Strawberry Sunday Read online

  Maybe it’s because I grew up in the Midwest amid a populace and a geography with a similar orientation, or maybe it’s because in my college years I was a big reader of John Steinbeck, but I’ve always loved the Salinas Valley. When I first started going down there, usually on my way to L.A. or to the Monterey Jazz Festival, the enterprises were mostly truck farms owned chiefly by immigrants, particularly the Japanese, who grew various kinds of produce on small plots of land and marketed them mainly out of roadside shelters that attracted city dwellers eager for the kind of food that tasted the way food used to taste when you grew it in your backyard. Now it’s increasingly corporate, much of the land owned and operated by giant agricultural combines or multinational conglomerates eager for diversification. That’s not necessarily bad, I guess, except accountability for misdeeds tends to disappear somewhere in the middle of the organization chart.

  Technological progress has changed farming as much as any other enterprise, perhaps even more so. Many crops are planted and picked by machines these days; even delicate produce like tomatoes are ripped from the plant by rotating scythes, deposited on conveyor belts, sorted by farmworkers clinging to the machines like barnacles, then dropped into trucks for shipment to the cannery. With many crops, the workers no longer pick, the workers tend the equipment—cleaning, sorting, repairing, and operating the ungainly devices that sweep through the fields like a rampaging rebel army and are beyond the budgets of all but the most affluent landowners.

  An exception to the trend is the strawberry, which is still planted and tended and harvested by hand. On larger farms, most of the work is done by day workers, employees paid by the hour as they plant or tend the plants and who work nine months of the year on the farm, leaving them the time and money to return to their families in Mexico for Christmas. The smaller growers rely on workers hired and delivered to the fields by labor contractors, who often exploit them in a variety of ways, from docking their pay for specious reasons, to charging extortionate rents for substandard and unhealthy housing, to ignoring laws that enable workers to benefit from unemployment and workman’s compensation insurance and receive increased pay for overtime labor.

  But some of the owners follow a different plan, contracting with several families to work the entire season on the same parcel of land, two or three acres at most, families who, because of their intimate connection to the crop, from preparing the fields for planting to picking the fruit many months later, possess great pride of ownership in the harvest and work hard to produce fruit of the highest quality because they will share in the proceeds of sale. Maybe that’s why strawberries still taste pretty good while tomatoes taste like a cardboard core with a waxed paper wrapper.

  Strawberry growing is stooped, backbreaking labor that requires patience and strength and an almost mystical ability to withstand both the chill of the morning fog and the high heat of midday during the typical summer in the valley. These are the qualities that farm laborers have always had, of course, whether the crop was Kansas wheat or Washington apples, but they are qualities that in California are possessed almost exclusively by Mexican immigrants, who come to this country both legally and illegally for the express purpose of harvesting seasonal crops. Despite their importance, the workers are largely unappreciated by many though not all growers until, for reasons of labor strife or political engineering, they are no longer available and amenable, at which point the growers panic—fruit must be picked when it’s ripe and strawberries should be picked every two or three days or the fruit begins to rot on the stem.

  According to the papers, there’s a union organizing effort going on with regard to the 25,000 strawberry workers in the state, an effort to do with strawberries what they did twenty-five years ago with grapes. The farmworkers’ union points to a variety of abuses by the growers and to the meager incomes of the workers; the growers point to improved working conditions on their farms if not on all others and to the precarious profitability of their enterprise. Afraid of losing what little he already has and confused by the conflicting claims, the worker doesn’t know where to cast his lot.

  They were increasingly visible as I drove along the edge of the table-flat fields that stretched like green shag carpet toward the distant mountains, lines of workers wearing long-sleeved shirts and wide-brimmed straw hats with sweatshirts and sweaters, which had been removed when the morning fog receded, knotted around their waists. They bent over the amazingly uniform lines of squat green berry bushes for incredible lengths of time, pawing through the plants with both hands, selecting the ripened and well-formed berries, then placing them just right in the plastic pint baskets sitting in the three-wheeled carts they pushed along the furrows in front of them.

  According to Rita, the biggest berries go on top, the smaller on the bottom, and the misshapen are tossed in a can on the back of the cart for transfer to the frozen market. In addition to picking, the workers are responsible for manicuring the plant, removing all rotting, diseased, and damaged fruit so the plant will stay healthy. When full, the baskets are put into cardboard flats carried on the cart. The flats go on the truck, where they are examined for quality and credited to the picker on the tally sheet, then hauled to huge sheds where the berries are cooled to thirty-three degrees and gassed with CO2 to slow down their metabolism, then shipped in refrigerated trucks and airplanes to grocers throughout the country. Within three or four days, a berry picked in Watsonville or Salinas will be on sale in a market in New York City, in the same plastic basket that was filled in the field, thanks to a process that few consumers of the product are aware of. It was one of the marvels of the modern age and it depended primarily on the ability of a farmworker to spend ten hours a day bent over at the waist, often earning less than the minimum wage.

  Another row, this one of cars and trucks and old vans and school buses, was parked on the dirt road that marked the boundary between the plots. A cluster of chemical toilets stood like sober chaperons among the vehicles, strapped to a simple trailer, ready to be towed to the next field when work on this one was done, their prosaic function enlivened by the colorful array of clothing hung on the side. According to Rita, toilets and water jugs were one of the few remaining achievements of the legislation passed during the days when Cesar Chavez marshaled so much public support for the plight of the farmworkers that even the corporate clients in the state legislature had to pay attention to their plight.

  As I thought about Rita and her devotion to the workers, I couldn’t help wonder if, as with many organizing efforts of old, the union campaign had turned violent. Which made me wonder if Rita Lombardi had been yet another young life lost to the eternal struggle between capital and labor. I hoped it wasn’t so, but hoping doesn’t change very much, certainly not the past.

  Another field, another line of workers, another row of trucks and toilets. I turned off the air conditioner and opened the windows. Heat filled the car, more maternally than oppressively, bringing with it the smells of grass and soils and ripe fruit that displaced those of engine oils and leaking Freon. I took several deep breaths and relaxed. For now at least, the world seemed a healthier and more beneficent place. But I had a feeling I was about to learn that the countryside was as dangerous and corrupt as the more notorious urban landscape.

  A billboard announced that Haciendas was home to 1,982 friendly souls and was a City on the Move. A small motel, a Union 76 station, two auto repair shops, and a farm implement dealer welcomed me at the fringe. In the center of town, a post office, fire station, police department, two tacquerias plus the Gelbride State Bank and St. Bonaventure’s Catholic Church, were more established presences. Burger King was there; so was J. C. Penney, but Wal-Mart hadn’t yet made an appearance, for which the local retailers must be giving thanks. The bars were called the Cantina and the Tractor Tavern; the café was called Shortcake’s; the local wags seemed to be mostly Latino. The largest structure in town was a decaying brick building that had HACIENDAS COMMUNITY HOSPITAL etched above the door but
which stood behind a sign that read FARM LABOR HOUSING—HOUSING AUTHORITY OF MONTEREY COUNTY.

  I drove west to east, from one end of town to the other. It seemed a sleepy but highly functional place, with trucks loaded with produce passing through in one direction while school buses loaded with pieceworkers headed out of town in the other. The houses were small, the stores mostly geared to Latinos except for the chains. The brown faces were mostly men, lounging on corners, waiting for work. The white faces were mostly female, shopping or banking or hauling their kids toward summer fun. The offspring of the Latinos no doubt spent their summer bent over in the fields with their parents, which probably wasn’t their idea of a vacation.

  It was too soon to make judgments, of course, but there seemed to be a calm in the air in Haciendas, an aura of accommodation and cooperation between the various cultures and social strata, a tacit agreement about what would be said and unsaid, done and undone, punished and unpunished. Maybe it was the natural order of things, or maybe it was the result of an oppressive and authoritarian socioeconomic structure that brooked no dissent or disagreement, whatever the issue. Or maybe it was just that the summer sun had melted away the sharp edges of all concerned and bathed the populace in sweaty lethargy. In any event, I was prepared to believe that Haciendas was an oasis of multicultural serenity until I reached the east edge of town.

  In contrast to Haciendas itself, the outskirts bulged with the mechanics of commerce. The massive cooling sheds and packinghouses and loading docks, interspersed with truck lots and rail yards and equipment dealers, were stark reminders of how big a business agriculture was. And the lengths of barbed wire that surrounded most of the installations, and the number of police and security cars that cruised up and down the road, were proof of how tense the atmosphere in the industry had become. All of a sudden it was easy to remember that Rita Lombardi had been stabbed thirty times in this self-same emotional climate.

  Fremont Street bisected the highway four blocks east of the Catholic church. As opposed to much of Haciendas, it was a street flanked by trees, several large cottonwoods that shaded the pavement in welcome spots of charcoal gray amid the shimmering pastels of the rest of the town. But the street turned to gravel in the four hundred block and the trees gave out at the same place, as if nature itself were mourning Rita’s passing.

  Like most of the town, the Lombardi house was a simple bungalow, single story, painted a yellow that had paled in the sunlight to evoke the yolk of an old egg. The roof was blue shingle, the door red enamel, and the grass would turn green if it ever got watered. There were two vehicles parked out front, a ten-year-old Chevy Cavalier and an ageless Ford pickup. Another pickup was parked down the block, this one a brand-new Dodge Ram. The Cavalier was faded red, the Ford was deep green; the Ram was a bright white that made me squint in spite of my sunglasses. The vehicles were well used and unwashed. As I plucked my sodden shirt away from my damp back, I felt a lot like that myself. I circled the house, parked in the shade in the previous block, then went to the front door and knocked.

  The man who answered was tall, handsome, Latino, and lost. He was dressed in Levi’s worn to the white and a T-shirt with a woman’s face on it—at first I thought it might be the singer Selena, but when I looked more closely I saw that the face was Rita Lombardi’s, smiling and saucy and shaded by her birthmark, balancing precariously on two metal crutches while pointing toward the camera as if to forbid the photographer to snap the shutter. The photographer must have been Carlos Reyna and he must have had the shirt made up in tribute to his deceased financée. The sight of Rita’s laughing eyes in such a ludicrous venue made me quake and turn away. If I had been uneasy before, now I was uneasy squared.

  Her boyfriend seemed to be holding it together except for his eyes. They were red, rubbed and random, and seemed to beg me to be something I wasn’t and to bring with me something I lacked. I told him my name and that I was expected by Mrs. Lombardi.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Why what?”

  “Why are you here?”

  I forced myself to look him up and down. “Nice picture,” I said. “You must be Carlos.”

  He crossed his arms as if to keep the image his private property. He projected arrogance and strength, and was imperial in look and bearing, but something in his eyes said it was mostly a pose. “That’s me. So what?”

  “You and Rita were going to be married.”

  “Yeah.”

  “She loved you very much.”

  “Yeah.”

  “She talked about you a lot.”

  “When?”

  “When she was in the hospital.”

  He nodded as though I’d confirmed a conspiracy. “You’re that guy.”

  “Marsh Tanner.” I held out a hand.

  He took it and squeezed it hard. “Carlos Reyna.”

  “Is Mrs. Lombardi in?”

  “She’s on the phone.”

  “Then I’ll wait.”

  Despite the introductions and our common grief for Rita, Carlos stood like a sentinel, blocking my path to the presumably cooler interior, watching me wilt in the glare of sunlight that was the primary fuel in his world. As the heat of noon threatened to bring me to a boil, I decided to see what would happen if I kept my mouth shut. It’s often the best way to get information—some people are comfortable with everything but dead silence.

  “So you think you’re going to drive down from the big city and poke around a few days and find the guy who did it,” Carlos said after a while. “Like maybe we’re too dumb to find him ourselves.”

  “I don’t think that. It’s just that sometimes an outsider can see things that loved ones can’t.”

  “Things like what?”

  “Motives. Moods. Machinations.”

  Carlos frowned. “Yeah, well, you don’t need to bother; I’ll take care of it myself.” His tone left no doubt that he planned to be judge and jury and to issue a sentence of death at the first opportunity.

  “I’m sure you can, Carlos, but why don’t we work together? You know the town; I know the business. It might save time if we teamed up.”

  “What is this business? The strawberry business?”

  “The detecting business,” I corrected. “I’m a private eye. I find criminals for a living.”

  It was only a tiny part of my living, of course, but Carlos just needed to believe I could help him get where he wanted to go and that I would get out of his way when he got there. The latter part wouldn’t happen, but Carlos didn’t need to know that yet.

  He cocked his head. “You going to pay me to work with you?”

  “Not unless someone pays me, which Mrs. Lombardi says they aren’t likely to do. So I was planning to work for free. I figured you’d do the same, since you were the guy who loved her.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t want someone ripping me off. Selling stories to the TV and the grocery store papers behind my back.”

  Hard Copy and O.J. have eroded our moral fabric. Truth and justice now go to the highest bidder—unless it’s bought and broadcast, it isn’t real. Pretty soon the problem witness won’t be the one who sold her story to the trash media, it’ll be the idiot who turned them down and was impeached on grounds of feeblemindedness.

  I slapped him on the shoulder. “No TV and no tabloids, Carlos. So what do you say? Will we help each other out?”

  He looked up and down the block, as though an answer might have been burned into the yards by the sun. When he saw the white Dodge Ram, he frowned. “The son of a bitch.”

  I looked at the truck myself. “Who?”

  Carlos shook his head and looked at me. “I got things to do in the fields. If I can find the time later, we should talk. What do you plan to do first?” he asked, still dubious of our shaky alliance.

  “I’d better begin with Mrs. Lombardi.”

  Carlos cocked an ear toward the house. “She’s on the phone with Mrs. Gelbride.”

  “Who’s Mrs. Gelbride?”


  “The boss’s wife.”

  “Boss of what?”

  Carlos waved his hand. “Everything.”

  I smiled. “How did he manage that?”

  “By having all the jobs.”

  I thought of the logos I’d seen on the trucks I had passed on the road, the initials GB and F intertwined in a leafy vine. “Gelbride Berry Farms,” I said.

  “Yeah. Gus Gelbride. His wife called Louise to express her condolences.”

  “That’s nice.”

  Carlos glanced at the Ram once again. “Yeah.”

  “Gelbride is a pretty big operation, I guess,” I said, just to keep things going.

  “They own from the top to the bottom—the land, the nurseries, the cooling sheds, the truck lines and rail spurs, plus the bank and the pharmacy and funeral parlor, too. You want a job, a loan, a pill, or a casket, Gus Gelbride is the man to see. Gus or his son. The asshole.”

  “The son’s not a nice guy?”

  “The son is a fool, but Gus doesn’t see it. Gus thinks he’s muy macho, but Randy’s the main reason the union came back to the valley.”

  “Why?”

  “To put a stop to his labor practices.”

  “Sounds sort of medieval.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that. I just know Mrs. Gelbride called to say how sorry she was about Rita.”

  “Did they know each other?”

  “I don’t know about the missus, but Gus knows Louise from way back. Her husband was a foreman at the farms and Louise used to work in the sheds during the pick. That was before she got sick.”

  “Sick how?”

  Carlos placed a finger on his breastbone. “Heart. She’s too heavy and she can’t get around much any more. She was counting on me and Rita to care for her, but now there’s just me, and I got my own people to look after. But I’ll manage,” he said, giving me a better idea why Rita had been in love with him.

  “Do you work for the Gelbrides, Carlos?”