The Immigrants and The Potato Goddess
A Story By
Tim King
I first saw Lyle when his photo was in the newspaper. It was a full color photo, headlined Bizarre Spuds, but the only colors were blue, brown, and white. Lyle had dug his spuds, put his baby blue cardigan over a white shirt, found his specs, and headed over to the newspaper office in his recently restored 1931 coupe that he calls Betty. Betty is his wife too. Of course all eyes turned as Lyle motored sedately over to the newspaper because Betty is a glistening ebony beauty with sleek lines and polished interior woodwork. But for once Lyle wasn’t thinking about Betty. Well, actually, he told me later, it was Betty’s idea about the Bizarre Spuds. She said, “Lyle, those spuds you dug Saturday are really bizarre. You should show the newspaper.” It was now 9 a.m. Monday morning and the potatoes – they were Kenebecs and the crop had been pretty bad again this year – were nicely washed and ready for their journalistic debut.
At the newspaper office the staff was in its weekly panic of laying out the weekly newspaper. There wasn’t a minute to spare. But the camera was on the front counter. Dewayne, the photographer, editor, publisher, and computer genius, was intently focusing on a colorful computer screen just eighteen inches from his camera.
 |
| Astarte |
Lyle had planned his entrance well. He came through the door holding a twisted, conjoined three-pound Kenebec in each hand. In his right was the one where four big potatoes joined promiscuously to form one spud that has the marvelous hips of Astarte, the ancient Goddess of fertility. In his left was the multi-fingered one that looks like Mr. Potato, the Hitchhiker.
Anyway, Lyle came in the door holding those potatoes just so and announced without preliminaries, “I’ve got some bizarre spuds”. Dewayne swiveled in his chair, away from the computer screen toward Lyle, and immediately saw the photo he needed to complete his front page. He exchanged pleasantries with Lyle, reached for his camera, directed Lyle to stand in front of the walnut grain wood paneling, and froze him into immortality on the front page of the September 10 Chronicle.
I work at the transfer station where we sort recyclable material from the garbage that comes in. It’s a job. You might even say it’s a green job and I’m part of the new green economy. But since I’ve been working there for eight years I don’t think its honest to say that I‘m on the economic cutting edge although there are some awfully sharp edges in the garbage we sort but mostly we’re careful. It was September 19th when Lyle spilled out of a bag of newspapers coming down the conveyer. I saw those front page spuds and I knew I had to get to know Lyle. So, I folded up that newspaper and put it in my coat pocket. Sometimes you find things so it’s good to have lots of pockets. Big pockets. Once I found a hundred-dollar bill in a bologna sandwich.
CHAPTER 2
I suppose you’re wondering how a guy like me knows about Astarte. Maybe not. But I’ll tell you anyway. I’m not an archaeologist but sometimes, when I’m digging through the garbage, I pretend. I saw it on the Discovery channel. I mean Astarte. I love that channel.
Astarte was a complicated person. Maybe you shouldn’t call a goddess a person. Around here you shouldn’t even talk about a goddess. But, like I said, it was on tv. Anyway this Astarte was the goddess of fertility and sexuality. Maybe that’s where the word tart comes from? I don’t know. I didn’t finish high school so what do I know. On tv they said she was also a goddess of war. Since sex and war are our two favorite things, next to tv, you’d think Astarte would still be a goddess. She’s not. But the ancient Egyptians put her in a war chariot. The old Hebrews thought she was the female demon of lust but, just to confuse things, King Solomon built a temple for her. The Hebrews made little statues of her that you can hold in your hand. She had these big hips and breasts and was naked. I guess in those days they didn’t like skinny girls. I don’t think that stuff is in the bible. About hefty girls, that is. My favorite story from the tv is where they found a statue in Spain. Of Astarte.
The tv said the statue is about 2,500 years old. Astarte is sitting on a throne. On each side of her is a sphinx holding a bowl beneath her breasts. Now this is sort of violent, but Astarte’s breasts are pierced. I guess it’s just a statue. They said there’s a hollow in the statue that the priests filled with milk. They poured it through her head. The priests, I mean. The holes in her breasts were plugged with some kind of wax. I suppose the priests mumbled a prayer while they were heating that wax. Then, when the wax melted and the milk gushed out, the people would imagine a miracle had happened.
It’s that kind of stuff that made me quit going to church when I was a kid. But sometimes I think the priests were on to something more than just their tricks. It’s just that nobody really understood. I mean, not even the priests. I’m not saying I understood either. But I think I believe in miracles. That’s why I needed to go to see Lyle. I think those bizarre spuds might be some kind of miracle.
CHAPTER 3
After work I checked my pocket to see if Lyle and the spuds were there. They were. Then I started hoofing it to town. It’s only three miles. I like walking. That is, I don’t have a choice. The cops took my car. If you don’t like it don’t pick up them illegal aliens, they said, or something like that.
The pavement felt hot under my boots. Too hot for a late September afternoon. The drought and the heat had dragged on since June. The big automated irrigators in the sand plains had been pumping night and day. Mining water was the only way to get a potato harvest this year. Last year too. There’s a river flowing under these sands. It’s been there since the glaciers left. Thanks to the glaciers this is big potato country. Potatoes and melted glacier water make for a lot of paychecks.
Whoosh. Whoooosh, go the northbound semis. They blast hot air in my face. Crunch go my boots on the gravel in the road shoulder. I’ll need new ones for winter. Whoosh. A big potato truck flashes by. Then its break lights blink crimson, breaks screech, and the truck crunches onto the shoulder a few hundred feet in front of me.
If you’ve never seen a spud truck you should understand. It’s like a big dump truck. Only it’s heaped with potatoes. Every day, from August to October, they lumber out of the fields from across the county. Then they head to the potato warehouses where hundreds of workers sort, wash, and bag the potatoes. Then they’re loaded onto semis and the spuds are trucked to the big markets like Minneapolis and Chicago. Everybody loves those new potatoes. Trouble is, something is causing the potatoes to die in the fields. Each year there are fewer to harvest.
This spud truck had a dented and faded red cab, a rusty white box, and was spewing blue exhaust into the hot air. It also had a driver’s arm waving to me and a horn blaring for me to shake my leg. I did. I sprinted the distance between us, heaved open the door and leapt into the passenger seat.
“Hola amigo,” the driver said.
“Buenas tardes pastor. I thought you had a corner office in corporate headquarters now days.”
Pastor Augusto has never shared my Anglo sense of humor. But he’s one of the most decent guys I know. By day he’s a supervisor at one of the potato outfits. On the weekend he serves as pastor to an Evangelical church in town. He knew why I was walking. I was busted by the cops for transporting two members of his flock.
“No Tim. We got a lot drivers sick with that flu. It happens every time immigration comes to town. So some of us managers have to work in the fields.”
“I know what you mean. Has Isabella heard from Oscar?”
“He isn’t back in Mexico. She said the boys cry for him every night. I think she cries a lot too. We’re praying for them in church.”
“Last time I talked to you, you all were praying for the harvest. You’re keeping your people pretty busy.”
“Yah Tim. I don’t know what to do. Things are getting pretty bad.”
“You mean the harvest or the flu?”
“Both Tim. Both.”
“You still playing guitar in the church band?”
“The drummer got deported back to Mexico. So now I’m drumming and preaching.”
Augusto stopped the truck by my apartment. A few Red Pontiacs tumbled off the top of the load. That’s potatoes, not cars. They plopped at my feet and shattered red and white as I stepped down out of the high cab.
“Thanks pastor. Keep beating the drums for truth, justice, and the spuds. ”
“Sometimes I wish there was more I could do.”
CHAPTER 4
I didn’t want to tell Augusto what I was thinking I might propose to Lyle. It was a little too Old Testament for a Christian pastor.
But, before we go to meet Lyle I should tell you about Oscar and Isabella. You need to understand about them. It’s important.
I’d known Isabella for a few years. Early in our friendship I called her at home.
“Immigration is in town. You should lock the doors. Don’t open them for anybody.”
“Don’t hang up. I’m walking to the door. I’m locking it. Oh my God! Oh my God! They’re outside. There’s a lot of them. They have guns. Oh my god! I’m scared.”
“Why don’t you take the boys and go down to basement. Lock all the doors.”
“Oh God. I’m so scared. Boys! Boys! Come here! Now!”
“Be careful. Don’t run down the stairs!”
Ok. Ok. Come boys. Oh God what if they take Oscar. Oh. What will we do?
“I’ll call the factory. Maybe I can find out something. You call Rubi at the store. Maybe she knows something.”
Ok.
“I’ll call you back.”
Five minutes passed.
“What did Rubi say?”
“The line was busy? What did they say at the factory?”
“The line was busy.”
“It’s dark down here. The boys are scared. Oh God! What’s that noise? What is it? They’re next door I can hear them! It sounds like they are tearing everything apart. They are shouting in English and Spanish.”
Oscar did come home that night. Everybody was sick with the flu the next day. But Oscar has steel innards. He went to work.
“Why do they hate us so much,” Isabella asked me the next day. “When my husband comes home from work his hands are red and swollen. Nobody else wants this work. We came here to work. That’s all we want.”
A few weeks later Oscar was fired. After five years the company discovered his social security number was wrong.
“Is your name really Alfredo?,” they asked Oscar.
“No.”
Oscar came home early that day. A few weeks later the potato harvest started. Oscar and Isabella both got jobs. Or, maybe it was Alfredo and Isabella. I didn’t ask. They bagged potatoes all day. Isabella’s niece took care of the boys.
One day, in late August, I got off work early. The garbage conveyor broke. My small paycheck would be smaller so I wasn’t happy. It was hot. But that was normal for August. Driving down the shimmering highway there were center pivot irrigators putting down water in fields on both sides of the road. And there were two people walking on the shoulder.
They recognized me first. I’m not well known. But my restored cherry red low rider ’49 Ford pick-up is. Two arms went up as I whipped past. Isabella and Oscar! I turned around in a field road and headed back toward them. As I pulled onto the shoulder the dust exploded into a thick yellow cloud. I’d have to wash Fran. I’m not married. I like the name Fran 49 Ford. Fred sounded wrong.
Isabella ran up to the driver’s door. She looks cute in overalls. Even if she looked like she’d spent the day in a potato warehouse.
“Hi Isabella. You want a ride.”
“Yes. It’s awful out here.”
Oscar piled in first. Then Isabella.
“I’m sorry. I don’t have three seat belts.”
“He said, he’s sorry. He doesn’t have three seat belts.”
Isabella always translates for me.
“How are the boys?”
“They’re really good. Micah said mama yesterday.”
Oscar joined in. He had a big grin when he spoke.
“He said Junior can count to ten.”
These two live for those boys.
“Why are you walking? I thought you rode to work with Artemio and Luz.?’
Isabella repeated this to Oscar. His smile went out like a broken light bulb. He said something in Spanish and put his head in his hands.
“They called Oscar to the office again. They found out about his social security.”
“Was he working as Alfredo?”
“That’s all he’s got. We can’t afford to buy another name. We got this one from his cousin. He didn’t need it any more.”
“Oh God. I’m sorry.”
“He says he’s sorry.”
Oscar didn’t look up. He mumbled something.
“He said the potatoes are sick.”
“What do you mean?”
“He said what do you mean.”
Oscar looked up. He was deeply sad.
“He said that when they come in and are washed they start rotting. Nobody understands.”
“Is that why they fired him? I mean, do they have to let people go? What’s gong on?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did they fire you?”
“I quit! They cannot insult my husband. I will not take the insults any more. My husband is more of a man than any of them!”
Isabella was yelling. Then she started crying and yelling. Then it was just heaving sobs. Oscar took her hand. They both had big brown hands. Isabella began to calm down a little. We drove for awhile that way.
“What are we going to do now,” she said.
I didn’t answer. I did have $100. That was the day of my good luck. My good luck could cancel a little of Oscar’s and Isabella’s bad luck. With one hand I started fishing in my pocket. I excavated the bill and dug it out and handed it to Oscar. It still had a small blob of mayonnaise over Ben Franklin’s face.
He looked at me with immense gratitude. I thought he might start crying himself. Then he said something.
“He said it looks like it was in a sandwich.”
“It was. Bologna. I think somebody made a mistake. They maybe put the bill in their sandwich and their lettuce in their wallet. I found it in the garbage.”
Oscar was looking at me. Isabella translated my little speech.
“He said he wants their recipe. They are good cooks.”
Those two started hooting with laughter. Oscar was slapping his knee and shaking. Isabella was hugging herself like she would burst. She had tears on her cheeks again. Laughter tears. Then Oscar twisted in his seat and reached over and put his arms around Isabella. They both were still laughing. That’s how I’ll always remember them. I have a color snap shot of them embracing and laughing framed in my mind.
The snapshot is distorted by the rear view mirror of my truck. The mirror was reflecting the red and blue flashing lights of two police cars. I knew they didn’t want me. I never drive over forty-five. I eased onto the shoulder. A cop car pulled over behind me. Another wheeeped its siren and pulled in front. I looked over at Oscar and Isabella. Their dark eyes were wide – like two deer frozen in the headlights of a freight train.
Within minutes Oscar was in the back of one car. The guys in the front seat of that car had the snow-white letter I.C.E. on the backs of their navy blue jackets. Isabella and I were in the back of a local police car.
“Where do you live miss,” the officer asked.
He wasn’t unfriendly. But Isabella had just been run over by a train. She didn’t respond. She had her arms wrapped around herself and was staring at the floor. I gave the officer the address. When the cop car pulled away from the curb near her apartment I looked back at her. She was standing on the sidewalk. She was like a statue. Isabella still had her arms wrapped around herself. Her life had just exploded and she was trying to keep the pieces from flying apart.
They booked me for transporting an illegal alien. Fran was parked in the evidence lot behind chain link fence. I called a friend and got a ride home.
CHAPTER 5
When I got to Lyle’s house I didn’t know what I was going to say. I knew what I wanted to do. But how was I going to convince Lyle, who was probably a good Catholic, to give me the potatoes.
He answered the door. He was skinny. My age – that is to say, approaching pretty old. Mostly bald. He looked like that farmer in the painting, holding a pitchfork and standing next to his wife. Like he had left the pitchfork and just stepped off the canvass to take care of a few things. He was wearing the sweater he had on in the newspaper photo. So, I figured that he was going somewhere.
“Lyle, I’m Tim King. I saw your car in the parade. She’s beautiful. I was wondering if I could get a closer look at it.”
He smiled. I didn’t think he’d get the pitchfork.
“Yes, I’ve heard about your truck.”
“You know the cops have it?”
The smile flickered, grew thin.
“Nooo! I don’t know what a man like you is doing getting involved with the police? I heard you had a restored 49 Ford that is a little too red for this town.”
I didn’t say anything. I smiled.
“Come on Mr. King. Let’s go. Betty asked me to go to the store. Let’s take a spin. Maybe you can tell me why the police have your truck. I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if they had my Betty.”
Lyle’s restoration work was perfect. The car even smelled good inside.
As we purred down the street Lyle accepted my compliments and turned the conversation toward my problem. He was a generous man.
I told him about the ride with Oscar and Isabella and its results. I paid special attention to Oscar’s comments about the potatoes.
“My son is the foreman on that farm. He told me the police came. He said if he’d known what they’d wanted he would have let his worker out the back door. He says those people are good workers. They come to work and don’t cause any trouble.”
“Oscar said the potatoes are rotting?”
“Lyle Jr. tells me there are three fields that have a blight that the chemicals can’t control. He’s afraid it will spread to the other fields next year.”
“Oscar told me they sort of dissolve when they come out of the field.”
“Not right away. One load got washed, bagged, and put in a semi trailer. The next morning they were ready to pull the trailer away from the warehouse and a stinking brown liquid was oozing out the back.”
“There’s no smell worse than rotting potatoes.”
“I pity the guys who unloaded that truck.”
In the pet food aisle at the grocers I asked Lyle if he ever watched the Discovery channel.
“Do you know where they keep the darn stuff for old cats?”
My old girl friend had an old cat so I showed him.
Lyle knew the check out girl so he chatted her up. Nice weather a little too warm and how are the kids.
Back in the car I told him I’d seen his picture in the paper.
“Betty said those Kenebecs were bizarre. I don’t know why I repeated it. Then, they went and printed it that way. Everybody is just repeating what everybody else says. It’s stupid.”
“They reminded me of something I saw on tv. On Discovery.”
“Astarte?”
I stared at that skinny little bugger for thirty long seconds.
“You saw that too?”
“Both Betty and I did. We weren’t going to say anything. The neighbors already think we’re a little different. You know what I mean?”
Lyle’s family is one of those families that, when they get a good name, they stick with it. So, when we went into the house, I met Betty and Elizabeth, the old cat. She rubbed against my leg while I admired Astarte the Bizarre.
She was on a large plate in the center of the kitchen table. Next to her was a blazing bouquet of red, orange, and pink zinnias.
“We don’t quite know what to do with her,” Betty, who is one of those people who can conjure a mug of steaming coffee with a wave of her hand, said.
We sipped our coffee and reminisced about the tv show. While we chatted I noticed that the potato had eyes in all the right places. Potatoes are asexual. They reproduce themselves by means of little growths. You cut the potato into pieces. Each piece has one or two growths, or eyes. When farmers put the piece of potato in the ground the eye turns into a new potato plant.
Astarte had a couple dozen eyes and most of them were in locations that if she were a woman walking down the street all the men’s eyes would be on her bounteous eyes. She was one a-sexy spud.
When Betty refilled my mug it seemed we had reached a watershed moment.
“What if your potato is a fertility potato? What is she could . . . I don’t know . . . bring health back to the fields?”
“Potatoes can’t be she,” Betty pointed out.
“But they can be fertile. Look at all her . . . its eyes. There never has been another potato like this,” Lyle countered.
“What if we went out and planted one of her eyes in each of the fields? Maybe there’s something in your bizarre spud that can reverse the blight. Stop it dead with a big dose of fertility.”
Betty stalled by offering me more coffee. I put my hand over the cup. I wasn’t kidding about the watershed moment.
“Can I use your bathroom?”
“It’s down the hall and to your right.”
Sometimes old married couples need a private moment to make a decision. When I returned they were both studying a calendar. It was one with the phases of the moon and classic cars.
“We’d want to plant in the waning moon. You get better potatoes,” Lyle said.
He was pointing to the week of the 19th.
“I think we should do it at night. I read you get the best yields when you night-plant,” Betty added.
“Who ever planted potatoes at night?”
“Lyle!, there’s no way I’m going to let anybody see me doing this.”
CHAPTER SIX
We’d agreed to meet at eight on the evening of the twenty-first. The moon was just a tired old sliver and we thought that since it was near the equinox, we’d increase our chances of success.
Justice’s wheels had ground away and spit out my truck. It was good to be driving again but the dog hair on the seat covers was irritating. The dogs wouldn’t have found any drugs – I don’t use them – but I hoped Oscar hadn’t dropped that $100 dollar bill. Those dogs would likely have slurped it up. There wasn’t room for all three of us though.
“Let’s take Betty,” Betty said. “I’m feeling like a teenager.”
In her black sweater, slacks, and beret she looked like a beat nick or a silver haired French gangster. Lyle was dressed less imaginatively in jeans and a worn sailor’s pea coat. He was having reservations.
“Do you remember how Astarte was the Goddess of War and Fertility,” he asked. “What if we somehow start some kind of struggle or . . . something.”
“Sometimes you have to take a risk. Remember what Obama said when he went to Copenhagen for the Olympics,” I said.
“Right. But he came back empty handed and got criticized.”
“Obama got the Peace Prize! Why don’t you two guys show some leadership and help get us on the road.”
Betty was scooping up pieces of Astarte from the bowl on the table. I suppose you could say that now there were many Astartes. There was a fresh bouquet of flowers.
“We got twenty-eight eyes. Lyle Jr. showed us a map and there are twenty-six fields,” she said.
“I guess you and Lyle can use the other two in your garden?”
“I don’t know. There are more than 3,000 acres of fields.”
“Betty’s taking this pretty seriously. She even soaked the eyes in milk overnight. Sort of like with the milk on Discovery.”
“This is Central Minnesota. I used cow’s milk. It was rBGH free, though.”
“Organic?”
“Too expensive,”
Betty was at the wheel of Betty. She was going to be our get-away-driver. Or at least the get-to-driver. Lyle held the map of the fields on his lap and a flashlight in one hand. He was the navigator.
“We’ll go to field eighteen first, Betty. That’s closest. It’s right next to the old Hansen place.”
“You mean Harold Hansen. The one who married June what’s her name.”
“Nooo. This was Leslie. Harold and he were cousins, I think. His dad was Leonard. They had those two pretty girl twins that graduated just ahead of Lyle, Jr. Remember how that Susan could sing in church.”
“And Sally ran away with the Thompson boy – they lived by field twenty-one – the night she graduated. Broke Myrtle’s heart.”
“Who’s Myrtle?”
I thought I should ad something. I’d only been in the area twelve years and did not possess the rich map of memory that Lyle and Betty had access to. I sort these people’s garbage but I don’t know its origins or history.
“Sally’s Mom. She was a Hedin,” Betty said as she put her arm out the window and signaled to make a right turn onto a gravel township road. It was black out but the beam of Betty’s head lights sliced across the silver center pivot irrigator spanning the 200 acres of field eighteen. She switched the lights off and a black curtain fell across the skeletal watering robot.
I grabbed the potato bag and stuffed a couple of pieces into my pockets. Betty handed me a big heavy four-battery torch. Lyle got a spade out of the boot. Old cars have boots. Not trunks. We had a plan. Lyle and I were to head to the center of the field. That was where the center pivot well pierced deep into the earth. Our idea was that we’d plant the potato eyes there. We figured that at that place our Astarte Kennebecs would be most likely to have access to the healing powers rising up from the center of the mother earth. Betty said that sounded pretty goofy. She said the spuds did stand a better chance of surviving spring tillage if we planted them there. I just hoped Betty was still tuned to the same channel Lyle and I were tuned to.
Betty’s job was to stay with the car. We were worried we might get lost in the big dark field. Betty was supposed to flash her lights if we weren’t back in a half-hour. We’d seen something like that in a spy movie on HBO. We were also counting on Betty’s creativity. If a farmer, or a sheriff’s deputy, came along her job was to make up a story explaining her presence on the edge of a dark field. There were four other slightly more recent model vehicles parked on the edge of that field. I didn’t know if that would make things easier, or more difficult, to explain to a deputy.
But Lyle and I had our beeline blinders on. We were on a mission to save the potatoes with the aid of an ancient goddess. We were Astarte’s soldiers as we marched straight out into the velvet autumn darkness. We paid no heed to the fact that one of the cars belonged to his cousin Leopold.
It was a long walk. Those big irrigators are divided into sections. I thought they were about a hundred feet long. Lyle said eighty. We debated that until Lyle tripped on a pile of potato vines left by the harvester. The flashlight went flying. Lyle said something the nuns didn’t teach him and he landed flat on his face. His right arm was stretched outward. I could see that because the flashlight was lying on the ground ten feet away. Its beam pointed back at him. It illuminated his out stretched hand and arm and half his face. Between the light and his hand lay a medium sized russet potato.
I fetched the light and gave Lyle a hand up.
“You look like a still life painting. It’s called man reaching for potato.”
“I’m too old for this. It’s a crazy idea any way. I could be home watching Hawaii 50 reruns.”
“While you sat on your skinny behind watching Steve tell Dano to book ‘em the potatoes would be rotting in stinking warehouses. Sometimes you’ve got to stop watching and act.”
Lyle was silenced by my eloquence. We marched on.
“You’ve got dirt on your nose,” I told him.
Separating the irrigators’ sections are pairs of wheels. Lyle would slice through the darkness with the light beam and find a set of wheels. We’d walk toward it. Once there, Lyle would start probing the darkness for the next set. If he thought we were off course he’d point the beam upward searching for the silver metal skeleton. He’d find it and we’d get under it again.
We walked in silence. The earth was soft. I could hear Lyle breath but couldn’t hear his foot falls. The light flashed over the uneven earth in front of us. We were behind the light, in the darkness. We were pushing our small light forward. The darkness was very large.
After four sets of wheels we saw a pair of other lights. Their long beams flashed over the soil. One was white, the other golden. They were to our right. Fragments of voices came from behind them. My instinct was to stay away from them. Lyle veered away from an upcoming wheel set toward the lights.
“Gleaners,” was all he said.
Like a sheep I followed. As we grew closer fragments became completed punctuated sentences pronounced by male voices.
“The score was eleven to thirteen. This week they play Bertha.”
“Bertha is strong this year.”
These two guys were talking about the high school football team while picking up potatoes left by the harvesting machine. They spotted Lyle’s light and turned. Lyle’s light went up at the same time as one of their lights.
“Hi Lenny,” Lyle said.
“Evenin’ cousin,” Lenny said.
Lyle’s cousin Leonard had a burlap bag half full of what must have been Russets. His companion moved into the small circle of light like a supporting actor. He too had a lumpy bag.
Our bag was small but Leonard made no comment on it. He did not think it was strange.
“Nice evening to be picking spuds,” Lyle said.
“We wanted to beat the frost. Forecast is for cold this weekend.”
“Are there many this year,” Lyle asked.
“Not as many as last year. I hear a lot of them rotted.”
“I heard that. How is Dawn getting on.”
“She’s fine. The doctor said it was nothing to worry about. She would have come but she doesn’t like to do this in the dark.”
“I guess it’s better that way. Well, I should let you get back to picking. Be seeing you Lenny.”
“G’night Lyle.”
We turned back into the dark and Lyle’s beam sought out the irrigator in the dark. Finding it we continued toward our destination. Lyle started talking into the darkness.
“Lenny and Dawn’s Loren is my godson. I truly love that young man. He’s away at college. We thought Dawn might have cancer. That’s good news. Good news. Even when she was a kid she didn’t like the dark.”
We reached the central pivot of the irrigator. That is where the well is. Lyle searched the ground with his light.
“Here?,” he asked.
I agreed by sinking the spade into the sandy earth where the light pointed. I removed a little soil and reached into the bag for seed. I gently placed part of Astarte's brown arm into the small hole. Lyle leaned down with me. With our faces nearly touching we smoothed and patted the soil over the potato part. The earth was cool but had no smell. Lyle retrieved some potato vines and laid them over the small hill. We stood and looked down at our work. Then we looked at each other. I couldn’t see Lyle well but I believe he smiled.
“OK?”
“OK! Let’s go. Betty will be waiting.”
The walk back was seemed quicker than the walk out. In the distance we could see frail light beams sweeping the earth. Halfway back a set of car lights flashed. On. Off. On. Off.
“That’s a nice sight!”
“I guess the law didn’t get her.”
Betty was bored. When we told her about our adventures she said she was coming on our next field trip. She started Betty and backed off the field entry onto the road.
“First you want to dress up like a gangster and drive Betty,” Lyle complained in that way that old married couples can. “Now you want to plant the potatoes. Tim and I should have stayed home. We’re missing Hawaii 50.”
“I think the feminine mystique is just what this potato planting is lacking.”
Lyle was silent as he, no doubt, pondered the mystique of it all.
There were cars lined up at the next field, also.
“Any of your relatives, Lyle,” I asked.
“No. But I’ve seen that ’91 Ranger before.”
I had too. It was pastor Augusto’s truck. As we entered the field we could see the lights. They were under the irrigator. As we came closer I thought I could hear Spanish.
“Oh! They have children with them,” Betty exclaimed.
A light lifted off the ground and only briefly swept our faces. Augusto is always the gentleman.
“Hola amigo,” he said.
“Good evening pastor. It’s a pleasant evening for the harvest.”
“Yes. There are still potatoes.”
“It looks like you brought the whole congregation.”
“These are for Sunday. We will collect them and give them to the people who have no work. Nobody should be hungry.”
“I hear Oscar crossed back over.”
“Yes. He was in church Sunday. The children needed him.”
“That’s good. Well good night pastor.”
When we found the center of the pivot Betty said Lyle and I were doing a pretty good job with the planting. She got down on her knees and made sure the potato eyes were pointed up, not down. Together we pushed the earth back over the new seed. This soil smelled like fresh mushrooms. Betty found some mulch and carefully covered the hill. Then we left.
We planted seven more fields. There were people in all of them. But they were always in the distance flickering like fireflies. We were getting tired. It was getting late. And chilly.
Field number ten reeked. The stench made it hard to keep dinner. There were no people. The few potatoes on the ground were limp. Lyle stepped on one. Puss came out of it. We walked as fast as we could in the awful smelling darkness. It was too far. But this was why we came. Lyle fell behind. I heard him gagging. I turned and put the light near him. We’d learned not to put it each other’s face. He was on his knees.
“I’m ok,” he said.
Betty helped him up.
We planted two seeds in field number ten. Also in number fourteen. When we got back to Betty and Lyle’s place a streak of red was on the horizon. Lyle took the first shower. Betty made coffee, eggs, and bacon. I thought with the smell I wouldn’t be able to eat. It wasn’t a problem. Betty had recorded Hawaii 50. So we watched that and ate. Lyle’s snoring woke me up in time to hear Steve tell Dano to book ‘em.
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