“Why are you laughing?” Claire said, sickened.
“The air was scented with coffee for days and days. No one slept for a week. We inhaled caffeine with each breath.”
“So I should burn down the tree? Or fire you? To pacify them?”
Minna turned her lip down, moody. “When I was a girl, our workers would get restless every year or so. Father said you could set the calendar by it. They would get lazy, threaten him with their demands. Then he watched a few days and picked out the one others listened to. He used a whip on him and made the rest watch. That broke their fever, and they would be peaceful and docile again for a whole year.”
Claire couldn’t bear to hear any more. “We don’t do uncivilized things like that. Go inside now.”
But Minna lingered at the porch railing, looking out at the fast-fading light. “Perhaps they will hurt me. Or you. Or worse.”
“No one will hurt us. Octavio will get to the bottom of it.”
“I’m scared,” Minna said, but she did not look scared.
“Get inside.” It was Claire who was now terrified.
“Octavio hates me after what happened with Paz. He says obscene things to me when you aren’t around. You don’t know him.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before?” Claire said, accusing.
“You wouldn’t believe me.”
“I’m tired. I don’t know what to believe anymore.”
“Men are men. It seemed harmless. Letting out his anger. I decided not to do anything to keep the peace.”
“Really?” Claire said. “Is that the way it really happened, or are you maybe just exaggerating?”
“He told lies to the other men. To turn them against me. Against you. Lies about us.”
“None of this is your fault?”
As they argued, Octavio’s pickup pulled up to the house, and her answer was lost.
He stopped and peered out the windshield at the porch, took in the sight of Claire, distraught, in the rocking chair, and Minna balanced on the railing, one leg over the banister, a foot curled around the rung. He set his mouth, got out of the car, slamming the loose door, and took heavy, defeated steps toward them. Not until this last encounter had he understood that Claire, too, was afraid of this girl. But once again, he was helpless to intervene.
He glanced warily at Minna, and she smiled back at him as if to a lost friend.
Claire worried what Minna might do. “Get inside.”
“But I should offer—”
“Get inside!”
Octavio nodded at her exit and sat down on the lowest step of the porch, facing toward the orchards. This was only a show of control on Claire’s part. The girl would get what she wanted.
“Sit up here,” Claire said, but he waved her off. She knew that moment that she had lost him.
“I do fine here.”
“What happened out there?” she asked. Surprised when he shrugged and then chuckled.
“The men, one of them, Bernie, his car is stolen. Salvador, his wife run away. Easier to blame a tree for bad luck. They are just simple men from a country full of these superstitions.”
“They attacked us.”
“Her. You were in the way. They say she is from island where witches are. They say her black skin is maleficio. That she is a slave to the devil.”
Claire could hardly sit, head and heart and stomach filled as if she would break apart. “That’s disgusting.”
“They are cruel, but that is their feeling.”
“Are you leaving?”
When Claire first ran the place alone, Forster told her that the workers might not take orders from a woman. They would smile and joke but not obey. She had been proud of her bond with Octavio, thought it was beyond simple worker and boss. Over the years, they had formed, if not an equal at least a candid friendship. His attitude now made her feel betrayed.
“I don’t care how they feel. They work for me. When they are on my property, I will not have any person attacked, do you understand?”
“Entiendo, but it makes no difference,” he said, looking down at his thick hands, strong as small shovels. “Why didn’t you stop her?” He pressed his palms together as if in supplication, certainly not to her, but to whatever power was making him sit there and suffer unjustly on those porch steps. Maybe this was the excuse he finally needed to return to Mexico?
“Why do they hate her so?”
“She cursed the ranch. They say she has dropped blood from between her legs onto the dirt.”
“And what do you think?”
“I cannot stay. They no longer trust me. If I don’t stand up for them, I lose their respect. Then I am useless to you.”
Claire’s head was spinning, changes occurring so drastically she couldn’t imagine. Octavio predated Claire, Forster, all of them. “I want you to fire every man on the ranch. Because you’ve allowed this poison to fester, and all of them are contaminated. I can’t trust them. Do you understand?”
“Claro.”
“Everyone will be paid a month’s salary. Because it’s unfair, the circumstances. I also want you gone.”
He wiped his face and looked calmer now, relieved. There was no turning back for either of them.
As he got up to leave, Claire hesitated to reach out her hand. End their relationship by shaking hands, after all these years? Unthinkable to hug him. Minna would be watching from a window. Claire felt a galling spike of pride that Minna would see herself defended. Would Claire be the first person to offer her such unconditional loyalty?
“I will miss you, my friend.”
He stood and remained silent for a moment, then walked to his truck. His heart was so full of things to say that of course he could say none of then. “Ten cuidado, be careful,” he said, then jumped into the truck’s cab and pulled away.
* * *
Claire moved as if underwater, grabbed a broom, and swiped at the wooden porch, stunned at the breaking of ties in a few minutes that had bound the farm together for decades. How quickly things could be destroyed. It all felt out of control. She had never intended to lose Octavio, and especially now when she could not afford to consider things outside and apart from her own body. His leaving felt like an amputation. Tears stung, but she had had no choice. The awful truth was she could less afford losing Minna. How treacherous one became in time of need.
* * *
The evening continued on its path, cruelly oblivious in its loveliness. Only Claire was estranged. The pepper trees on each side of the driveway bowed inward, the long trails of spiked leaves touching earth. Light daubed the mountaintops with pink, but she was in no mood to enjoy it. A heavy trail of orange and lemon mixed with the astringent of eucalyptus and the dull smell of dirt: the perfume of home. A squawking in the nearby grove revealed the wobbly, fluttering flight of a covey of wild parrots as they searched the unguarded fruit trees for their dinner. She loved this spot of earth more than anywhere else, yet for all her efforts she couldn’t keep it still, unchanged, its inhabitants free of harm.
Minna came out of the house, meek, testing Claire’s temper. She hummed a tune to herself and picked leaves off the wooden steps. “He’s gone?”
“Satisfied?”
She walked over and knelt at Claire’s feet, hugging her so tightly that the bones of her knees pressed against each other, causing pain. “No one ever loved me more than something else.”
Claire’s heart gave in just the slightest, although her words still came out harshly. “Because I fired a man unjustly?”