clearly was fond of telling me what. “You come by this Saturday AM. We get started early around here. You find Ray and report to him. He’ll tell you what to do, and God knows what it’ll be, but we’ll figure something out. We’ll say one month. Saturday’s the first of the month and when the month’s over I’ll sign a piece of paper saying we’re even. Is that satisfactory to you?”

  “Oh yes, that’s satisfactory. Thank you. Thank you very much.”

  The old lady smile-winced and adjusted the waist of her apron.

  “I’m a man of means,” he went on, just when I thought it was over. “I could pay the thousand dollars with the money this place earns while I’m taking a dump.”

  My face must have lit up too much with the expectation he was going to let me off the hook.

  “But I won’t,” he said. “And do you know why?”

  I shook my head meekly.

  “Because I’m goddamned tired of people stealing my avocados. These kids that come around at night thinking they’re so smart.”

  I shook my head to indicate what I hoped was disgust with the kids who were coming around at night, stealing his avocados, thinking they were so smart.

  “You’re not like that, I can tell.”

  I shook my head hoping to convey I was nothing like that, while thinking about his daughter who had such a hateful face when she said the words one way.

  “You’re the kind of man who needs to pay off a debt that’s rightfully his, so I’m going to give you that opportunity. You’ll thank me for it one day.”

  I couldn’t imagine thanking him one day, but I nodded my head to show I would.

  He stuck out his hand. “Name’s Lupe Diaz, but you can call me Mr. Diaz.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Diaz,” I said. “I’ll be here first thing Saturday morning.”

  Eight

  The worst had already happened, hadn’t it? I was on the downhill part of an uphill climb, so everything should be easier going forward. I knew what was expected from me . . . now I just had to do it. Then why did my breakfast feel like a cold, hard lump in my stomach as I drove to the Diaz Ranch on Saturday for my first day of work?

  Turns out we way underestimated the amount of time it would take to fix Maman’s car. For one thing, she didn’t just have a dent that needed to be banged out—she was leaking oil pretty bad. In fact, there was a complete transfer of oil from her car to our driveway. So that meant more money and more complicated family arrangements. It also meant I had to keep transporting Khalil to and from school. Lucky that was okay with my schedule, timewise. In other words, Khalil spent a lot more time in school than me, and why not? He was destined to be a doctor or lawyer or some other fancy professional. And I was destined for trade school, by choice. That’s where my interests lay, so why bother killing myself with unnecessary classes?

  Khalil was enjoying my company, a break from his L-Mom. I was older, thereby cooler in his eyes, but not so old as to be uncool. I also drove a vehicle, even if it was a beat-up truck. Masie had already proven that transportation could make an invisible person like me visible to a girl like her. Khalil didn’t drive and there was no reason to believe he’d be driving anytime soon. Most kids by his age are nagging their parents to get at least some hours behind the wheel, but Khalil was perfectly happy being driven by others. When I dropped him off at home that Friday, he asked whether I wanted to come by on the weekend to play video games and maybe shoot some hoops. I guess all that togetherness made him think we were buds by then. He said he had real friends at school but between their busy parents and his busy parents, it was hard to catch a ride. And Khalil wasn’t one to walk places.

  “I can’t,” I said. “I have a job that starts tomorrow.”

  “A job?” It was a new concept to Khalil—something he’d never considered—a kid having a job that would interfere with weekend goofing off. “Doing what? Babysitting your brothers?”

  “Nah, Papa does that on the weekends.” From his permanent seat on the couch, I didn’t add.

  “So what kind of job, then?”

  I had to be careful. I didn’t want Khalil to find out about the accident and tell his parents something about Maman that would cause them to have less confidence in her. Khalil would never purposely sabotage his “L-Mom” but he was so open and trusting he might not think two moves ahead about the consequences of his words. And I couldn’t very well ask him to lie by omission.

  “Working at the Diaz Ranch. Helping out. Odd jobs.”

  “The Diaz Ranch!” He yelled so loud I almost drove off the road. “Where Bett the Beast lives? She’s one of the girls I was telling you about. Not just one of them . . . she’s the worst one of all.”

  “Bett the Beast? You mean Bettina? She doesn’t look like a beast.” I thought about the firm, disapproving line of her lips when she said one way.

  “Bettina? She goes by Bett at school. And, yeah, she’s a beast. Take my advice and stay away from her. She looks okay, I guess, if you dare to look at her.”

  “Okay, well, I think you’re overdoing it a little. She’s just a girl—how bad can she be? And anyway, I’m not working for her and I probably won’t even see her. I’m working outside on the property.”

  “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He shook his head slowly as if he’d just received some really bad news. “Hey, Beau? How come you never invite me over to your place?”

  “We’re not really friends, Khalil. I mean, I like you—you’re a good dude. But you’d be bored hanging out with me.” I paused and took a deep breath. “You wouldn’t have fun at my house, trust me.”

  I looked at him out of the corner of my eye and immediately felt guilty again. I didn’t want Khalil to come over and see how we lived. How Maman lived. To see Papa all laid up the way he was—helpless like a baby. Not even able to get to the bathroom by himself.

  So, there I was the next morning, driving to the Ranch, thinking about all the things Khalil had said. Bett the Beast. What’s the worst thing she could do to me? If Papa had managed the transition from alligator-trapper to orange-picker to orange-picker falling off a ladder to invalid on a couch, couldn’t I handle a girl my own age? If Maman could work eight to ten hours a day cooking and cleaning for another family before she came home and cooked and cleaned for her own family, couldn’t I pick a few avocados with or without a girl looking over my shoulder? If Angie could handle the concept of marriage to an idiot like Jason—who acted like my big brother around my parents and Angie, but picked on me when we were alone —couldn’t I man up and breathe the same air as a girl who might have said a couple of mean things to some freshman boys? If Claude and Del could put up with . . . well, the truth is they were just little kids and didn’t have to put up with very much except maybe being babysat by me from time to time when I was trying to do homework and had to lay down the law so I could hear myself think.

  And by the time all this stuff had made the complete journey through my brain, I’d arrived at the D
iaz Ranch. Right where everything started. Guacamole used to be my favorite snack, but I was at the point where I couldn’t stand the sight of an avocado. I pulled my truck up as close to the fence as I could and started to park and prepare for the hike down the driveway, until I thought better of it. Mr. Diaz had said this was his property too. Maybe he didn’t want me parking here. Maybe I should try to park in the back where deliveries were made. But how would I get to the back, and why hadn’t I asked? Not down this driveway, I knew that much. Obviously, there was another way in, so I pulled the car back on the road, making sure not to replicate Maman’s accident. Then I drove slowly down the road until I came to a break in the fence that was pretty much hidden because of the tall oleander hedges on either side. It was the entrance to another long gravel lane that looked like it should lead more or less to where I wanted to go. I signaled a right turn with my arm out the window and crossed my fingers—figuratively, of course.

  My tires crunch, crunch, crunched all the way down the lane until I finally caught sight of the house. My instincts had been correct—this lane led to the back, the part I hadn’t seen before. There was a big open gravel area with a bunch of cars and trucks parked along the edges. I parked my truck under the shade of a gnarled old oak. I walked past a four-car garage, partially opened to reveal the white Range Rover. A little further on I saw a sign near a narrow door that said “Deliveries.” I kept walking, wondering where I could find this Ray person who would tell me what to do. Some men were working in the vineyard, so I decided to start there. Maybe one of them was Ray. Or maybe even Mr. Diaz, himself.

  There was a huge fenced-in area between me and the vineyard that looked like a few acres. I walked all the way around, sneaking a peek as I passed. Part green lawn, part fruit orchard, and part jumbo-size swimming pool. The pool was mostly protected from prying eyes by a border of oleander speckled with fuchsia blooms. Fuchsia. Yeah, I know that color, which was Angie’s go-to toenail shade. I wasn’t completely in the dark about girls, having an older sister and all. Just mostly in the dark.

  I decided right then and there to stay away from the fenced-in area. To not get anywhere near the entire massive ranch house and its immediate grounds. It was obvious nothing good was ever going to happen to me over there.

  It turns out that working off a debt feels like being picked last for a team. Nobody really wants you, but now that they’ve got you, they’ve got to make the best of it. And doing a job that you’re not trained for feels like going to a school dance without a girl. You’re going to do a lot of standing around while trying to pretend you’re part of the scene, but you’re really not. So that should give you an idea of what it was like for me that first day.

  I eventually found Ray after asking some of the guys who were busy with picking grapes. They pointed here and there, and I wandered up and down a few rows of grapevines before I finally bumped into him. He had perfectly straight posture and long legs that covered a lot of ground with each step. You knew right away he was a guy who had everything under control. His animal spirit, I decided, was one of those Great Dane dogs. Or maybe a Doberman. He was nice enough but didn’t have a clue as to who I was or why I was there, so I guess Mr. Diaz hadn’t remembered to mention me. But he took it in his stride, said the jefe wasn’t around (which I understood was Mr. Diaz), but he’d find something for me to do . . . which turned out to be picking grapes.

  Here’s how you pick grapes. First off, don’t call them grapes, call them berries. Don’t ask me why because, to me, a grape and a berry are very different things, but there you have it. Second, you grab a big white bucket and a pair of sharp snipping shears. You probably want to put on a pair of gloves to avoid messing up your hands too much, and then with one hand you hold the bunch of berries and with the other hand you snip the stem at the top of the cluster. Then when your bucket gets filled, you take it over to this metal container and dump—I mean, gently distribute—the grapes so they’re evenly spread out. At some point, the tractor comes by to pick up the full container and leave an empty one. It pretty much goes on like that all day, with you stopping for lunch at a certain point and a few breaks for snacks or water or whatnot. During the breaks you try to find a spot in the shade, but since there weren’t very many most of us wound up under one big oak tree together.

  One thing all that picking did was give me a better appreciation for what Papa did for a living. Being an orange-picker, he did pretty much the same thing I was doing except he did it on a ladder—which turned out to be a bad thing on the day he got stung in the face by a yellow jacket, which caused him to take a backward dive and eventually landed him on our sofa. He also used a little harness contraption attached to a cloth sack, instead of the bucket I was using. I guessed grape picking might not have been too awful if you had someone to joke around with while you were picking all day, but the rest of the guys were speaking Spanish to each other and I didn’t understand any Spanish. If they’d been speaking Cajun French, I could have at least followed along.

  During one of our breaks, three or four of the guys were talking and then they all looked over at me and laughed, and I was pretty sure I heard someone say “Bettina.”

  “What?” I asked. I’d run out of snacks and water by then, so I was sitting a little apart from everyone, contemplating how sore I was going to be the next day when I came back to work. And why hadn’t I thought to wear a hat and sunglasses? My nose and cheeks were already feeling more burn than the muscles in my back and shoulders. But at least I was nearly one day closer to fulfilling my part of the bargain.

  The men all laughed again so I turned to Ray and raised my eyebrows in a facial gesture I hoped he’d interpret as “what’s the big joke?”

  “Don’t worry about it, kid,” he said. “They’re just wondering why you’re here . . . why Diaz hired you since you’re so slow at picking. They figure you must be Bettina’s boyfriend.”

  At the sound of her name, everyone laughed again.

  “Oh yeah? Well you can tell them I’m not. In fact, I don’t even know her.”

  Which I guess he did, which provided one last laugh at my expense before the break was over. So, it was good, I suppose, that I was at least providing everyone with a little entertainment to make their day go by faster. But that day seemed hella long to me.

  Just before quitting time, Ray pulled me aside.

  “Look, kid, you’re not much good at picking grapes. I could keep you busy doing it if it’s just a matter of putting in your time ’til you’re square with Diaz. But is there something you’re actually good at so we don’t waste each other’s time?”

  “Building things,” I answered.

  Nine

  The next morning, I got there early, armed with water, snacks, a hat and sunglasses. I was really feeling it all over from my labor the day before. When I pulled into the big open parking area, there were no other cars. The garage door was down so I couldn’t see inside. With nothing else to do, I turned on the radio, shut my eyes, and waited for everyone else to get there. After a while when nobody showed up, I looked at my watch and it was already thirty minutes past starting time. I got out of the truck and walked over to the vineyards to see if anyone was there. But after walking up and down the rows of vines, there was no sign of anyone. I knew I’d told Mr. Diaz that I’d be there Saturdays and Sundays, so I wondered why there wasn’t someone around to tell me what to do. I hoped I hadn’t wasted a trip for nothing. I also hoped I wouldn’t only be working Saturdays, which might mean he’d expect me to put up with the Diaz Ranch for two months instead of one.

  When I’d given up finding anyone in the vineyard, I walked back toward my truck and saw the narrow door that said “Deliveries.” There was a doorbell, so I rang it and then waited for what seemed like a long time. I was just about to leave and go back to my truck when the door swung open, with Bettina on the other side. Her braid was slung over one shoulder the way I remembered it, except kind of messy like she’d either sle
pt in it or maybe just done it up fast. She was wearing a little white sundress, kind of skimpy, but other than that nothing special except it looked good against her dark skin.

  “If you have a delivery, just leave it and someone will bring it in later.” She started to close the door.

  “Wait! I don’t have a delivery, that’s not why I’m here.”

  “You’re the guy from the driveway, aren’t you? The one going the wrong way.”

  “Yeah, but . . . ”

  “Then why don’t you have a delivery?”

  “I never did have a delivery. I don’t even know what you think I’d be delivering.”

  Her eyes narrowed, and she backed up a little while making a move to close the door like she suddenly realized I was a serial killer or something.

  “I’m supposed to be working today,” I said urgently, hoping that would stop the door from slamming in my face. “But no one’s around. I looked in the vineyard, but I couldn’t find Ray.”

  The door opened a little more and she stared at me. “I thought you had a delivery.”

  “Well, I don’t.”

  “In that case, I don’t know what to tell you. Everyone’s at church.”

  “Oh.”

  “And they usually don’t get back until past noon.”

  “Nobody told me anything about that.”

  “So you can come back then.”

  “I drove all the way out here. Couldn’t I just stay and work? Do something until they get back? Otherwise I’d have to go all the way home and then come back again. That’s a lot of driving.”

  “What would you do?”

  I looked at her and a strange sensation came over me. I could usually see the animal in a person but I couldn’t get a fix with Bettina. They called her The Beast, so what exactly was a beast? A lion? Crocodile? Gorilla? Something sinister? But she didn’t fit any of those. She didn’t fit anything at all. She could make a scary face for sure, but when it wasn’t directing an angry phrase at me, it didn’t seem so bad—in fact, it might even be nice-looking to an outside observer.