Dove Season (A Jimmy Veeder Fiasco) (10 page)

“So, what happened?” I finally asked Bobby as we left the city limits and drove onto the back roads. The sweet pungence of a distant skunk and the sticky, grassy smell of the alfalfa fields felt like home. Back in the country.

“You mean, while you were taking your little beauty sleep?” Bobby said.

“The last thing I remember was getting jumped. When did you show up?”

“When last we saw our hero, he was entertaining a young damsel named Marguerita. Man, I don’t know about you, but don’t matter who the chick is, there’s nothing better than making a woman laugh. Don’t care if she means it or not. I was telling Marguerita knock-knock jokes in English. A language she knows about three words of, but I taught her how to say, ‘Who’s there?’ and, you know, the ‘Who?’ part at the end. And every time, didn’t matter what I said, didn’t matter if it made sense. Every time I said the punch line, she laughed her ass off. And she had an ass. ‘Knock-knock.’
‘Who there?’
‘Shorty.’
‘Chorty who?’
‘Shorty Fuckadoodle.’ Big laugh.
‘Ha, ha, ha, ha!’
You got to respect that. That’s a professional. A whore who takes pride in her work.

“Then our buddy, Guillermo. You remember, ‘Talk to Guillermo’? Dressed like Cesar Romero. He comes bouncing in, saying there’s a fight outside, thinks it might be my friend, you. I get up quick, accidentally drop Marguerita to the floor. But of course, she laughs more. They don’t make enough of ’em like her.

“I hit the sidewalk. It takes me a couple of seconds to find you. You ended up kind of around the corner. But I see the cowboys, and I hear the thuds. You might want to take it up with Mr. Turquoise, that dude that was sitting with Tomás, ’cause he was leaning against a wall watching and smiling. I don’t know what you did, but he was enjoying himself.

“I hit a couple cowboys before they even know they’re fighting me. Couldn’t give you details, just swinging at everything that moved. You weren’t one of those things. You were out. They got a few licks in, but I took most of the heat off you and I was definitely giving better than I got. I put my back against the wall, my head down and kept my punches short, letting them come to me. Punishing them when they did. My shins are bruised to shit from those boots. Talk about kickers.

“Then the cops show up. First time I’ve been glad to see a Mexican cop. These three local
federales
shove everyone apart. One of them, probably the new guy, got to his knee and checked your pulse. Of course he checked your back pocket for a wallet once he knew you were alive. I was honestly relieved when I heard you moan. I mean, you were crumpled up in a weird-ass position, one hand squeezing your junk.

“So I’m bleeding all over myself and what do our pals, the
federales
, do. They roust me. Completely ignore the five fucking cowboys. Five against one and it’s my fault. Like I would start some shit. They come at me with rapid-fire Spanish. And the cowboys ain’t going anywhere. Just waiting. Smiling.

“This ain’t my first cage match. I know the deal. It’s always about money. I give the lead cop the rest of your money. Problem is, it’s only like twelve bucks. Bro, we bought a lot of booze. He took it, but I’m pretty sure he was insulted. I do my best to explain that that’s all I got.
Todo dinero
. He nods, steps back, and says something I don’t hear to one of the cowboys.

“I know then, I’m super fucked. One of the cops points at me and holds up some money, yelling, “
Treinta pesos.
” Another gives him a nod, digging into his pocket. They’re betting on me. Or against me. It’s like a fucking cockfight or some shit. The cowboys circle me again. The cops are laughing and betting. I get my fists up, ready to go.

“But before the cowboys have a chance to make me into a squishy pile like Beetle Bailey after the Sarge jumped on him, the Incredible Hulk, that big dude that works for Tomás, the one that threw you over the table, he starts grabbing guys and throwing them left and right. Throwing them like a midget toss. The cops just watch. Me too. We’re stunned. And in like ten seconds, less, all the cowboys are on the ground, hurt, moaning. One of them is shaking in a really freaky, disturbing way. Like a seizure, you know. Then the Hulk turns to the cops. I don’t know what he was going to do, if he was going to do anything, but they sure thought he was. Because they all drew their guns.

“Man, you missed some shit. I don’t how you slept through all of it.

“Now the Hulk and me are standing there. He’s breathing hard ’cause, Christ, it’s got to be something just hauling all that weight around, let alone beating serious ass. And I’m bleeding. Pretty much all I’m doing. Bleeding as quietly as I can. And there’s like the three
federales
pointing guns at us. They’re scared absolutely shitless. I mean, guns-shaking, piss-stinking terrified. Full disclosure, the piss might have been you, I don’t know. I concentrate every ounce of energy on not moving. I know if I move, one of these mothers is going to freak, shoot, then the others are going to unload. Red light. I’m frozen. And I’m hoping the Hulk gets it, too.

“We’re like a what-do-you-call-it? One of them scenes in a museum. Like with a stuffed mountain goat. That’s what we are, like in a museum. Nobody’s moving. Nobody’s saying anything. The only sound is the Hulk’s breathing, which is deep and steady with a nose whistle. Actually kind of nice. Soothing. I couldn’t help it, I started breathing with him. We were on the same side kinda, so it was like we were bonding.

“A diorama, that’s the word. We were like a diorama.

“Oh yeah. You’ll never believe this. I look down. There’s a knife sticking out of the Hulk’s ass. One of the cowboys stabbed him in the butt. Some blood running down the back of his leg. Deep in the meat of his cheek. I don’t even know if he knows. Didn’t make a move to take it out. Didn’t seem to bother him. He was just breathing.

“And then, ‘
Amigos.
’ Someone says, ‘
Amigos.
’ I hear the word, I know what it means, but I don’t know why I’m hearing it. Then again, ‘
Amigos.
’ We all turn our heads. Real slow. Nobody moves their bodies, just the heads. And we all see Tomás standing on the sidewalk. And he’s got a fistful of twenty-dollar bills fanned like he’s Biggie fucking Smalls. And he’s smiling ’cause he knows he owns the situation.

“The tension immediately fades. The cops, they slowly put their guns back in their holsters, although they keep looking at the Hulk like he’s going to smash. Tomás peels off a couple of bills, pays each one of them, but not before he says something in each one’s ear. I don’t know what he said, but if they were scared of the Hulk, they were terrified of Tomás.

“And right there in front of our eyes, I watch everything change. The cops start kicking the cowboys awake. Four of them slowly get to their feet. The other one won’t wake up. So, two of them drag him by his feet as the cops hold them at gunpoint and walk them down the center of the street. To jail or a ditch at the edge of town, I don’t know and I don’t want to know.

“Tomás knelt down next to you, checked your pulse, your eyes. You kind of woke up, but then dropped back out. More passed-out than knocked-out, I was thinking. I told him I would take care of you. And without a word, Tomás went back into Cachanilla’s.

“When did Tomás turn into Tony fucking Montana?

“The Hulk followed Tomás. And as he walked, no shit, he reached behind him and pulled the knife out of his butt cheek. Just dropped it on the ground, barely missing a step. I wanted to watch him turn back into the Mexican Bill Bixby, but I figured it was time to get you home.

“I carried your ass three blocks. You are one heavy sleeper.

“But that settles it. We have got to go to Mexicali more. The weird shit always happens when you’re around. I missed you, man.”

Bobby dropped me off at the house. I decided that I would rather die in my sleep from my probable concussion than stay awake. I didn’t try to reflect on the events of the evening. I didn’t want to think about the fact that I’d only been back one day. I didn’t even take my shoes off. I just dropped on the couch fully clothed. And through the spinning, I let myself pass out.

Ow.

I knew I was going to be in pain, but—ow. Ow all over my body.

The morning sun woke me, searing light ripping through the living room windows. I had been awake for a half hour, but remained motionless on the couch. I knew if I moved it would hurt. How did I know? I wasn’t moving and it hurt. I seriously considered avoiding any kind of movement until sometime next week. Or next winter.

I kept time with my pulse, counting each pounding heartbeat that echoed in my head. I hadn’t lost a fight that decisively in a long time and was quickly remembering why I had put it off so long. A hangover was bad enough. Pile on an A-plus ass-kicking and it made you forget that life was precious and every day a miracle.

I sat up slowly, holding my ribs for fear that they would shatter inside my body. I may have screeched in pain, making a sound not dissimilar to a cat fighting a pterodactyl. It’s hard to recall. I was alone. There were no witnesses. So let’s just say I manned up and silently took the pain.

I rubbed my hand gently across my right side where I had taken most of the punishment. My ribs were definitely bruised, a couple probably cracked, but none felt out of place. You know you’re having a rough morning when the most you hope for is to not piss blood.

I sat up. That was enough for the moment. I went back to not moving, my teeth pressed so tightly together I thought the enamel would crack. I lit a cigarette and smoked two before I made the effort to stand and make my way to the bathroom.

I stood in front of the mirror and stared at my face. I looked like the parachute hadn’t opened. It was an impressive array of injuries. I had a mouse under one very bloodshot eye, a fat lip, and a greenish bruise on one cheek. Coagulated blood filled my inflamed nostrils, and the entire length of the right side of my face was scraped with thin, red scabs. Some caked blood covered my forehead, having dripped down from where I had hit my head. I could feel the cut under my blood-matted hair, the wound still wet.

The skin on my right arm was almost completely scraped off on one side. I had speckled bruises and cuts here and there. But it was when I took off my shirt to get in the shower that I almost cried. My chest and stomach had so many dark bruises I looked like a Dalmatian. It didn’t look real. It looked like some teenage
Fangoria
magazine fan’s first attempt at gore makeup. Little spots, big spots. I was an Appaloosa. And my legs weren’t any better, my thighs patched dark purple. I poked my right quad because I’m an idiot. It felt soft like a bad apple and hurt like hell.

The cold shower would have felt a lot better if there had been any kind of water pressure. The light drip was more frustrating than soothing. It took me forever to get the blood out of my hair.

I dried my body, continually hitting spots that made me shriek, swear, and then breathe deeply. I doused my body in Bactine, the stinging so severe at one point I started laughing. Getting dressed was like playing Operation. I tried to get my clothes on without the clothes actually touching me. Unfortunately my nose kept lighting up red.

Before I left the house, I chewed on three aspirins with two shots of tequila as a chaser. The tequila almost came up, but through concentration and practice I kept it down. The warmth in my stomach took some of the edge off. I thought about bringing the bottle with me for medicinal reasons, but decided against it. Two shots were helpful. The whole bottle would be twelve steps in the wrong direction. Besides, I was meeting Mike, and he might have frowned on it.

Mike Egger is my cousin. His mother is my mother’s sister. Here’s the thing. I never knew my mother, so I never got close to that side of the family. I knew Mike enough to say hi to him on the street or if I saw him in J&M’s, but we didn’t spend holidays together or even exchange Christmas cards. The most I could say is that we were aware of each other.

But apparently marriage was as good as blood. Because when Pop got sick, Mike immediately offered his help. I spoke to him before I drove down and asked him why. He just said, “That’s what family does—what family is for.”

Mike had been farming Pop’s land for the last year and a half. For anyone else, taking over the land would have been a big deal, but Mike farmed close to six thousand acres. So he just absorbed it into his workload and massive workforce. He made sure that the alfalfa was irrigated, mowed, and the hay stored and sold.

I didn’t ask him why he hadn’t called me when Pop first got sick. I assumed it was because he had promised not to.

There are people who say that they’ll do anything for you. And there’s the people who actually do. Mike had stepped up when he knew he could help, and as much as I would like to believe that’s common, my experience was that it was a rare gesture.

The simplistic way in which the media portrays people would suggest that Mike and I shouldn’t like each other. He was a Red Stater. I was True Blue. As usual, the media was full of shit. Nothing is black and white. People can be different and get along.

Mike was an easy guy to like. Two hundred and fifty pounds of burly, big guy. Bear hugs and slaps on the back that knocked you five feet forward. A family man and a good Catholic, Mike had four kids, never thought about cheating on his wife, donated time and money to the church, rarely complained, and never judged the people around him. He believed in what he believed and wasn’t afraid to express it, but he never thought I was stupid because I didn’t agree with him.

I drove my pickup down a dirt road toward Mike’s shed, an enormous corrugated tin barn visible in the distance. The deep tractor ruts made my truck bounce and swerve, mocking my day-after agony. I drove as slowly as I could without stalling. Each bump felt like someone was hitting me in the head with a shovel. Dust blew into the slit in the window meant to let my cigarette smoke out. I was forced to stub out my smoke when I started having a coughing fit that made my ribs burn.

I pulled my Mazda next to the more manly pickups next to the shed. The Dodge Rams and Ford F-150s made my four-banger look like a child’s toy. They were bigger, badder, and filthier. Mud spatters shot up the sides of every fender.

Walking into the shed, I gave a wave or head nod to the couple of familiar faces that I recognized. Guys who had done some work for my father or guys I had worked alongside in the fields when I was a teenager. There were no titles in farming. No managers. No foremen. Just guys.

Daniel Quihuis, an ageless Mexican man, was Mike’s main guy. Rail thin, Daniel had one of those faces that had always looked old. Deep laugh lines and leather skin. Now that he was old, it finally fit him. He ran the day-to-day that Mike didn’t handle himself. Daniel had worked for Mike’s father, my Uncle Frank, but I never saw him treat Mike like a kid.

“Jesus Christ, Jim. What the hell happened to your face? You get in a fight with your boyfriend?” Daniel asked as we shook hands. Years ago, the first time he had seen me with long hair was the beginning of a long series of jokes about how much of a girl I was. It never got old. At least for him.

I gave him a smile, acknowledging that I got his joke. “Mike around?”

He nodded toward the back. “How’s Big Jack doing? Marta brought some tamales by a couple days ago. Not sure if he was allowed to eat ’em, but at least he could smell ’em. She said he looked okay. Thinner.”

I shrugged. “Thank her for me. How you doing? You must be like a hundred years old by now, right?”

“Some days it feels like it.” He laughed. “But I’m just a seventy-three-year-old youngster.”

“You ever going to retire?”

“And give up all this?” he said, holding his hands out to his side.

One of his guys yelled his name from the other side of the shed.

“Good to see you, Daniel,” I said.

We shook hands.

“You too. Oh, do me a favor. Ask Jack something for me?”

“Sure. What?”

“Ask him if he wishes he had a son,” Daniel said, cracking himself up. I walked to the back, Daniel’s laughter trailing behind me. All I ever wanted to do was make people happy.

Behind the shed, rows and rows of heavy equipment filled the two acres of packed dirt. Tractors, caterpillars, threshers, plows, and other monsters with enormous, dirt-caked tires filled the yard. Some were operational, some antiques. In farming you never threw anything away. You never knew. There might yet be a need for that rusted-out horse-drawn plow.

I found Mike underneath a thresher. His boot heels pushed him further out of view as he tried to gain leverage in the dirt. I could hear the banging of metal on metal and the grunts that accompanied it. Two of his guys stood over him. An array of tools littered the ground.

Mike slid out and stood up, shaking the dust off his pants and shirt. He turned to his guys. “All right, I give. You were right. Bent to hell. I can’t fix it either.” He saw me out of the corner of his eye. “Hey, Jim, that you? I’ll be right there.”

I nodded, but he had already turned back to his guys. “I bring it to the shop, they charge me two grand. That ain’t happening. This ain’t a sports car. Don’t need to run fast. It don’t even need to run good. Just needs to run.”

“
Qué quieres hacer?
”

“Talk to the other guys. See if anyone has a brother, a cousin. Someone that’s a mechanic or a welder. In Mexicali or here. Tell them I’m offering five hundred to whoever fixes it. And a hundred for the guy who finds him. But only if it runs for at least six months. They do a good job, I’ll shoot them more business. No gypsies.”

The workers nodded and picked up the scattered tools off the ground. Mike walked to me and gave me a crushing, one-handed shoulder squeeze. “You want something cold to drink? A steak for that eye? Let’s go to my office. It’s cooler in there.”

It wasn’t. The small fan was overmatched. Its blades moved so slowly you could track them with your eye. It may even have been a little hotter inside, the air thick and stale. Mike’s wood-paneled office was all function, no frill. A desk, a water cooler, a mini-fridge, a filing cabinet, and a couple of chairs. And stacks and stacks of paper everywhere. Each stack with a different makeshift paperweight to keep the paper from blowing away. Although I doubted that the fan was capable of moving even a single sheet of paper.

As Mike took a seat, I moved a large stack of paper off the only other chair and set it at my feet. The stack had been held down by a box of shotgun shells, which I set on top of the stack. I didn’t want to mess up Mike’s system.

Mike grabbed a couple of bottles of Coke out of the mini-fridge. He handed me one and gave my face a squinting once-over. “You never learned how to fight? What’s the other guy look like?”

I felt the bruise on my jaw, immediately self-conscious. “I went down to Mexicali last night with Bobby Maves.”

Mike laughed, explanation enough. “I thought Bobby got married. Settled down.”

“Didn’t take.”

“That’s too bad. Hate to hear that. He has a daughter, right?”

“Two. They’re with their mothers. Not in the Valley no more. He sees them when he can.” I didn’t know why, but I felt the need to defend Bobby.

“He’ll settle down. Has to eventually realize he’s a grown man. Act like it. Did he start the trouble last night?”

“Trouble found us.”

He nodded, taking a big drink of his Coke. “So, what can I do for you?”

“I wanted to talk to you about Pop’s land. Make sure it’s cool. Not giving you too much extra work. It’s a big load.”

Mike interrupted me with an embarrassed wave of his hand. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s nothing.”

“So. I’m down here for a while now. I don’t think I’m ready to take over the farming completely. I don’t know if I’ll ever be. But if you tell me what needs to be done, I’m sure I can do some work. I can irrigate, mow, you know, bale. I know how to do the stuff I did in high school. I’m ready to work, but I ain’t really ready to take charge.”

Mike smiled and nodded. “It’s all alfalfa now. Just been mowed, I think. I’ll check. But next time I need an irrigator, I’ll call you.”

“I hope you’re not paying for anything yourself. You’re keeping track of all the expenses, right? Take it out of the hay sales.”

“Labor’s on me. No way I’m charging Uncle Jack for my work or my guys. But real expenses, I keep track, got it all figured. It’s in one of these stacks. Don’t worry about it.”

“Thanks, Mike.”

“How you doing for money?”

“I’m okay. I got a little. Hadn’t really thought about it, you know. I just knew I had to be down here,” I said.

“I can always use a hard worker. If it ain’t an insult to a college boy like you.” He smiled. “When do you usually see Jack?”

“I’m going to try to see him every day. From like ten to three or four. But I’ll take work if you got it.”

“All right. I’ll see about some irrigating, mowing, digging, whatever. If not, maybe some work here, around the shed. During the summer, we’re not in the fields midday, so your schedule fits.” He sat up in his chair and looked for a spot on his desk to set down his empty Coke bottle. Failing, he settled on the ground.

“I don’t want to step out of line or get personal or nothing, Jim. If I do, you tell me. But do you have any kind of plan? I don’t mean now. Now you spend time with Uncle Jack. That’s important. I mean later, you know. Do you know what you’re going to do?”

“You ain’t out of line, Mike. I haven’t thought about any of that. I know I should plan stuff, but I can’t or haven’t or I don’t know. Like if I start, I’ve made a turn I’m not ready for. And I don’t care if it’s smart or not. Pop’s still alive. That’s my focus.”

Mike nodded. “Good enough. When you coming over to the house, get yourself a home-cooked meal? Annie and the kids would love to see you.”

“Soon. Still getting settled. Only been back a day. After my face heals a little. How about next time she makes that thing with the Fritos in it, you call me?”

“Everything she makes has Fritos in it.” Mike shook his head. “She likes Fritos.”

“I’ll come by soon,” I said, getting up. “Thanks for the Coke. Thanks for everything.”