Send Down the Rain(18)

While we stood there snooping around, a forty-person yellow school bus swung wide in front of the trailer park and slowed to a stop, followed by a massive backfire. I felt the sweat trickle down my back and tried to focus on a single spot.

It was too late. My head was already spinning.

Seventy-odd people wiggled out of that bus. All shapes, sizes, and ages. Men. Women. Children. They scattered to some thirty different trailers. Most carried machetes. As the crowd thinned, a short, stocky man with an ear-to-ear smile ran toward us and then hugged Catalina, who was hugging him back. He looked to be in his early thirties. Dark, tanned skin. Hardened hands. When he shook my hand, the meat in his palm told me he had never been a stranger to hard work.

They laughed, hugged again, and talked excitedly. A thousand words a minute. Moments into their conversation, his face turned serious. The two began nodding and she spoke in hushed tones, talking as much with her hands and pointing at me. Finally, Diego showed Manuel the knife hanging on his belt. Manuel looked at me, then back at Catalina, and she nodded.

Manuel took off his straw cap and spoke in broken English. “Gracias, mi amigo. For mi familia.” He paused, trying to find the English. “Must you please stay for dinner.”

Catalina said Manuel had been in and out of this trailer for several years. He rented it depending upon harvest. We were lucky to catch him, as the crops around here were about picked and he was a day or two from leaving with some of the other men for Texas and Louisiana.

I walked behind the truck and sat on the tailgate with Rosco. He wanted out of the bed of the truck, but given the umpteen dogs running around, I figured he was better with me. He thumped the edge of the truck bed with his tail and whined in my ear.

At one of the fire sites, several women started making tortillas. Off to one side, a man was carving strips of meat off a side of beef. The beef had been freshly butchered; it was still draining blood. The man’s hands were red up to the elbows and the meat pink and crimson.

While Catalina talked with Manuel, Rosco and I watched from the stable safety of the tailgate. Diego and Gabby played with several other kids who, as best I could understand, were second or third cousins once or twice removed. At a second fire a few feet away, a woman poured half a five-gallon bucket of peanut oil into a large pot and set it on the side of the fire to warm.

The kids, now about a dozen in total, began kicking a soccer ball. Around the fire. A large man, bare-chested and muscular, stepped out of the trailer next to us and spoke in a harsh, rapid tone to the kids. Pointing his finger. While the kids moved their game off to the side, he walked to a woodpile between our two trailers and, swinging his machete, began chopping bigger limbs into smaller and placing them in a pile next to the fire. He worked at a fast and determined pace. At one point, a few of the chips flew over and into the bed of the truck. I stretched out, closed my eyes, and tried to imagine the taste of the fajitas.

Around me swirled rapid conversation in Spanish, the occasional waft of the outhouse when the wind swirled, the rhythmic echo of wood being chopped, and the sight of the butchered cow. I was dangerously close to needing to leave.

In truth, I was beyond that.

In a few short moments, the park had transformed from a silent and empty mud hole to a thriving, noisy community. Everybody had a job and knew what it was without being told. Behind me the chopping continued. Across from me the butcher was boning out the ribs off the beef. Blood covered his hands like gloves. I lay back, counted kids, adults, dogs, flamingos. I pulled the mint ChapStick from my pocket and covered my lips and the edges of my nostrils. Just across the fire sat the elderly blind woman. I slipped a card from my pocket and studied her features. Cataracts. Hunched shoulders. Crow’s feet. Gnarled hands. Toothless gums. Bowlegs. Stained apron. She was a study in mileage.

A soccer ball rolled into the vicinity of the fire, bounced off the pot of peanut oil, sloshing it, and then rolled toward my truck. Gabby, who was faster than most and that included many of the boys, followed it. Barefooted. She bounced past the peanut oil, nudging the pot, and then hopped over one side of the fire en route to the back of my truck to retrieve the ball. The chopping behind me stopped but not the noise. The muscular man behind me turned toward Gabby, pointed at her, and began speaking loudly and with greater emphasis and irritation. Then he moved toward her with great speed. Gabby picked up the ball and froze, her eyes growing wide. She tried to dodge him but he hooked her with a massive arm and snatched her up, and she dropped the ball. He lifted her so fast, her hair whipped back and forth from the movement. He spoke with animation and irritation.

Then I heard Gabby cry.

A few moments later, I found myself lying on the ground between the trailers with that big man between my arms. He was limp. A rag doll. A group of men had circled me, each wielding a machete pointed at me. But standing over me was a woman—holding a machete—and pointing it at all of them. Speaking loudly and in a language that was not mine.

Coming out of it is always tough. A few seconds of knowing nothing. The only thing I knew to do was keep my mouth shut and wait. Eventually the fog would clear. And in the meantime, don’t let go of whatever I had hold of. I may not remember why I was holding it, but at one time I must have had a good reason. I shook my head, my eyes focused on both Gabby and Diego, who were standing behind the old woman, looking at me. The limp man in my arms was breathing, and blood trickled out of a busted lip. I sat up, looked around at all those people looking at me. Catalina had straddled me and was speaking fast and forcibly in Spanish, pointing that machete at all those men.