It was quiet again. “I’m terribly sorry,” Ellie said.
“For what? This is all just splendid. The town needs a good café. In fact, it is just exactly what this town needs.”
“But . . . ,” Ellie said, and let her eyes drift toward the door the man had just walked out of.
“Oh, don’t worry about Mr. Schutt. He’s been looking at the place for the last year and a half and all he ever wants to do is knock me down on the rent.”
Ellie chuckled at this for the sake of politeness; then she took a breath and said, “Well, about that rent . . . what exactly were you thinking?”
Mr. McNamara scanned the disused restaurant, as if considering its possibilities. He was wearing his slim gray suit, and, to Ellie’s eye, his smooth brown head was somehow distinguished-looking, as if to grow hair was to let yourself go. “Well,” he said finally, “you’re going to need some seed money, for supplies and machinery and so forth, so my suggestion is this. I’ll put up the money and provide the building and, once you start turning a profit, I’ll take twenty percent until you pay me back, and ten percent thereafter.” His smile stretched wide. “How does that sound to you?”
“The percentage . . . that would be in addition to the rent?”
“No, I mean instead of the rent,” he said. His expression was warm and genial, as if presenting her with this gift gave him as much pleasure as he knew it would give her, and just like that, Ellie felt lighter than air, as if she might float away.
A café. Her own café. She already had a name for it. She wouldn’t say it out loud, not yet, but she had it. The Sleeping Indian.
It grew dark as Mr. McNamara drove her back to Ida and Hurd’s. The whole way they talked about Charlotte.
63
Already Oscar de la Cueva had dropped the rest of the pickers at another grove, but he’d told Clare and his father to stay on the truck and then driven slowly to this place at the end of a long dirt lane, a small grove of Valencias bounded on each side by a windbreak of shaggy eucalyptus. He and his father rolled a single bin off the truck and stood staring at the trees.
“Thanks for the favor, Oscar,” Clare said. He gave it the sound of a jest but it wasn’t really a jest. The trees in this grove were too closely spaced. That forced the limbs upward in their search for sun and light. Tall trees meant sparse fruit and slow picking.
Oscar de la Cueva ignored the remark. He said to Clare, “They tell me to tell you that tomorrow you go to packing.”
Clare wasn’t sure what he’d heard. “Packing?” he said. “Or picking?”
“Packing,” Oscar de la Cueva said.
“Just for a day or two? Like before?”
“No. You stay in packing.” He squinted at Clare. “Just you.” He glanced at Clare’s father. “Not papa.”
Working in the packinghouse was what all the pickers wanted. The pay was better but the best part was, you could work even when it rained. Probably this was why Oscar de la Cueva waited until the other men weren’t there. He didn’t want them there when he announced that one of the worst pickers had been promoted. Clare looked at his father, who was pretending still to appraise the trees they’d be picking.
“No,” Clare said suddenly. “We’re together. My dad and me. We’re a team.”
Oscar de la Cueva’s eyes slowly closed and when after a long moment they opened again, they were on Clare. “Tomorrow you go to packing,” he said in a low, even voice. “Only you.” He gazed away again. “And today you and papa pick this grove. These are my trees. You pick my fruit and you see what you see.”
He drove away without another word. Clare and his father shouldered their bags and their ladders and began picking their way into the grove. It was bad work. Even the lower branches were hard to pick because one tree grew into the next. The upper branches were all but impossible to reach, but Clare tried. He didn’t want Oscar de la Cueva pointing to unpicked fruit. Twice when Clare stretched out from the top of the ladder, he looked down to see his father with his foot planted at the ladder’s base and his hands on its rails so it wouldn’t slip.
“We’ll never finish this grove if you hold my ladder all day,” he said and his father nodded and said, “We’ll never finish this grove if you break your neck.”
When they sat down to eat lunch at noon, the heat lay like a membrane and held everything still. Clare felt like he’d already worked a full day. The sweet juice from the oranges bit into the cracks and scratches of his hands and smelled like boiled punch. His boots were stained and wet with the juice and his hair was brittle with the broken webs of orb spiders. His father unwrapped his sandwich and said that it was good he was going to the packinghouse. “You’ll make more, you’ll have shade and cover, and there won’t be any ladders for you to fall off of.”
“But I like being outside. That’s what I’ve always done, Kansas or here, worked outside with you.”
His father cleared his throat, turned away, and spat phlegm. Then he said, “We’re here now. It’s like your mother says, we’ve got to make adjustments. Besides, school will start soon. You should be in school.”