Playful Peach #7

He should have never been there in the first place. A 15-year-old boy should be in school, his greatest worry whether or not he would get a date to the dance on Friday. Instead, he went to the “unofficial” meeting place at the town gas station where all the day laborers went hoping to get work that day. He arrived around 7am hoping to get picked up by one of the farms, they worked you hard but you usually got off early because the heat became unbearable around 3. Plus, the farmers wife always cooked us lunch, which was a change from the usual treatment we received.

Three hours later his hands were sore from wrapping the vines around the wooden stakes that commanded them to move just right. His back was beginning to ache and he had already sweated through his shirt. Julio didn’t care though; as long as no one else noticed how young he was he didn’t care about anything. Just keep your head down and keep working he told himself. It was common knowledge that a local cop always tried to stop the “illegals” from working and Julio had a feeling he would cause the other men extra problems being that he was both an illegal and under aged.

Mercifully the bell rang that signaled to everyone it was time to go home. He walked to the place where everyone else went to collect his wages for the day. When he got the front of the line the farmer smiled at him and asked him to wait until he had paid everyone else. This made Julio suspicious, why were the other men getting paid first? But he didn’t want to give the farmer a reason to not pay him since he had no way to enforce that he pay him anyway. He just sat their quietly waiting for his check.

After everyone left the farmer looked at Julio with a sly smile and asked his age.

“18” he lied.

“No, you look much younger than that” the farmer replied maintaining his smile.

Julio admitted his actual age but then begged to still get paid claiming that he worked just as hard as everyone else. The farmer started to offer up excuses saying that he was a liability as a child worker and an illegal immigrant. Julio really needed the money, his mother’s salary as a housekeeper wasn’t cutting it and his dad left when he was born. He had two little sisters and a brother who all needed to stay in school. Julio felt responsible for taking care of them as the oldest boy and didn’t want them to have to bear the same hardship he did.

“I will do anything for you, I really need the work” Julio pleaded.

The farmer looked intrigued by his offer and it gave Julio a bit of hope.

“Anything?” the farmer asked, his expression suddenly turning serious.

Julio nodded in agreement expecting to have to do the worst job possible. The farmer never changed his serious gaze, but then started to look a little uncomfortable and awkward. He had to have been in his late 30’s, a strong athletic looking man with a stern jaw and skin browned from working in the fields. Julio never, in a million years, would have predicted what the farmer was about to ask him to do.

The farmer started by telling him how difficult it is to have your profession chosen for you so early in life. When he was Julio’s age he was planning on moving to Los Angeles to try and be a dancer. The son of a farmer didn’t just become dancers, but the son of a farmer also wasn’t supposed to be gay, as he knew in the depths of his soul that he was.

He tried to tell his parents his feelings, but they wouldn’t hear it. They sent him to a Christian camp for boys with his “problem” and told him that he would be “cured” there. It was an all-boys camp filled with boys that were “sick” just like him. It was at this camp that the farmer met his first (and only) love.

The farmer and his lover planned to escape the camp and run away together to start a new life away from their parent’s oppressive rule. On the night that they were to make their escape they were caught and his lover was sent home while the farmer was forced to stay at the camp. He found out that when his lover got home his father beat him to death and then passed it off as a suicide. No one ever investigated it.

The farmer told Julio that he needed his help. He would never be able to get his lover back, but he could avenge his memory. Now, the farmer couldn’t do it himself because he had to run the farm and he didn’t want anyone to get suspicious. If Julio did this he would be awarded handsomely with enough wages for a whole year. He would be able to go back to school, provide for his family and still be a kid for a while longer. Julio’s head was spinning with all the information, feeling extremely sad for the farmer and sorry for himself that he had to make this decision.

The farmer told him that he didn’t have to decide at that moment. He would arrange for a truck to pick him up at the corner that he had waited that morning for work the next morning and if he showed up then the farmer knew he would do it. He would give Julio a gun and the money in a bag and all he needed to do was carry out the task set before him. The farmer tried to avoid saying ‘murder’ and instead used words like ‘task’ or ‘work.’ Julio didn’t let that fool him and knew in his heart that once you murder a man that leaves an imprint on your soul forever. He didn’t know what he was going to do.

He didn’t talk much that night at dinner. His mother kept asking him questions about his day, but he rebuffed each one with a shrug or saying it was fine. She was used to her moody teenager so she just cleared his plate of tamales that he hadn’t touched and left him alone. He went to his room and tried to fall asleep but he just kept tossing and turning. He sat and thought all night, visions in his head of the farmer, his mother and the task he was asked to perform. Sometime around 3 am he decided what he was going to do.

The sun wasn’t out yet as Julio stood on the corner with a look of determination on his face waiting for the truck. And to think, he wasn’t even supposed to have been there in the first place.