She watches him all morning from one window, then another. Maybe he’s taking his time to avoid getting back to his farm work. Or maybe he’s calculating, so as to finish just when it’ll be the right time to call his girlfriend in Mexico. Mi novia, he had said. More than a girlfriend. A bride, a fiancée. What time is it in Mexico now?
She is not policing him so much as making sure that he doesn’t fall. And if he does, then what? Does she call 911 for help? Take him to the hospital? Better the Open Door Clinic, if they are open, where the staff, mostly volunteers, are poor-friendly, undocumented-friendly, friendly period. Before Sam’s death, she used to volunteer there, translating for the migrant workers. Of course, anything serious, the clinic would send him over to the hospital, where they’re more fearful of liabilities. They might notify the sheriff, who’d come racing over to the ER, sirens going, lights flashing. Or they’d ask if he has insurance, as he lies on a gurney, bleeding to death. Who is allowed to have access to care? Universal health care, Sam argued. He could ruin a dinner party with his fierce advocacy. How can we call ourselves civilized and withhold care from those who can’t afford it? He was invited on several local talk shows and college panels. Some of his colleagues at the hospital began shunning him. But the younger doctors, especially the young women, regarded him as their mentor.
Of course, Antonia agreed with Sam, though she let him do the arguing. Even now, long after immigrating as a child, she still thinks of it as “their” country. Not for her to meddle in their affairs. Besides, Sam was better at arguing, sticking to the topic, not getting teary and tongue-tied when someone disputed her facts. Over the years, there was so much overlap in their opinions. She could tell what he thought from a glance at his face, the tone of his voice as he spoke on the phone in another room. Nice to get to that place with someone where you don’t have to ask. A different kind of silence now. She has the radio going constantly. She makes a mental note to up her contribution to VPR during the next membership drive.
She’s out collecting the mail when she spots the sheriff’s car coming slowly down the road toward her house. Instantly, she is alert, some instinctive reaction, like seeing a hornet in her vicinity. She runs down a checklist. What could she be doing wrong? On the top of the list would be the small brown undocumented man cleaning her gutters. But Mario has finally made it to the back of the house. Antonia lifts a hand casually in greeting, a performed rather than an innocent gesture. One may smile, and smile, and be a villain. Would the sheriff recognize Hamlet? Most of the law enforcement in town are local boys whose family farms have gone under. Many didn’t even finish high school, thinking they’d end up farming. Besides, as Sam often reminded her with a bemused chuckle: not everyone in the world walks around with a whole bunch of famous people talking to them in their heads.
Once she’s inside, she hurries toward the back of the house, sliding open the glass door off the living room. Ven, ven, she calls out. Rápido, rápido! La migra! she adds to hurry him. It works. Mario scrambles down from the ladder, missing a rung, and bounds toward her, still clutching a fistful of leaves.
She hurries him inside, points to a chair in the corner, out of view of any windows. Harboring a fugitive, the phrase runs through her head. What Sam would have done, unquestioningly. He was the bold one. She, the reluctant activist, though everyone assumed it was she who was the political one by virtue of her ethnicity, as if being Latina automatically conferred a certain radical stance.
Mario glances around the room wildly. Does he think Antonia has laid a trap for him? There’s a knocking at the door. Who could it be? Stay here, tranquilo, away from the windows. In the driveway, the UPS truck is already pulling away. The book she ordered that’s supposed to help with grief lies on the welcome mat. Antonia checks the road again: the sheriff’s car has stopped at Roger’s. Good thing Mario’s here. But then there’s José, Mario’s co-worker, perhaps cleaning stalls or mixing the feed, or if he’s on break, napping or listening to his tapes of Mexican music in the trailer behind the farmhouse.
As Antonia watches, the sheriff gets back in his cruiser and heads down the road, turning right at the corner, toward the rumbly bridge, where there’s a pull-off. Time for his lunch, riding beside him in a cooler, or maybe he’s meeting someone he can’t invite home. Antonia has heard he’s divorced, living with his mother.
Years ago, Mona talked her and Sam into making an annual donation to their local sheriff’s fund. They send you a sticker, Mona explained. You put it on your car window. You’ll never get a ticket again, I swear.
Smart cookie, baby sister Mo-mo. But Sam was doubtful. Another one of your sister’s theories. Let’s try it for a year, Antonia persuaded him. Against his better judgment, he had affixed the sticker to their Subaru.
That was over five years ago. They haven’t gotten a ticket since.
Other people are sometimes right, she reminded him. Other people, meaning her sisters, herself.
I never said they weren’t. He was too damn quick with his comebacks, right even about not always being right.
Roger comes to collect Mario. What’s he doing? Putting on a new roof or what?
She takes the blame. She had him come inside. Sheriff was on the prowl.
Came by my place, too, asking how things were going. Somebody’s talking. Roger looks at her pointedly, so she feels she has to deny that she has spoken to anyone. Why would she endanger one of her own?
Roger shrugs. A shrug that implicates her whole gender. Women. Always talking. They talk when they’re having their hair done; they talk waiting on line at the grocery store; they talk when they stop by to pick up their Thanksgiving turkeys from Roger’s honor store.
He’s in the living room, Antonia says, stepping to one side for Roger to come in, casting a look at his dirty boots. She considers asking him to remove them, as he seems to have missed the hint of shoes lined up below the mudroom pegs. But she might as well ask him to take off his clothes. No way this old Vermonter’s going to walk around in stocking feet indoors.
Mario is not in the living room where she left him, but there’s a fistful of leaves piled on the seat of the chair in the corner.
Mario! she calls. Es el patrón. To Roger, she says, he probably got scared. I told him it was la migra.
Roger lets out an audible sigh. Women overreacting. Mario! he calls in a commanding voice. They hear footsteps coming down the hall. Someone else who didn’t remove his shoes. But what unsettles her is that Mario took the liberty of hiding in the bedroom wing, a private part of the house.
Took the liberty? Sam would have challenged her. What does that even mean, when you are facing deportation?
Me agarró el temor, Mario says. Grabbed by fear. Personification is not merely a literary term, she used to tell her classes. Literature has to pull its weight in the real world or else it’s of no use to us. It’s not just Sam at dinner parties who could get in high dudgeon. Mario is holding himself, presumably to stop shaking. The red string bracelet he wears as a talisman on his left hand dangles its two loose ends. Suerte y protección, he had explained, wincing as she bandaged his hand. A lot of good it did you, she thought but didn’t say, concentrating on administering the first aid she’d picked up from Sam over the years. She had felt such tenderness then, and now again, at this boy-man who believes he can tame the dragons with a piece of braided string. No different from her literary cache of salutary lines. Tranquilo, tranquilo, she calms him. Estamos en Vermont. Here there be no torture of prisoners. He stares back, unconvinced. The world is crazy. Who knows what angry people will do.