It was a small farm community, tucked away back here behind the trees about a hundred yards off the main road. Not so much a town as a Joadville, Nomad thought. Something straight out of The Grapes Of Wrath. Maybe fifteen yards from where he and Ariel stood the dirt road curved toward a building that looked to be made out of tarpaper and green plastic siding, with a wooden cross painted gold up over the arched doorway. In front of this building a large-hipped Hispanic woman with gray hair bound by a red bandana was holding a bell and methodically swinging it back and forth. Around her, other women were setting out platters of tortillas, beans and enchiladas onto a table under the shade of a huge oak tree. Before the church, on the sparse grass, stood a well made of brown stones.
It was lunch time, Nomad realized. They were calling the workers in from the field.
He saw on the far side of the church a dozen more tarpaper shacks and structures protected by the shade of other oak trees. The buildings were made of what looked like things wealthier people had cast aside: patio tiles, water-stained awnings, sheets of corrugated metal and plasterboard, multicolored chunks of glass melted together to make windows. Little concrete statues that maybe had once been lawn ornaments in some other world decorated the plots of dirt: a rabbit with one ear cracked off, a greyhound looking around as if in search of its lost hind leg, a cherub with arms ready to fire the arrow but for the missing bow and hand that had gone with it. Nomad wondered if there wasn’t a dump somewhere nearby, where the people here found what they needed. A few old pickup trucks and cars stood about, sharing the indignity of rusted fenders and sun-cracked skins like the rough hides of alligators.
Nomad watched the figures in sweat-soaked hats and clothes coming out of the blackberry brambles. Even in this heat, most of them wore long-sleeved work shirts to ward off the thorns. He didn’t know how they could bear it. He would’ve been crawling out on his knees. A chocolate-colored dog came trotting closer to Nomad and Ariel, followed at a distance by two other mutts. It stopped short, splayed its legs and greeted them with a series of ear-splitting barks that went on until one of the women spoke to it chidingly and threw out a tortilla for the dogs to tussel over.
Other than that, no one seemed to pay the two intruders much attention except for a passing glance, followed by a comment or a shrug.
“We’d better go,” Ariel told him.
“In a minute.” He was waiting for his jeans to dry out a little more, which wouldn’t take too much longer in this heavy heat.
“Everybody okay?” Mike walked up on the other side of Nomad. “John, you past your fit?”
“I’m past it.” His fit had been eclipsed by this scene of hardship. Nomad knew that things were rough, with his personal disappointments and the band breaking up and all, but at least he didn’t have to labor in a blackberry field and live in a shack. Maybe he was heading that way, but not yet. He glanced back and saw that George had stopped the Scumbucket and had come around to the passenger side. George was using a towel from somebody’s bag to mop up the seat. Terry had gotten out too and was walking toward Nomad, shaking his head and showing a wry grin.
Someone came out of the field and crossed the road in front of Nomad. He felt himself being examined. When he returned the attention, he saw it was a slender young girl with long, glossy black hair. On her head was a raggedy old wide-brimmed straw hat. The small buds of her breasts were visible under the open workshirt and sweat-wet gray tee beneath that, and she wore sun-bleached khakis with patched-up knees. On her feet were dusty sandals. Before he could catch her face, she had looked away; all he was left with was an impression of penetrating eyes in a pool of shadow.
He watched her take her basket of blackberries to one of the pickup trucks and give it to a man who dumped its contents into one of several smaller flat plastic containers. She said something to the man, who smiled and showed a silver glint of teeth. Then she removed her stained leather gloves and shrugged off her workshirt and put them on the ground, and she passed by the table that held the platters of food and also a supply of paper cups that one of the other women had brought. She went to the well, where she cranked the handle that pulled up the pail. She took a ladle from a hook and dipped it full. Instead of drinking it, as Nomad had thought she would, she turned around and filled the offered paper cup of an older, sweat-drenched woman who had followed her out of the brambles and had likewise given her blackberries to the man at the pickup truck. The girl spoke and touched the woman’s arm. The woman’s heavily-lined face smiled, and she nodded at the comment and went to get her food.
Then the next person, a white-haired older man who displayed thick, tattooed forearms after he’d removed his own workshirt, came forward with his offered cup. The girl filled it, and she leaned forward and said something and patted his shoulder, just a quick light touch, and when the man turned around to go get his lunch Nomad thought he could see a boy looking out from the wrinkled face.
“We’re good to go!” George called, wringing the towel out on the ground. Two children about seven or eight years old were standing beside him, monitoring his progress. Their arms were crossed over their chests and their expressions as serious as any lord of the domain.
But Nomad was watching the procession. Between thirty and forty people had come out of the field. They were all ages, from early teens to elderly. All of them were burned dark by the sun, and all of them walked with a weary step until they reached the girl at the well, whose smile and touch seemed to revive them in some way Nomad could not understand.
Their day was most likely only half over. When their lunch was done, they would go back into the brambles. Maybe they kept at it until all the containers were full. Maybe they’d been at it since sunrise. Nomad figured the berries would be driven to a farmer’s market, or to a winery, or somewhere to be processed into jelly or jam. It was a hard day’s work, in anybody’s book. He thought, watching the girl and the people who filed past, that she was giving them more than just the water. A pat on the shoulder here, a touch on the elbow there, a leaning-in, a nod, a comment that urged a laugh. Maybe her real offering was human kindness, he thought, which also quenched thirst.
He knew that, in her own way, she was giving them the strength they needed to keep going.
And the thing was…the thing was…she didn’t pause in her work to get her own drink, though she was surely parched and thirsty like all the others. She had decided she was going to give everyone else their water first, and she would be the last to take one for herself.
Maybe it was just a small sacrifice, on this brutally hot day. Maybe it didn’t mean much, really, but a sacrifice of any kind wasn’t something Nomad saw very often.
“Let’s saddle up, people!” George said, about to climb behind the wheel.
“You guys ready?” Terry asked.
“No,” Nomad answered. “I’m not ready yet.”
He was fascinated by the scene before him. How the girl—maybe fifteen or sixteen?—picked everyone up as they came past her. It seemed so effortless for her, and so important. Everyone got a few seconds of undivided attention. They were not rushed along. Most of them carried their own canteens, or half-empty water bottles pushed into pockets of work-aprons, but it was clear that they wanted—needed, maybe—water from the girl at the well.