The next morning Uncle Julio threw together a breakfast of huevos con weenies. While he worked, he whistled through his mustache and then yelled, “Get up, lazy bones,” as he flung a tortilla onto the burner. He opened the refrigerator and brought out a plastic jug of milk. He examined the half-empty jug closely and saw that the milk was six days beyond its expiration date. Still, he poured them each a glass, figuring that they were young blood who would get over it if they got sick.
Hector and Mando stirred from bed, each massaging the small of his back where a spark of pain throbbed. They kicked the blankets off and got up, hobbling like old men.
“I feel like I got tackled by Bertha Sanchez,” Mando complained. Bertha was one of the baddest fighters at school. She could throw a boy’s face into the grass and then get mad because his fall crushed it.
“I’m gonna use Uncle’s cane,” Hector joked. He looked around and saw that the cane was hooked on the oven door, within reach of his uncle.
They sat down at the kitchen table and read the sports page together. While the boys ate, Uncle limped to the window and looked out. The fog had cleared. A patch of blue hovered in the east, where a sliver of sun shone.
“I got a shoot today,” he announced as he turned from the window to face the boys, who were draining the milk in their glasses. “I want you guys to come along.”
Uncle went into his bedroom where he packed his camera, a Nikon, and tossed rolls of fresh film into his shoulder bag.
Hector folded the bed and picked up while Mando did the dishes with his sleeves rolled up. A beard of soap suds clung to his elbows, flattening the boyish hairs on his arms.
“Let’s go. Ándale,” Uncle said, after the boys had dressed.
The three of them climbed into the car. Uncle started the engine, which groaned and coughed before its four cylinders rocked to life. He revved the engine. He turned on the heater, which threw out a gust of cold air that would soon turn warm. He banged on the radio, and once again country music—George Strait—twanged from the cracked speaker.
“You like country music?” Hector asked.
“That’s all the radio plays.”
“¿De veras?” Mando said with surprise. He played with the dial. No matter where the indicator moved, the station wouldn’t change. All it played was a country song about a broken-down truck and a wife moving out on the sly.
Mando and Hector exchanged looks that said, “The music’s sorry.”
They stopped for gas and air for their right rear tire. They then drove west until the city gave way to stinky dairy farms where cows grazed, staring dully at the ground. They arrived at a small airport with a line of single-propeller planes. It looked deserted. Some of the runway lights were blown out, dead. A herd of tumbleweed clung to the sides of the hangar, and the firetruck held no more than a ladder and a fire extinguisher. The truck’s tires looked flat.
Hector peered out the window at the airport. He asked, “What kind of job do you have, Uncle?”
“I’m gonna take a picture of a farm.”
“But this is the airport,” Hector said, his head tilted in confusion.
“You’ll see.”
The car stopped and the three of them climbed out. The day was blustery. Two flags were whipping like laundry. The chain link fence was rattling, and a line of blackbirds huddled on a telephone wire. The three of them hurried toward the hangar, where a man in an orange coat was striking a plane’s landing gear with a large wrench. He stood up when he saw the three of them coming and turned down a radio that was playing country-western.
“Hey, Stewart,” Uncle greeted.
“Hey, Julio. How’s the leg?”
“Stiff but in one piece. I picked up this stick over at Salvation Army.” He tapped the cane on the wing of the airplane.
“I’m sorry that you fell off the plane. It’s slippery sometimes—like now.”
“It’s part of the biz,” Uncle said as he looked skyward. “We have to shoot the Inouye spread in Parlier if you think we can get up.”
“I don’t see a problem,” Stewart said. He banged on the landing gear and asked, “Who are these young bloods?”
“My nephew Hector and his friend Mando. They’re from Los Angeles. They’re staying until my cooking kills them.”
“Your sofa bed may kill us first,” Hector quipped.
“That’s for sure,” Mando agreed.
Stewart chuckled and said, “Let me grab my log book and we’ll go.”
Only after Stewart was out of sight did Hector ask, “We’re not going to get in this thing, are we?” He jerked a thumb at the airplane. The silvery paint was faded and flaking. He touched a hole where a rivet had once been. The side window had a crack, and when Hector looked he saw that the seats were ripped and the stuffing was coming out.
“Stewart’s great,” Uncle reassured. “He could fly a truck.”
“Can’t we just drive? It’s safer,” Mando said.
“I gotta shoot a farm from the air,” Uncle said. He explained that farmers took pictures of their ranches, just like people took pictures of their family. To do this, he said, he teamed up with Stewart and they had yet to crash the plane. For six hundred dollars, plus fuel for the plane, they would buzz a farm and snap a picture. Usually, the farmer, when he heard the plane coming, would get onto his tractor and pretend to work. His wife and children would stand in the dirt driveway and wave. Even the dogs would get into the act by barking and pulling on their chains.
Stewart returned to the hangar with a box of donuts. His log book was pinched between his arm and chest.
All four of them climbed into the little airplane, a Cessna 143, with Hector and Mando squished in the back. Immediately, Hector looked around for a parachute. He made a pained face. To his dismay, instead of finding a parachute he discovered a rust hole. He wiggled his finger into the hole, worm-like, and showed Mando, who crossed himself and mumbled a prayer.
Stewart pressed the starter and the propeller churned slowly until the engine sneezed, sputtered, and finally came alive. He put on a pair of ratty gloves. He put on a pair of sunglasses. He gave a thumbs-up sign and muttered, “Come on, baby,” to his plane.
Hector looked at Mando, big-eyed with uncertainty. He asked, “You scared?”
“Yeah,” Mando said, squirming in his seat as the Cessna fishtailed onto the runway and Stewart gunned the engine. The plane rolled down the strip and lifted with a bounce and a sway. Hector held back a scream. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, he saw the blue sky in front of him and Stewart nibbling on a donut. He wasn’t even looking at where he was flying.
Uncle took out his Nikon and adjusted the f-stop. He took out a lens as tall as a thermos. He fixed it onto the camera, and then brought out a map that he studied. He turned to Stewart and yelled over the engine roar, “It’s on Manning and Central. The Inouye farm.”
Stewart nodded his head and passed the donuts to Hector and Mando, who took them and laid them in their laps. Any other time, they would have glued their faces to that sweetness. But now, they had other things on their minds.
The Cessna banked and slowed to a hover. Uncle opened the wing window. A gush of cold air immediately struck their faces. Uncle, hands steady, raised his Nikon, whispering, “A little lower, Stewart. Ease in. Steady.” The plane bounced and leveled to a hundred feet over a vineyard of Thompson grapes. The family had come out of their house. They were waving, all of them, waving hats and dish towels. Their dogs were leaping and barking.
Uncle shot a rapid succession of pictures and closed the plane window when they had passed the farm. He reloaded the Nikon. He turned to the boys, “Pretty exciting, ¿qué no?”
Hector smiled with a set of chattering teeth. He was cold and miserable. A white-faced Mando mumbled, “Yeah, it’s a lot of fun.”
The plane banked sharply. Uncle once again opened the window and raised his camera. He aimed and the camera clicked chew, chew, chew as it shot frame after frame. Within a minute, he took twenty-four shots and among them, he figured, was one that would be perfect. The Inouyes, Japanese-American farmers, would be proud.
As the plane banked west toward the airport, Uncle spotted a vehicle on fire. He raised his Nikon and took a picture. He reloaded and fixed a zoom lens onto the camera. He told Stewart, “Lower us down, Stu. It looks like a UPS truck. I didn’t know they went this far into the countryside.”
“That ain’t a UPS,” Stewart disagreed. “It’s an armored truck.”
Hector said, “Looks like a tank to me.”
“No, man,” Mando answered, “it looks like Tío Lupe’s old Chevy after he rolled it.”
Uncle Julio said, “Quiet, you jokers. Something’s happening down there. Looks serious.”
Hector and Mando craned their necks to see. They saw a truck in the road, a puff of smoke rising. A car was parked next to it, and two men were hovering over the trunk.
While Stewart buzzed the truck, Uncle aimed the Nikon and took pictures. They buzzed a second time, and Uncle remarked, “Maybe I can sell it to the newspaper. I’ve been meaning to crack The Fresno Bee.”
Stewart banked left and a choppy wind caught them as they gained altitude. They started back to the airport. Hector gripped his seat, which, he discovered, gave up a wad of cotton matting. Playfully, he tried to press the cotton into Mando’s ear. Mando muttered, “That ain’t gonna help if we crash.”
But the plane leveled off and the flight home was uneventful. They descended smoothly. On landing, the plane crushed a tumbleweed that got caught under the landing gear. Stewart complained as the airplane taxied to the hangar. When business picked up, he promised, he would move his plane to the airport across town.
Hector was glad to get out of the plane. He jumped from the wing and felt his stomach rise to his throat. He felt giddy for a second, free and safe, and then uneasy when his uncle said, “We have another shoot.”
“Another one?” Hector asked.
“Simón.”
“Do we have to get in this thing again?” Mando asked, pointing at the plane.
“No, we’re going by car,” Uncle Julio answered and started limping toward the parking lot with Hector and Mando in tow. He turned and waved to Stewart, “The check’s in the mail.”
“I hope so,” Stewart hollered in the wind. “I gotta pay the gas bill by the fifteenth, or it’s lights out.”
They got into the car and drove across town. But this time, no matter how Uncle beat on the radio, the music wouldn’t twang from the speakers. The country-western songs, it seemed, had clip-clopped to their trail’s end.
They drove in silence to a canary-colored house.
“She’s one of my best customers,” Uncle Julio said as he got out of the car. He opened the trunk and brought out a heavy box that contained lights and tripods.
“Your best customer?” Hector asked.
“Mrs. Murguia pays in cash. No bounced checks to worry about. And she’s a cute vieja.”
Hector studied the house as he helped to carry the box to the front steps. There were rows of plastic roses pressed into the flower box. A tiny windmill turned on the front lawn. Twin flamingoes were stuck in the wet earth. Astroturf was glued to the front steps and a row of ceramic frogs dotted the steps. “It looks like a miniature golf course,” he concluded.
“Yeah, it does,” Mando agreed.
Uncle knocked and the door opened to the sounds of cats meowing.
“Buenas tardes, señora,” Uncle greeted respectfully.
“Buenas tardes.” She greeted him with a smile and her hands pressed to her heart. She was a woman in her seventies and wore a print dress of chickens and dogs. ¿“Cómo se llaman sus niños?” She pointed to Hector and Mando.
“This is my nephew Hector, and this is Mando, his friend.”
“Mucho gusto, señora,” the boys said with respect.
“Pásen,” she instructed. She waved for them to come in, and the three wiped their feet carefully because they could see that her house was neat and orderly. When they entered, three orange cats jumped from the couch, their tails up in alarm. The cats were wearing pink bow ties.
Uncle put down his equipment. Hector and Mando did the same.
Two more cats came into the living room. They were gray and their bow ties were pink, too. They meowed, leaped playfully and rolled onto their backs.
“Open the box,” Uncle said. “Take out the tall stand and medium reflector.”
A striped cat sauntered into the room, his bow tie undone. He was licking his whiskers, having just eaten from a bowl of crunchies in the kitchen. His motor was purring deep in his chest.
“Ay, Fernando,” Mrs. Murguia sighed softly. “You keep undoing your tie.” She bent down with a grunt and, as she redid the bow tie, the cat licked her hands.
Uncle set up the camera on a tripod in the living room. He got a reading of the light. He adjusted the reflector and bounced the light off the ceiling. Then he took a Polaroid shot of Mrs. Murguia holding the cat. “I’m ready,” he finally said.
Mrs. Murguia gathered her cats—all ten, with a murky aquarium in the background—and cooed to them, “Cálmesen, you naughty gatos.” The cats had started wrestling and chewing on each other’s bow ties, boxing and throwing pleitos.
“Be cool,” Uncle said to the cats as he redid one loose bow tie. Hector and Mando helped out.
“Mom wouldn’t think they’re cute,” Hector said. He patted one cat and it pawed at him.
“These cats are better dressed than us, Hector,” Mando said. “Heck, they could be goin’ to the prom.”
Once the cats settled around Mrs. Murguia, Uncle didn’t waste time. He began to shoot. The Nikon chew-chew-chewed a succession of shots. And with each shot, the cats became more and more restless until they once again began to fight and rip their bow ties.
“Be cool,” Uncle warned the cats. Hector and Mando redid the bow ties. Mrs. Murguia went into the kitchen to fetch a handful of cat nibbles.
“These gatitos are my best customers,” Uncle said. “Every time Mrs. Murguia gets a new cat, she calls me up. She loves them more than anything.”
Mrs. Murguia returned with a ladleful of cat nibbles that calmed them down. The cats were named Fernando, Cochino, Boots, Precioso, Rayo, Kitty, Little Kitty, Momma Kitty, Angel, and the new one was Novio Boy.