The smell of Mexican cooking got stronger. Through the thin wall of a boarded-up cabin he heard low male voices speaking in Spanish. The farmworkers. Hector had already picked them up; the food was for them. Except the hood of the six-by-six had been stone-cold. That engine hadn’t been fired up in hours.
A Mexican about Dunc’s age materialized from the mist, just buttoning his fly. He had a narrow-jawed face and aquiline nose and brown liquid eyes that would have been gentle had one upper lid not been pulled awry by an angry red scar like a knife cut.
“Buenos dias,” said Dunc.
The Mexican broke for the front of the cabin. Dunc shrugged. He’d go find something to eat, return; the little diners that dotted the ocean side of the Coast Highway I would be open for the surfers. The door of Rephaim’s church opened and Hector came out. His whole manner was different from their first meeting, and his voice was bellicose.
“Hey, you. What are you doing snooping around here?”
Dunc just nodded, waved an airy hand, and kept on going. At the stand of manzanita, he looked back. Hector had gone back inside, the door with the cross over it was shut.
When he got back from breakfast, Rephaim was on his diving board, arms wide, well into his spiel; Dunc recognized the knife-cut Mexican among the Latins, but none from last week. Neither Penny nor her relatives had showed. Not even any of the coven.
He left. He needed the order, assurance, and peace of Sunday Mass. The phone book gave him noon High Mass in Santa Monica. Back in Eagle Rock he found a singularly unrepentant Gus full of lurid sexual adventures he didn’t want to hear about. He went to bed early. They had a pour tomorrow, had to be on-site at 7:30, which meant up at six.
It was after eight when Osvaldo showed up with the back of his old pickup filled with a new complement of workers.
“Where’d he find another crew so quick?” Dunc asked Joshua.
“There’s lots of wetbacks looking for work,” said Samuel.
“Does the union know they don’t have green cards?”
“Course the union knows they’s wetbacks, but they keeps their traps shut, they gets fifty dollah a man ’nitiation fees.”
Something about this bothered Dunc, he didn’t know why — not yet. Another thought hit him. “Does Donovan know?”
“Wa’m bodies, that’s all he care ’bout.”
As if on cue, Donovan yelled, “Get back up on those forms!”
At the lunch break the Mexicans clustered together in the shade, eating rice and beans and tortillas out of folded pieces of newspaper. One of the brown-skinned men had a narrow jaw, aquiline nose, gentle brown liquid eyes — except the right upper lid had been pulled awry by the scar of a knife cut.
“Buenos dias,” Dunc said to him.
Again, surprised and scared. But he said, “Buenos dias."
Osvaldo sprayed him with rapid-fire Spanish, turned to Dunc with a big grin. “No Eeenglish, no use talking with heem, señor.”
How did the slender Mexican get from the boarded-up motel out by the beach to a construction site in the valley in just one day? Being there at Rephaim’s Sunday morning service made no sense anyway. The man had no English, he wouldn’t know what Rephaim’s sermons were about.
Who could Dunc ask about it all? Gus wouldn’t know any more than he did. Joshua. He waylaid the lanky Negro.
“Lordy, child!” Joshua slapped his knee with delight. “This here was all in place befo’ you show up, gonna be here long after you’s gone.”
That was that, Dunc thought. The guys were illegals, after all, most of them would try again, a lot of them would make it.
On Wednesday night he was lying on his bed reading a copy of Faulkner’s Sanctuary he’d borrowed from the Pasadena Public Library when Uncle Ben called up the stairs.
“Dunc! Telephone.”
He yelled his thanks and rolled off the bed. Now that they knew where he was, his folks were calling once a week. He picked up the receiver off the table in the downstairs hallway.
“This is Penny.”
It was like getting punched in the stomach it was so unexpected. “Penny! I thought... I didn’t... Hey, hi, it’s great to hear your voice. Listen...” He reached over to snag the L.A. Times sports section out of the wicker magazine basket beside the table. “I don’t have your phone number there.”
He wrote it down on the edge of the sports page and blurted out, “How does your boyfriend like California?”
“Gerald? He left Sunday. Actually he’s not my boyfriend anymore.” She laughed that wonderful laugh. “Aunt Goodie says she’d like you to come over on Friday night so we can all thank you for saving me.”
“I tell my mom something like that, she’d have a bird.”
“Oh, I can tell Aunt Goodie anything. Can you come? About seven-thirty?” Could he? She gave him the street address. “We’re in Highland Park two blocks off Figueroa. It’s a little white two-story house in the middle of the block with an old-fashioned swing on the front porch.”
They were pouring the second-story walls. The grout had to be wheelbarrowed up two flights of plywood ramps, then out across empty space on two-by-twelve planks that bounced and shivered under their weight, to the open forms. At first Dunc had been terrified, but by now he and Gus were nonchalant about it.
Samuel was wetting down the forms so they could splatter in shovelfuls of grout to prime the rebar. Joshua was on the ground two stories below, using a garden hoe to mix up more grout in a wooden trough. He tipped back his head and shaded his eyes.
“Come an’ get it!” he yelled up at them.
Samuel pointed the hose straight down the face of the building. The water blasted Joshua right in his upturned face. He lowered his head, carefully laid down his hoe, turned and plodded slowly away from the building. Samuel kept moving the hose outward to keep the stream on the top of his head.
Out of range of the hose, Joshua stopped and turned and slowly looked up. And slowly raised one fist and slowly shook it at Samuel. By that time, Dunc and Gus were laughing so hard they almost fell off the narrow planks.
At quitting time, still soaking, Joshua pointed a bony forefinger at Samuel’s gut as if the finger were a knife blade.
“Open,” he intoned. He made circular motions with the switchblade finger. “That’s all-l-l-l gonna be open in there.”
Then he started to laugh along with the others.
Chapter Twenty-two
“They just stuck ’em in the van and they were gone,” Dunc was saying. “What if they had families or—”
“They don’t bring their families,” said Uncle Carl with vast authority. “They come to make money to send back home.”
“That isn’t all. They brought a new crew in on Monday — one of them was at Rephaim’s Sunday service. I saw him myself.”
“Everybody at Rephaim’s says they’re farmworkers,” said Aunt Goodie.
“Farmworkers, construction workers,” said Penny. “People see Mexicans and they see illegal aliens.”
They walked from the ice cream parlor on Figueroa through the warm flowery August evening back to the house, two abreast on a narrow sidewalk made uneven by tree roots. Aunt Goodie said, “I think it’s time us old folks went up to bed.”
“I’m not tired,” said Carl.
“You are now.”
“Good night, Uncle Carl,” said Penny with her silvery laugh.
“Why do I get the idea I’m not wanted out here? Dunc, defend me, men against—”