All told, it was a bad winter to try and get a farm up and running. The temperature dipped into the low twenties at night, and every morning the frost settled on the grass in crisp white blades. Neighbors who specialized in citrus watched helplessly as their winter crops came in hard and flavorless and gray. Most of the orange growers in Orosi had cashed out by the end of January, and with their departure the pickers at the state camp packed up and headed south for the season, leaving no one to prepare the land for spring. So many of our own laborers pulled out that we had to start paying their deposits back out of the household account. The big breakfasts I liked to cook on Sundays disappeared, replaced by morning after morning of farina and other packaged cereals that could be purchased in bulk at the local grocery. When Gracie outgrew her winter jacket, I took Mama’s sewing machine down from the closet shelf and altered Jessie’s to fit her. In turn, I gave Jessie my own heavy jacket and made do myself with one of Mama’s old coats. Without telling anyone, Dawn sold the rest of the clothes and makeup Daddy had bought her to a second-hand store in Tulare. We tried to refuse her money, saying she should’ve kept the clothes to have something nice to wear. She replied that, come summer, it didn’t matter if she had to run around in her chonies, so long as we were able to get by till then.
The first apricot was at least four months out, but still the trees needed watering and tending to make it through the winter. Jennifer’s foreman, Dale, really proved his worth in those uncertain days. Even with the state labor camp deserted, he used his connections to round up a team of hired hands to work off-the-books pruning and irrigating straight through to the first blossoming. Taciturn men with prison records and no proof of citizenship, they nonetheless knew how to keep an orchard in good health, and to keep out of sight if the county inspector came snooping round. Not everyone was thrilled to have them on hand, though. After what had happened to Beth, Mama said that none of us girls were allowed to play outside when the workers were in the orchard. We tolerated her command, as we’d tolerated her fear of the Mendes children, and spent our afternoons inside watching TV or doing homework.
Money and labor problems aside, I looked forward all day to coming home again. Even after pulling straight A’s in the first semester, school began to lose the value it once held for me. The frost had taken its toll on so many families in the area that come January fewer than half the upperclassmen returned from break. Most of the Math and English faculty were let go and the juniors were lumped together with the freshman and sophomore classes. I’d hardly seen Beth at school before she dropped out, but now I could feel her absence everywhere on campus. Each room I entered made me pause to wonder if she’d taken a class in there before. I spent my breaks and free periods hiding in the library and behind the cafeteria, avoiding anywhere my peers congregated in groups of two or more. Any time I thought I saw Eric coming toward me in the corridors, I turned and hurried off in the opposite direction or ducked inside the girls’ bathroom. I could never be sure if it was really him, but I wasn’t about to take the chance. Not surprisingly, I started to gain a reputation as a weirdo. With a small student body pulled from a handful of small farming towns, it didn’t take much to get labeled as one. Kids went out of their way to avoid sitting next to me in class, and on the bus ride home other girls burst into muffled laughter as I stomped through the aisle to the open seat at the far back. Once I overheard a pair of sophomore boys whispering a few seats ahead of me. One of them turned and looked back at me real fast. That’s the one I was telling you about, he said, and his friend glanced over his shoulder and laughed in my general direction.
I might’ve been spared these afternoon bus trips if Anthony hadn’t decided right out of the blue to go out for the wrestling team. After having her ear whined off all December long, Claudia finally decided that she couldn’t afford to lend the car to Anthony during the day—not if she was going to keep up her routine of giving confession at the local church three times a week. Fortunately for him, Dawn overheard their bickering and offered to let him borrow the Mitsubishi on weekdays. For a brief moment, I thought my days on the big yellow limousine were at an end, but then he went and decided he’d rather spend his afternoons getting manhandled by a bunch of sweaty dudes in leotards. There weren’t enough schools nearby for them to wrestle competitively, but the team still met for practice in the gym Monday through Thursday. Anthony would get home around seven and collapse in a chair at the dinner table. He’d spend another half-hour hunched over the plate of food his mother saved for him, too exhausted to do more than eat a few bites and wash them down with a gallon of ice water. I never came out and asked him why he bothered with it, but I never stopped being curious either. The longer I knew my brother, the more it seemed that his passions always led him to pursuits that excluded the company of women and incorporated violence in some crucial way. I couldn’t help but feel uneasy about the way he chose to spend his time. Still, if wrestling kept his mind off the rifle in his closet, that was good enough for me.
I found him on the bleachers one afternoon during free period. His practice didn’t start for another ninety minutes, but he was already dressed in the red spandex and black socks of his team, in the same uniform he wore around the house, against his mother’s wishes, whenever he was too lazy to change before heading home. He appeared to be killing time watching a freshman PE class run laps around the track, though he might’ve been spacing out instead. I tend to believe the latter, seeing as how he didn’t seem to notice me approaching until I was already sitting down next to him.
Aren’t you cold in that getup?
He shrugged his bare shoulders and rubbed his hands together. Cold’s bracing, he said. Makes you stronger.
I guess. Feels like I hardly see you around anymore.
I’ve been busy.
Busy wrestling?
Busy getting into shape. I got to toughen up.
So you’re still planning on joining the Army?
Soon as I’m old enough. Or as soon as I can pass for old enough. Whichever comes first.
Right. Well, let me know when you decide to sign up. Cause I’m dropping out of school the very next day.
Anthony finally looked at me directly. As dark as he was, his cheeks still showed red in the cold. Is that your way of trying to guilt me into sticking around?
No, I said. I just don’t want to go through this alone. You’re my only friend here.
That’s no reason to drop out, he said. You’re brainy. You could do a lot with a diploma.
Like what? College?
Yeah. You might get a scholarship someplace good.
I shook my head and drove my fists deeper into my coat pockets. College is for rich kids in other states, I said. Round here they’re bulldozing colleges to free up space for more farmland.
So move to another state, he said. What’s wrong with you? The valley’s no place for somebody with your smarts.
I’ve got Mama and my sisters to worry about. I can’t just up and leave them.
That’s a shitty excuse. I think you’re just afraid of trying to make it on the coast.
Maybe I am. So what? Elliot came from the coast, and look at what a monster he turned out to be. Antony looked around the empty bleachers, as if to make sure no one was listening in. All this time we’d kept to an unspoken agreement never to talk about Daddy at school, and my sudden breach of the pact was clearly making him nervous. But he was worrying for nothing. The only students within a hundred yards of us were too busy sweating and panting on the freezing cold track to give a crap about anything we had to say. I know I sound like an obsessive, I said. But I’m trying. I’m trying every day to get him out of my head.