From the first morning, Lee had to work at establishing his authority. These men had different ways than the men he’d worked with at McNeil, and he was even rusty with the farm equipment. On that first morning, heading out of the ranch yard before daylight, driving a truck for the first time in years, following the line of trucks, he’d jerked the clutch so bad that the men, jammed into the truck bed, laughed and hooted and shouted good-natured Spanish obscenities at him. They’d eased along a dirt lane and sharply up the side of a levee to a thin track at the top, the old truck straining, then moving on fast through the darkness to keep up with the others. The thin ridge dropped steeply on both sides. The truck rocked and heaved as the field hands horsed around laughing and cuffing each other, thinking nothing of the drop, not giving a damn if they went over. Lee crouched over the wheel gripping hard with both hands, hoping to keep it on the narrow track. As the sky began to turn red, sunrise soon staining the fields, he could see an occasional turnoff angling down the bank on his left. On his right, almost directly under him, a concrete ditch surged with fast black water from the Colorado. He was mighty glad when he saw his own flag marker, ahead in the field below.
As he angled down off the levee, the rising dust from the trucks ahead filled his mouth and nose, dust crept into his lungs so thick that soon he was retching and gagging, coughing up specks of blood. Well, hell, maybe the emphysema would finish him right there in the stinking truck, and who would even care?
He slowed along the edge of the melon field and the men began piling out, lurching the truck harder, landing at a run to keep their balance beside the slow-moving vehicle, men peeling off into the melon rows. They got to work fast when they were picking on their own time, were paid by how much they could harvest. They didn’t look up from their work as the sun lifted, as the sky slowly bleached to white and the rising heat slicked sweat across their bare backs. They stopped only to drink from the six water coolers that were wired to the back of the truck, then got to work again. Lee, driving along feeling the truckjolt as they loaded the melons, couldn’t escape the sun’s reflection from the fields and from the truck’s hood and dashboard. The temperature inside the cab, even with the windows open, must be a hundred and thirty. He wished this were a horse operation instead of a farm, wished he were doingajob he cared about, something he could put his mind to.
By midmorning he’d pulled off his shirt. He felt cooked through. He grew bored with keeping tally on the pickers, marking down their loads as they dumped them into the truck bed. By noon the water coolers were empty and the truck riding low on its axles, its bed piled high with its first load of cantaloupes. Going back in for the noon meal, the men rode on the outside, clinging to the slats, their voices irritable now with heat and hunger, exploding in fast Spanish arguments, and the heavy, sweet smell of the cantaloupes sickened Lee. If he were twenty years younger, maybe he wouldn’t mind this routine. At his age, with the emphysema flaring up, working all day in this damnable heat wasn’t going to cut it for long. Where the hell had he gotten the notion that the hot desert was just what he longed for? It was early that afternoon when, observing the men at work, he picked out a straw boss to run interference for him.
Tony Valdez was a squarely built kid in his early twenties, with an easy way about him. Maybe too easy, but he looked like he could handle the men, and that was what Lee wanted. Valdez worked stripped to the waist, the silver cross hanging around his neck swinging as he bent to cut the fruit from the vines. Lee saw no prison tattoos on his sun-browned skin, and no sullenness in his face.“I’ll pay you two dollars a day extra,” he’d told Tony. “You’ll keep the arguments down, and help me with the tally.”
The boy’s shoulders had straightened. “I can do that.”
“Can you drive truck?”
“I can drive that truck.”
Lee had nodded, thinking Tony would do. But it wasn’t long before the kid was strutting like a Spanish rooster, goading the men. “Estoy el segundo jefe, you guys. Don’t give me any shit,” and the next thing Lee knew a fistfight erupted between Tony and a dark-skinned older man. Lee, jumping over a row of cantaloupes, grabbed the two of themand jerked Tony around to face him, his temper flaring hot.
“What the hell did I hire you for! To stop fights, not start them.”
Tony looked at him innocently.“I was only keeping order, se?or …”
The men snickered.
Lee shoved Tony toward the rows and whirled around, staring at the idle crew.“The bunch of you get back to work or I’ll run your sorry asses clear to hell off the place.” He’d burned with rage, almost out of control. The other men looked at him, and quieted and turned away.
Lee didn’t think he had the authority to fire anyone, but they seemed to think he did. He looked Tony over, trying to quiet the fire in his belly. “If you can’t straw boss like a man, Valdez, I’ll pick someone who will.”
Tony quieted, too, looking at him first with anger, and then sheepishly. For the next three days Tony behaved himself, he didn’t goad the men, and he stopped two serious arguments capably enough. But then on Friday evening, when Lee moved to the right seat and let Tony drive, heading up the levee, the kid double-clutched it, jammed it into second and floorboarded it, shooting up the slope so fast the front wheels left the ground and the rear end skidded toward the drop-off. Lee grabbed the dashboard, and the pickers laughed and cheered.
“What the hell are you doing, Valdez! Slow down! This ain’t no cayuse you’re breaking!”
“Just getting the truck up the hill, se?or.”
“Yeah, and have the damn thing in the canal, on top of the pickers.” He wanted to smash the kid’s face. “If you can’t do better than that, hombre, you’ll ride in the back from now on.” Lee had been mad and rightly so, but in the ranch yard as he swung out of the truck, he wondered if that much anger was called for, wondered at the explosion of blazing rage that had filled him.
Dusk was gathering as Delgado’s Cadillac pulled into the yard. Lee turned over his day’s tally to Jake and moved away to his cabin to sit down on the steps catching his breath. Maybe he’d get used to this gig, and maybe he wouldn’t. On the hot evening breeze, the smell of beans and chili from the cookhouse drew him. Rising, he moved inside the cabin to douse himself with water, to gulp water, then he headed on out and down the steps, anticipating an isolated supper at the long tables, among the Spanish-speaking men.
Jake was just crossing from the house to the big white Cadillac parked beside the mess hall. There was no mistaking Ramon Delgado, as the boss stepped out. Looked like the fancy new car had been clean and shining when he left the home ranch this morning, before it picked up the day’s collection of road dust. Lee could see the gleam of red upholstery inside. Along the back shelf beneath the rear window lay a handsome serape carefully folded, and on the hood, where other cars had radiator ornaments, Delgado had mounted a set of polished, brass-tipped longhorns that reached out just to the edge of the fenders.
Ramon Delgado was a big man, half a head taller than Jake and maybe twenty pounds heavier. He looked to be all muscle under his Levi’s jacket and pearl-buttoned shirt. His boots were three colors of fine soft leather, heavily stitched in flower patterns. His black Stetson sported a silver hatband. Lee imagined a nice home place up in Hemet, maybe an adobe house low and rambling, green lawns irrigated by the Colorado and shaded by rows of date palms. Everything about Delgado looked rich and successful; and beneath the wide black brim, his face, hard-angled and square, had the look of a man to be wary of.