Under the Same Sky Read online

  “We’ll see about that,” I answered. I would have liked to just play the game and try to win a prize, but with Randy everything was a competition. He usually won, too, and that’s what happened this time. I was used to it, I guess.

  Randy picked out a huge teddy bear. The girls we had seen at the water rides came walking by, and Randy went up to them and asked who wanted it. They all went crazy over it, and Randy joked around with them, finally giving it to the one he declared “the hottest.” It was the kind of thing I’d heard Tony say.

  Then Jason won a rabbit that was almost as big and gave it to one of the other girls. Randy kept forking over money from the wad, and we kept shooting until I won a prize, too. I picked out a giant panda bear. I held on to it, though.

  “Oooh, isn’t that cute? José wants a widdle beary for his vewwy own,” Randy taunted.

  “It’s for Meg, lamebrain,” I lied. It was for Luisa, but I wasn’t about to tell Randy that. I had to lug the humongous thing around for the rest of the day, but if Luisa liked it, I figured it would be worth the hassle.

  It was weird, but all day long—except for the moments when I was riding the Mind Eraser, which definitely lived up to its name—Luisa and Manuel and the rest of the crew kept popping into my thoughts. Everything I saw seemed to remind me of them and of my job: signs advertising strawberry shortcake, a game that offered Mexican sombreros for prizes, a tortilla stand, even a ride called the Hornet.

  By the afternoon, I was surprised to find myself feeling bored and tired. Randy was getting on my nerves big-time. For one thing, he couldn’t stop calling me José, even after I told him three times to knock it off. And he kept on challenging Jason and me to stupid contests or wagers.

  “Dare you to toss the rest of your snow cone into that woman’s purse.”

  “Bet you’re too chicken to swipe one of those prizes and run.”

  “How much you wanna bet I can ring the bell?”

  Was it possible I’d never noticed what a pain he could be? And how he was always showing off and making fun of other people?

  “Look at that kid over there. What a load. I bet they don’t let him on the ride ’cause he’s too fat.”

  “Look at that loser in the checked pants.”

  “Quick, check out the toupee on that guy! Looks like something died on top of his head.”

  I remembered I used to laugh at the stuff Randy said and did, but that afternoon I couldn’t imagine why I’d thought he was so funny. Jason didn’t exactly join in with Randy, but he seemed to find him entertaining. I was actually relieved when Jason announced that it was a quarter to seven and we had to head for the parking lot.

  We found Shari and Tony waiting in the car. Shari didn’t look so hot, and Tony rolled his eyes and said she didn’t feel well. She lay down on the front seat as we began driving down the thruway.

  “Look at her, dead to the world,” Tony said after a few minutes. “Girls can be such a drag sometimes. You know what I mean?” He imitated Shari, talking in a high voice. “The roller coasters are too scary, the other rides make me sick, I don’t like shooting guns or throwing baseballs or darts, I don’t want to get my hair wet…” He shook his head disgustedly. “I mean, why go to an amusement park?” Then he turned around and winked over his shoulder at us. “I met a hot chick at Jack’s the other day. I’ll take her next time.”

  It seemed like a crummy thing to say with Shari right there in the car, even if she was asleep. I was leaning forward to look in the front seat and make sure her eyes were closed, when Tony pulled up beside a car in the right-hand lane. He was checking out the girl who was driving, giving her his movie-star grin and a little lift of his eyebrow. She smiled back. Then Tony gunned the engine, pulled past her, and sped ahead.

  I closed my eyes, thinking I’d try to sleep myself until we got home. I guess I had started to nod off when I heard Tony swear and say, “Would you look at that?”

  I struggled to sit up, and looked out the window where Tony was pointing. There was a car on the shoulder of the road, with the hood up and the engine smoking. Standing around it, looking bummed out, were seven Mexican-looking guys. One of them motioned for us to pull over, but it was a pretty halfhearted gesture. He didn’t look very hopeful.

  “Yeah, right,” said Tony. He stepped even harder on the gas, muttering, “Drive a decent car or go back to Beanville.”

  Randy snickered.

  “Hey, give them a break,” I said. “Maybe they can’t afford a better car. They’re probably sending most of their money to their families back in Mexico.”

  “Or maybe as soon as they get a paycheck they go to a bar and blow it all,” said Tony, with a knowing look in my direction.

  There was a time, probably even that morning, when I wouldn’t have dreamed of contradicting Tony. I thought that everything he said was cool, and that he knew stuff because he was older. But what he was saying was stupid.

  “Well, the guys who work for us aren’t like that,” I said.

  “Oh, sorry, José,” said Tony, frowning at me in the rearview mirror, looking anything but sorry. “I forgot those are your amigos.” There was a moment of silence, then he added, “The thing I can’t understand is why people like your father hire those guys, when they could give jobs to real Americans.”

  “Are you saying you want a job?” I asked.

  He snorted. “What, picking beans? Are you kidding?”

  “Well, you said Americans want those jobs. Like who?”

  “Look, what I’m saying is they don’t belong here. They don’t even talk English. You know what I mean?”

  How was I supposed to answer that? I shrugged and mumbled, “No, not really.”

  Randy poked me in the side and said, “Hey, lighten up, would you, José?”

  I elbowed his arm away and said, “Yeah, well, you guys don’t get it.” Maybe there was a way to make them understand. “There are no good jobs in Mexico, in case you didn’t know. They just want to make some money for their families, but people give them a hard time. Like the other night, some guys drove through the farm throwing stink bombs and yelling stuff like, well, like what Tony just said.”

  Randy laughed. “Whoa! That must have been wild!”

  “So?” Tony asked. “What’s your point?”

  “So it was a lousy thing to do,” I said, annoyed at the question. “It scared the crew. Meg was crying and everything. The police came. It was a big mess.” I wasn’t about to tell them I’d been scared, too.

  “Nobody got hurt, right?” said Tony dismissively. “Somebody just wanted to make a statement.”

  “Freedom of speech, man,” Randy declared. “It’s a free country.”

  I couldn’t help myself. “Lucky for you,” I muttered. “You get to say any stupid thing you want.”

  Randy put his face right up to mine. “Oh, yeah? Well you know what, José? You’re acting pretty freaking weird lately, if you ask me. Why don’t you just move to Mexico or something?”

  I ground my teeth together and tried to keep my mouth shut. What was I going to do, start a fistfight in the back of the car?

  Jason said impatiently, “Can you guys talk about something else for a change?”

  “Gladly,” said Randy, sounding disgusted.

  I kept my mouth shut and counted the telephone poles passing by. I just wanted to get home. For once, I was happy that I lived out of town, because it meant I’d be the first one dropped off.

  It was nine-thirty when Tony finally pulled into our driveway. As I got out of the car with the panda bear in my arms, Randy said, “You and your beary sleep tight now, José.”

  “Yeah, right,” I said tiredly. “Tell your dad thanks.”

  The downstairs was dark. My parents were already in bed reading. I stuck my head into their bedroom and said good night and headed for bed myself. My paycheck was on the pillow; Mom must have left it there for me. I looked at the amount and groaned: $176.78. Even though I’d worked on Sunday, I had taken today
off, making it a six-day week. The first day of picking strawberries had been a disaster, and even though I’d gotten faster as the week went on, I hadn’t come close to catching up with the others.

  Rounding off in my head, I added $177 to my previous total of $348 and got $525. After deducting $16.99 plus tax for Randy’s CD, I had $507 for two weeks’ work. It was less than half of what I needed to buy the Streaker. Okay, so this was going to take longer than I had expected.

  I lay in bed thinking about giving the panda bear to Luisa, and smiled.

  18

  When I came downstairs the next morning, Meg was sitting at the breakfast table with the giant panda bear on her lap, pretending to feed it Cocoa Puffs.

  “He’s so cute, Joe!” she said, her whole face glowing with pleasure. “Did you win him? I was thinking we should name him Jing-Ming-Ling.”

  Oh, man, I thought, groaning inwardly. Like a dope, I’d left the bear in the kitchen, and Meg had seen it and thought it was for her.

  When I didn’t say anything, she said, “Don’t you get it? J for Joe, M for Meg, and L for LuAnn.”

  “It’s a good name,” I said carefully. “But maybe Luisa will want to call it something different.” I hesitated, then came out with it. “I got it for her.”

  For a second, Meg looked so disappointed that I almost gave in and told her she could keep the bear. Then she said, “Oh,” in a very small voice.

  I tried to explain. “It’s just that, well, you have tons of stuffed animals, Megs. And I bet Luisa doesn’t have any.” I poured myself a bowl of cereal, then looked at her to see how she was reacting.

  Good old Meg. She’d always been a generous kid, more generous than I was, if I had to be honest about it. She was already smiling again, her disappointment forgotten. “I bet she’ll really like it, Joe. I bet when she takes it home, her little sisters will love it! I bet they never saw anything so big! I bet it’s bigger than they are!”

  Relieved, I poured milk over my cereal and began eating. Meg chatted on. “Hey! She could still call it Jing-Ming-Ling! J for Joe, ’cause you won it for her, M for Manuel, and L for Luisa! Tell her when you give it to her, okay?”

  Now that Meg had mentioned my actually giving the bear to Luisa, I imagined myself walking out to meet the crew by the barn, holding a giant stuffed animal. I could already hear the teasing I’d get from the guys. They’d be kidding around, but I’d still feel dumb. And Manuel would probably give me that suspicious look that implied I was up to no good.

  “Hey, Megs,” I suggested. “Why don’t you walk out with me and give it to her yourself? You can explain all about the name and everything.”

  “Okay,” she agreed eagerly.

  As Meg and I walked down the driveway toward the rest of the crew, I congratulated myself on my brilliant strategy. Everyone’s face, even Manuel’s, lifted in a grin at the sight of Meg struggling to walk with the giant bear in her arms. A burst of Spanish came from the group:

  “Meg, es tu amante?”

  “¡Muy hermoso!”

  “¿Pero un poquito gordo, no crees?”

  I gathered they were teasing Meg about her “boyfriend.”

  Meg walked right up to Luisa and handed her the bear. “It’s for you. Joe won it. Do you like it? Do you think your sisters will like it? You could name it Jing-Ming-Ling. See, J is for Joe, M is for Manuel, and L is for you! And it sounds kind of Chinese, and panda bears are from China—”

  Meg stopped, probably to catch her breath, and Luisa said, “It’s a good name, Meg. It’s perfect.” Then she looked at me and gave me a smile that took my breath away. “Thank you, Joe! Are you sure it is for me?”

  “Yeah,” I said. I wished the whole world wasn’t there watching, because it made me feel really self-conscious, but it was terrific to see the happiness in Luisa’s eyes and know I’d done something to put it there.

  I dared to glance at Manuel, and was relieved to see that even he seemed to be getting a kick out of the big bear. Grinning, he took it from Luisa’s arms and said, “Come on, compadre grande, vámanos.” He sat the bear in the front seat next to Gilberto, where it rode with us out to the field.

  The crew was a little more relaxed that day than they had been during the week. As we rode along, they told me they’d gone to the big Tip-Top store the night before to do their grocery shopping. The way they explained it, a lot of the workers from the area farms met there on Friday nights, so they could visit and exchange news and gossip.

  “No one has seen the patrol since Monday, when they come here,” Carlos told me.

  “It does not mean they won’t be back,” warned Gilberto as we climbed out of the truck.

  “Sí, sí, we know,” said Jorge. “We keep watch like before.” Then he got a big grin on his face, reached into the front seat and grabbed the bear, and set it up on top of the truck’s cab. “Señor Oso will watch, too,” he said, cracking himself and the rest of us up. “He will scare the migra away!”

  Whether it was because of Mr. Bear or not, the day passed with no sign of the I.N.S. Nothing out of the ordinary happened at all, except for Luisa’s discovery of a tiny, spotted fawn huddled in one of the hedgerows.

  I was picking away, lost in my own thoughts, when I looked up to see Luisa gazing at the ground and crooning softly, “¿Dónde está tu madre, chiquilla?”

  I stood up with a groan and walked over. When she saw me coming, she motioned for me to go slowly. I crept up beside her, and at first I didn’t see anything. She pointed, and after a moment I saw it, too. It was curled up on the ground, its spots causing it to blend in almost perfectly with the sun-dappled background of dead leaves. It opened its huge brown eyes in alarm, but remained frozen in place.

  Luisa and I both began to back away as silently as possible so that we wouldn’t frighten it into bolting. When we were far enough away to figure it would feel safe, we exchanged smiles, shaking our heads in wonder, the way you do when you see something that incredibly cool.

  “I can’t believe how small it was,” I murmured.

  “Muy dulce,” she said, which I was pretty sure meant sweet. “The eyes make me think of my little sisters back home.” For a second her eyes glazed over with a mist of tears, but she quickly shook her head and pulled her baseball cap lower on her forehead.

  “You miss them,” I said, and she nodded.

  I thought about Meg and LuAnn, and how they were always around. LuAnn mostly got on my nerves, and I guess I ignored Meg a lot of the time. But when I tried to imagine them being somewhere far away, along with both my parents, I could see how I might miss even LuAnn—a little, anyway, every once in a while.

  However, I had no problem at all with the idea of their leaving for a few days to go to the family reunion. Better still was the idea of being home alone and being in charge of the farm.

  Nobody had mentioned the trip in a while, and I was trying to think of a way to bring it up during dinner when Meg asked, “Hey, are we going to Pennsylvania, or what?” She looked expectantly from Mom to Dad. “You said you’d decide soon, and that was ages ago.”

  Mom laughed, probably because it had actually been less than a week since we’d talked about going to the reunion. I knew a few days could seem like ages, though, when you were really looking forward to something, the way Meg obviously was. I was eager myself to hear what Mom and Dad would say.

  “True,” agreed Dad. “I think we can plan on going this coming Thursday—”

  “Yay!” Meg cheered.

  Dad raised his eyebrows and finished his sentence. “Unless something happens between then and now.”

  “Things have been pretty quiet around here lately,” I said casually. “The crew’s feeling better,” I added, proud to be contributing something important to the conversation. “They met a bunch of their friends last night at Tip-Top, and nobody’s seen the border patrol around. Nobody’s been hassled by jerks like the ones who drove through here the other night, either.”

  “Well, that’s
good,” said Mom. She turned to Dad and asked, “Speaking of that, Jim, what’s going on with Tom Matthews’s application to build more housing?”

  “It’s still under consideration,” Dad answered. He frowned. “I think there’s a zoning board meeting Thursday night, actually.”

  “That could stir things up again,” Mom said worriedly.

  I didn’t want them to start dwelling on the possibility of trouble on the first night they’d be gone. Turning to Dad, I said, “If the weather stays like this, we should be finished with strawberries by Friday. I was noticing that the last cabbage fields we planted need weeding pretty bad. Is that what we should do next if we do finish the berries while you’re gone?”

  Dad looked surprised by my question, probably because it was the first time I’d ever expressed an opinion about what was going on at the farm.

  “Well, as a matter of fact, Joe, I was thinking the same thing this afternoon. We’ll have to get those fields cultivated, because the peppers and cucumbers are going to be ready soon. Once they start, it’ll be nonstop for a while.”

  “And then the sweet corn’ll be coming in,” I said.

  “That’s right,” said Dad. “Then we go straight into early apples.”

  “So this sounds like the perfect time for us to go on a trip,” LuAnn pronounced slyly. “Mom, do you think my yellow sundress is okay to wear at the reunion?”

  Mom and LuAnn began talking about what they needed to pack for the trip, which I thought was a good sign. It meant that Mom was seriously thinking they would go.

  I turned back to Dad, hoping to continue our conversation. It was a new feeling, a good one, to be talking to him about the farmwork. I wanted to further impress him with the idea that he had no reason to be concerned; I could handle things while he was gone. But he was already excusing himself from the table, saying he needed to talk with Manuel about the next day’s delivery schedule.

  “What delivery?” I asked. “Tomorrow’s Sunday.”