All You Get Is Me (21 page)

A few minutes pass and the chickens slowly, tentatively make their way over to the food. They watch me in that strange way that birds have of looking at you sideways. They’re getting on with their chicken lives and I feel happy for them, as I do for myself. Moving on with your life is something you can learn from a chicken? Who knew?

I slowly get to my feet and go looking for someone to help me repair the coop.

Later in the afternoon, I’m clipping a print to my darkroom clothesline. It’s a black-and-white eight-by-ten of a petite curly-haired little girl in purple chaps and a matching cowboy hat being nudged in the butt by a black-faced sheep. She’s about four years old and the look on her face says that the sheep might be in big trouble. The phone over in the barn starts ringing and I hear my dad answer it. Then I hear a whoop. I’m not sure it’s a whoop for joy. He’s not a whooper by nature and strange things have been happening to my dad lately that have kept me vigilant; like today he went to pick up a couple of laborers at the post office to help with the clearing of a new field we’re planning for root vegetables, and no one would get in the truck with him. This is unheard of. The day laborers will take any kind of work offered but they wouldn’t even talk to my dad. Then someone flattened my dad’s tires while he was parked in town the other night. He had to call Steve to come pick him up. He says it’s just kids being kids, but I know he doesn’t believe that. I fly out the door of the darkroom to find my dad, all in one piece, still on the phone, smiling. I stand there watching him and it occurs to me that I’ve been looking at him without seeing him for a long time. His long hair, falling in wisps from his trucker’s cap, has some new gray streaks in it and I hadn’t noticed the deep lines around his eyes and his mouth before. The hand holding the phone is calloused and weathered from farmwork. He talks for another minute and then hangs up the phone.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

“The insurance company is settling.”

“What does that mean, exactly?”

“It means that we won! I mean Tomás won. They’re offering a fraction of what we asked for but Ned’s got them on the run. He knows he can get more.”

I swell with pride for him. He worked so hard for this. I remember all the times I doubted him. I feel bad about that. I’m pretty sure that he knew that all this could be for nothing but he still wouldn’t quit. He just wanted what was right. My dad measures success in small victories.

“Can Tomás come home now?”

“Yes.”

I hug him. He hugs back. This is our new thing, this thing where we hug. He goes off to tell Steve and Miguel. I go back to my darkroom and clean up. I can’t wait to tell Forest, but I guess he probably knows already.

The phone is ringing again when I get up to the house. I grab it. It’s Storm.

“Hey, what happened to you last night?”

“I went home.”

“Sorry about that. I guess I had a little too much.”

“That’s okay. Did your parents find out about you stealing the car?”

“Uh-uh. They didn’t even see me in there. They thought I was in bed. But here’s the weird part: Someone stole my bike last night. They’re pretty pissed about that.”

“I did. How do you think I got home?”

“Oh, right. Hey, lemme go call off the dogs and I’ll get back to you.”

I hang up and dial Forest.

“Hey. I just heard.”

“Is your mom okay?”

“She’s great. She’s had a Realtor here for hours. She’s putting the house on the market. I know it’s pretty weird but I think she feels like she’s finally doing something right.”

“Where will she go?” I ask quickly, selfishly trying to figure out how all this will affect us.

“I don’t know. She’s thinking about New Hampshire.”

“New Hampshire? That’s, like . . . far.”

“Yeah, I know, but she’s got a sister there and my grandmother lives there too.”

“Oh.”

My dad comes in and stands in front of me gesturing that he needs the phone.

“I gotta go, my dad needs the phone. I’ll call you back.”

“Sure.”

I hang up and hand him the phone. “Now can I have a cell phone?”

“We’ll see,” he says, punching numbers.

“It would make a thoughtful birthday present.” I point to the calendar above the phone, displaying the month of August. The number thirty, my birthday, is circled in red marker. I tap it with my finger but my dad seems not to notice. I also glance at the quickly disappearing days till Forest leaves. It makes my stomach hurt to see that we’re down to days instead of weeks now.

I notice my dad’s cell phone is sitting on the table. I hold it up in front of him.

“It’s not charged,” he says, with the phone at his ear.

I look at the display. It’s flashing “YOU HAVE A MESSAGE.” I press the message button and it shows the number of the last caller. It’s Forest’s home number. My dad’s too busy speaking Spanish frenetically to Reynaldo to notice what I’m doing. I place the phone back on the table and walk away.

It’s difficult to say exactly how an entire town can know someone’s private business in a matter of hours. I imagine the rumor mill at work: The receptionist from Funk, McIntyre, and Monk tells Carmen, her manicurist, while she has her acrylic nails filled. Carmen tells her brother, who works on a construction crew, and he tells everyone else on the crew, some of whom are Mexican, who tell their farmworker buddies. Once it hits the farmworkers, the news goes all the way over the border into Mexico and all the way back until everyone knows. As word of the settlement spreads like wildfire, my dad seems to have changed teams overnight. He now plays for the Mexicans again. I don’t think that any of the workers ever believed that there was a hope in hell that Tomás could win this settlement, but now that he has, my dad has gone from rabble-rousing troublemaker to some sort of saint. I’m pretty sure that he won’t have any trouble finding workers to help with the new root-vegetable garden anymore.

On the flip side, the ranchers and factory farmers are none too pleased with this news. They don’t like the idea of any migrant farmworker thinking he has the right to sue over every little thing that happens. If he loses an arm in a thresher while working on their land, for instance, well, that’s just his problem. I’m sure that they worry that things could get way out of hand if these people start feeling empowered. My dad has never been a favorite of theirs anyway, moving into the valley with all his fancy new ideas about organic farming and sustainability and generally stirring things up. I’m sure they’d all be happy if he just disappeared.

Meanwhile, all the usual suspects have reappeared. Every newspaper in the area is buzzing around my dad again, wanting his opinion on the plight of the migrant farmworkers and the flawed immigration policies of this administration. The
San Francisco Chronicle
is even doing a big story on the case, with a side story exposing the abuse of farmworkers and the dangers they face crossing the border to find work. They want to interview my dad and they’re coming out next week to take photos.

Steve and I make the drive over to Reynaldo’s to fetch Tomás. This time I’m at the wheel the whole way. It seems to take about half as long as it did when we delivered him.

When we pull into Reynaldo’s vineyard, Tomás is standing there with his little duffle at his feet. The wounds on his face have almost healed but otherwise he looks the same. It occurs to me that knowing he has some money coming doesn’t really change the fact that he lost someone he loved. When he sees us he grins. I’m not sure I’ve seen him smile like that before. He’s standing with an intense-looking young woman with fine features and long black hair. They seem to be saying good-bye like they wish they weren’t.

On the ride home I can understand enough Spanish to know that Steve is giving Tomás a hard time about the girl, and he looks away, embarrassed. I pinch Steve hard on his bicep.

We only have one tiny driving episode on the way home when I pass a car on the one-lane road and then panic because I can’t find fourth gear, but I finally do find it. I see Tomás crossing himself in the rearview mirror. It probably didn’t help that I started screaming. It also didn’t help that Steve was laughing at me.

When we arrive home my dad tells us that Uncle Ned worked his magic on the insurance company and he managed to extract one hundred and fifty thousand dollars from them. Most lawyers would take a third of that as their fee, but Ned only wants ten percent to cover his costs. The money will be slow in materializing, so Tomás will be with us for a while. Considering what everyone went through, this might not seem like a lot of money, but to Tomás it means the difference between a good life and one of endless labor and risk-taking. It will buy a future for him and Rosa and probably his extended family and his in-laws.

Steve goes into the kitchen and gets busy on his famous enchiladas, a Mexican homecoming dinner for Tomás. I stand next to him and whip up a big bowl of guacamole with fresh avocados and limes. The mood is festive and we joke around a lot. My dad puts an Eddie Palmieri CD on the stereo. He’s Puerto Rican but it seems to work. Miguel and Tomás run into town for a case of cervezas and when they get back a toast is made in Spanish, something about prosperity and friends and those who have passed.

After dinner Steve pulls me out of my chair and we two-step across the linoleum in our bare feet. I’m an awful dancer but Steve’s had a couple of beers and he seems not to notice. Rufus barks at our feet. I look over at my dad watching us. He’s smiling and he nods at me. I’d forgotten what it feels like to be held in the gaze of a parent like that.

I look at the clock above the sink and leave the boys in the kitchen as the volume of their conversation increases. I wander onto the porch with Rufus and sit cross-legged in the swing watching darkness settle onto the farm. The buildings and fence posts become shadowy and a cool breeze mingles with the warm air, scenting it with sweet grass. The chicken coop has been repaired and the chickens are calm again, as chickens go.

Rufus pricks up his ears at a pair of headlights coming up the drive. His tail thumps three times and a low growl gathers in his throat as he IDs the visitor. When Forest opens his car door, Rufus leaps down the porch steps, tail wagging, and gives him a proper welcome.

Forest walks slowly toward me and I try to figure out if he’s nervous. I decide that he probably isn’t. As weird dads go, mine is about neck and neck with his, maybe just a hair ahead.

I take his hand and pull him into the brightly lit, noisy kitchen. The boys stop their animated Spanish and give Forest a hearty, loud welcome. I introduce him to my dad and Forest leans across the table to shake his hand. There’s a certain amount of sizing each other up but my dad is pretty cool about the whole thing, offering up a chair at the table and asking if he’s eaten. There’s a half-eaten casserole of enchiladas sitting on the counter. Forest eyes it hungrily and I make him a plate. He digs in and the conversation resumes. I can see him following the Spanish floating over his head, trying to catch threads of it. He’ll be fluent before long. I make a promise to myself to learn too. Over the summer I’ve picked up a lot, but if I tried harder I could be part of this conversation. I sit down next to Forest and he smiles at me and squeezes my knee under the table. Rufus curls up on the wood floor with his head on Steve’s bare feet, completing my ragtag little family.

Chapter 20

O
n the last day of my summer with Forest, which is also the eve of my birthday, Storm stands behind me and ties the long white apron at my waist. Then I do hers. Somehow she manages to make her apron look sexy. I look like I work in a basement morgue at a hospital. Forest is wearing a white apron too. He looks like he works with me at the morgue. We’re part of the volunteer waitstaff at the second annual Field of Greens dinner, another one of my dad’s brainstorms. The miles-long white-tableclothed dining table runs between two rows of organic cornstalks in the middle of a cornfield. The guests are locals and out-of-towners, all of whom have paid one hundred dollars a plate to taste the bounty of all the organic and sustainable farms, vineyards, and ranches in the area. The farmers, ranchers, and vintners who contribute to the dinner get in for free, and famous chefs from San Francisco, Berkeley, and a few other places are invited to participate by preparing one course each. All the food is prepared in a big tent with generators humming behind it to power the stoves. The profits go to support Field of Greens, my dad’s sustainable farming group. It pays for advertising and educational programs and the rest goes into a fund to help support starting farmers or suffering farmers or whatever else comes up.

Millie, from the diner, is in charge of us and she hands us each a bottle of white and a bottle of red wine.

“Red goes in the round glass and white goes in the taller one. Please don’t mix them up. Oh, and no sampling!” She looks at Storm when she says this.

We head to our sections. Forest walks next to me and Storm falls behind. She sees something worth taking a second look at in the form of a tall dark waiter.

“This is a breeze,” says Forest.

“Yeah, talk to me in four hours when we’re pouring coffee and serving dessert.”

As we pour the wine, another group of waitstaff, volunteers from the participating restaurants, brings out the first course, an amuse-bouche made from local goat cheese with peach chutney and caramelized leeks, served in a leaf of endive. The waiters carry massive trays, and the plates are miraculously delivered in a matter of minutes.

My dad is sitting next to Reynaldo and his wife, Maria. Steve, Tomás, and Miguel sit across from them. Connie Gilwood is sitting way down at the other end of the table. This must be my dad’s doing. Tomás doesn’t know who she is. My dad hasn’t arranged for her to meet him yet and tonight is certainly not the night for an “I’m sorry I killed your wife” talk. Connie is sitting next to a friend of hers, a woman I recognize from town. She has high hair and long nails and gold bangles that announce her every move. She’s carrying a handbag large enough to fit a toddler. She’s probably a Realtor. She’s probably selling Connie’s house. Connie is wearing a long, flowing lavender cotton skirt and a plain white T-shirt. She has silver hoops in her ears and her hair is pulled back in a ponytail like the last time I saw her. A few loose strands fall across her thin face. The effect is quite pretty. She appears to have given up the Heather Locklear look for good. Maybe it wasn’t attracting the right people. In this deconstructed version of Connie Gilwood I can see a bit of Forest in her eyes and around her mouth.