All the Wind in the World Page 3

  “How does that sound?” I ask. I can’t fault James for being beat-­down and skeptical right now, but I need to know that he still believes in us.

  James smiles, just a little. I will take that little smile as a gift. I will.

  WE SPEND THE next day going over our plans for the future because that’s what we do when we need to pass the time and can’t work with our hands. James’ mood has lifted since yesterday, so he starts. He says that he’ll find us a deserted island off the Eastern Seaboard. He’ll find a hill on that island, hollow it out, and that’s where we’ll live, underground like weasels. There’ll be no windows, just a little wooden door and a chimney. Inside will be an iron cookstove, a bed with a handmade quilt, a rocking chair, a fireplace, and a table. The wind may batter our hill from time to time, but we won’t ever notice.

  When it’s nice out we’ll walk for miles and swim in the ocean—even at night. When the weather’s bad, we’ll stay inside and make up stories with us as the characters.

  “But we can’t be the good guys in all of them!” James shouts as he stands halfway out the door of the train car, balancing on one leg, allowing the wind to yank at his hair and his clothes. “Sometimes we’ll have to be the bad guys.”

  “Of course,” I reply. “I’ll be the evil genius, and you’ll be my sidekick!”

  “Perfect!” he shouts back.

  I’m okay with our house built into the hill as long as I can have my horses. I’ll pick a favorite and call her Daisy. She’ll be mine, but only because she wants to be. I won’t stable her or anything, but she’ll come around some mornings and let me saddle her, and we’ll run laps around the island. I’ll whoop into the sky knowing that no one will ever hear me.

  There’s one more thing James wants our island to have, something that will make it perfect: a big tree with a whole mess of branches, all bursting with green leaves. He wants a tree so tall that when he climbs into its highest, most tender limbs, he’ll feel weightless, like the winds are always threatening to shake him loose. He’ll defy those winds and climb higher.

  This is the very best plan.

  Just before the sun sets, Leo stops by with more water, jerky, and dried figs. He’s sort of drunk again, and as he’s taking a piss off the side of the train, he launches into a story about his last stint cutting maguey out near Salton City. The overseer there went crazy one day, started screaming about fantasmas, and took swipes at the workers with a coa. One guy tried to stop him and got whacked in the neck and died. Another got three of his fingers sliced off. Finally, a group of jimadors tackled the overseer and held him until the other foremen could drag him off. After that, the field was labeled cursed, and most of the workers—including Leo—left to catch the next train headed east.

  “Not that I really believe in all that stuff,” Leo says. “Ghosts and shit like that? But—let me tell you—once those rumors start, about curses? Camps clear out fast.”

  James and I share a glance.

  Leo goes on to tell us his dream of saving up enough money to buy a parcel of land in northern Mexico. He wants to get rich running his own maguey fields. He wants a big house—a house made of bricks, he says—and a cellar full of wines with names he can’t pronounce and a bedroom with thick red curtains that block out the sun so he can sleep as late as he wants.

  “Forget the East!” Leo leans farther out the side of the train, letting the wind tear at his face. “Too cold! It’s so beautiful out here. I’ll be so happy to be buried in this ground.”

  “We miss water,” James replies.

  When we lived together in Chicago, James and I had our lake. It, too, was in the process of drying up, but still, it was something. But as I study the passing landscape, I have to agree with Leo. It is beautiful out here, in its own way. I love the hot days, the hard expanse of ground, the little lizards that hide in the creosote, the imposing mountains, the way the wind, when it hits the right speed, sounds like a string section playing in a minor key. It’s dangerous out here. I’ve warmed up to that danger. I still want my house in the hill, but I’m hot-­blooded now, too.

  ON THIS NIGHT, our last like this for a while, James and I curl up together in the corner of our cold train car. He rubs my arm, trying to create warmth, and I nuzzle my nose into the crook of his neck. I inhale deeply and feel the goose bumps ripple across his skin.

  “What are you doing?” James asks, pulling me closer.

  “Smelling you,” I mumble.

  James’ laugh rumbles in his chest. “Why would you want to do that?”

  “I like the way you smell.” I breathe in. “Like smoke and dust.” I breathe in again. “And engine oil.”

  “I haven’t worked with machines in months.” James’ voice is low and quiet, like he’s almost asleep. “How can I still smell like engine oil?”

  “You just do. Back when we met you smelled like engines, so that’s how you’ll always smell.” I shift, crawl on top of him, bringing my lips to hover over his. “Do I have a smell?”

  “Yes,” James replies automatically.

  It thrills me that he knows this, that he’s thought of it before.

  His eyes are closed, but he grins slightly. “You have a definite smell.”

  “Which would be . . . ?”

  James’ smile grows wider. He won’t cover it when it’s just the two of us. “Gamey.”

  I try to jerk away, but James holds me in place.

  “I smell like meat?”

  He opens his eyes. “You smell like you. Like campfires and spice. Like a wild animal.”

  I’ll take that.

  “How about . . .” I start to say. “How about . . . I’ll give you my smell, if you give me yours?”

  James closes his eyes again. His grin still lingers. He’s waiting for me to kiss him, and I do. I kiss him and inhale him at the same time, knitting his scent and the sure, soft urgency of his lips into my memory.

  A deep growl rises from the back of his throat, followed by all the syllables that make up my name: “Sarah Jacqueline.”

  I work to keep this memory, too: the way he says my full name when we’re alone together, how it’s gruff with wanting, how he takes his time to unwrap it like a present, unroll it like a banner, or open it up like the pages of a Bible.

  THREE

  The next morning as the sun breaks, we all launch ourselves from the train and run toward the maguey fields of the Real Marvelous. We run because in most camps not every­one who wants a job can have one. There are only so many beds and supplies an owner can provide. We also run because, after all that time stuck in the train, it feels good to be using our bodies again. We whoop and shout, and the sound shoots across the desert.

  People new to this part of the country sometimes describe it as barren, but that’s just them not looking hard enough. Under the cracked surface, the fire ants swarm in a cool, dark empire. Lizards and rattlesnakes emerge from the depths to warm themselves on hot rocks for the day. The birds here—every last one of them black with oil-­slick feathers—don’t fly so much as soar in perpetual circles, watching and waiting. The creatures that live out here are smart and resilient; they have good instincts; they know when to strike and when to rest. I tell myself that I should be more like them. There is sameness here in the desert, yes, but there are also treasures.

  News must have traveled about a train full of jimadors coming this way, because a foreman is waiting for us at the camp gate. He’s like a version of St. Peter dressed in gray and black and wearing mirrored sunglasses. I’m the first to reach him, and the others line up behind me. The foreman doesn’t even give me time to catch my breath before gripping my arms to feel for muscles and spinning me around to lift the back of my shirt to check the straightness of my spine. He scans my eyes for the yellowing in the whites that’s common with disease.

  “Have you cut maguey before?” he asks.

  “Yes.”

  “How many plants can you down in a day?”

  “As many as you n
eed me to.”

  The foreman grunts in approval and waves me through. Inside the gate, another man points me toward the women’s bathhouse.

  I look back and see that James is also waved through—of course—and sent in the other direction. It feels strange for us to part after so much time together, but I can still pull his scent from my hair and my clothes. He gave me his; I gave him mine.

  The woman working in the bathhouse finishes the drag she’s taking off her hand-­rolled cigarette and tells me to strip. After she inspects my clothes and hair for lice, I’m allowed to shower. She hands me back my bundle of clothes, and after hanging them on a hook, I head over to the closest water spigot. The meager lump of soap provided is black, made of lye and coal. The water’s not exactly hot, and the whole place smells like old milk and seems as if it’s coated in layers of slime, but I don’t know when I’ll be able to feel water on my skin again, so I make the most of it. After washing and rinsing, careful to leave enough soap for the women who’ve come in behind me, I duck my head under the spray. It’s good to feel clean.

  I turn off the tap just as a woman comes in holding the hand of a whimpering little girl. They remind me of the jimador and his boy back at Truth or Consequences and how my soft heart cost me a good thing. I won’t let anything like that happen again. I cross over to where my clothes are hanging, and since there don’t appear to be any towels, I dry off with my dirty shirt.

  After changing back into my clothes and checking to make sure I still have my bandanna and my jewelry, I step outside to view a flat expanse of rose-­gold dirt dotted by maguey plants. Over to the west, there’s a ragged line of mountains.

  I weave through the rows of bunkhouses and spot the owner’s house, atop a far, wide hill several hundred yards away. It’s a sprawling thing, a single-­story structure surrounded by a five-­foot adobe wall. A red-­and-­white flag waves lazily from a pole in a courtyard. There’s a twisty gold symbol in the middle of it, like several snakes all tied up in a knot—maybe the crest of the owner’s family. To the left of the house are some tidy stables and an exercise yard for horses. There’s a girl there, reed-­thin and almost ghostly, leading a large white horse by the reins.

  The wind shifts so suddenly, it nearly knocks me off my feet, and brings with it the smell of roasted meat coming from camp. Like a starving dog, I turn on instinct and see a growing number of freshly inspected jimadors all congregating in a large common area between the bunkhouses near a pit, where some of the young mess crew, the ones responsible for preparing our food and cleaning up after meals, are flipping thin strips of meat over a coal fire.

  I remember what the man back at Truth or Consequences said, something about things not being right with the food, how the owner put stuff in it. I scan the crowd and find James. Our eyes lock. His brow hitches up, just slightly. I’m ravenous, so I’m willing to take the risk. I make my way into and through the line, get my plate of food, and take a seat on the ground near the fire. Then I dig into the meager bits of charred, fatty meat with my fingers. James takes a seat beside me, and together we eat in silence, waiting for the overseer to address us.

  I’ve seen pictures in books of men all tied up together, wearing striped clothes and breaking rocks with sledgehammers on the side of the highway. Chain gangs, they used to be called. In those pictures, there’s always one guy off to the side, wearing dark pants, a shiny, saucer-­sized belt buckle, and a white button-­up shirt, with a rifle slung over his shoulder and a couple of dogs at his feet. The overseer of the Real Marvelous ranch looks like that, as if he studied those pictures to get the details just right.

  “Newcomers!” he calls out. “Welcome to Valentine, Texas. We call this ranch the Real Marvelous. Here’s what you all can expect.”

  His dogs—a duo of muscle-­bound mastiffs the blue-­black color of true night—sit on either side of him and grunt as their master explains the rules.

  “Breakfast starts at six thirty. We leave for the fields by seven. There’s a fifteen-­minute break at eleven. We stop at three. By five, the harvest for the day is totaled, and you are paid according to the amount you cut—five cents a plant—minus your room and board, the cost of water, and the cost of the diesel fuel it takes to cart you all out into the fields.”

  I do the math. That leaves us with anything from thirty to thirty-­eight cents a day per man. The wage isn’t much. Some of the jimadors grumble, but no one gets up to leave and wait for the next train to come through. I crack my knuckles. I can’t wait to get a blade in my hand again and start working.

  The overseer begins to say something about how they issue coas here, but stops and glances over his shoulder as a man on horseback approaches. I know immediately who he is. Unlike the rest of the men in charge dressed in blacks and smoke grays, he’s in a suit of lightest brown. His clothes are too clean and fit too well, and his skin is too pale for him not to be rich. He’s the owner, a rare sight. They don’t usually want to see us, and we don’t want to see them. I’m sure this man spends most of his days inside his comfortable house up there on the hill, balancing his ledger books, admiring his horses, listening to his flag flap in the wind, and sipping silver tequila from glasses that aren’t flecked with chips.

  He rides up next to the overseer and leans down from the saddle. The two men talk briefly, and the overseer steps back to give the owner space to address us.

  “Welcome again.” The owner’s voice booms. “Be aware, you’re joining near on two hundred other jimadors already here, and you’ll have to prove your worth in order to stay. I expect everyone to do his or her job here, and do it well. Idleness will get you sent out to jump the next train. Those who cause trouble will be punished first and then get sent out to hop the next train. I’ll see to that punishment myself.”

  A girl next to me snickers, causing her friend to jab her in the ribs.

  I fight back my own smile. The owner’s trying to assert his authority, which I suppose is fine, but I’ve never been afraid of a ranch owner, and I’m not about to start. I look over to James. He’s glaring at me. His hard frown wipes the smile right off my face.

  My gaze drops down to my empty plate, and even though I just finished eating, my stomach pops with hunger.

  IT’S HOURS AFTER supper and most of the jimadors have retired to their bunks, but, still, it takes James no time to get a game together. All he had to do was pull his old deck from his back pocket, sit down in a clearing near the edge of camp, and start to shuffle. Leo sidles up, bringing with him some other people from the train. Most of them are from Salton City, but some have come to Valentine from such far-­flung places as Idaho and the Dakotas.

  I’m worried that they can all smell Angus’ death on me, but to my relief, no one tells a story about a dust storm and a dead foreman in Truth or Consequences, yet they all have stories, and similar ones: foremen going crazy from the heat, taking off all their clothes and dancing in the field; foremen getting caught having sex with the jimadors; foremen getting caught having sex with the livestock; foremen getting drunk and killing other foremen. Most everyone is laughing—though not loud enough to draw attention from the night guards—but I watch a young couple, Ben and Rosa, who’ve come from Arizona, as they eye each other. There’s string peeking out from the collars of their shirts and the slight bulge of fabric in front of their hearts. They’re wearing those bundles of sticks and dried herbs around their necks. Madness in the fields isn’t funny to them.

  “I left Joshua Tree because the maguey started bleeding,” a girl named Odette tells us. She has corn silk hair that spills down her back and large, round eyes that give her a slightly stunned expression.

  Leo snickers, pulls a flask from his shirt pocket, and takes a pull.

  “I’m serious,” she says, chewing on a fingernail. “I struck my first plant one morning, and blood so dark it was almost black came oozing out. It was all over my coa blade. I couldn’t wipe it off.”

  We’re all quiet for a moment. Ben pulls Rosa
into his lap. She drapes her arm around his shoulder and starts to run her fingers through the loose curls at the back of his neck.

  Bruno, a big, brawny guy who told us he’s been at camp for close to six months, glances over at them. His eyes narrow slightly before he turns his attention back to the cigarette he’s rolling. It’s odd for a couple to lay claim to each other that way, to show such open affection. It’s a clear invitation for people to start talking.

  The firelight flickers against Bruno’s large hands, and I can’t help but admire the careful work he’s doing. The delicate rolling paper is crisp and uncreased. The tobacco is spread out perfectly.

  “We’ve all seen things we wish we hadn’t,” James says.

  Odette lifts her head and offers James a wobbly smile. She doesn’t know that even though he’s looking at her, he’s not talking to her. He’s talking to me. Like he always is.

  James calls that hand a wash, shuffles a new one, ups the ante, and just like that restores the mood. We play for what seems like hours in good spirits under a bright-­eye moon. James’ original ante of a dollar has doubled. Others are winning too because James is letting them, especially Odette, whose trembling fingers and open face betray every hand she’s dealt.

  “I love it out here,” Leo eventually says. He gestures out toward the horizon and grins his messy grin.

  It’s late, but there’s still a strip of peach at the bottom edge of the sky. Out West, the days hang on this way. They cling to the crust of the earth. This is what Leo must be talking about: it’s admirable, the way the day refuses to give up, the way it always wages a battle against the oncoming night.

  But I’m wrong. That’s not what Leo’s talking about at all.

  “All the lies,” he says. “The desert seems so simple and boring, but really it’s full of secrets. When the Spanish first came here all those hundreds of years ago, they had no idea what to make of it, so they just started coming up with lies.”

  “Call,” James says, ignoring Leo, who is—no surprise—a bit drunk.