Chapter 12

Jeremy was standing with Luis in the second barn. They were commenting in roundabout phrases about how Luis's sister-in-law had appeared at breakfast an hour earlier.

"How delicately she sits in a chair," Luis said with an evil grin on her face.

"Yes, she is a regular lady — at the table," Jeremy replied.

They were watching the tractor returning from the olive groves with one bin in tow. Even from a distance, Lucy appeared to be grimacing with each bump in the dirt road. She carefully maneuvered the machine into the barn, shooting both of the men a dirty look for some reason that Jeremy couldn't guess. Unless she could read minds, that is.

Amid the noise of the bin being dumped and its fruit cascading onto the conveyor, Luis reached for his telecom. He walked away from the noise with his finger in his other ear and talked for a moment before hanging up. He ran back to Jeremy.

"The police are coming down the driveway. They're coming with two vehicles no less. We've got to hide you, now!"

Jeremy gave the situation a brief moment of thought.

"Don't bother hiding me. If they're seeking me, then they are going to go look for a man who is hiding."

"Eh?"

"I'm going back to the groves with Lucy. I'll ride in the bin as she drives. When the police drive out there to search the groves, all they will see is a bunch of sweaty, poor slobs picking olives. I won't have to fake anything. Tell Emma not to worry because if there is one thing I've learned, it's how to harvest crops," Jeremy said.

First grabbing a hat from a hook on the wall, Jeremy leapt into the righted bin as Luis signaled Lucy to drive quickly. Jeremy sat in the bottom trying to keep himself from being bruised by the bumpy ride. Lucy gave him a hand climbing out and he gave her a one-word explanation: "police."

Jeremy became an olive picker. With a burlap bag on a strap around his neck, he collected the dropped fruit from the nets. As the low man in the grove, he had to stoop down and collect the fallen fruit. The higher-ups got to pick the low-hanging fruit while a few others had to climb ladders to reach the tallest branches. They attacked one tree at a time. When that tree was done, they emptied their sacks in the bin. They were on their fifth tree when one of men on the ladder called out "police" and everyone else became anxious.

Jeremy was sure none of the pickers knew who he was. He hadn't even seen any of them because their bunkhouse was away in the southern groves. Whatever was making them tense was their own doing and enough of them looked guilty to confirm his observation. The idea that these men might be on the run from something they had done made him feel safer for he had a larger pool of suspects in which to hide.

"Police are just like big, dumb animals," Jeremy called out to his fellows. "Ignore them and they will ignore you. Eventually they'll give up and go away. Just don't feed them."

The other men laughed at his weak joke, though their laugher was more bravado than anything else. They went back to picking. Lucy was beneath a tree behind them re-staking the nets to in case any missed fruit were to fall.

The police car came to a stop meters from the tractor. Lucy straightened herself and stalked off to confront the intruders while the pickers moved on to the next tree. Jeremy was too far away to hear the conversation but he could see that Lucy was giving the cops a hard time. Luis had eight sets of pickers running through the orchard and at least two of the groups had stopped what they were doing to watch the proceedings.

Lucy made a big show of walking away from the police to yell at the slackers. The officers were not dissuaded or intimated by Lucy apparently. They stationed themselves by the bins and watched each man come forward to dump his load.

Picking olives isn't slow work. The bags fill quickly and the pickers move fast. They are paid by the amounts they pick each day and one slacker will cut the pay for everyone. Even with the police eyeballing every one of their faces, each man kept up the pace.

Jeremy was dumping his fifth or sixth load when one of the officers approached him.

"What is your name?" the tall one asked.

"Enrique," Jeremy said.

"How long have you been on this farm," the short one with the flat nose asked.

"Since the beginning of the harvest," he said with the half remembered cadence of Manuel. "She's a bitch," he pointed at Lucy. "The food sucks."

The wind shifted and the officers got a whiff of Jeremy. Their eyes didn't water but they did their best to move from downwind. Jeremy scratched his balls and turned to leave before they could think of any more brilliant questions.

They challenged one or two others before they gave up their hunt. Climbing back in their vehicle, they turned around and sped off, kicking up a cloud of dust.

"Assholes," someone said.

Lucy put her telecom to her ear and talked to someone for several minutes. None of the workers were talking but Jeremy was sure they were all speculating behind their squinting eyes. The olives kept falling though and the sacks kept getting heavy. The pickers kept filling the bins and both of them were now fairly full.

Lucy put her telecom away and called out, "Lunchtime!" Everyone dumped their loads, large or small in the bins and began walking down the row of trees to the bright plastick coolers that were sitting in the shade of the first tree. As Jeremy made his way to follow the rest, Lucy grabbed his arm and instructed him to climb into the back bin. She told him to hide himself under the olives because they could have an eye in the sky.

Fresh olives bruise easily but they are also hard as rocks. Jeremy silently bitched as olives bounced under and over him. The drive took forever and although he wasn't sore from the previous night's exercise, he was aching nicely by the time the bin rolled into the barn.

The motor cut out and Jeremy heard several voices talking. Thankfully the bins didn't lift and tilt to dump their contents on the conveyor, which left Jeremy with only the task of staying still. It felt like a piece of fruit had managed to wiggle down his pants and between his butt cheeks. It itched.

More words were said, louder but still muffled to Jeremy. A door slammed somewhere. A beep-beep-boop of a digital device echoed off of the walls but what kind of device it could be was beyond Jeremy's experience.

Someone banged the side of the bin. Luis started yelling. Jeremy was sure it was Luis giving someone a good chewing out. He was nearly as good as Captain Diaz in Jeremy's opinion, but the farmer held his own.

Someone else argued loudly and then Luis responded again. Jeremy wanted the olive out of his ass. A short eternity passed and then there was silence. He tried to take a nap but was unsuccessful because his bladder had begun to protest.

Machinery started up and then the bin started to tip. Jeremy started to fall into the conveyor and then realized it was a deep trough of water. He sank to the bottom immediately to avoid getting pelted further by olives, which float in the water. Holding his breath as long as he could, he finally came up and broke the surface of the water quietly.