Fields of Wrath (Luis Chavez Book 1) (7 page)

“It’s not about letting these people into your life, it’s about letting them into your head,” he said. “Once you hear their voices when you’re about to make a decision instead of your own or, even better, God’s, you’re not living for yourself anymore. You’re living for them. And you might as well be living for the devil.”

Luis was momentarily struck dumb. Then he laughed in his brother’s face. He didn’t know it then, but Nicolas’s words would be burned into his mind for the rest of his life.

At the time, though, Luis expected not much more than a pitying smile and a retreat. Instead, Nicolas hugged him.

“I love you. Mom loves you. You’re already ten times the man Dad was. We’re just waiting for you to see that.”

Luis shoved his brother away. Nicolas left the room. Luis got a call from Oscar a second later saying he’d be picked up after midnight. He never saw his brother alive again.

When he slipped out that night, Luis found a car waiting for him at the end of the block with two guys up front. He got the sense they’d been there for hours and wondered if the Alacrán OGs thought he might try to run. The drive was less than ten minutes. They reached the edge of Boyle Heights, pulling to a curb alongside the wide concrete riverbed of the so-called Los Angeles River. The men climbed out first and led him to a break in the chain-link fence that crowned it.

When they reached the bottom of the dry waterway, Luis realized why it was appealing to gangbangers. The lights of the city dimmed to an almost-perfect darkness in the gully. It took Luis’s eyes a few seconds to adjust, but soon he saw the large group of Alacrán gangbangers waiting for them under the Fourth Street Bridge.

They’re going to make an example of me,
he thought.

Conversations quieted as they approached. Luis could make out Oscar, Remberto, and a few of the younger guys he’d run with, but many faces were unfamiliar. He’d seen various OGs around the neighborhood just enough to know they were a different level of gangster from him. They had reputations. They’d been to prison. They were feared by other gangs. They had families. Some had jobs or businesses. They weren’t just criminals, they were part of a criminal economy.

One of them—a tall, skinny man with a shaved head and big, gaucho-style facial hair—stepped forward. Luis had never seen him before.

“Get over here, Chavez,” he said in Spanish.

Luis did so, seeing the vast number of tattoos crisscrossing his face, neck, and arms. They were of three familiar varieties: Catholic, Chicano, and criminal. Nobody with ink like that thought twice about working in the straight world.

Luis caught Oscar’s gaze, but his friend quickly looked away.

It’s gonna be bad,
Luis thought.

“So, you fucked up a robbery, fucked up the getaway, and got thrown in jail,” the OG said. “It’s only because of our intervention that there aren’t going to be charges.”

This answered one of Luis’s questions. He considered thanking the guy but figured he should keep quiet.

“Everybody goes in at one time or another,” the OG continued. “It’s how you do your time that is the measure of a man. You got your cherry popped, but you did it right. Even better than not talking, you didn’t complain and you didn’t make friends. A man like that—and that’s what you are now, a man—can be relied on.”

Luis was confused. He shot a look to Oscar for clarification. His friend still wouldn’t meet his gaze.

“But to be a man, you still have to deal with all of us.”

Luis waited for an explanation. He got a fist to the kidney instead. For the next thirty seconds, Luis was pummeled from all sides. Most of the blows were to the torso, though some made it to his arms and legs. A couple glanced off his head, but any that hit there or to his face felt like accidents. A rib cracked and he gasped as he felt it in his lungs. Blood trickled into his eyes from a cut to his forehead. He’d tried to stand after the first couple of hits but now balled up in a fetal position, the concrete cold through his thin shirt.

He knew what this was. More importantly, he knew he wasn’t to fight back. If he did, the intensity of the beating would likely increase or, worse, the beating would get called off entirely. No one got a second chance to be jumped in. You had to just take it.

The beating stopped as suddenly as it began. Everyone stepped back, though it still felt to Luis as if someone were pressing on his chest, holding him down. He’d soon learn this was because his broken rib had deflated his left lung.

“Hospital,” snapped the OG.

The men who’d brought Luis lifted him to his feet, causing such a tremendous spasm of pain throughout his body that he almost passed out. If they noticed, they didn’t act like it. As they dragged him past Oscar, the one who Luis had seen delivering the rib-breaking kick, his friend leaned in.

“Fuck you,” Oscar hissed, all malice.

For a second Luis wasn’t sure where the rage was coming from. Then it hit him. Oscar had planned the robbery. He’d had the gun, which was the real risk when it came to the cops. This should’ve been his opportunity to prove himself. Instead, his peon had grabbed the glory.

Luis would get him back. It wasn’t as if Oscar’s anger or the violence of the attack would’ve gone unnoticed by others. He’d have to save face.

“Fuck that guy,” Luis choked out as he was shoved into the back of the car.

Around that same moment, four bullets entered Nicolas’s body a couple of miles away.

X

Oscar and Luis didn’t say much of substance on the way up to Santiago’s farm. They caught up on each other’s families, Luis played a few rounds of “where are they now?” and Oscar asked about his path to the priesthood. When they spoke of their own combined past, both seemed to realize that staying away from their teen years was best.

“They used to do that pumpkin patch every year,” Oscar was saying, “and they put in a haunted house. The Soriano family or something. You got in free if you were under three, so my dad always made us pretend we couldn’t talk.”

Luis laughed.

“I remember that. Nic and I went with you guys once. The guy at the ticket booth even pointed out that I was wearing my school shirt. But your dad made us be assholes and hold up our fingers all
‘Tengo tres años, señor.’
”

Luis waited for Oscar to chuckle but realized the mention of Luis’s brother had shut him up.

“Hey, I talk about him. It’s cool.”

“Always hard to tell how raw things are with people,” Oscar said. “I mean, probably easier to be away from it.”

“It’s not like I forget. Your shop’s maybe two blocks from where it happened.”

“Yeah. You visit him?”

“Nah. There’s nothing of him there. My mom, either. They’re long with God.”

They wound up the highway, cresting a few hills before the vast flat farmlands of Ventura County sprawled out beneath them. Oscar checked the map on his phone against a sign on an overpass and hit his blinker.

“Next exit.”

Alongside the highway there was an outlet mall, a few business parks, and even homes in the distance. Five minutes west and they might as well have been on another planet, surrounded on both sides by dark, empty fields.

“You’re sure we’re in the right place?” Luis asked.

“My guy seemed sure. You have to remember these aren’t farms, these are fields. Every square foot counts. You put up a house or a barn, that’s a couple hundred square feet you’re not using to plant.”

They passed a mile marker. Oscar slowed and pulled off the road.

“We’re here.”

“Where?” Luis asked.

Oscar pointed to a dark strip between two of the neighboring fields.

“I don’t see anybody,” Luis said.

“Neither do the cops, but they’re down there. They’ll probably be accustomed to new faces, but keep your head down. Look for a boss tomorrow morning and say yes to everything. Yes, you’ve worked fields before. Yes, that includes strawberries. And much as you’ll want to, don’t ask questions your first day.”

Luis extended a hand.

“We good?” Oscar asked.

Luis knew what he was asking and nodded. The way Oscar shook his hand made it clear the gangster thought it might be for the last time. Luis clambered out of the truck and waved.

“Vaya con Dios,”
Oscar said in a joking tone, then pulled away.

The culvert looked like a refugee camp. About a hundred people lined the dry channel’s walls in tiny but well-defined stakes. A few had actual tents, but many made do under tarps, makeshift roofs of cardboard or wood, or were simply laid out on the hard ground. Most were asleep, but a handful registered Luis’s arrival. The glances asked if he was a threat or merely a stranger. He tried smiling back but received nothing in response.

He reached the end of the line and lowered his pack. The rotund woman who’d anchored the row nodded warmly to Luis as he unrolled a blanket. It was the first look of kindness he’d received. He wondered if she was just happy to have a body between her and the unseen lions of the night.

He nodded and laid out his bedroll. Then he prayed.

“Café?”

Luis awoke to a cornucopia of smells. There was freshly brewed coffee, roasted pork, beans, tortillas, and corn. The woman to Luis’s left indicated a makeshift stove she’d made from a coffee tin balanced on a Sterno can.

“Gracias,”
Luis replied.

The woman’s name was Carmen. Luis played dumb as she told him about the recent and brutal murder down in Mexico of the man who ran the farm and how several of his workers had left immediately, fearing more trouble. The word went out that a handful would stay on out of loyalty. They would continue the harvest, hoping for a piece of the profits, but mostly because they thought letting the fruit of Santiago’s labor go to waste added insult to injury.

Luis was about to ask a question when most of the camp rose to climb out of the culvert, as if roused by a silent bugle. Luis followed. Waiting for them at the top, his face barely visible in the dim light, was a large man in his midfifties with unlaced boots and gray, sunken eyes. The rough stubble on his face added to his grave expression.

“For those who don’t know, I’m Alberto,” he said, staring into his hands. “We
are
going to work. I spoke to a couple of our drivers, and they’ll take in the stock at midday and sundown. I also heard late last night we may get some help from the other side of the hill. That may be in additional workers or a guarantor of pay. Those with papers on file, get to it. Those without, same rate. Twenty dollars an hour if you move. You don’t, you’re out.”

Three-quarters of the group moved to the field. Those that remained looked confused. With the exception of Luis.

“For you guys, I’ll need to see and copy your green cards. You’ll get your paperwork by the end of the day. Anyone without a green card—well, it might be easier for you to try somewhere else.”

Most of the remainders shuffled off. Luis stepped forward.

“I need a labor cert. I was told I could do that here.”

Oscar had been surprised when his contact in Ventura County had informed him that as far as the state was concerned, Higuera’s fields were aboveboard. They were incorporated as a small business; Santiago’s workers were listed and paid as seasonal labor.

“Yeah, but that’s probably bullshit,” Oscar had said. “He’s probably just a smarter criminal.”

Luis hadn’t said anything. They’d come up with a couple of fake IDs, making him out to be a Mexican national. They dummied up some residency paperwork as well that suggested he was on the road toward naturalization. An almost-legal illegal. He was just missing one thing: a business owner’s confirmation that he was a skilled employee.

“Good chance they’ll blow you off if you bring it up,” Oscar had warned. “But if they’re trying to avoid scrutiny, they’ll at least have to make a show of helping you with your paperwork.”

“The same week the boss is murdered?”

“Hey, it’s your plan, not mine! But if you only need to be there a few days anyway, they might not ask at all, and you can get right to work. This is for contingencies.”

Now facing Alberto, Luis was happy to have jumped through the right hoops.

“You need a labor cert?” Alberto asked incredulously. “On these fields?”

Luis handed over the pages Oscar had printed off the Internet.

“It’s all I need. I have an apartment. My kids are in school. They were born here. I wasn’t. But I’m almost there. Just need a labor cert.”

“You’ve got to work somewhere two years for that,” Alberto said.

“No,” Luis countered. “I need to work in the same labor pool. It can be in different fields.”

“Things are changing in this state,” Alberto said, barely able to hide his exasperation. “Heck, even the country. You could probably wait it out a few years . . .”

“Would you do that to your kids?”

Alberto stiffened. Clearly he would not.

“Look, I have to be straight with you. I don’t know what’s going on with this farm in the short
or
long term. Yeah, Santiago was big on helping people navigate all this. He was undocumented for a while and knew what it was like. That doesn’t mean the next owner will feel that way at all.”

Luis indicated the fields, now filling with workers.

“Maybe. But it looks like you need workers now. All I’m asking is to do the work. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll try somewhere else. You just have to know how few places will give you the time of day. They want you legal or under the table. You try to split the difference, and they think you’re going to cost them.”

“But not you.”

Luis fell silent. Alberto stared him down like a man accustomed to winning these battles. When Luis pushed the papers forward, Alberto relented.

“I’ll do what I can,” Alberto said. “’Cause Santiago’s voice in my head is telling me that’s what he’d do.”

And that’s what he did for you,
Luis realized.

Though mortification of the flesh as a way to get a sense of Christ’s suffering had been a central practice of the Catholic Church for centuries before falling out of favor in the twentieth century, Luis was always surprised to see with what reverence it was written of in earlier texts. In various accounts of the lives of saints, ecclesiastical scholars wrote with veneration about the gory details of the pain the canonized had endured:

When the feast of the saint arrived, Father Grijalva whipped himself until the skin of his back was in ribbons and blood cascaded down his legs.

After receiving the compliment, Father Antonio went to an olive tree, took down a branch, and flagellated himself to chase out the sin of pride.

Following the miracle, Sister Agatha took the leather strap and humbled herself to her Lord.

It was like something out of a Stephen King novel. How could the writer know how joyful the priest felt with every lash, how much closer to the Lord?

Luis was glad it had fallen out of favor, as he could never envision flagellating himself bloody as a reflection of the Passion. It was too absurd. Which was why, as he suffered through the most backbreaking labor he’d ever endured in over-a-hundred-degree heat, he questioned whether any of those enthusiastic writers had done any mortifying of the flesh themselves.

Not that his injuries were anywhere near comparable to Christ’s. His hands and fingers were rubbed raw by stiffening leaves, his fingertips by the sharp edges of the plastic clamshells he filled with berries. Every microlaceration or abrasion combined, until it looked like his skin had been boiled away. Worse were the burns seared into any bit of his skin exposed to the sun. The backs of his hands and neck, his face, and his ears had erupted into a blazing rash. As advised to do by Oscar, he’d worn long pants and sleeves into the fields. But his clothes soon stuck to him from constant sweat, irritating all areas beneath. His skin was in full revolt.

His muscles ached as well. The only efficient way to pick strawberries was to move down the row bent over, using two fingers to grip and gently twist the berries free from the stem. They were then placed in a clamshell container that would later arrive in the supermarket. The fewer hands that touched the berry, the less likely damage to its skin. The smallest abrasion could lead to rot within days.

This process was the reason there was so much turnover in the stoop-crop fields. Wrists went, hip joints went, legs went, but worse than everything, backs went. At the end of the first day, he was so stiff, he couldn’t even stretch. He thought he’d be better in the morning. Instead, he could barely get out of bed, much less stand.

“You gotta give the plants their due before they’ll give you yours,” another worker said. “They bleed you a little. Get a taste. Your hands callous up, your skin thickens, and you come to an understanding. Only then will they give up the berries.”

Luis kept at it. A few of the other new faces quit. He didn’t have that luxury.

Another thing Oscar had said was proven right on that first day, too. If he’d asked any questions about Santiago, much less Odilia, he would’ve been shut down immediately. No one socialized during the day, and in the night folks stayed with their own, seemingly suspicious of overtures of friendship.

So he worked, kept his mouth closed, and patiently waited. To assuage the pain, he remained in an almost-constant state of prayer.

Dear Lord. Please . . . please guide me today as I try to do your will. Lend me the strength to endure this pain and guide me toward a way to avoid this fate tomorrow.

The other thing Luis waited on was his paperwork. He’d brought it up again to Alberto on the second day but mostly got the brush-off. Alberto’s priority was continuing the harvest, answering the questions of the small number of investigators that came by, and getting his people paid.