Tangerine (28 page)

Victor said, "Yeah? I'll mess up your face with some delicate hands."

Tino said, "My daddy and my Uncle Charlie are out in the Cleopatra grove startin' the fire. They're gonna call us out to haul tires and brush. Luis is gonna stay in the new grove and run the pumps. He's gonna call us to chop ice off the trees." He smiled at Victor. "In our spare time, we're gonna do what we did last night. We're gonna keep the Golden Dawns packed with dirt."

Then Tino extended one gloved hand toward us and held it there, just like Victor did before each soccer game. We crowded in and put our hands on top of his. He said, "You know what's up. Time and temperature. Luis says it's gonna be ten hours of hard freeze tonight. Trees are gonna die no matter what we do. We gotta save what we can."

Victor said calmly, "Let's do it," and the circle broke up. We filed outside with our shovels into the cold sting of the wind. The sun was dropping in the sky. The temperature was dropping, too.

We headed into the old grove of trees, now bare of fruit, the grove of the Cleopatra tangerines. Their leaves seemed to be withering, shriveling. We walked through the sights and smells of last night's battle, to a high point of land. Tino gestured in a slow circle. "Check this out."

The trees in this spot were tall, weathered, and cracked—haunted-house trees. "Luis says to use these to keep the brushfire going. Daddy and Tio Carlos will do the chopping, and we'll do the hauling." Tino looked at Henry D. "These trees are all dead. We call them the lightning trees. They're at the highest point in the grove, so they get zapped by lightning. They've been dead for years. We don't chop them down, though, 'cause they act like lightning rods. I hope we'll get away with just chopping down one or two for the fire tonight."

Tino started downhill and we followed. Henry pointed out a line of metal contraptions that were about four feet high. Each had a wide, round base and a narrow stovepipe sticking up from it. "Those are the smudge pots. Wait'll you see them when they're burning. Fire comes shooting out of the tops of them." He called out, "Tino, are we gonna be haulin' the diesel for these smudge pots?"

"Ain't nobody else gonna do it." Tino turned at the end of the row and stopped. He pointed out a skinny three-sided wooden box, about five feet tall. Henry and I looked inside. It was a glass thermometer, attached to a white metal plate that had
PEPSI
written across it. The temperature read thirty-five degrees. "You'll see these at different spots, high spots and low spots inside the groves. I call Luis with the temperatures, and he calculates what we have to do and how much time we have to do it in. Time and temperature."

As we approached the lowest point in the grove, the trees began to look scorched; they smelled like smoke and rubber. We reached a clearing that had obviously been the site of a fire the night before. Tomas Cruz and his brother were placing dead branches in a crisscross pattern, laying the foundation for tonight's fire. A revolting smell of burnt rubber seeped up from the debris.

Tino poked at his uncle as we passed by. "
¿Quépasa, Tio?"

"Tu saves,
" he replied.

We emerged from the old grove into the wide, square field of the Golden Dawn tangerines. How different this field looked now! Tino and his crew had dumped a thousand small mounds of dirt in here. Like a thousand giant anthills, they covered up all of those black irrigation hoses. Each little tree was now packed with dirt about a foot high, with a few green leaves sticking out at the top.

Tino spoke again to Henry. "We have to make sure that these trees are packed above the bud union, right here." He pointed to a spot halfway up one of the dirt mounds. "If we don't, the Golden Dawns are dead, and we got ourselves a thousand rough lemon trees." He paused for emphasis. "That can't happen."

We continued along the back of the square field until we entered the new grove. There were twice as many tall, skinny sprinklers as last time. In the distance I could see that one part of the grove was already being watered by them, from high above.

We walked toward the sound of a diesel pump until we came to a rickety corrugated-iron shed, kind of a lean-to that was open on one side. Luis was inside it, looking at the dials on a pump and making notes. We formed a group around him, and he said, "Tonight's the night, homeboys. All over this town, all over this part of the state, people are gonna get hurt by this freeze. It's a killer. It's gonna kill right down to the wood, right down to the ground."

He looked up at us. Actually, he looked up at me. He said, "You understand the plan, right? We're icing the new grove, we're packing the Golden Dawns, and we're burning the old grove. What's alive in the morning is what's alive in the morning." He pointed at Victor. "Did you guys get some rest?"

"Yeah, we crashed all day."

"You ready for another night of this?"

"Sure. You know we're always ready to rumble."

"Yeah. I know that. Just be careful. All of you."

Luis looked to the west, so we all turned to look with him. The sun was sinking low. The Cleopatra trees stood black in the orange light, like Halloween cutouts. The temperature was dropping by the minute, and the wind was whipping up.

I thought about my phone call to Mom. In Lake Windsor Downs, the people were inside, welcoming the freeze with hot cocoa and fake logs and Christmas CDs. In Tangerine, the people were heading out to fight it with shovels and axes and burning tires.

That turned out to be our last moment of peace. For the next twelve hours, we waged a fierce and increasingly desperate battle to save the Cruz family's trees.

We began with the smudge pots in the old grove. A hundred smudge pots had to be filled with fuel, fired up, and kept burning all night. We set out in pairs to do it. Henry and I were given two gas cans and a lighter, and we soon figured out what to do with them. The smudge pots were hellish machines, belching foul-smelling smoke and shooting a dangerous wild flame out the top, like upside-down rockets.

We made hundreds of trips to the big orange diesel tank. Diesel generators pumped the water that Luis spread over the new grove. Diesel generators lit the new grove and the Golden Dawn field. Whenever we weren't responding to a crisis, we were hauling diesel.

But there was one crisis right after another. A crisis might begin with a call from Tomas that the brushfire was going out. We'd take off on the run through the Cleopatra grove, choking on the smoke, tripping in the dark. Tomas would be there hacking apart a lightning tree, and we'd drag the dead limbs to the bonfire. Then we'd run back to the diesel tank. Soon Luis would call, and we'd take off for the new grove. We'd use our shovels to scrape at trees that were getting too heavily coated with ice, trees that were about to crack.

On and on it went like that, repacking dirt, hauling tires—we battled against the ever-dropping temperature: thirty degrees, twenty-eight degrees, twenty-six degrees.

But we were losing. The fire in the old grove was blazing high and wild, scorching the leaves off anything near it. By midnight we had chopped down four lightning trees. The ice was forming too rapidly in the new grove; the coatings on the trees were too thick. The loud cracking sound of trees splitting off branches like amputated limbs, or splitting in two like they'd been pole-axed, hung horribly in the frozen night air. We were losing.

For all of our frantic efforts, the temperature continued to drop. It must have been about two o'clock when I saw Tino and Victor standing in front of one of those Pepsi thermometers. Victor was screaming at it, "Twenty-four degrees! Twenty-four degrees!" It was like his frozen breath was spelling out the awful words.

Tino got off the walkie-talkie with Luis and announced, "Luis says this: If it stays twenty-four degrees for ten more minutes, then it's all over. He's calling it off. We're all going home."

I stopped in my place, in a row of Golden Dawns, and I set down my can of diesel. One by one, I pried my black-gloved fingers back, trying to straighten out my warped hand. For the first time that night, I felt the cold. And I felt exhaustion.

I dropped to my knees on that frozen piece of earth, weary to the core of my body. I looked over to my left. The new grove was glistening like an angel on a Christmas tree, lit from within by the light of a diesel generator. Every tree dripped frozen icicles, from the top down to the ground. And the glow of all of them together was more beautiful than anything I had ever seen.

To my right, the smudge pots and that bloated bonfire were spewing out over every living thing. I saw Tomas and his brother emerge from the black and billowing smoke, marching toward Tino. I turned back and saw that Luis was coming down, too. They all met at the thermometer and talked for five minutes. Finally Tomas and his brother broke away and marched back into the scorched grove. Luis said one more thing to Tino and then went back to his duties.

I got back up on my feet as Tino called us to him. He announced, "Our daddy and Tio Carlos are going to keep trying. Luis says that the rest of us have to go inside. Right now. He'll call me when we can come back out."

We all trudged obediently over to the Quonset hut. I walked inside, felt the blessed heat, and collapsed on the floor. Victor picked me up into a sitting position. Then Theresa appeared in front of me with a cup of coffee. She said, "Do you like cream and sugar?"

I shook my head dumbly and said, "I don't know."

She smiled. "Let's find out." I tried to take the cup from her, but my fingers wouldn't close around the handle. Theresa stooped down, held the cup up to my mouth, and I took a sip. It made me shiver. I took another one. And then another. Finally I was able to hold the cup in my hands.

Tino said, "Fisher Man, last time you were here you collapsed because it was too hot. Now you're collapsing because it's too cold? What's up with you?"

I couldn't even think of a reply, much less make one. I sat there in a kind of coma for a long, long time. Finally Tino's walkie-talkie crackled to life. I heard him say, "All right! That's what we're waiting to hear." He turned to Victor. "Luis says the new grove is holding steady at twenty-nine degrees, and the high spots in the old grove are showing twenty-eight. He says that the worst is over; the temperatures are goin' back up."

Victor and Tino clasped hands, but Victor was solemn. "So how much dead wood you got out there?"

"I don't know, man. Anything in those low spots has had it." He turned to include me. "It got too cold down there for too long. But, hey, we're still in business." Tino, Victor, and the boys got up to go back out, so I struggled to get to my feet. Tino turned to Theresa. "No way he's going back outside. Orders from Luis."

Theresa pointed a stern finger at me. "You heard that. Now don't move from here. I'm going to go get you some blankets."

I could barely move. I could barely speak. But suddenly Luis entered, and I knew I had to.

He said, "Paul, are you all right?"

I looked up at him and tried to focus my eyes. I stared hard at his left temple. There it was! I could see it in this light. It was a dark red bruise, deep set, like a birthmark. It curved over his eyebrow like a dark red crescent moon. I whispered, "Yeah."

"Tino said you were in bad shape."

"I was a little frozen. I'm OK now."

"Do you want to go to the hospital?"

"No. No way. I'm feeling better already."

He studied me doubtfully. I blurted out, "Listen, Luis. We only have a couple of minutes, and I have to tell you something. I saw you at Lake Windsor High School. I saw what you did."

Luis straightened up.

"I saw you face down Erik and those other guys, and I saw Arthur Bauer hit you with a blackjack."

His hand moved automatically up to his temple. "Is that what it was?"

"Yes. And you have to believe me, Luis. They're dangerous. They're very dangerous."

Luis, to my amazement, smiled. He was about to reply when the door at the far end opened and Theresa returned. He just said, "I'll talk to you about this later."

Theresa came up and handed me two thick green blankets and a white pillow. Luis went back out, and I crashed.

The next thing I knew it was six-thirty, and the crew was coming back in. Henry D. said to me, "The sun's coming up. We made it through the night."

I pulled off the blankets and stood up, humiliated. But Tino came right up to me and said, "Hey, Fisher Man, thanks for helping us tonight."

He held out his hand, and I shook it. I said, "Tino, I'm really sorry about what happened."

"What? Hey, man, you're not used to this kind of work."

"No. Not that. I mean at my house."

Tino shook his head. "Oh, that. Well, we never should have gone over there."

"Yes! You should! You should go over there. You're my friends. Or ... I want you for my friends. You're welcome at my house."

Tino nodded and then said, "You can be our friend over here. All right?" I shrugged and nodded. He added, "Our daddy's driving to the takeout for some Egg McMuffins. You down with that?"

"Yeah."

"OK. Oh, and Luis says he wants to see you outside."

"All right."

I went out back and found Luis kneeling by a Golden Dawn tree with his face buried in the green leaves.