Stars Always Shine (11 page)

He would ride his bicycle to Grange Hall early the morning of the interview and do some sleuthing. He grew excited from the anticipation and intrigue. And then he wondered how he would show current employment.

“I took care of that this afternoon too,” Mitch explained. “It’s nice when your friends owe you things. He’ll have this letter confirming that he’s employed at Paul Legarrata’s cattle ranch down in the south county. It’s nicely written for an old cowman.”

“Not bad for a Davis grad, huh?” Mitch asked after reading the letter out loud.

Salvador was pleased. Mitch and Place told him not to worry and to be prepared for the interview. Salvador asked them what they thought the chances were of his obtaining a green card. Even though Mitch and Place were not sure, they both felt good about it. Mitch’s research had turned up information that showed flaws in the system. There would be a certain amount of judging going on in the interviews. Green cards were not going to be handed out purely on the presentation of objective answers and proof-yielding documents. In Mitch’s experience, this created an open field of possibilities. Presence and attitude could mean as much as hard evidence. The new law was creating a mass of workers who were willing to chance coming forth to claim at once that they were paradoxically in this country illegally and wished to remain legally. There was a huge demand for their cheap, productive labor, and certainly there would be a degree of confusion at Grange Hall that day.

The morning of the interview as Salvador mounted his bicycle, Place approached him to explain a slight change in plans. Mitch and Place had agreed that riding his bike could be too time consuming for Salvador and that it could create potential snags. The plan was based on timing and strategy, and since Salvador often paid little regard to traditional time as marked by a calendar and clock, that element was paramount and could not be tested. Another reason—an emotionally significant reason for Place—was that he would feel better if he could accompany Salvador to Grange Hall. Both men were nervous and apprehensive, and as they climbed into the pickup truck they grew sweaty and silent. Mitch advised Place, who sat in the middle, to take long, deep breaths and to tell Salvador to do the same. Outside the Hall there were dozens of men standing in front of the building. The parking lot was full, and many men leaned against cars. Others parked across the street and paced like expectant fathers. Some squatted in circles, drawing meaningless lines in the dirt and looking like kids in a huddle playing sandlot football. Place and Salvador stood off to one side by a small grove of eucalyptus trees observing the crowd and listening for bits of meaningful conversation. The Grange was still closed, but the buzz of news was that numbers would be drawn as soon as the doors opened. Salvador waited as a long line formed. He got in line behind a few familiar faces—workers whom he had seen around the county or at the park or who frequented the Boot Hill Bar where many went for overpriced drinks and paid for female companionship.

He asked many questions of some individuals who emerged from Grange Hall after their interviews. The most important discovery he made was that none of the interviewers was a native speaker of Spanish. It was turning out that communication was not as smooth as the planners and administrators had expected it to be. Those appealing for residency cards spoke a rapid-fire, staccato Spanish. Those who were interviewing and granting the cards could absorb only so much Spanish at a time. There would be many slow starts and enunciated restarts with questions and answers. Many men told Salvador that they had to help the interviewers with the questions they needed to ask. Salvador thought this could work in his favor, or, if the interviewer was not patient, it could work against him. He emerged from Grange Hall with his number and found Mitch and Place waiting for him. As they drove back to StarRidge Ranch, Mitch listened as Place explained, and countered each statement with a comment or piece of advice.

After further deliberation, Mitch, through Place, told Salvador to get ready for the interview. She sent Place to accompany Salvador to his small house to help him pick out something appropriate to wear. From a cardboard box, Salvador pulled out a fairly new pair of jeans—at least they were clean and not too faded, with very few holes. He also grabbed a clean T-shirt. The rest of the box contained assorted socks, briefs, T-shirts, and a hooded Sonoma State University sweatshirt. When Place asked Salvador where the rest of his clothes were, he pointed to his cardboard box. Since Salvador’s house had running water only in the kitchen sink, Mitch and Place advised him to take a shower in their home.

As Salvador showered, Mitch handed Place one of his good shirts and told him to hang it in the bathroom. She took a pair of Place’s dress shoes—hardly worn because Place did not dress up for many functions—wiped the dust off them, and instructed her husband to deposit them in the bathroom too.

Salvador was sweating nervously as he squeezed his wide foot into Place’s dress shoes. He tucked in his shirt and combed his hair straight back. Place knocked on the bathroom door. In his concern for things to proceed smoothly, he thought about the times he was getting ready to make his first Holy Communion or confirmation or graduating from high school and his mother instructed and waited in urgent anticipation. Salvador opened the door slowly and shyly, feeling awkward in the shiny black shoes and crisp, clean shirt.

“Wow!” Place exclaimed, “¡Sua-ve-ci-to, hombre! Estás listo para ser americano,” and he smiled widely.

Salvador blushed, wondering if indeed he was ready to become an American, and shifted uneasily. Mitch came to the bathroom door, seeming a bit nervous herself and trying to conceal it. She looked at Salvador and with her hands made fists with both thumbs up. “We’re ready. I’m going to drive him down there. You can start on the fence so we don’t fall behind in our chores. Tell him not to be nervous. He’s going to do fine.”

Mitch was back in minutes. She walked over to where Place was painting the long stretch of fence where it bordered Sweet Wine Road. As she approached, he could see that her face showed a concern that seemed to drain her expression of the sure confidence that he was so used to in her, and had never felt in himself. She could see in her husband the gloom he felt at the prospect of losing his new friend. Salvador was reminding Place and reteaching him the things that were culturally, genetically—essentially—his, but that he had lost through the process of assimilation in becoming more American than Mexican. Salvador had helped Place learn to speak Spanish more fluently, and he had even explained figurative meanings of what Place was considering his new language. When Place wanted to get the cracked windshield of his truck fixed, Salvador agreed it needed to be replaced because it was “estrellado.” Place, asking for a clearer pronunciation of the word, learned from Salvador that the windshield was “estrellado como las estrellas en la noche,” and he could see that indeed the dark night was cracked by the bright stars. Once when Salvador wanted to take a mid-morning break, he informed Place that he was only going to eat enough “para engañar a la tripa,” or just enough to deceive the intestines. On another occasion when Place asked Salvador why he was often late for dinner or other social events, Salvador explained that time was not as concrete as American thinking made it appear. Salvador was on Mexican time, and dinner at six meant dinner
sometime
around six. It could be six-thirty or even seven, and that should not be a problem. Place responded that he had often heard some students in college joke that they were on Chicano time. More than anything, Salvador had reminded Place about the dignity of work, that there was something honorable about the work they were doing, even if it was often dirty and hard work. It was nothing to be embarrassed about. It was productive. And that was more than could be said about many people.

Place took long, slow, sweeping strokes of his brush, the whiteness of the paint transforming the dull, chipped fence to a glossy newness. Mitch looked over the green pastures of StarRidge Ranch and thought about the men who stood outside Grange Hall waiting for a new life. She thought about Salvador, who was the best dressed one in his odd ensemble of new shirt and shoes and worn jeans, and her thoughts turned to guilt and confusion. A significant part of why the county could boast its world-famous wines was because of the labor of men like Salvador. These ranchers and farmers wouldn’t be able to stay in business if they had to do it by themselves. Most natural-born citizens wouldn’t stoop to the level of work that these men did. None of these allegedly hard-working country people would profit much beyond personal subsistence if they didn’t have the help of the thousands that left their homeland each year for the almighty harvest season, or to work a spread for a few bucks an hour. It was always justified by the natives as an offer of something better than where these people came from. It actually justified their exploitation. And now, to offer this promise of residency with this new law. Mitch felt that deep within the labyrinth of local and state legislation there was some dirty dealing going on. A lot of favors were being exchanged, and her reprobation led her to consider the way she conducted some of her own business. The snarl of ideas forced her to grope for allowance and forgiveness. She told herself that she was resigned, even forced, by men in a man’s world to go along with this approach to be even moderately successful. But she knew too that the way wasn’t always a straight one, and she thought to herself, In today’s world, you can’t be a crusader. You’re constantly rationalizing things to yourself just so you can sleep at night.

“Your expression is a thoughtful one,” Place said softly as he dipped his paintbrush in the tray of paint. “Maybe even a conscience one. Or is it conscious? I get those two words mixed up.”

Mitch did not answer as she thought about how the right things were not necessarily done the right way. She felt stuck. She was bound by certain laws and regulations, but all it took was a good vocabulary and the sound and appearance of conviction in what you’re arguing to switch things all around. To make things look like their opposites. To make the guilty look like victims and the victims like perpetrators. With this new immigration law, temporary legal status for one produced legal slavery for someone else. Things were so contrived because the bottom line meant so much. Profit in one place came from loss somewhere else, and it wasn’t financially, either. Mitch drew concentric circles in the ground with the toe of her boot. “What’s that word you were explaining to me the other day when we were talking about Salvador?”

“Parejo. It means to be honest, honorable, and on even terms with someone. That one word connotes a lot. But my understanding of the word, especially when I hear it in songs, is that there is a strong mutual respect between friends, lovers, and peers. Being parejo allows for genuine communication, even in silence. Being parejo means sincerity in relationships. Being parejo means together, like walls of resolve, you’ll hold a roof of security over each other. You and I are parejo. And we’re parejo with Salvador, and he with us.”

For Mitch, this was a difficult concept to grasp. It was beyond her ability to believe and trust in anybody else. Frustration steeped in her mind like the percolating water of a geyser, and usually she circumvented this through fumaroles of strategic relief. But now something was different, and she wasn’t sure what it was. Mitch stared at the white lines left by Place’s painting strokes. Her eyes followed the fence as it ran west along Sweet Wine Road, and then she watched the road as it narrowed into the horizon past farms and ranches with postcard facades. “I’m going in to start dinner. We’re going to have a big supper for Salvador tonight to celebrate.”

“What if he doesn’t make it?” Place asked with a crack in his voice.

“Then it will be a last supper,” Mitch answered as she walked away.

Salvador walked the last right angle as he neared StarRidge Ranch. The cool late-afternoon breeze swept his hair back and made his sweating head feel a little better. For the first time he noticed how refreshing it felt. In the truck, Place pumped the gas pedal as he wondered how Salvador had done. He saw Salvador’s small, distant figure grow bigger as the truck approached him. Place looked to see if he could detect an expression, either happy or sad, in Salvador’s face as he pulled up to his friend. Salvador shook his head from side to side looking serious, then waved his hand in the air, holding a plastic coated card.

“¡Me dieron un green card!” he shouted as he ran up to Place.

Place sat stunned for a few seconds, and then jumped out of the pickup and hugged his friend hugely and shook his hand hard. “Let me see,” he said as he reached for the card.

The residency card had Salvador’s picture on it, and an expiration date that allowed him to work for five years without having to hide or lie or feel alien. The small print said it could be renewed providing the holder of the card remained an upstanding citizen. Of course, the card did grant Salvador a new name, but it was sufficient and nobody else would know.

During dinner, Mitch and Place wanted to hear the whole story. Salvador narrated that it was not a difficult interview at all. The interviewers only spoke Spanish a little better than Place, maybe, and he suggested that Place might find a job as an interviewer. Salvador’s fingerprints were taken and checked, and when he had to explain the name of the criminal Camilo, things became a little tense. But really, his response and his answer to the stated age on the slightly edited birth certificate were well received. The letter of recommendation that Salvador proudly submitted, created positive head nods that showed that things looked to be in order. Most of the men who were interviewed were granted residency cards that day, Salvador explained. They had to be. There are more and more grapes being planted in this county; they need us, he told Mitch and Place.