(A/N: So here is my 'minimalist' piece, as promised. Gotta warn you though, I didn't follow my own rules. There are still some rough parts, but I hope you guys like it. I will be posting the other half very soon.)
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In the morning, as he walks to work and before the city is awake, the pear trees standing in the dew reach their black arms towards the stars, gathering them from the heavens. Shadows beg at their bases. The air pricks his nose and the smell of grass and mud and hardwork rubs away the sleep in his eyes. He walks alone. He smokes a cigarette. It is cold, but he has his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He always keeps them rolled up. It keeps him good. It keeps him thinking of work, waiting for work, mindful of work. He walks alongside the rows of precise trees. He can see the several cigarette tips a little farther up the orchard, where they will pass out the picking bags and take role for the day. The grass is thin and wet. Red mud cakes his boots and makes his feet heavy. When he decides to scrape it off, it will peel off like a fat leech.
Light is just beginning to fertilize the valley.
**
His son will learn the word homo today. They will shout it at him from the street corner. They will laugh and smoke and spit. His shoulders will roll up to his jawline and his back will hunch forward into his jacket. He will try to make himself seem smaller. His black eyes will dim in the streetlights. His mouth will turn dry and his hands will harden into tight little fists, his fingers retreating into his hand like snails into their shells. Homo, homo, homo. They will follow him as he walks to the school. They will throw things at him. They will try to tease some sort of man out of the boy. But they have the wrong definition of man. They think that a proper man will cuss and wear his pants low. This is too bad. Men also beat their women and smoke marijauna joints behind the minute market. Their words will die in the air, but their barbs remain stuck in his skin, like little bee stingers. He will turn around eventually and tell them to piss off. He will get in a fight. These things happen. It is unavoidable. He will come home with a fat, rubber lip and a black eye and poison in his words.
Things will get better.
**
The picking bag has straps that you cross and put your head through. He places it over his head. It rests against his belly and chest like a nursing infant. They have a camping lantern hissing on the plastic table with styrofoam cups of water and coffee. There is a smell of white gas in the air. The men are laughing and scuffing the ground with their boots and waiting for the tractor to come. He looks up again. He sees the light from the east scrubbing up the sky, wiping away the soot left behind by the night. The trees hustle. He can see their branches, heavy and cupped with fruit. The pear bodies soft and round in the half-light, like the secret parts of a woman. He can hear the tractor coming now. Chuffing and grumbling up the row. The other men can hear it, too. They drop their cigarettes and step on them with their heels. He checks the the buckles on his picking basket. The orchard keeper sitting behind the plastic table reminds them that he doesn't want any pears that aren't as big or bigger around the middle than his index finger and thumb pressed together. Rows twenty-two through forty today. He tells them that if they bruise any fruit he'll take it out of their pay.
The headlight of the tractor bumps around the corner, fingering through the trees.
**
His son will learn the word home today. He knows what it used to be. It used to be casa. Now it is the old tenement within walking distance of the orchard. It used to have walls of plywood and a roof of corrugated aluminum and when it rained it would chatter and rattle all night long. Now, it has walls of plaster that are spread with flowery strips of paper which sag and smell. The roof is soundless. They have a plastic card key to get into their room. They also have three forks. One of them is silver. They never use it. They keep it in the drawer with the squeaky track and wheel. He will go to school again today. He will see the kids who beat him up and he will hate them. Their black, horsefly eyes. Their baggy white t-shirts and their thick fingers and heavy knuckles. Their upper lips sparse with thin black mustaches and their Cadillac with its low wheels and chipping paint. But he will be sensible. He will keep his head down. Maybe back home he would have defended himself, scrapping in the hot dust: an honorable thing. A necessary thing. But here, he does not know the rules. This place is too big. The city swallows him up, like some seamonster from a depthless trench. The streetlights that regard him. The predation of the smog and the seduction of low-hanging clouds. And these people. The curb-sitters. The chewers, the spitters, and the gangsters.
He will not forget.
**
The tractor is pulling a platform with wooden benches bolted to it where they will sit. He climbs on to the back and chooses a seat and sits with his picking bag on his lap. The others get on, too. The man who sits beside him smells of tortillas and sleep. He has a transistor radio held up to his ear. There is grainy, flat latino music coming from it. He listens with a solemn face. The driver looks over his shoulder and nods and pulls his tractor around and back down the row he came from. Exhaust is warm on his face. His picking basket bounces on his knees like a happy child. The branches of the trees grope at his face, like the fingers of blind women. The tractor tires spin mud. The wind is cold and he pulls tighter into himself, rubbing his hands together. The drone of the music. Damé fé, damé alas, damé fuerza para sobrevivre en esta mundo. There are pit toilets in between every twenty trees or so, hunched in the morning light. He can see a slow mist rising from the ground – spirits with hunger in their fingers. He can see old fruit lying on the ground with split skin and mushy flesh.
The stars have gone home.
**
His son will learn the word illegal today. He will learn that he should stay away from cops and keep his head down as much as possible. Don't look anyone in their eyes. Be respectful. Keep your sleeves rolled up. Show that you are a hard worker. Stay quiet. Words get you in trouble. He will walk the streets while his father is working. The soles of his sneakers will become worn down and hot. He will do everything right and no one will know him. He will find the railroad tracks. He will walk on the rails, arms held out and tipping for balance. He will see the old hobos with toothless mouths. He will see the cop cars on the street and he'll freeze up, ears pricking, his legs wobbling. They will not see him. He's just another poor mexican. He blends in with the slummy neighborhoods and the grassless lawns: woven into the picture. Digested. He will realize this himself eventually. He will become tall and thin. His ribs will hug and dip like plowed farmland, his feet will grow, his teeth will ache. He is a normal thing – part of the cycle. He is just there. He might fade and wither. His face might stretch, elongate, collapse and his jaw might become hard with pride. His limbs might bend and shrivel, like broken cornstalks. But no one will know.
And he will learn to love the anonymity, like one comes to love the partner of an arranged marriage.
