Two

TWO

Light.

There was lightness, seen from the inside of a cloud, white light that came from all directions, somehow came from inside him as well as out, and he opened his eyes.

The white light did not go away, grew more intense with his eyes open.
`Can you feel this?` Somebody pinched his legs and it hurt. He swore.
`That is good. Move something now, move this foot…`
the boy started to focus and saw that what he thought was white light was really the shirt of the old man reflecting the glare from the bulb hanging in the shed where they slept.

He moved his foot then his hands and arms, each as he was told to move, and at last his neck. By now an older woman – at least forty – was there and she said something in Spanish and felt his neck and shoulders, then smiled at him with even white teeth and said something more.

`She says you are young and green and did not break,` the old man said. `I thought surely a bone or two would have snapped. You fell such a distance,` he laughed, `and even when you were senseless you did not let go of the pigeon.` He smiled. `You must be a true hunter.`

Which made the boy feel proud because he had hunted, had thrown himself at the woods to escape the drinking and fancied himself a good hunter. `I hurt.`

`As you should. The ground shook when you fell. But it will be worse tomorrow when you awaken – you must sleep now.`

The boy rolled onto his side and then rose to his knees. He did not want to appear weak in front of the old man or the woman kneeling next to him or the two girls standing off to the side, so he stood, wobbling, and made his way to his sleeping area and fell onto his bed of feed sacks and was asleep, or unconscious again, instantly.

In the morning he thought, I am paralysed. He had slept on his right side, a rolled-up feed sack for a pillow, and he had drooled and his head was pressed into the wetness. He wanted to move it away but he could not.

His body screamed with pain. Every bone, every muscle, his head, even his teeth, ached and when at last he made something move – he swung his leg sideways – it was pure agony.

He rolled slowly onto his back and opened his eyes. There was daylight, bright sun, cutting into the gloom of the shed and he knew that he was very late – it must be close to nine – and that all the Mexicans were gone to the fields and would get so far ahead of him he would never catch up. In his life he would never catch up, he thought, and then he saw the farmer’s wife come in the door.

His sleeping area was way in the back of the shed, tucked in a dark corner so that somebody coming in from the bright sun would not be able to see to the rear where he lay. He held his breath, watching her, wondering.

She wore a loose red-print dress that hung on her like a drape. She stopped at the first bed on the left side – the men slept on the left, the women on the right – and reached down to pull a sack up from the floor. She held the sack in her left hand and put it to her face, her cheek, and then to her nose and smelled it and breathed the odour of the sack and at the same time she slid her other hand down her body.

The boy forgot the pain and felt him self grow hard and at the same time confused because she had said she hated the Mexicans and didn’t want the men to get her and yet here she was breathing in the smell of them.

He knew that if she saw him now she would probably go and get the pistol and shoot him but he needn’t have worried. In a moment she re-arranged the sack as it had been, straightened her dress, turned and walked out of the shed, and he lay back to ponder what he had seen. The pain had returned and he thought he might just lie there all day thinking of the skinny farmer’s wife and what she had done but he had to pee so badly that he finally stood, moaning from the pain, and made his way to the outhouse behind the shed.

Once he was up and moving, the pain seemed to lessen and after using the outhouse he slowly walked the half mile out to the field and picked up his hoe were the Mexicans had left it and went to work, carefully, cutting left and right, left and right, every other beet.

When at last it was time for lunch he sat with the men and ate tortillas with beans and after they had eaten he told the old man what he had seen in the sleeping shed that morning.

The man laughed and turned and said something in Spanish to the other men and then looked to where the farmer’s wife sat in the truck, a hundred yards away. She had brought sandwiches, though nobody was eating them now, and sat in the cab of the pick up with the gun next to her.

`She does not know herself,` the old man said, the smile leaving his face. `Her husband must not be much of a man and she feels the moon on her shoulder and wants but cannot have and so does not know herself.`
`What does that mean?` The boy wiped his hands on his jeans. `The moon on her shoulder, what is that?`

`It is something we say in the village where I come from. Women are said to have the moon on their shoulder when they are not satisfied.` He sighed and looked up at the noon sun. `It is said that men have the most lust but women have more – they have all the lust. They want everything. Marta, hey, Marta,` he called to the older Mexican woman. `Marta – do you have lust?`

The woman was=s lying against a grassy bank on the fencerow along the edge of the field with her hat over her eyes and she raised the hat. `I Que?`
He said something in Spanish. The woman laughed and gave the old man the finger and then went back to resting.

`But it is true,` the man said. `Women have all the lust there is. They are never satisfied. They all have the moon on their shoulder.`

The boy lay back, half asleep, smiling, thinking of it until they went back to the hoes. Working through the afternoon burned the pain and stiffness off and by quitting time he was back to normal and starving.

Somebody had cleaned the pigeons the night before and put them in a shady corner of the shed, in a pot with cool water, covered to keep the flies out.

Soon they had the fire going and when the beans were cooked, after dark, the pigeons were put in and some dried chillis, and the stew simmered while the boy sat dozing in the corner and the Mexicans talked. He listened to the music of their talk instead of the words.

Finally, the food was ready and the women cooked tortillas and everybody ate until they were full, standing around the pot, picking the pigeon meat of the bones and wrapping it with beans in the tortillas.

The boy thought it must be near midnight when they were done and full and had smoked rolled cigarettes and still the men sat and talked in one place while the women talked in another.
He could hardly keep his eyes open and moved to his sleeping area but the old man came over to him.

`Are we not to get more pigeons?`
`Tonight?`
`It is when they sleep.`
`But it’s late.` The boy never wanted to climb again. `And we have work tomorrow.`
`Not tomorrow. It is Domingo – Sunday. We do not work on this day.`
`But -`
`Did you not like the pigeons?`
More than like, the boy thought, his belly full and the pigeon fat still on his lips with the faint burn from the chilli – much more than like. `Yes.`
`Is it that you are afraid to climb again? That would show an understanding – if you were afraid to climb. A fall like that would cause an understanding of the risk…`

It was important that a man not be afraid and so the boy felt concerned. Later he would wonder, when he was no longer with the Mexicans, if the old man had done it intentionally to make him face his fear or, perhaps, just because he wanted more pigeons.

Whatever the intent, the result was the same. With a full belly and fear in his heart the boy went to the equipment barn and climbed upside down to the rafters for more pigeons.

The fear helped rather than hindered him, made him cautious and slow and kept him from falling. He climbed and dropped the pigeons one after another until finally the old man called up, `It is enough. We have enough to eat and more will only spoil.`

The boy climbed down and was ready for bed but it was not to be, not yet. They went to the sleeping shed and sat at the back with the glow from the bulb hanging inside and cleaned the pigeons, everybody helping, men and women, ripping the skins from the birds and thumbing the guts out expertly while the old man told them the story of getting the pigeons, first in English for the boy and then in Spanish for the rest.

`He went through the birds like a bad wind,` the old man said, `holding as sure as would a panther, killing left and killing right until I made him stop. It was a thing to see.`

And the boy knew that he was being half teased, but still, there were the birds being cleaned and they would eat the next day because he had climbed the rafters and dropped the dead birds down. It made him conscious of the way the women looked at him – or how he imagined they looked at him – and when at last he long aching day was done and he crawled onto his feed sacks near dawn to sleep, he could not help feeling pride that he had killed the pigeons.