Did you see a lot of snow overseas? In the war?
He shook his head. No, he said. No snow, no rain, no relief of any kind. Nothing but sand and heat and flames rising up from the land. Falling from the sky.
Why were you over there?
Well, he said. They told us it was to protect the country from terrorist attacks. But really it was to show that we were still capable of getting something done. A lot of other countries were watching us close near the end. We did a lot of bad things just to prove we still could.
And then the states disbanded anyway.
That’s right. I was lucky. Some of the guys who got left behind on foreign bases had to pay their own airfare to get back to their families. Some never made it. And some didn’t bother trying. Wherever they were when the news hit, they decided to make a fresh start there. Who knows? If things had turned out different, I might have changed my name to Abdullah.
I don’t know why anyone would come here if they didn’t have to.
That made it twice in one conversation that he turned to look at me straight on. I smiled and laughed so that my question would seem sarcastic in retrospect, even though, to be honest, I had meant every word. It made no sense to me that someone would leave the east, even a disorganized and disbanded east, and come to the most boring corner of the world to pick fruit for state-subsidized subsistence wages. To him I must’ve seemed like a spoiled little shit, disparaging all the blessings I’d received even as the man in front of me was relying on the ag bureau to keep his stomach full throughout the day. But Chris didn’t try to scold or correct me. He just took a match and a crumpled cigarette from his shirt pocket and struck the match on the post and took a slow drag as the bluish smoke unfurled through the air.
I wasn’t going to stick around to see the shit-show unfold, he said. Once the Army stopped cutting paychecks to the soldiers on the ground, I knew it wouldn’t be long before everything fell apart. I went AWOL from a V.A. hospital in Texas and lived in twenty different places in as many years. Mexico, Central America, sorts of places a man with security training could make money easy without having to answer too many questions. But I couldn’t keep it up. Not at my age. So now I’m just trying to work my way north one job at a time.
I looked at him with my mouth partly open and my eyes partly closed. AWOL, I said. You left the Army without permission.
Without leave, he said. But yeah, I did. I’m a deserter. I deserted the American Army. Along with some five hundred thousand others.
Okay. I get it.
But how do you feel about it? It’s okay. You can tell me the truth. I won’t get mad.
I guess, I guess it’s all right. Like you said, they stopped paying you a wage.
That’s right. And if I’d stayed any longer, I’d have been there when they finally had to cut out the chow as well.
I get that. It’s just. I don’t know. I don’t know if I could ever run away from something after I’d made a promise to it.
He looked at me close and breathed the smoke from his mouth back in through his nose. What about your family? he asked. Sounds to me like you’ve got plans to run away from here the first chance you get. Won’t they feel like you broke a promise then?
I don’t want to run away from them, I said. It’s this place. I want to get as far away from it as I can.
This place isn’t so bad. I’ve seen plenty worse.
Doesn’t matter. I was born here and I’ve spent all my life here so far. So I don’t want to grow old and die here. I want to live somewhere different.
Different is a point of view. It all depends on where you’re standing and where you started off. This valley was different to me when I first came here a couple years ago. And if you were to see the place where I grew up, you’d say it was different enough to suit your needs, but after a time you’d see it’s just the same product in different packaging. There’s plenty a man can do to improve his situation, but not if he’s always looking around the bend for the next thing that’s new and different. That’s what I think anyway.
No, I get it, I said. There’s nothing new under the sun.
He shook his head and smiled like I was cute for playing the wise old sage at the ripe age of fourteen and a half. It’s true I was full of shit, trying to sound smart with words taken straight from the monsignor’s mouth. There’s nothing new under the sun. That was one of his favorite verses, and the more he repeated it the more willing I was to believe that even my own self was a plagiarism of some earlier version from long ago. Every year on my birthday I grew more anxious about who I was becoming. If there really was nothing new in the whole course and history of the world, then boys like me were probably a dime a dozen in the grand design. But then why was it so hard to find someone who spoke my language?
As I was contemplating my own weirdness, Chris took the last drag off his cigarette and carefully twisted the flame out against the post and flicked the butt into the dirt far from the dry grass that bordered the fence line. Let’s assume you do make it out of the valley one day, he said. How do you expect to make a living once you’re out there?
I don’t know, I said. I haven’t thought that far ahead.
Well, what are you good at?
Not much, really. I tried going out for sports at school, but I didn’t have any skills.
Skills come with time and practice. Right now is the time for you to decide what you’re interested in. So what interests you? I take it farming doesn’t exactly do it for you.
I gave out a small fake laugh. Not even, I said. That’s part of why I want to leave so bad, cause there’s nothing to do around here.
I see you out walking around sometimes in the late afternoon. Over by the packing house. What do you do over there all by yourself?
Nothing. I don’t do anything.
The more Chris pressed me for answers, the more his questions froze me, until finally I was sitting off the edge of the fence rail with my mouth hung open like a mounted bass on a fisherman’s wall, too embarrassed to admit how deep my weirdness really ran. Every farm boy and girl in the valley had some private habit they indulged in alone, out in the orchards and fields where no one was watching. Some streaked and others jerked it. Others daydreamed, and made hidden fortresses out of the trees, and lost themselves in hidden fantasies that were too loud or disconcerting to risk exploring inside the house. As for me, there were things I knew children were capable of doing that could raise adult eyebrows immediately, and I prayed that Chris wasn’t like other adults, cause at the rate we were going, I was bound to reveal my secrets to him in one way or another.
I like to burn ants with a magnifying glass, I said. I know it’s stupid and gross and I shouldn’t be doing it at my age. But like I said, there’s not much to do around here, especially in the summer. Figure I might as well put the burning sun to good use. But please don’t tell my mom. She wouldn’t approve.
Chris nodded slowly, looking down at his own dangling feet and the dry curdled dirt beneath his heels. More than a month since any rain had fallen and the earth still held the shape of its last heavy swelling. Long memory it had, the poor dry sand-soil of our country. You ever kill any larger animals? he asked. Anything that walks on four legs instead of six?
God, no, I said. My thighs squirmed against the fence rail. Torturing animals, especially pets, was one of the sure-fire ways for a farm boy to land himself in trouble with the teachers and administrators at school. Just talking about it, even jokingly, was sometimes enough to get him sentenced to counseling, to weekly sessions with a district headshrinker that were longer and more humbling than any parish confession. And even supposing you made it out unexpelled, no one would look at you the same again. You’d live out the rest of your time in school alone and friendless, eating lunch with the retards on the retard bench. I’m no psycho, I said. I never hurt any cats or dogs. I swear.