A So-Called Vacation (13 page)

Yet once they reached the town limits, their mother made one last pitch for togetherness. “Boys, are you sure you wouldn't rather see a movie? After all, the water in that pool isn't going anywhere.”

“Actually, it is,” said Paula. “I hear they drain the pool Sunday nights.”

“Why is that?”

“It has something to do with migrants swimming there on the weekend,” said Paula. “I guess people of color turn the water a little dingy.”

“At least they time it right,” said their father with the same cynical tone. “They start the week with clean water and let it get dirty. Then they let the
raza
come in and put the finishing touch, the ring around the rim. That's what the Anglos used to do back home when I was a kid.”

“Dad,” said Gabriel, “you're not talking your way out of this one.”

“I'm not trying to. I'm just saying that maybe the movies are a better choice.” Yet underneath the feigned
concern in his voice was a hint of someone attempting reverse psychology, knowing that the boys would do the opposite.

“Mom, Dad,” Gabriel corrected them, “down here in the sticks they call them
pitcher
shows.”

“It's a double feature,” said his mother.

“You know why? Because neither one's a first run.”

“If they're showing the same ones from the last time we were in town—” Gus started to say.

“You know they are,” said Gabriel.

“Then I already saw both back home,” said Gus, “way back during spring break. I'm not sitting through that again.” He turned to Paula. “Look, I'll save you some money and tell you how it ends.”

“Don't you dare! I'm in the mood for a movie and no one's going to ruin it. Any good, old-fashioned picture show will do. I'd even go see one of those old silent movies. I spent every day in that harsh sun and every night listening to you guys whining. Now I'm going to chill out in some air conditioning, like a bat in a dark cave.” Her anticipation was so vivid that she revealed the gooseflesh on her arms.

She was also hoping to get under her older brother's skin, and the tactic proved so enticing that he ended up arguing back. “I'll bet she's meeting her Borrado boyfriend in the theater,” he told Gabriel.

“I don't blame her. What girl would want to be seen with him in broad daylight? Anyway, he shouldn't be hard to find. He's so pale he glows in the dark.”

“Actually,” she replied, “you guys are more likely to bump into them. Maybe you can even race a few laps against them. Just for practice.” She squeezed Gabriel's left bicep before he had a chance to make it taut. “You
know, to start getting in shape for the championship round.”

After shopping for swimming trunks and leaving the women in front of the theater lobby, their father drove Gabriel and Gus to the pool. He was about to pull away when Gus reminded him, “Didn't you say you'd wait for us?”

“I think I'll find a watering hole of my own.”

“Remember,” Gabriel called out from the other side of the turnstile. “It's not quite noon yet. Maybe the bars aren't open.”

“Yeah, Dad, don't get all paranoid and think they're trying to keep you out.”

The pool water was still a few degrees short of tepid, so they sat on the edge and dipped their legs to acclimate. Gus seemed anxious to dive in, but for the time being Gabriel was content to paddle his legs in the water the same as in the canal.

“Say, Gus, I see the Borrados over there.” He tuned out his brother's mumbled curses, and for a moment he almost felt like a member of an exclusive country club.

“Well, I don't want them around us, so ignore them. Come on, let's start a little action around here.”

“What's the hurry? Let's get the lay of the land first.”

“What for? I've got everyone here figured out.” He pointed out the assorted Anglo cliqués, as well as the smaller clusters of migrant kids. “Just remember the first rule of psy ops. Don't let your enemy control the field of battle. Put him on the defensive.”

“Since when have Anglos been your enemies? We're not here to fight, Gus. We're here to have a good time.”

“Exactly,” he said and dived in.

Gabriel slipped into the shallow end while Gus wasted no time challenging two Anglo teens as tall as he to a lap
race. When they gave him the once-over and turned him down with disdain, he started to ask again, but the lifeguard chirped his whistle and motioned him to keep quiet. Gabriel and Gus looked at one another across the water and wondered with simultaneous shrugs why, in the midst of the pool's commotion, he had been singled out.

Soon Gus recovered his self-confidence and swam over to a small gaggle of local girls. Gabriel, still by the shallow end, couldn't make out the conversation, but noticed when the oldest girl began playfully splashing Gus, he responded with a cautious splash of his own.

“Quit it!” she laughed.

Suddenly the lifeguard blew his whistle again, harder this time, as several migrant kids ducked underwater, leaving only hanks of shiny black hair on the surface. Even the Borrados, sitting along the edge, wrapped their towels around their thin frames like roosting bats.

“Hey! I'm talking to you!” The lifeguard pointed straight at Gus, then at a sign beside the diving board. “Can't you read?”

Gus grinned at the girls, then at the lifeguard. “Sure. You need someone to read it for you?”

It was a sophomoric retort, one that the towheaded young man could have defused easily with another reprimand. Instead he plodded along the rim of the pool and nearly slipped twice, which only made him madder. He reached Gus, who was still smiling and oblivious to his rage.

“You're out of here!”

“Hey, guy, take it—”

“Right now!”

At that moment, one of the migrant boys who had come up for air assessed the situation and promptly dove under again.

“Right now!” he repeated. “Or I'm calling the cops!”

Gus pushed himself out from the pool in a single thrust. The guard must have been expecting a slight migrant like the Borrados, because when the glistening dark body hunkered in front of him, his fear eroded the little reason he had left. “I don't want any trouble. Just get your things and get out.”

“Why? I just got here.”

“Can't you read?”

Gabriel held his breath, afraid that his brother would repeat the silly reply. He did not, but the damage had already been done. “You mean the stuff about horseplay? Look, I took lifeguard lessons too—”

His remark, less a boast than an attempt to find common ground, only led to the Anglo turning on his heels and waddling away.

Gus took his towel and walked straight to the exit without a word and looked straight ahead. When the lifeguard saw Gabriel follow him, he did not even bother adding that the expulsion did not apply to him. For their part the girls who had been talking to Gus now basked in their reflected infamy, utterly indifferent to the injustice.

For a time, both brothers roamed the town like two mutes, in an inseparable and silent suffering. But it was still early afternoon—Gabriel figured his mother and sister were still watching the first feature—so he suggested getting a bite to eat.

Gus, still gnawing at his humiliation, could only answer with a cliché: “How can you think of food at a time like this?”

“How can you think of anything else? We haven't eaten all day.”

When hunger finally got the better of Gus, he wondered aloud whether the restaurants only served Anglos.

“There's one way to find out,” said Gabriel. “At least they'll turn us away before taking our money.”

“What about there?” Gus pointed to a fast-food place. “After what we've been eating, it'll be like a four-star restaurant.”

They both devoured their burgers and fries, even as Gus looked over his shoulder a time or two, suspecting that someone might ask them to leave. Gabriel was right, though it was the closest to a back-home meal they had eaten in a long time. Their mother tried her best, but she lacked the little extras like napkins and ice, sometimes even the basics like enough chairs or a sturdy table.

The best part was that no one bothered them. The workers, mostly Anglos, were courteous. After placing a second order, Gus even considered hoarding an additional order of fries for the road. Gabriel talked him out of it, pointing out that they would turn soggy by the time they returned to camp. In the end, they settled for refilling their soft drinks with plenty of ice.

Having nothing to do until the double feature was over, they window-shopped along Main Street to walk off their meals. This time, with a full stomach and a more pleasant encounter with the locals, Gabriel had a more positive view of the place, despite the occasional store-owner who stared out with suspicion. Finally he paused by a store window. “Aren't you going to send your girl a postcard from here?”

Gus glanced down Main Street one way, then the other. He did not have to look far either way. “What for? It's nothing to write home about.”

“I guess you're right. If they have any souvenirs, they're probably about strawberries.”

“Or else shrunken migrant heads. Besides, who'd want to let anyone know he's here?”

They walked a while longer and Gabriel asked, “Don't they have a place in Disneyland called Main Street?” When his brother shrugged, he added, “I wonder if it's anything like this.”

“Well, don't tell Dad. He'll say, ‘So then why bother going out there?'”

But their conversation triggered a reaction in Gus, who began scanning the street again. “Didn't Dad say something about calling his cousins in Anaheim?”

“You're right, and it's about time. Let's find him first, then we'll find a phone.”

Gus looked around and his gaze paused on a pack of young stag workers from another camp, with the raw and rustic look of illegals. “Wait. I've been thinking. Maybe it's not a good idea to tell them we're working here. At least not yet. Let's wait till all this is over.”

“Why?”

“Well, don't you feel strange?”

“Strange?”

“Yeah. About working in the fields.”

“I don't think migrant workers feel strange.”

“They don't, because that's what they are. But we're not.”

“But we are, at least for now. That's what we've been doing all summer, and we've got the sunburn to prove it.”

“We've been working
with
migrants. That doesn't
make
us migrants.”

“What are you getting at? That we join a union?”

Gabriel took the teasing no further, since he himself still felt ambivalent about the label. He didn't mind it in camp, when he was among the other workers. But around town he was conscious of it, constantly. A couple of times, among the locals, he had used a certain word or even hummed a certain tune in order to set himself apart from
the herd, but then afterward he had felt a tinge of shame for having done so.

His brother, though, was ashamed, period, and rubbing his face in the reality only exacerbated the self-hate. Gabriel could only wonder how Gus would explain his rough hands to his friends, to say nothing of an erratic tan that would never pass for a summer on the beach.

He realized that back in Texas Gus had decided to go to California because everyone at school was convinced they were leaving anyway. Gabriel had assumed that Gus's decision meant he had put the migrant issue behind him. It was obvious now that he had only buried it, and in a shallow grave at that.

“Don't worry about the call, Gus. I don't think Dad will tell his cousins what he's doing either.”

“But they'll know. Once they ask where he's calling from, they'll know.”

Gabriel tried to explain that their relatives would find out the moment the family showed up in Anaheim with calluses and leathery, farmworker complexions. But he could tell by the way Gus narrowed his eyes—the same way his father looked when he was cornered—that he was determined to postpone that call.

They continued walking the few downtown blocks, peeking through display windows while hoping their father wasn't soaking his woes in a bar, until they found him inside a drugstore. He was close enough to a pay phone that Gus took no chances.

“Dad!” His yell inside the store startled not only their father but the pharmacist as well, who was probably used to a meeker type of migrant. “You haven't called your cousin, have you?”

He must have taken the remark as a reprimand, because he put aside the heartburn medicine he was
holding and started crafting an apology. “Not yet, but now that you mention it—”

“Then forget I mentioned it. Let's wait till the season's over. and we're ready to hit the road.”

Gabriel thought he recognized the look that came over his father—the slight flaring of his nostrils and the cagey arch of his eyebrows—whenever he detected a chink in his opponent's armor. “So you're calling off the bet?”

“The bet's still on. All I'm saying is we should hold off on that call.”

Gabriel, though, still had his doubts. “What if we miss them? They need to know ahead of time. Maybe they're making vacation plans too. And you know it won't be Disneyland.”

“We'll just take our chances,” said Gus.

Their father nodded solemnly, even as a sliver of glee leaked through his mock disappointment. “Well, if you boys insist …”

Gabriel started to say that he wasn't the one insisting, but by now his father could barely stifle his satisfaction. He looked so comical that Gabriel had to abandon his own seriousness.

“Dad, you're cross-eyed with delight.”

“I'm happy when my boys are happy.”

Gus neither noticed his father's smile nor his brother's sarcasm. In fact he seemed oblivious to the outside world until their father was out the door.