Desperate Student, Episode 11: Agricultural Laborer

This continues the epic saga of the Desperate Student. If you aren't up to speed, read up.

Life comes at you fast. One moment, you're the darling of the city, so popular that the mayor is almost forced to hire you. The next, you're running for your life. Okay, maybe you isn't the right word in that context. A better word would probably be: me. Yes, me. Me used to be popular, but now me's running for me life.

Actually, me might not be the right word, either.

I woke up groggy and itchy in the It'll Have To Do Hotel and wandered down for the two star continental breakfast, which consisted of orange juice and coffee. Then I dutifully checked FCN. Gummi had a helpful comment on my last episode. He/she observed that I should try a career as an illegal alien, and get a job in a vineyard or something. I had heard Michael Savage tell me that the illegals were stealing American jobs. That sounded great. I wanted in on the action. A little snipping, a few burritos ... what was the danger in that?

So I waltzed on down to a phone booth, reached into my pocket, and came up short. It took fifty cents to place a call, and I only had a quarter. The universe was out to get me. What the universe had neglected to remember was that I was desperate, and desperate people multiply their resources. I plugged the quarter into a newspaper stand, popped it open, and lifted the whole stack. Then I went to the nearest stoplight and knocked on the door of a hummer. The driver rolled the window down. It was a middle-aged blonde woman with bags under her eyes.

"Can I help you?"

"Uh, yes, hi. I was wondering if you'd like to buy a newspaper."

She obviously didn't know how to handle that information. I decided to give her more. "It's for the Salvation Army. The proceeds go to Africa to help feed starving African babies from Africa."

She wrinkled her nose, hesitating. I moved in for the kill. "Please," I said. "I'm desperate. My dad's in jail, my mother's sick, and my little sister isn't eating so we can have enough money to buy grandma's medicine. I really, really need this. Please."

"I thought you said the proceeds were going to Africa."

"Right, right. I guess I did say that. Well, it's complicated. Charity type stuff."

After some more hesitation, she nodded. "How much?"

"Just a dollar, but you can buy the whole stack of a dozen for just fifteen bucks." More hesitation. "You can send a little African boy to college with that money." She nodded and started counting me the bills. The light turned green, cars started honking. She handed me a twenty.

"Keep the change." Then she drove away. I didn't even get to give her a newspaper. So I cracked the twenty into loose change off a helpful motorcyclist in a parking lot, then went back to the machine and put the papers back. Then I hit the phone booth and called a local ag labor foreman.

"Hello, this is Jose."

"Hey, uh - yeah, hi Jose. I'm looking for work."

"You do cherry harvesting?"

"I'm a regular pro at it."

"Where are you from?"

"Central California, why?"

"Sorry, I don't hire workers from those parts."

"But you work here! You don't hire workers from around here?"

"Buh-bye now."

I slammed the phone into the cradle, aggravated. Then gummi's advice flitted through my fertile brain. I dialed the number again.

"Hello, this is Jose."

"Hola. Yo esta una worker dudo. Yo esta searcho for worko."

"Who is this?"

"Una worker dudo! Mucho dudo!"

"Can you harvest cherries?"

"Si!"

"Where are you from?"

"Deepesto, darkesto Mexico."

"You were born there?"

"Si. Born and raisedo."

"So you speak spanish pretty well then?"

"Si! Esta mi native linguo. Comprende?"

"Something's not right here. You're an illegal immigrant, right?"

"Ja, ja!"

"Mexican?"

"Oui!"

I could hear him hesitating over the phone. Finally, he spoke. "Then show up for work tomorrow at six. The orchard is on the north corner of Redman and Beetle. Don't be late."

"Gracias, senorita! You'll no regreto esta!"

"One other thing. When you show up, bring proof of your current Mexican citizenship. If you can't produce, you're off the crew. Got it?"

I was in a pickle and we both knew it, but I had faith in my desperation. "Uh, mucho bueno. Yo see usted tomorowo, okay?"

"Yeah. See ya."

I hung up and pondered the situation for several minutes. Then I picked up the phone and called one of my many former employers, Mayor Sanchez. The good mayor was almost as desperate as I was. On his agenda: making sure that I stayed as far away from him as possible so he wouldn't be implicated in a dog-related incident the week before.

A snotty female voice picked up. "Sanchez' office, who's calling please?"

"This is former dog catcher ..."

"Please hold."

"Sanchez here. What is it? What do you need? Passport to another country?"

"Close," I said. "I need Mexican citizenship papers."

"I'll file it myself and overnight them over."

"No, I need them by six tommorow morning."

Sanchez sputtered for several seconds. Then he sighed. "All right. All right, all right. I'll drive it over tonight. Where do I meet you?"

"I'm in the It'll Have to Do Hotel, room 7."

"I am so there." He hung up.

I went back to my room and watched Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen (starring Lindsay Lohan), during which I used up an entire roll of tissue wiping away my tears. Soon after the movie ended, I heard an urgent knock on the door. I opened to find the good mayor with a manila envelope.

"I think you'll find everything is in order," He said. "And if there's anything else, please don't hesitate to call. Do you have my cell?"

"No."

Sanchez looked both ways nervously and started edging away. "Fornixeleveree. Call any time."

"I'm sorry, I didn't catch the area code." He was already gone, pelting down the hall with his arm in front of his face.

I showed up for work the next morning with a decidedly sunny disposition. The orchard was about sixty acres, or slightly bigger than the state of Rhode Island. Several very tired cars were parked on the edge of the orchard, and various workers were standing around with hand crates. I pulled up and got out. A man with a huge white cowboy hat (No, not a sombrero. I can tell the difference. Thank you very much.) approached me, hand extended.

"You still saying you're an illegal?"

I shoved the papers in his face with a satisfied smile, grabbed a crate, and got to work, leaving him blathering meaninglessly by the side of the road.

We worked for four hours. The work was pretty simple. We just pulled cherries off the trees, popped them in the crates, then stacked the crates at the edge of the orchard and went in to do it again. It was boring, but not fatiguing or challenging. I was starting to think I might make an excellent agricultural laborer. Life got even better when the taco truck showed up. It played a delightful little ditty, and everyone dropped what they were doing (which probably bruised the fruit) and made a mad dash for the truck. I was slow to react and ended up being last in line. I had to wait for a whole forty seconds for the entire crew to be served. Then it came to me.

"What'll it be?" Asked the man in the truck.

"Uh ... what do you suggest?"

The man studied me for a moment, then cracked a wide smile. The ends of his moustache pointed straight up. "You're new?"

"Just this moment arrived."

He laughed. Not a friendly, how-do-you-do laugh. Not an amused, that-was-pretty-funny laugh. It was more like a devious, I-just-found-the-secret-ingredient-to-make-the-undead-
birthday-cake-that-will-blow-up-the-world sort of laugh. I didn't like it.

"I have just the thing for you," He said. Then he turned back into the kitchen. I heard him rattling around in the back of his cabinets. There was a chopping sound, then an oink, then a squirt. A hot, steamy pile of something was handed to me, wrapped in oily paper. It smelled awesome. The food was pretty powerful, but I honestly can't remember what it tasted like now.

I gobbled it down, shrugged, and got back to work. An hour later, I noticed that I still had some of the lunch on my fingers. It had turned from brown to a sort of glow-in-the-dark green. It itched. I rubbed it off on the side of the crate. We continued another hour, during which the heat became so strong it made Arizona look bad. The sweat ran down my face and drizzled into the cherries.

Finally, we stopped. I was paid just under minimum wage and scooted on back to the It'll Have To Do Hotel. Then I clicked on the news. There was a breaking story about some contaminated cherries in the area. People were getting sick and dying. Whole blocks were being quarantined, but the toxic nastiness was spreading all over the city. I realized that I might easily have harvested those very cherries. I was pretty darn fortunate not to have been exposed.

The phone rang. I picked it up. "Hello?"

I heard the friendly voice of a mature woman. "Are you the one that worked for the FDA on eyeballs?"

"Probably."

"Do you still do that kind of work?"

"No. Ha! Just kidding. Yes, I do. Are you hiring?"

"My name is Jane Goodall. Let's talk."

We chatted for another fifteen minutes. Jane was a delightful woman. She painted beautiful word pictures about a world where all creatures great and small were equal and where the little guy in the world had a fighting chance against the best of them. I got all excited. When she asked me to travel to Zimbabwe with her team to collect samples of Orangutan dung for study, I immediately agreed.

So that's where I'm headed. I fly out early tomorrow, just as soon as I'm done checking FCN and downing another coffee-orange-juice suicide. I'll be gone for several weeks, during which I leave this blog in the hands of my capable co-writers, who are both slobbering morons. I'll join Jane and her team in the Zimbabwean rainforest to do some of the most grueling, disgusting work known to homo sapiens.

Goodbye, America. Maybe I'll send a postcard.