All You Get Is Me (8 page)

A shopping cart is parked next to Forest, piled high with microwave popcorn and bags of Doritos and soda. Maybe he is a little fuzzy on the whole concept of grocery shopping after all.

“So. Are you still enjoying country life?”

“Sure. I guess.”

I look at the magazine he’s reading. “Hey, did you read that piece on the Monsters of Folk?”

“Yeah. I’m just reading it now. Do you like them?”

“I do. I love Bright Eyes.” I click on my MP3 player and hold one of the earbuds up to his right ear. It plays “The First Day of My Life.” He grins.

“I love that song.” He looks at me and I feel slightly elevated. I mean, what are the chances that I would just then be listening to a song by a band that contains two members of a band that he was reading about? It smacks of serendipity.

“Yeah, me too.” I smile at him.

Forest looks at his cart and returns the magazine to the rack. “I’m pretty much finished here. Do you wanna go somewhere or maybe go for a drive?”

“You have a car?”

“I wouldn’t call it a car. But it’ll do the job.”

“I’m on my bike.”

“We can throw it in the back. The trunk is very spacious; I’m contemplating moving in.”

“Okay.” I try not to think about how many of my dad’s rules I’m violating. Not the least of which is I’m not supposed to get in a car with anyone under twenty-one. The prospect of knowing Forest better makes me feel reckless. If he asked me the right way, I’d probably run away with him right now.

Things get a little awkward at the checkout. Rita, the cashier, rings me up and I know that she knows just about everything about everyone in a one-hundred-mile radius. Small talk is unavoidable.

“So, I hear you’ve got Tomás coming to work at your place.”

“Yup.” I glance at Forest. He’s perusing the gum.

“That’s nice. I met him once. Sylvia was always in here picking up groceries with that sweet baby, Rosa. Nice family. Really awful what happened.”

I nod. Forest’s eyes shift over to me but he looks away quickly, pretending not to hear.

I get my change and say good-bye to Rita. If she knows who Forest is, she’s not letting on and he’s certainly not offering. Outside, I stand next to my bike, putting my groceries in my backpack. I look up to see Brody Burk driving by slowly in his massive black truck. He watches me with an expression on his face that is obviously meant to unsettle me. His idiot twin sons are in the cab with him. His pit bull rides in the back, chained to the truck bed. He watches me in his side mirror and when I’m out of his sight he punches the gas, making the pit bull lose its footing. It yelps as the choke chain around its neck tightens. The hair on the back of my neck stands up.

Forest appears a minute later. He points to a rusted-out Ford, parked at the curb.

“Well?” He grins.

“This is your car?”

“Nah, it’s my stepdad’s. It’s the only car he’ll let me drive. I’ve only had my license for two months.”

I cringe.
Two months?

We wrestle my bike into the trunk. I pull open the whiny passenger door and get in next to him on the cracked vinyl seat. It smells like dust and motor oil. He throws his bag of groceries in the backseat and puts the key in the ignition, turns it, and pumps the gas. The engine finally roars to life. He pats the dash.

“She purrs like a kitten,” he says over the roar of the engine.

“Do you think we’ll make it?” I ask nervously.

“Sure, this baby has years left on her.”

Darth Vader dangles from the rearview mirror, reassuring me. Forest backs out of the parking space and heads toward our farm.

“So, where to, country girl?”

“Please don’t call me that.” I glare at him. “I’ve lived in the city most of my life and it wasn’t my idea to move here.”

“Okay. Sorry. Where to?”

“Well, I had something planned for this afternoon but you can come along if you like.”

“Okay. Tell me where to go.”

Could it really be this easy? You spend hours daydreaming about someone and then suddenly you’re driving down the road with him, going somewhere together, like you’ve known each other for years. I tell him to turn right at the next corner and he cranks the giant steering wheel like he’s turning a river barge. We drive down a narrow road for about five miles and I point to the side of the road and tell him to pull over next to a little farm stand. We get out of the car and walk down an unmarked lane with lush stalks of twelve-foot bamboo growing on either side. Forest never once asks me where we’re going. He walks silently next to me. I like that about him. We eventually come to a clearing and to the right of us two Buddhist monks in orange robes are bent over, tending a terraced vegetable garden built into the hillside. Their persimmon-colored robes contrast beautifully with the rich green of the garden and I stop and take a couple of shots with my camera, which is loaded with color film today. The monks see us and wave. I wave back. From this far away, I can’t tell who they are because they all have the same shaved heads and even the old monks carry themselves like young men.

“They don’t mind?” asks Forest.

“No. That’s the thing about them. They don’t mind anything as long as you respect them.”

“Cool.”

We continue on, veering off on a narrow gravel path that leads through a perfectly tended oriental flower garden. We cross over a wooden bridge with a koi pond underneath it. The big orange-and-black-speckled fish surface with their mouths open like baby sparrows. The monastery is quiet except for the sound of metal wind chimes that make a resonant musical sound, each tube a different note, not unlike the sound of chanting. A monk is sitting cross-legged on a wooden bench up ahead. He’s reading a book. His sandals sit on the ground in front of him. He looks up and smiles.

“Hello.”

We both say hello and carry on past a gazebo. The three-legged dog is napping on the cool floor inside it. He raises his head for a second, checking us out, and then goes back to his nap. Past the gazebo, the trail leads to a sparse dining room with a big kitchen, and then on to separate little residences for the monks and then the grand finale, a beautiful ornate temple where the monks pray and meditate. We pass by the back door of the kitchen, which is propped open with a stone. There are a couple of young monks baking bread. The aroma is intoxicating. Two of them stand across from each other, punching dough down on a big metal-topped island. When they see us, they bow their heads slightly in greeting and one of them beckons me over. He grabs a heavy serrated knife and cuts a couple of slices off a loaf that sits cooling on a rolling rack next to the island. He hands them to me, smiling. I nod my head in thanks and take the soft, moist slices. I hand one to Forest. He takes a bite.

“Well, that is about the best thing I’ve ever tasted.”

I smile. “Isn’t it? You can buy it at the grocery store in town, you know.”

“Wow. This bread could change a person’s life.”

We walk along the path until we come to a bench that overlooks the property with the temple off to the right. Somehow, even on the hottest days, it feels cool here.

“You wanna sit?” I ask.

“Sure. Is it okay?”

“Yup. Like I said. They don’t mind. I’ve been coming here for a year and a half.”

“This is the most peaceful place on earth,” Forest says, sitting down and taking in the dramatic view. “What do I have to do to live here?”

“Give up all your worldly possessions and meditate eight hours a day.” I sit down next to him and finish my bread, savoring the crunchy crust.

“Sounds reasonable. Do I get to eat this bread every day?”

“Yes, but the monks are vegan. And no Doritos, no soda, no microwave popcorn.”

Forest looks sheepish. “Hey, thanks for bringing me here. This is incredible. Really, I’m loving it.”

“You’re welcome.” I smile, happy that he knows that this place is special. Part of me thinks that maybe I brought him here as a test. If you want to know if you like someone, bring them to a sacred place and see how they behave. I snap a photo of him in profile just as he looks away.

“Am I going to have to start combing my hair?” he says, smirking.

“No. I’d hate that.”

A kitten runs across my feet and puts on a show, chasing a fly for a few seconds. When she comes within reaching distance I grab her and put her on my lap. She attacks my fingers with her little paws and mews contentedly.

“All the smart animals end up here,” I say, scratching the kitten’s chin. “The monks take great care of them. No one goes hungry.”

“How do the monks survive? Who pays for all this?”

“Well, this is a monastery but it’s technically a working farm, just like ours. The monks sell a lot of what they grow, plus the bread, and they’re famous for their jams too. You can also come here and take seminars. The monks teach people how to meditate and chant and find peace and recover from trauma and things like that. The land was a gift from a rich Californian who became a Buddhist and wanted to unload his material possessions. He lives here a lot of the time too.”

“How do you know all this?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. I just picked it up in bits and pieces. The monks aren’t chatty but they’re happy to answer a question or two.”

We sit there for a long time. This place does that to you. It makes you lose track of time. When we finally make a move to leave I have no idea how long we’ve been here. On the way out of the monastery, we pass a wooden donation box. Forest pulls a couple dollars out of his pocket and stuffs them in. I’m pretty sure I would marry him on the spot.

We climb back in the car and I direct Forest to my farm. I ask him to let me out a safe distance away and he doesn’t question it. We have yet to talk about his mother and what happened. There was that awkward apology at the farmers’ market but I think that we should talk about the accident before it becomes that big, ugly thing that we don’t talk about. But not today. Today was about something else. I give him my phone number and my email address and he gives me his and now we’re connected. We know how to find each other. Everything from here on will be different.

As we’re pulling my bike and my backpack out of the trunk Forest tells me he’d like to do this again. When he says it, he looks away as though he’s afraid I’ll say no.

“This? You mean the monastery?”

“No, I mean this going somewhere together thing. Can we do it again?”

“Sure.” I smile and my mind races ahead to secret meeting spots, code words, nicknames, maps, letters, all of the things you do when you want to see someone and you have to keep it a secret. I wonder what I’ve gotten myself into but I know it’s already too late to turn back.

I snap a photo of the back of his car bombing down the road away from me. As I lower my camera and stand there with my bike leaning against my thigh, I can see him watching me in his mirror and I know that I’m half in love with him already.

Chapter 8

T
omás materializes on the porch from out of nowhere. There is no car pulling away, or a bus, or a van, or anything. Rufus didn’t even hear him until he tapped on the screen door. I open it to find him standing there, his straw cowboy hat in his hand and a small duffel at his feet. He looks as though he just strolled over from next door. His white shirt is crisp and freshly ironed and his jeans have a sharp crease down the front. He looks so much younger than I had imagined; he’s really just a kid. Despite his smile, it’s easy to see that he’s in a lot of pain. My dad comes to the door and greets him in slow, soft Spanish. Tomás shakes his hand and thanks him for the job. My dad tells him that he’s sorry for his loss. He shrugs and tilts his head slightly in that way that Hispanics do, meaning the intolerable must be tolerated. Pain is pain but work is necessary for life and, as farm labor goes, this isn’t too bad. My dad gives his employees a comfortable place to sleep, a hot shower, fair pay; he doesn’t expose them to any pesticides; and he even feeds anyone who happens to be around at dinnertime. We’ve heard horror stories lately about the overcrowded
colonias
, trailer parks with people sleeping wall-to-wall and in shifts. Some workers sleep in their cars if they own one and some even sleep in the fields where they work because they can’t afford to rent a place. Since most of the workers are undocumented, paying them even minimum wage isn’t required and a lot of farmers take advantage of that. When I asked my dad what happened to Wanda’s husband, he shrugged and said no one really knows. Sometimes the coyotes, paid guides who escort Mexicans safely across the border, are crooked and they take your money and abandon you. Wanda’s husband had paid a coyote but he never showed up on the other side. Wanda has accepted that the worst has probably happened. He was probably left to die in the hot desert.

My dad walks with Tomás in the direction of the bunkhouse, Tomás taking two steps for every one of my dad’s long-legged strides. I’m glad that in the end I decided to put some lavender in there, even if it is in a canning jar. Tomás and my dad walk past the gossiping chickens pecking at the dirt and my dad points at them and then back at me, standing on the porch, watching. He might be telling him that the chickens are my job but he might also be saying, “Those are the chickens. They don’t like my daughter much
.
” Steve and Miguel form a friendly welcoming committee, walking over to shake hands, and even Rufus seems to have taken a shine to Tomás, trotting slightly ahead of him and looking back to make sure he’s still there.

As I stand on the porch watching the four men and a dog make their way to the bunkhouse, I think about how perhaps some powerful otherworldly force may have brought us all together in this place. My dad and I lost someone, Rufus lost his family, and now, because Tomás has lost someone too, he ended up here with us. It’s a crazy theory but maybe we were meant to find one another and help each other out or maybe I’m just overthinking this whole thing. Maybe Tomás is just grateful for a job and that’s that.

I open the screen door and let it ease shut behind me. I take the stairs quickly up to my room and turn on my computer. My heart leaps at the sight of a new email from Forest. I open it.