LITMIR.BIZ

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Keller’s voice was hard. “We do this my way, or not at all.” After he pulled the car to the shoulder, he threw it in park, and sat there with the engine running. He looked in the rearview again. “What’s it going to be?” She didn’t answer, just glared at him, her eyes locked on the reflection of his. “Fine,” Keller said. He opened the door and got out.

      He was reaching for his duffel in the back when Angela said in a low, furious voice, “Get back in the car, Jack.” He didn’t answer. He yanked the duffel out and turned away. Angela turned to Lucas. “Would you talk to him?”

      “I think this is one you two are going to have to settle yourselves,” Lucas said.

      “He’s not seriously going to get out here? In the middle of nowhere?”

      Lucas looked out the back window. “Looks like that’s exactly what he’s doing.”

      “And you don’t intend to do anything about it?”

      “Nope.”

      “What the hell good are you, then?”

      “Angela,” Lucas said. “Whatever relationship you two are going to have, you’re going to have to work it out if it’s going to work at all.”

      “Damn it,” she said. She snatched up her cane and slid over to the driver’s side. With some difficulty, she got out the car door. They were on a four-lane highway, divided by a deep median. The empty land stretched out to the edge of sight, where it met the sky that arched overhead like an overturned bowl. The stars were hard, bright, and cold in the utter blackness of the desert night. Keller was walking toward the median, his duffel slung on his shoulder. She called after him.

      “Can we at least talk about this after we talk to the lawyer? When we know if there’s even anywhere to go?”

      He stopped, turned around. His face was unreadable. Finally, he nodded. He started walking back.

      “Okay,” he said as he passed her. He tossed the duffel back in the backseat. He climbed into the back after it. “You drive for a while,” he said. “We need to go straight through.” She stared at him for a moment. He stretched out in the backseat and closed his eyes. She shook her head and got behind the wheel.

      

      THE MATTRESS beneath Ruben’s back was soft, lumpy, and smelled of mildew. His head pulsed with pain as he opened his eyes. The bottom of another mattress, crisscrossed with rusted wire supports above him, was all he could see. He tried to sit up, thinking the pain couldn’t get worse. He was wrong. He lay back down.

      “Easy, friend,” a voice said in Spanish. Ruben turned his head, slowly. A man was sitting on the lower bunk of the bed next to him. It was Diego. “You took a bad shot to the head. One of those assholes hit you with his gun. From behind.”

      “My brother,” Ruben whispered. His voice felt rusty. “Where’s my brother?”

      “He’s here,” Diego said. He raised his voice. “EDGAR!”

      Ruben winced at the volume and looked around. He was in a long narrow room. There was a row of bunk beds against both walls. A long wooden bench ran down the center of the room, with posts rising to the ceiling every ten feet or so. The walls were wooden, rough, and unpainted. There were no windows, only slits high up in the walls, which let in a little light and less air. A few men lay on the bunks, with others gathered around one end of the bench, talking in low voices. Some were the men he’d been traveling with, but there were others he didn’t recognize. We aren’t the first ones to be brought to this place.

      Edgar detached himself from the edge of the group and came over, worry etched on his face. He sat next to Diego. Ruben held out a hand. Edgar took it and squeezed. “I’m okay, little brother,” Ruben said.

      “Don’t tell them he’s your brother,” Diego advised. “One of the guys who’s been here a while says they separate everyone who’s related. All the women and girls went one way. My sister was one of them. The men are here and in another house.”

      “What is this place?” Edgar said. “Why are we here?”

      Ruben tried again to sit up. The pain was only slightly less, but he felt he could bear it. “Those men. The ones who brought us here. They said we broke the law.”

      Edgar looked frightened. “Are we in prison?”

      Diego shook his head. “No. I was in jail in America before. The first time they threw me out. That was no real court. And they wouldn’t put a boy this young in prison with older men.”

      “Then who are those guys?” Ruben asked.

      “I don’t know,” Diego admitted. “But I think they’re crazy.”

      “We have to get out of here,” Edgar said. He was beginning to look panicked.

      “How?” Ruben said. “They have guns.”

      “And the fence is electrified,” Diego said. “They told me a man killed himself a couple of weeks ago. Ran and threw himself on the fence. This may not be a real prison, but they’ve sure set it up like one.”

      There was a commotion at the end of the room. Two men had come in, their machine guns held loosely at their sides. One of them was the blond man from the truck. The other was tall, skinny, and dark-complected, with what looked like a permanent five-o’clock shadow on his slack jaw and an unruly shock of dark hair shot through with streaks of gray that he didn’t look old enough to have. He dangled a toothpick loosely in one corner of his mouth.

      “Okay, muchachos,” Blondie said. “Time to start earnin’ your keep. Line up.”

      Slowly, the men and boys shuffled into line. Blondie noticed Ruben. “Can you work?” he demanded.

      Standing up had made Ruben feel shaky and nauseated, but there was something in the question that told him what his answer needed to be. He nodded.

      “Good,” Blondie said, “because we follow the Bible rule here. ‘If any would not work, neither should he eat.’ You may want to let the rest of your amigos know about that.”

      Ruben thought of asking what Bible verse covered hitting people in the back of the head with gun butts, but he held his tongue.

      They were marched out of the barracks, down the dirt path in front of the buildings, and through a wire gate. The land outside was dead flat, with lines of trees forming a wall all around, at least a mile away. Fields began a hundred feet or so from the wire—beans close in, corn and tobacco farther away. Prodded by the voices of the guards, they trudged down the dirt road between the fields until they were ordered to stop. A large farm truck rumbled up then pulled to a stop in a cloud of dust, which made the men cough and wave their hands in an effort to keep the choking stuff out of their eyes and noses. “Get the baskets out of the truck,” Blondie ordered. He gestured with his gun, and a couple of the men climbed up into the truck. The swarthy man with the toothpick still hadn’t spoken. The men started tossing large wicker baskets out. “Everybody get one,” Blondie ordered. The men on the ground looked at each other in confusion.

      “Come on, damn it,” Blondie fumed. “You wetbacks came here to pick beans, didn’t you?” He bent down, picked up a basket, and thrust it at an older man in a flannel shirt. “Well, get your fucking basket and pick some fucking beans. It ain’t fucking siesta time.” The man took the basket, looking daggers at Blondie, who apparently didn’t like the look. He grabbed the old man by the shoulder and shoved him toward the field. The man stumbled, turned as if to protest, and found himself looking down the barrel of Blondie’s gun. “Go ahead,” Blondie said. “Somebody always gets made the first example of. Might as well be you, amigo.” The man turned back and walked into the field. Without looking at anyone, he bent down and began pulling the beans off the low stalks. Gradually, the others followed. Ruben

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