Illegal

FIFTY-SEVEN

Jimmy and Tino were twenty miles south of Bakersfield. Payne turned on the radio and picked up a Dodgers game from Shea Stadium, the Mets leading by a run. They heard the cra-ack of bat on ball and listened to the melodious Vin Scully describe Rafael Furcal banging a double off the left field wall.

"?Solido conectando!" Tino chimed in. "Furcal's my favorite."

Payne smiled. Tino loved baseball. That made two of them.

"I gotta pee, Himmy."

"You sure?" Payne remembering the boy's gotta-pee distractions.

" 'Course I'm sure. Can you stop in the next town?"

"As long as you're not gonna rob a bank."

They took the exit at Route 223 and headed east. They passed the freshly painted wooden barracks of Weedpatch Camp. A forlorn settlement of Okies during the Great Depression, the place was made famous in The Grapes of Wrath. A banner hung limply in the still air, inviting folks to the upcoming Dust Bowl Festival, promising corn bread, chili, and tri-tip steak.

Close to the restored camp, bare wooden shacks were still occupied by migrants-Hispanics, not Okies- tending nearby onion fields. The shacks weren't as nice as the freshly painted Weedpatch barracks. Payne wondered if anyone noticed the irony.

A roadside sign announced the dusty little town of Arvin, the "Garden in the Sun." They found a sporting goods store with a rest room in the back. While he waited for Tino, Jimmy bought two baseball gloves, a big-webbed, Wilson brown steerhide for himself, and a Mizuno black pigskin youth model for Tino. Then he grabbed two handfuls of Pony League balls.

Payne was already in the driver's seat, engine running, when Tino hopped in and found his new glove waiting. "For me?"

"You look like a shortstop to me. Lots of range."

"Oh, man!" A smile rippled across the boy's face like a cool breeze on a mountain lake. "After those cabrons stole my glove, I didn't know when I'd ever get another one."

"Once we find your mom, we'll play some ball, see what you've got." Payne thinking of Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams saying, "You wanna have a catch?"

They drove off, Tino running his fingertips over the raised red seams of one of the balls. Then he pounded the ball into the pocket of the glove, over and over. Payne imagined the boy sleeping with the ball and glove.

They passed Bakersfield and Delano, Pixley and Tipton, the temperature soaring as they drove deeper into the valley. With the Mustang's top down and the hot air enveloping them, Payne was reminded of his college job in a pizza shop, manning the ovens.

In nearby fields, cows lazed under shade trees. A few lonely oil wells pumped endlessly to their own rhythm. Neat rows of grapes formed straight lines across finely tended vineyards. Fat, round peaches dangled heavily from tree limbs. Hispanic men in hats and long-sleeve shirts hauled honeydews, big as volleyballs, to waiting wagons.

There were almond trees and melon fields and berry patches. Lettuce and tomatoes, asparagus and artichokes, all soaking up the sun, crystalline water exploding in great plumes from rotating sprinklers, rainbows dancing in the mist.

Towering silos of grain stood like missiles alongside railroad tracks that paralleled the highway. Warehouses and pallet yards and fertilizer tanks and billboards with the reminder, Crops Grow Where Water Flows.

There seemed to be nothing here that wasn't devoted to the soil and its bounty. Could migrants be blamed for believing that America was paved, if not with gold, with tasty treasures ripe for the picking?

The Dodgers game was lost to static, and Payne twirled the old-fashioned radio dial. He found a Spanish-language station and another in Portuguese, then stopped when he heard Los Lobos belting out "Good Morning Aztlan." He remembered how much Sharon loved the up-tempo song and how she once told him to listen carefully to the lyrics. All about not trying to run and hide away. "Here it comes, here comes another day."

He was never much for drawing philosophical lessons from music, be it "Margaritaville" or "Ave Maria." But who could argue with that message? He had been running. Ever since Adam died. Running from his grief, hiding under a mountain of pain. Not caring about the next sunrise or the new day.

Helping Tino had energized and focused him. He anticipated the pure joy of the boy's reunion with his mother and his own joy of helping them, asking nothing in return. But then what? Sharon's words came back to him. "You'll wake up the next morning, and Adam will still be gone. And you know what? Tino will be out of your life, too."

With that thought tormenting him, Payne saw a billboard along the road. It would have been hard to miss.

Dominating the sign was a three-story-high likeness of Simeon Rutledge, a crooked smile on his craggy, cowboy face. And this greeting: Rutledge Ranch and Farms, Inc., Welcomes You to Kings County. Drive Carefully.