Stars Always Shine (5 page)

Place looked at him with surprise and managed a profound “Oh.” He gathered himself and tried again, this time telling himself to concentrate on what he had just learned and felt he should have already known. “Buenas tardes. ¿Cómo estás?” he started out safely, measuring each syllable metronomically.

“Fine. Thank you,” the man answered with a shrilled accent that exuded effort in careful expression as much as response.

Place soured his face in confusion. “Do you speak English?” he asked.

“No. And you?”

“Well, yes,” Place began, and then chuckled nervously as he realized the incipient conversation was not making sense.

The dark man laughed at Place’s twisted face and offered, “I speak little bit English. Poquito.” And he held up a hand with his index finger and thumb narrowly separated to indicate his limited second language. “What you name?” the dark man asked.

“Plácido Moreno,” Place replied with a fine, ornate accent. He reached out toward the man.

“¿Plácido Moreno, eh? Salvador Campos. Mucho gusto.” He accepted Place’s smooth, clean hand with a scabrous and solid grip, and then he invited Place into his home.

The cramped living room had a single couch squatting in it with one of its two cushions missing. One remaining faithful cushion bulged with padding, pushing up through a gushing tear. Next to it, a renegade metal spring spiraled upward from the base of the couch. As Place stepped into the living room, a white tailless cat ricocheted into another part of the house. Straight back from the living room was a small kitchen. There was an old enameled white and rusted stove with a smaller camp stove placed directly on top of it. A small wooden table stood a few feet from the stove, and there was a solitary milk can positioned close to the table to indicate that this was where the diner sat. The limited kitchen window looked out to an unpainted wooden wall which Place would later find out was the side wall to Salvador’s outhouse, as his house had no functional toilet. Rays of light leaked through the roof where the short hallway led to a tiny boxlike bedroom.

Place sat tentatively on the edge of the couch thinking he might become infected by something. He pinched at his nose repeatedly and wiped his upper lip to help his nostrils battle the thick mustiness that hung heavily in the living room. He delivered Jacqueline’s message and waited for Salvador’s response, which was one of understanding as he nodded his head and said, “Sí, yo sé.” The previous owners had already explained the situation to him, and Jacqueline had days earlier tried to reinforce the same message but only in English and with primitive hand signs. He was well aware of his time and his rights, and he told Place this.

Aside from the intended business, Place was as curiously interested in Salvador as Salvador was in him. They asked each other tentative questions about where they came from, where they had been, and where they were going.

Place gave his story first. With intense concentration, he explained in a jerky, bucking Spanish, which Salvador patiently coaxed out of him and corrected, that his parents were from Mexico and he had been born in the Imperial Valley in Southern California. He had nine brothers and sisters who were born in various other valleys and lived in different states. He told Salvador that he had lived in many towns, had gone to many schools, and had picked many types of fruits and vegetables. He also left out many details, not wanting to reveal his entire existence in this initial encounter and not feeling comfortable talking about himself.

Diverting the discussion from himself to Salvador, Place’s first question was an abrupt “¿Eres legal?” He wasn’t sure why he asked this. His own father had never taken the time to become a legal citizen of the United States, and the family never concerned themselves with the issue. It was something everyone, including labor contractors, took for granted or didn’t want to know about in the first place. Citizenship was not a prerequisite to doing work that legal citizens did not want to do or felt by their birthright that they should not have to do.

Salvador recognized that Place could be Mexican; his name indicated that. But Salvador could see and hear that Place was distinctly more American. And as the opposition of thoughts collided in his mind, Salvador wondered if he could trust Place. The Mexican part of Place merited cultural and ethnic allegiance. The American part of Place could bring with it uglier things, the things many Americans felt about immigrants and immigration, like meddling officiousness, misguided indignation, and maybe even meaningless envy.

Salvador looked at Place dubiously. He wondered who this culturally filtered and watered-down Mexican was. He knew only too well that Americans employed legal Hispanics to work for them as spies for la migra. But it also did not make sense that Place asked a single individual. It was always preferable to catch a whole bunch of illegals—like trapping rabbits—and then set them free in the wilderness of their own country where they belonged.

“No. Soy ilegal,” Salvador answered unflinchingly, looking at Place with recalcitrant eyes.

“¿Mojado, huh?” Place responded.

“¡No!” Salvador said, adding a tone of denial to his expression. “Mojado, no. Alambrado.”

Place was bewildered. From his prior knowledge, as he had been told his father had done, he assumed that the illegal point of entrance for those who migrated south to north was made by swimming across the river; that was how the term “wet” or “wetback” was explained to him by older brothers. He had also assumed that even if someone crossed into the United States through California, Arizona, or parts of New Mexico where there is no river to wet one’s back, there was still a wetness or aspect of being mojado and thereby illegal.

Salvador, understanding the jumbled expression his response created, read Place’s confusion. He explained to him that if one crosses over into Arizona, say, as he had, one would have to cross over, under, or through a wire fence or a fence made of alambre. So the correct term was
alambrado.
Once he prepositionally made it past the wire fence, Salvador told Place as he shifted his explanation to the story of his arriving, there were miles and miles of desert to cross, and the crossing had to be made on “la carretera del diablo,” the dangerous Devil’s Highway. “Es muy peligroso,” he warned Place as if some day he would take such a journey. He saw human skeletons in the desert as he worked his way to a secret meeting point where he was transported north in the trailer of a furniture truck with a few dozen other paisanos. Three flesh-baked and thirsty days later, he was in Washington state picking apples. From Washington, the truck smuggled the work crew down to Oregon, and from Oregon down to the Sacramento Valley and then over to the abundant vineyards of Sonoma county.

In Mexico, Salvador continued as he wound his way backwards with a brief autobiography, he had worked with his family’s few cattle and attended school when he was not attending to his devoted mother and useless father. But he did finish his education all the way through the eighth grade, he added with a flourish of pride. And sensing that Place or most people who looked at him saw only an ignorant immigrant, Salvador stated, “No soy estúpido. No más tengo la cara.”

Salvador laughed and waited for Place to understand his joke. Salvador also revealed that he had worked at racetracks near the frontera because the border and what lay north of it interested him. He slept in stalls and cared for horses whose lives seemed to be worth more than his own. He knew horses, but he did not know the other side of the fence. On the day he thought was his birthday—he wasn’t sure about the exact day, and he really was only close on his exact age, but time was abstract and subjective anyway, he explained, and much more of a concern to Americanos as was money—he made the crossing with a memorable hangover, a modest savings, a jug of water, and a package of corn tortillas.

One day when he was walking back to his culvert that ran under a bridge and into Miwok Creek, and which was home to him and a few others, Salvador exhibited to the owners of Thundering Thoroughbreds Ranch his talent with horses when he caught a high-strung thoroughbred that had escaped, and rode it onto the ranch bareback using his belt as a halter. He left the culvert for the small help house which he shared with three other ranch hands and worked full-time and year round.

He didn’t want to leave the ranch that had been his home for almost two years. He didn’t want to go back to Mexico, but he had no idea where he would be going. He told Place that he had petitioned Jacqueline and Mickey for work by gesticulating shoveling motions, raking movements, and lifting pantomimes, but they declined the request. Then he scoffed and predicted that Jacqueline and Mickey would not be able to run the ranch successfully. He could see it in their movements. Their movements were awkward, too slow and stiff, and they didn’t know as much about the land as the animals did. They were like lost foreigners. He added emphatically, “¡Aquí,
ellos
son ilegales!”

“But what about your family?” Place choppily asked with Salvador’s linguistic assistance.

“¿Mi familia? No tengo familia. Hermanos y hermanas, sí, en México, pero no tengo esposa ni hijos,” Salvador explained as he threw in an editorial comment on the challenging economics of having a family. “Esposa y niños cuestan mucho. No más tengo mi gatita.” He then asked who would be working on the ranch, and when Place told him only himself and Mitch, he presumed that there would be no horses on the property.

But yes, there would be horses, Place told him. The owners wanted to fill all of those empty pastures. A monthly mortgage had to be met. StarRidge Ranch was destined to be a working and bustling horse ranch just as it had been in its previous life.

Salvador explained that in that case, the ranch would need more workers. The work required could not be done by only a couple of full-time ranch hands—no matter how industrious they were. The irrigation alone took up to three hours because of the necessity of moving and setting the water hoses; sometimes a hose would burst holes that needed to be patched. And the hoses that came with the ranch when the Kittles purchased it were well past their prime. Sprinklers and couplers had to be reattached or repaired with regularity. And then there was the daily mucking out of stalls. The barns needed to be cleaned, and the waterers needed to be scrubbed and disinfected at least once a week. Horses had to be moved to other pastures or to holding pens for one reason or another, especially when the rains came and there were horses in those lower pastures out back—they would flood. Occasionally a horse needed to be held for a vet or a shoer. Other occasions required that pastures be turned and replanted or they became overgrazed and the weak grass would have no nutritional value. Weeds had to be sprayed. Not to mention the general upkeep of the landscaping—look at how bad the lawns were—and the usual fixing of things always used up the valuable hours of a work day. No, this ranch could not be effectively worked by someone merely infatuated with labor. And even if you think you are holding up well to the demands, it takes its toll. It runs a man down. It slowly breaks his spirit. That’s why it is so hard to find reliable workers. This type of work forces you to look for something else. To move on. Only those who are desperate and illegal can manage. And quite often, the desperate become confident and find something easier, and the illegal go home.

Place was stunned. He hadn’t realized what was required to make a setting so pastoral looking. Doesn’t Mother Nature take care of most of those things? he wondered naively. Then he remembered that Salvador had not even referred to all of the painting that Jacqueline and Mickey wanted done. He bid Salvador a good evening and with a nervous concern walked up to the faded ranch house.

T
here are always cats on a ranch. Ranch cats survive well enough on their own. They are adept in their masterly ways when they hunt for mice in barns and crouch patiently with the silence of an assassin, waiting to pounce on gophers that push up through the earth. They are a low-maintenance animal, hearty as the land and deft as a secret breeze.

Salvador’s little cat, Gatita, was quite able as a hunter, but she was different, as cats go, in her companionship. Her markings were unusual, as she was mostly white with black splotches on her underside. Her chin was streaked with a black stripe that traveled down her neck and ended where her legs began. On her head she wore a spattered cap of black. But what was really unique about this cat is that she followed Salvador around as a dog follows its master. She heeled without being taught how to do so. She even seemed to walk like Salvador, taking the same quick, deliberate strides that did not waste time when work was abundant and the day always seemed too short. With Salvador, she did not display that aloof and coy lack of concern that most cats tease their owners with. While Salvador worked in a pasture or cleaned a barn, Gatita waited close by, often sunning herself in the sleep-inducing solar light or stretching thin and licking herself clean. When anybody approached, she would slither off into hiding, but she always remained in close proximity, watching Salvador.

The morning after Place and Mitch had settled into their new home, Salvador told Place the story of his Gatita as he offered a walking tour of the ranch. Place listened attentively, even though he was distracted and mildly depressed about losing Rosa. Salvador had saved his little cat after almost stepping on her when he had found her in a barn one cold morning. Her eyes were newly opened, and she pushed along the ground trying to go where only destiny led. He laughed when he said that she moved more like a sea turtle on a beach. Her small legs were limp, and crawling was still beyond the scope of her development. Salvador searched for a mother. He listened for mewing babies that might signal that it was time to be fed. He called out the high-shrilled and rapid cry that some cats respond to. He asked others if they knew who this kitten could belong to, and he found himself holding a tiny creature who had no mother and no tail.

During his lunch break that day, Salvador rode his bicycle to the little market down the road and purchased some milk. He placed the milk in a bowl, and the bowl in a box with the weak kitten. Gatita did not have the instinct to lick the milk from the bowl because she would still be suckling from a mother’s teat if one were available. That evening as Gatita lay helpless, Salvador made an urgent trip to a farther but much bigger store and purchased a baby bottle. He carefully held the little cat in one hand as he poked the nipple toward her mouth. The nipple of the baby bottle was too big for Gatita’s puckered mouth, but she managed to take some fluid in while most of it ran down her face and neck. One day, as Salvador was administering a healthy shot to a sick horse, he looked at the large syringe as he slowly pushed the medicine down through it and into the needle. Struck with ingenuity, he imagined the syringe without the needle dispensing a controlled dose of milk to his baby cat. Before work, after work, and during his lunch break, Salvador nurtured his kitten with a syringe of milk. She grew quickly, maturing into a competent mouser and an even more capable companion.