Anna had gone quiet again by the time they reached the Shoat house. The Washam Poultry catch crew was due in half an hour, so Henry gave her some space to catch her breath. He walked down a gravel lane toward the crops, and was standing in a field of soybeans when the trucks rolled in.
A white pickup hauling a forklift led four tractor-trailers down the long dirt road to the two chicken houses. Each house was five hundred feet long, a shed of corrugated metal with big fans and a feed silo mounted at one end. The beds of the tractor-trailers were piled with empty cages that were shedding feathers like a torn pillow.
Henry watched from a distance as Anna greeted the foreman with a handshake. He wore a black Washam ball cap and a red flannel shirt, and handed her a clipboard with papers to sign. Nine men spilled from the cabs of the tractor-trailers, calling out to each other in Spanish.
They were scruffy and bedraggled. They stood to one side, preparing as if for battle. Several pulled on heavy work gloves. Others covered their arms with torn panty hose, presumably for protection against beaks and talons, and donned respirators and dust masks. Some wore goggles.
A funny place, the Eastern Shore. Less than a two-hour drive from Capitol Hill, and a frequent stopover for beachgoers on the way to Ocean City and Rehoboth. But it looked, felt, and operated more like a state in the American South. In recent decades it had turned over its scut work to thousands of new arrivals from Latin America, whose presence was now evident in bilingual signs and a boomlet of Mexican restaurants—all of this happening in small towns that had previously been about as ethnic as a jar of mayonnaise.
Yet, in the more prosperous and picturesque waterfront villages, there was a layer of urban gentry that had silted down over the years from the better neighborhoods of Baltimore and Washington. Old money and privilege, embodied by people like Stu Wilgus, or new money and excess, which showed itself in gargantuan new houses. You didn’t have to dig beneath the surface very far to find a sediment from the power corridors of Capitol Hill, K Street, perhaps even Langley—the sort of people Rodney Bales might once have investigated. Yet another reason for Henry to stay on his toes.
The forklift hauled a stack of cages into the end of one of the chicken houses, and the workers followed. A sudden uproar of clucks and shouts announced that their labors had begun. A cloud of dust rolled out the open door. Henry had read that the trick to this job was to grab as many as four chickens at a time with each hand, snatching them up by their feet. Even from where he stood, he could smell an ammonia stench from the drifts of wood chips and manure that covered the floors of the houses, ankle-deep.
After a few minutes the forklift emerged, the cages now filled with a flutter of dingy white birds. Henry had expected Anna to flee at the earliest opportunity, sparing herself the sight of the carnage. Instead, she was riveted to her spot, arms folded. And he was watching her. It felt somehow appropriate to once again be twice removed from the real action, just as he’d been on his previous assignment, watching the cops and the feds as they had, in turn, watched the drug bosses and the dealers on the corners—an extra layer of detachment that had insulated him from the consequences of his actions.
After an hour or so the crew emerged from the first house and moved into the second one. Two of the tractor-trailers had already rumbled off toward the processing plant where, within an hour, all those chickens would be headless and hanging by their feet.
Henry saw a catcher tending to a bloody scratch on his arm. The wind was picking up, and the next gust brought a powerful whiff of ozone and rain from the west. Henry looked behind him to see dark clouds rolling closer. A gust thrashed the soybeans against his trouser legs, tickling his ankles through his socks. He glanced downward to see green leaves dusted with insecticide and fertilizer, the work of Anna’s father from only a week ago.
Anna and the foreman headed for the shelter of a nearby shed, and Henry decided he’d better join them. The first fat raindrop slapped his forehead as he crossed the final row of beans, and he reached the shed just as the skies opened.
“There you are.” Anna sounded relieved. The foreman with the Washam Poultry cap nodded.
“This is Ben Halloran,” she said. “The…I’m sorry, Ben, what did you say you were called?”
“The live-haul manager. I come out to the catches a few times a week, to make sure the crews are up to snuff. Are you family?”
“A friend. Henry Mattick.”
They shook hands. Anna looked ready for the day to be over.
“I’m real sorry we won’t be coming here no more, ma’am. It was always a pleasure working with, well…I’m assuming it was your mom and dad?”
“Yes. It was.”
“I was, uh…real sorry about your news.”
“News,” she said. “Yes, I guess that’s pretty much what it was. It was news all right.”
The poor fellow shifted his weight from one foot to another and tried to redeem himself.
“They was good folks. Always treated our people right. Willard, too, even.” Now he was in even deeper, but it was too late to stop. “I’m kinda surprised old Merle didn’t latch on with today’s crew, given his attachment to the boy.”
In the awkwardness that followed it took a few seconds for the words to sink in. Anna looked at Henry, who raised his eyebrows.
“His attachment to Willard?” she said.
“Yes, ma’am. Rest his soul.” He actually took off his cap, as if Willard, too, had passed away.
“How do you mean, his attachment?”
“Well, ma’am, they always got to talking afterward, when we’d break for lunch. Your mom would put on a spread for the crew. Coca-cola and an ice bucket, sandwich fixin’s and some chips.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. If I’d known I would have—”
“Oh, no. I didn’t mean that.”
“But you said they’d talk, this guy Merle and my brother?”
“That’s right. Merle always requested special to be on any crew coming to your place, so I expect they must have been pretty good pals.”
Henry was all ears.
“Merle who?” she asked. “What’s his last name?”
“Oh, hell, ma’am—pardon my language—but I don’t know the full names of half the fellows on these crews.” He put his cap back on. “Especially with, well, you know.” He grinned and made a yacking motion with his hand. “All that Habla Español. Except when they’ve got a complaint about their check, of course. Then all of a sudden their English is pretty damn good.”
“At the rates you pay, who can blame ’em? You do keep records, though, right?”
“On the regulars, sure. They get paychecks, W-2s, the whole nine yards. But Merle, he’s a hustleman.”
“Hustleman?”
“Part-timer. Cash basis only. No receipts, no records, nothing. We pick up a few every day, for when we’re running short. And with the full-timers jumping from company to company, well, we’re just about always running short.”
“So this Merle, he just kind of shows up at the job site?”
“Oh, no, ma’am. He’s part of a labor pool, over at Henson Point. That’s where we always go first when we’re looking for hustlemen. He wasn’t there this morning, though, which, like I said, kinda surprised me, because he was always looking to be on any crew coming here. And you folks were due. He would’ve known.”
“He would’ve? How?”
“Oh, the grow schedule, mostly. He kept track.”
“Did he, now? Well, I’d like to find him if I could.”
“Find him?” Halloran, seeming to finally register her intensity, looked a little uncomfortable.
“To thank him, for being such a friend to my brother. In light of what happened and all.”
“Sure, ma’am. But I, uh…I don’t really think they’d like the idea of me helping you track down one of our hustlemen. Not that I’d personally object.”
“I understand, Ben. So where’s this labor pool, then? You said Henson Point?”
“Yes, ma’am. One of those informal things. They start showing up in the Walmart lot around six. Every morning but Sundays, looking for any kind of work they can pick up.”
“Undocumented?” Henry said.
“Well, mostly, although you didn’t hear that from me. They get some drunks, too, the usual down-and-outers. Cash basis, like I said, which is the way those types like it.”
“Merle doesn’t sound like a Hispanic name.”
“Oh, he ain’t, ma’am. He’s as white as you and me.”
“Then which is he, a drunk or a down-and-outer?”
“I don’t rightly know, and that’s the truth of it. Always works hard, though, when he bothers to show. That’s usually how it goes with the drinkers and the druggies. Reliable until they’re not. Although, well…”
“Well, what?”
“He’s always been kind of a fish out of water with that crowd. Dresses like ’em, I’ll say that. But clear-eyed, never bloodshot. It’s why our crew chiefs like having him. They know they’ll get a good, sober day’s work. ’Scuse me, ma’am. Looks like they’re about finished.”
He stepped into the rain and headed off toward the trucks. Henry looked at Anna.
“What do you think?” he asked. “Could he be the new Joey?”
“Better. Joey made flesh.”
A few hours ago she’d looked beaten. Now she looked invigorated, determined.
They had work to do. It was a slim thread, but it was a lead.