Hector and Mando had returned from their walk shivering from the damp air. Uncle was dressed and sitting at the kitchen table, balancing his checkbook. A stack of bills stood tall on the table.
“Hey, you guys,” he greeted them without looking up as the boys stamped their feet on a rug. He paused for a second and then, scooting his chair around, said, “Don’t worry. Nothin’s going to happen to us.”
While they were on their walk, he figured he had been hard on them. If he were a kid and a newspaper reporter said, “I’m going to put you in tomorrow’s news,” he would have blabbed everything about his life, including the time he stole two bicycles, both from his cousin Lupe.
“We’re not worried,” Hector lied as he huddled over the floor furnace, warming himself.
“Yeah, we throw some chingadasos if they mess with us,” Mando said. “Sock them in the jaw if they fool with these homeboys.”
“That’s the way to think,” Uncle said with irony. Right there, at the kitchen table, he concluded that the younger generation had seen too many Stallone and Schwarzenegger movies. He got up from the chair. “We’re gonna drive down to Parlier and deliver the pictures to the Inouyes.”
Right after meeting with Wearwell, Uncle had taken the negatives to Paul Kanzaki’s Photo Studio. He had asked Paul to make prints and touch them up with color. He had an appointment to pick up the prints at nine-thirty.
The boys jumped when the telephone rang. Uncle limped over to the telephone and answered it. “Hello,” he said.
It was Vicky on the other end.
“Well, hello, Vicky,” Uncle said as cheerfully as he could. “No, no, we’re awake. We get up early. Did we see the paper? Oh, sure we did. The boys were happy to be written up.”
But Vicky wasn’t so happy. She called to apologize for the story’s publication. It wasn’t supposed to appear for another week, or until after the robbers were apprehended and locked away. She was sorry that it had run without notice, an error by her assistant.
“I’m sorry that you’re sorry,” Uncle said in a suave voice. He leaned against the wall and with his finger twirled the cord. “If it will make you feel better, why don’t you have dinner with me and my boys?”
Hector jumped away from the heater, which had gotten too hot for comfort. He shook his head at Uncle. He felt his uncle was being silly for a grown man, hitting on a woman he’d only known for five minutes.
A smile lit Uncle’s face. The answer was yes. He hung up the telephone and rubbed his hands together. “We’re goin’ out, hombres. What do you wanna have, chicken or pizza?”
“Pizza,” the boys screamed.
Uncle paused for a second and thought. “On second thought, we’ll have Thai food. No, we’ll let Vicky choose.” He clapped his hands and said, “Come on, ándale. We have to get the pictures delivered.”
They drove down to Paul Kanzaki’s Photo Studio, which was located on the west side of Fresno, the bad side of town. Two bums were drinking from a bottle when they parked the car in front of the studio. A dog with mismatched eyes was sniffing a burger wrapper.
They got out of the car and said “Good morning” to the bums and entered Paul’s studio. Paul was in the back, touching up the Inouye family farm with a little color—green on the orange trees and lawns, and pink and blue for the sky. He used a nice brown for the muddy tractor path.
“Paul!” Uncle yelled.
Paul, a Japanese-American himself, came out from the back with his smock untied. He proudly held up the photograph. He asked, “What do you think, Julio?”
Uncle grinned and applauded, “The Picasso of farm pictures. Paul, I don’t know how you do it.”
“With pastels and a steady hand,” Paul said. He then added that he had once dated Tad Inouye’s wife, back in high school. They were sweethearts for three weeks, and then just friends for the rest of his life.
“Is that right?” Uncle said with surprise.
“Yeah, but she married that farmer. Her hands are probably all rough.”
“Too bad for her.”
“Yeah, she could have had me, and all this.” He gestured at what hung on the walls: photographs that were yellowed, dusty, and curled in their frames. He looked at Hector and Mando and asked, “Are you his assistants?”
“Yeah,” Hector said. “I’m also his nephew.”
“I’m Mando,” said Mando.
“They’re visiting me from East Los Angeles. Did you read about them in the newspaper?”
Paul shook his head no. He usually read his newspaper in the afternoon.
“We’re in ‘Today’s Youth,’” Hector said.
Paul’s eyes sparkled but he didn’t say anything. He then looked up at Julio and said, “That’s forty-three dollars, Julio.”
Julio wrote out a check.
“Okay, Paul, but can you cash it after two o’clock? That’s when I’m doing the banking,” Uncle said. He showed Paul, a softy at heart, the check from The Fresno Bee for three hundred dollars. That would go into his checking account along with the Inouye check.
“Okay,” he said. “Say hi to Kimiko for me.”
“Who’s Kimiko?”
“Inouye’s wife. My ole’ sweetheart.”
Uncle and the boys left Paul’s studio, closing the door gently behind them. Uncle said “Have a good day” to the bums, who raised their wine bottles in salute, returning the greeting. Julio opened the back of his Ford station wagon and fumbled through a cardboard box. He brought out a picture frame. He dusted it off with his sleeve, fogged the glass with his breath, and wiped it clean before he fit the picture of the Inouye farm into the frame.
They then got into the car and drove to the freeway, Uncle still feeling happy because he had a job nearly finished and a date with a news reporter.
“Do we have to have Thai food?” Hector asked. “Why can’t we have American food, like pizza?”
“It’s up to Vicky. She’s our guest,” Uncle answered. “Maybe Vicky will want to go to DiCicco’s, order the works.” Uncle was in much too good a mood to argue.
Hector gave Mando the thumbs-up sign and then fell silent as he watched the roadside become a patch of farms—vineyards and orchards that, in season, grew grapes, plums, nectarines, almonds, all the fruits of the world in one long valley. He watched a tractor cut across a muddy field, a plume of smoke rising from its steel exhaust. He watched children laughing and beating each other with plastic bats, and huge blackbirds sitting on a barbed wire fence, beaks open and swallowing the wind of rushing traffic. He watched the valley pass, acre after brown acre.
They pulled into Parlier, a small town with one traffic light. They got themselves sodas, and then drove outside of town, east to where the Inouye farm lay.
“Drink up quick,” Uncle said. His cold soda was propped between his legs.
Hector drank so fast that he burned his nostrils. He asked his uncle, “What do the Inouyes grow?”
“Nectarines, I think,” Uncle said. “Some oranges.”
They drove along a country road for two miles. On each side of the road stood orange trees.
“Here we are,” Uncle said. He recognized the farm from the white fence and the tall palm tree.
As they pulled into the driveway that led to the house, Hector noticed a parked car. He got onto his knees and looked back. Two men were sitting in the car, not moving.
Uncle pulled into the driveway and honked his horn. Two German shepherds came out of the rain-warped house, barking.
“These dogs are scary,” Hector said.
“Looks like they want some Mexican food,” Mando said, referring to his legs.
“They’re tame. Nothin’ to worry about.” Uncle climbed out of the car, cooing, “Nice doggie. Hey, be cool!” One of the dogs had raised his front legs onto Uncle’s chest. The dog was as tall as Uncle.
Mr. Inouye, followed by his wife who was slipping into a sweater, came out of the house yelling for his dogs to shut up. He picked up an orange that was on the ground and tossed it. The dogs, tongues wagging, went chasing after the orange.
“So what do you have, Mr. Silva? Let’s see,” Mr. Inouye asked. He took the framed picture from Uncle. He held it up for his wife to see. Their faces glowed with pride as they admired their farm, all eighty acres. “Look, you can see me,” Mr. Inouye remarked. He tapped the glass with a work-worn finger. He was on his tractor. “Looks real fine, Mr. Silva. Real fine.”
The dogs returned with orange pulp between their teeth. Hector picked up another orange and hurled it. The dogs went racing after it.
Uncle took a batch of other photographs, ones that were not colored, all 8 × 10’s, from a folder. “These are yours for the same price, too.” Mrs. Inouye took them from Uncle, who noticed that her hands were soft, not rough, long and white, not stubby from pulling fruit from the branches. He realized that she was still attractive, beautiful even. He wouldn’t have the heart to tell Paul that she was still stunning after all these years.
They did their business standing in the muddy driveway, Hector and Mando taking turns playing fetch with the dogs whose teeth were piling up with orange pulp.
“Are these your sons, Julio?” Mrs. Inouye asked.
“Yeah, in a way. These are my boys for the weekend,” Uncle said.
“It’s nice to meet you,” Mrs. Inouye said. Her cheeks were red from the cold. Her hair was slightly mussed from the wind.
“You have a nice farm,” Hector said.
“Pretty big,” Mando said. “And nice dogs.” For the tenth time, Mando tossed another orange and the dogs took off, tails wagging.
They concluded their deal, which included a bag of oranges for the boys, and waved good-bye. The three climbed back into the car. Hector waved to the dogs, who seemed sad that they were leaving. The dogs then started barking and ran after them as they rolled slowly down the driveway. Hector thought of tossing the dogs another orange, but he didn’t want to waste one of his own. He tore into an orange, and Mando tore into one that was big as a softball.
When they pulled out of the farm, Hector spied the parked car. He nudged Mando’s shoulder and said, “Check it out, man.” Mando stopped chewing. He got onto his knees and looked over the seat at the car that was dark and spooky and flecked with mud the color of dry blood.