Starting from Loomis and Other Stories

Dominguez

KL 43 Dominguez From time to time, I find myself thinking about Dominguez Mendoza, wondering if he is still alive. I owe him a treat, a milkshake. It sounds silly, but it happened when I was fourteen. At first, I couldn’t tell Dominguez or anybody else from the twenty or more Filipino men out at the ranch. They all seemed alike to me— the same dark faces, the bandana neckerchiefs, the light, quick feet, and the Tagalog speech. Maybe we Japanese all seemed alike to them. I don’t know. Anyway, I kept away from them as much as I could, even though we were doing the same job, picking Santa Rosa plums. We even drank water from the same canteen, though none of the men drank half as much as I did. I guess I was afraid of them. I had heard stories, and believed them, about how handy they were with knives and how they thought nothing of sticking one in a man’s heart. Also, it did not sound too chummy, the way they talked back and forth—any minute I expected them to start slinging daggers or one of those trick knives people said they carried . Nothing like that ever happened, but I was always looking for it. I admit I was a little prejudiced in that respect, at least when I was fourteen. DOI: 10.5876/9781607322542:c07 dominguez 44 I suppose I learned much of that from my father. He always said, “You can’t trust those Filipinos,” and I believed him, for he had his troubles with them. He liked to have their trade selling them groceries, but the real challenge was getting paid. They practically bought out the store—a crate of this and that, vegetables, piles of canned goods, and pounds of fish. Everything was on credit, and about five of the men— leaders, I supposed, or men who could write—signed their names to the bill. Beautiful handwriting and names like music—Richard Bello, Carlos Esteban, Dominguez Mendoza; but darned if father could remember them for a minute. One summer the men forgot to pay. Father chased them all the way to Sacramento, but they got away easily, scattering to pool halls, hotels, bars, and other places. He lost nearly sixty dollars, which was quite a sum for a small store in those days. He got wise to them by asking their boss to give him early notice of payday so he could be around for his share. I guess he didn’t have much trouble after that; I no longer saw him suddenly chasing off to Sacramento. KL I didn’t start to change my views until I got to know Dominguez. I was fourteen, and I could pick plums. I had picked them since I was ten years old. Every new season I had to learn all over again, but after a couple of days I could size the plums at a glance. I could tell which were packed five by fives, four by fives, and four by fours. I knew the colors, too. I knew what was half-color, quarter-color, straw-color, and green-color. I could also handle the eight-foot ladder better than anyone else. It was heavy but I didn’t move it around much—just poked it in between the branches four or five places, and I had circled the tree and was moving on to the next. “Always stay one tree ahead of the others,” Father would say. He was interested in my work; he didn’t want me fired. I did what he told me, dominguez 45 even stayed two trees ahead sometimes, working hard whether the foreman was out of sight or standing right below me. When he was watching me, I probably worked even harder. The thought never occurred to me to relax once in a while, let the breeze cool off the sweat, or to take it easy climbing up the ladder instead of bounding up. I didn’t smoke then, so I didn’t waste any time rolling one either. I had been working for about a week when one day Dominguez walked up alongside of me on the way back to the fields. “It is hot for you?” Dominguez asked. “Sure is,” I said. It was hell going back to work after lunch, the sun burning hot close above my head. I...