Champagne for Buzzards (25 page)

Everyone froze while Welbee listened silently. As he hit End and slapped closed his phone he said, “A body was found buried behind the house. The dogs had dug it up. The driver's license in the wallet they found says the body was that of a Howard Sweet.”

Harland gave a whimper of distress and slumped forward. Welbee quickly moved to support him but Harland rallied and pushed the agent away. “I didn't know,” he said. And then he added, “Why? Why would they kill Howie?”

“We don't know, sir,” Welbee replied. “Those are questions yet to be answered.”

Zig and Tully took Champ to town to find a vet while Clay and I sat in the sun on the porch steps long after Agent Welbee and the other men had left. I didn't think I'd ever be truly warm again and neither of us seemed inclined to move.

Elbows on his knees enclosing me, I leaned back and looked up at Clay, saying, “Grandma Jenkins used to say, ‘Greed is the root of all evil.' The Breslaus sure proved that, didn't they? Anything was better than losing what they had. Didn't matter who else had to suffer. Other than that, it's real quiet here in the country.”

“Yeah, no wonder you prefer the beach.” His hands rubbed my shoulders.

“Shouldn't you be getting back to saving your empire?” I asked.

His hands stopped. “Things will change big time for us.”

“I'm real good at being poor.”

His hands went back to massaging my shoulders. “I'm not sure I am.”

I laughed. “It's one of the few things you don't need to practice.”

He leaned forward and kissed the top of my head. “I'm sorry.”

“It will hurt if we lose the Sunset, no denying, but it's better to lose possessions than your humanity.”

“There's a lot more than the Sunset at stake,” Clay said. “We may lose everything.”

“Well, if that's the worst thing that happens to us, we're golden. Boomer just showed me something a whole lot worse. But I sure as hell will miss my bar.”

“I suspect you'll always find another one, and we haven't lost it yet.”

I leaned back and looked up at him. “Why don't you get out of here and do your damnedest to hold on to it.”

“I will,” Clay said, getting to his feet and pulling me up, “But first I have something else to do, something for your daddy.”

THE END

On Monday, March 27, 2006, an article appeared in the Englewood
Herald Tribune
on human trafficking. It told the story of migrants coming to Florida from Mexico and Guatemala to find a better life, only to be sold into slavery. The article stated that Florida was the third state behind California and New York for human trafficking and that it was currently proposing a new anti-trafficking bill that would affect tens of thousands of people a year. The true extent of the problem is unknown because victims seldom go to the police for fear of being deported.

I had earlier read about migrants being held in container trucks, beaten and forced to work in Florida fields. The scheme was revealed when one of the workers was able to get away. I haven't looked at produce in a major supermarket the same since reading this article, wondering who picked that tomato or bagged the head of lettuce I'm holding. From this grew
Champagne for Buzzards
.

Phyllis Smallman Englewood, Florida

Thank you to the Pereira family, Anil, Sheryl, Lucie, Bennett, Henry, Jaipur and Elysse for their generous support of Artsping on Salt Spring Island.

And thank you to Betti and Carl for the loan of the Pink Palace so I could finish this.