By the time Tita approached outer ridge that signaled the property line of the hacienda, Atanasio’s more ear-splitting wails had subsided. With his arms draped uselessly around her shoulders and his ostrich head buried deep within the sands of her shoulder, Atanasio’s shoulders shucked and danced to the irregular beat of his quiet remaining sobs.
The mordant charm of having to carry him was less lost on her than it had been on the boy. Tita raised the boy off her shoulder and dropped him hastily to his feet. She turned his shoulders towards her and lowered her body to his eye level.
“You’ll be a good boy, it’s time for work.”
Placing both of his hands inside her, Atanasio followed his Tita to the enormous, airplane hangar of an Aluminum building. The sun reflected a particular glare off the yellow and red Nolan Foods logo that hung enormous, even against the majestic backdrop of the mountains. The packing building had all of Orson Welles’ subtle proportion of design.
The track that ran across the middle interior of the hacienda was loaded with bananas from the overnight harvest and the pair stopped and waited for the dark green bunches to glide past like an endless train hanging from one of those harness gliders the gringos like to ride when they visit the Rainforest.
They slid through a quick opening and scuttled into the unnecessary 3 story mouth into the packing area. To one side was a harem of low faces in yellow smocks, placing stickers on the bunches, places and the bunches in the water tanks, sealing with a paintbrush the rinds of the bunches with an inorganic lime-green compound that came in bottles marked “chlorinated water.”
To the other side were a pair of slender-hipped, wiry middle aged men, hunched over to support the bunches of bananas like children with scoliosis; lurching forward with long awkward steps from the trucks to the main dispensation terminal in the middle of the room. “Room” being a generous term for an area that all the impersonal qualities of a 4 story warehouse with none of the pesky walls to keep out the elements.
Tita walked mournfully to her Mexican supervisor who calmly marked 6:02 on her timesheet. He furrowed his brow but never looked directly at her. With a single motion she rung her blotched, yellow smock around her neck, tied it in the back and set about to her day of cutting bunches of 5-7 bananas and packaging them for transport to Brazil, Cuba and America.
Atanasio sat knees to chest on the far side of the room away from the workers, waiting quietly. Within a half hour Atanasio could make out the silhouette of Raphael’s who jogged through the gate to the hacienda. At first Atanasio could not make out his friend and regretted the unsavory prospect of an entire day with no one his own age. As his mother made her way into the workroom, Raphael’s gleeful smiling peered over her shoulder as she came to an abrupt stop the left of Tita, Raphael’s feet appears behind his mother’s his knees bent to absorb the drop from his mother’s shoulder.
He giggled and gesticulated meaninglessly with his hands as his young mother swept his hair behind his ear, whispered inaudibly and kissed him. Raphael wind-milled his arm in the opposite direction of Atanasio and took off; Atanasio hopped onto his right foot and dutifully ran after him. At the edge of the room stood a huge barrel filled with circular blue and yellow foam separators. Each of the boys grabbed one as they passed and turned towards the crops.
Atanasio felt the wind in his large ears whip and increase in volume as the two ran out in the banana fields. The fields were a never-ending labyrinth of short, green palm trees with, ears hanging from the canopy. Every 5 yards an aluminum arch extended from the ground like a tunnel through the foot of a mountain. Raphael, slimmer and older than his companion remained always 6 steps ahead and called back to Atanasio.
“We have to hurry! They’re cutting them down now! We have to get the sticky leaves before the hit the ground.”
When harvesting bananas, the workers would pull the tops of the malleable plants down towards the earth. They would then cut at the root of the bunches and carry them to the truck or hang them on the pulley system to be slid back to the plantation. Another worker would then hack the remaining leaves off the top of the tree and leave them where they feel – like vela littering the floor of the fields.
The boys rushed to get those good, sticky leaves. The piece of the leaves that had been closest to the stalk. These leaves had a fantastically adhesive quality and if enough could be gathered, they could be molded together with the smooth outer leaves to make a weight, bouncy and very respectable soccer ball. The boys knew well that almost an entire days worth of leaves was necessary to make one and their last one had been destroyed as it was, by rain which insidious drips its way to the center of their makeshift soccer balls and like a virus, unravels them from the inside out.
They ran for what felt like miles to Atanasio, who could feel his wheezing heartbeat through his throat and out the side of his neck. Finally, he could make out the flatbed with the bunches resting on the road – a glint of light flashing near the short, obstructed horizon.
He could hear Raphael, who had already increased his sizable lead, call out to the workers.
“One minute sir! One minute! Don’t cut it down yet!”
Miles, the only worker at the plantation who ever would have considered any order from a little boy smirked and waited.
“I can’t wait forever, Raphael!” who shouted gamely. He pantomimed a cutting motion with his angled machete. “Oh! Oh!” she shouted, pretending he was about to take swipe. “Wait! Here I g…”
“Wait! No! One minute. Please!” Raphael sprinted under the plant and extended his arms in a “v” towards the heavens underneath the canopy of the leaves as if he expected to be washed in cleansing water. Miles chuckled softly and take one hard, impressive swipe at the top of the stalk and like slow falling early snow, the leaves dropped softly into Raphael’s waiting hands, who for his part immediately plopped to his bottom and began to break up the leaves in dutiful preparation for the task at hand. Atanasio finally stomped up to his friend and put his hands clasped on top of his head; breathing the wheeze out of his lungs.
“Catch yourself and follow Miles.” Raphael commanded gently. “And don’t forget, if you get dirt on the sticky part, we can’t use it.
No comments:
Post a Comment