From Somewhere

Thomas walked down the single step of the one room shack and stood in the dirt that was everywhere. It was a dry, dusty kind of dirt except in the orchards that were regularly irrigated. The orchards went on forever and made the roads seem like pathways in a labyrinth: a labyrinth with really long straightaways. Any lush green life near these parts had been painstakingly coerced into such a state. Even the fruit that was grown and picked by the immigrant workers was from somewhere else. The shack was made of wood grown and harvested in Canada. The workers, “Those poor bastards” he thought, followed the harvest as it moved North. Farms that treated these folks proper, were far and few between, most of the little farms had been bought up by Eastern Fruit & Produce and their labor practices were illegal at best and heinous at worst; Eastern was from somewhere else also. Thomas considered these things as he stood there grinning. He was happy to be moving on as he watched a dirt devil skip across the dirt yard towards the state highway. He had that and that alone in common with this place: everything came from somewhere else. “Even the dirt blew into these parts from somewhere yonder” he thought as he watched the boys and Grace got into the car.
It was a 1959 Buick and as big as a tank: two tone white and root beer brown and if chrome was like gold, they would have been filthy rich. It was pretty low in the rear end from all their belongings in the spacious trunk and it excited Thomas to see it so. They had been moving on from place to place for several years now, following the work that had finally led them, from Texas, on through o Washington State. That is the dry side of the state, not the lush green forested side of the state that travel brochures talked about. They had been in Eastern Washington State for 9 months now, living in the farmworkers shacks. The picking crews had left weeks ago for the next crop to be picked; only leaving behind a couple cars that had run their last mile and empty bottles piles up under a tarp: some still unbroken: most not. The orchard boss wouldn’t let them take them; he said it was part of the rent for the crappy little shacks that they filled past capacity every harvest time. Thomas smiled again, feeling guilty to be happy, as he thought about settling down for good on the green side of Washington.
Thomas opened the door of the Buick and was about to get behind the wheel and head out when he heard something coming from the shack next door to the one they had just left. It sounded like a cat at first, so Thomas paid no mind. Then he heard it again and realized that it sounded like a small child crying. He was about to walk over, but was beat by Grace who had heard it also. Grace cried, “Come here Thomas, you won’t believe it”. He walked into the shack and there was Grace holding a small child, probably 6 months old. The little thing was crying and fussing and it was dirty and was wrapped in an old flour sack. “What the hell, how did this little fella’ get left behind”, Grace exclaimed, as we could tell it was one of the picker’s kids because it appeared to be Mexican. “Don’t rightly know Grace, but we gotta’ take ‘em somewhere, can’t leave him” Thomas said out loud, as he thought to himself “Who would leave a child behind”?
Grace carried the baby to the well and pumped some water into the bucket and commenced to cleaning the baby. Thomas made a bottle out of a whiskey bottle and a rubber glove fingertip. They fed him and he ate like he had not in some time. He stopped fussing and went to sleep, safely in Graces arms. They drove to Wenatchee and dropped the baby off at the local hospital. They did all of this without a lot of deciding, or even talking much. It just had to be done, something had to be done.
When they were finally on the road, Thomas glanced over at Grace and could see that she was crying gently. He knew how seeing this baby left behind had affected him, but he had a family to get settled in before the boys were school age and a wife to keep happy. His work was cut out for him. Grace, on the other hand had lost a girl a year before her youngest son was born and it was a fresh hurt only soothed by the birth of her last. She was half Cherokee and as a little girl had been taken from her family on the reservation and given to a white family. This was all in the effort to whiten the indigenous people of that area. She had thought that her family did not want her, until at the age of 15, her blood brothers came and found her and told her her history and who she was and where she was from, but she would always be that little girl, given away to someone else: from somewhere else.
That journey was the last long journey for both Thomas and Grace. They ended up in a little college town in the very northwest corner of Washington State and lived there happily for the rest of their lives. The story of the little baby boy left in the old shack was told by Thomas and Grace for years and became one of the stories that chronicled the end of their vagabond ways, their travels and their settling also. The part they did not tell, was the conversation they had behind the car, before the left for the hospital. The boy looking up from a clean towel Grace had wrapped in him as if he knew of what they spoke. Will you leave me too? He seemed to say. They had talked about keeping the little one, but in the end, they knew that they could not do that. He was someone’s child. It had broken their hearts to leave him behind too. Had anyone else have pain from leaving him behind? Did he end up being taken care of ? Was he safe right now? Did he have a good life? Grace would often think about that baby and Thomas did as well and a good many prayers went up from their house that he was a part of. In this way, the child was not left behind, his memory, one that brought Grace to terms, eventually, with her own abandonment and Thomas with his realizing that all children are ours to nurture and keep safe from harm, lived on.