J. Curtis - Calexit - The Anthology

Mardi said, “I ran into a custodian mopping in the cafeteria. I asked him where the evidence room was. I wanted to scout it out before I made a decision. He told me it was in the basement, something I would have figured out if I had taken the time to think about it. So, I went down to the basement.”

“And then…” Chad prompted. Like many guys he liked the shorter version of the story.

“Well, one of the guys in the evidence room noticed my Detroit Tigers ball cap. Turns out he is a HUGE fan of an old show called Magnum P.I. He wanted to know what it would take to buy it.”

“I told him that if he liked it that much I would just GIVE it to him. After all, to me it is only a hat.”

“After that, it was like I was his favorite niece. It was like I had made his month.”

“Not only did they redeem our ‘evidence’, they gave me some of the backstory on Mz Lois Gale-Lienhart-Diaz.”

“It seems like Mz Lois used to be just Mz Lois Gale-Lienhart. Gale is an ambitious woman and she bullied her partner into bringing a Latina woman into the marriage to gain extra EEO points. That would be Mz Diaz.”

“Gale was never a pleasant person. In fact, the guys in the evidence room were eager to help me if it would twist her nose. Like I said, she had never been a pleasant person to work with but her personality definitely went into the ditch when her first spouse decided he liked sharing a bed with a sweet-talking, compliant, Latina hottie rather than a frumpy, menopausal, harpy. “

“Seems like she would have just taken Mr Lienhart to court, divorced him and cleaned him out. You know how the courts in Cali are.” Chad observed.

“That is what I thought, too.” Mardi resumed her story. “But if a three-way marriage dissolves, the vast majority of the assets will follow the most ‘oppressed’ member, in this case, the young Latina. Game, set and match… Lois Gale-Lienhart-Diaz is screwed and tattooed.”

“Damn!” Chad said.

“Yup.” Mardi agreed. “And after they logged out our computers, they loaned me a tote and arranged a ride to the bus station. It all happened real fast.”

“About that tote,” Chad said, “how do we get it back to them?”

“Easy-peasy.” Said Mardi. “It is Department of Education property. Just drop it off at any Elementary school and it will find its way back.”

“All in all, I think we got lucky.” Chad said.

“I am not so sure. I think I made an enemy for life. I got that vibe that this woman is making it a personal mission to destroy us.” Mardi said.

“Wow. I have never heard you be that negative. I never took you to be a drama queen.” Chad said.

“You weren’t there. She makes me think of the witches in Macbeth or a fat spider at the center of a web. It is as if her ego is a black hole and it warps the time and space around her. She has the aura of evil.” Mardi mused.

“If I were in her shoes I would bide my time until harvest. That is when we are the most distracted and are really working the kids. My gut feeling is that we better be at the top of our game when the potatoes start coming out of the ground.” Mardi said.

“Look. You have to clip the fence to the posts in five spots. Yes, I know everybody else uses three clips. But here, you gotta use five and most of them need to be near the bottom.” Chad told the crew.

It was early August and shortly before the first potatoes were to be harvested. Izzo Farms had a contract with Cali to deliver 40,000 pounds of potatoes, for forty days in a row. The truck would show up at the farm and the work crew was to carry out, and load the semi with four hundred, 100-pound bags of potatoes in less than an hour.

Miguel said, “Boss, this is the weirdest damned thing in the world! Why are we making a fence out here in the middle of nowhere? I just don’t understand.”

Chad pulled off his gloves and slapped them against his thighs, driving dust into the air. “Okay. You guys have been with me all summer, right? You must have noticed that a lot of people do me favors, favors I don’t pay for. Right?”

Most of the work crew were nodding their heads “yes”.

“This is how I return those favors. The central valley is cursed with a plague of feral hogs. Folks can’t shoot them because all the guns have been confiscated and it takes a month to get a permit to control any varmint. This slope is covered with Jeffrey pine and oak trees. This is the first place in the valley where the acorns ripen. Every hog within fifty miles comes here starting in mid-August.”

“We are making an industrial sized, Figure ‘6’ hog trap.”

“People will do things for five pounds of pork loin that they would not do for a thousand Callors.

“But don’t worry. There will be plenty of pork for us to eat. The thing is, we got a good thing going here, and just one person blabbing can spoil it. By the way, every ‘student’ who ever worked here gets a little package of pork each year. That is just the way I roll.”

Miguel asked, “You know, I never figured out why you get a new crew every year. It seems like it would be way more efficient to keep the same crew year after year. I know you spent a lot of time training us in how you wanted us to do things.”

Chad nodded in agreement. “That is how it started out. We got to keep the same crew year after year. But then about three years after Calexit there were some rural uprisings. The people at the Department of Education decided that the students and the farmers were working together too well. The people who make policy decided that it was better to have the farms be less efficient as long as the people they were supervising remained off-balance and easier to manage.”

“Things are going to get real busy over the next three months. First, we will be harvesting potatoes, and then we will harvest the cabbage. We will have some long days but we will feast like kings.”

Ken said, “I am real sorry, Chad. But I am not picking up your potatoes today. Some chick named Lois and a tool named Terry showed up at the motor pool and stirred up a bunch of shit. They flashed their badges and kicked me off my own damned truck. They brought a couple of big-city thugs to drive the truck. Like I said, Chad, I am real sorry but it looks like they plan to fuck you over, big time.”

Chad spoke into his phone. “Hey, no sweat. You can only do what you can do. Tell me, how did that dry rub work with the pork loin?”

“Damn, Chad. That was the best damned meat I ever ate. You were right. Slow cooking it at low heat over a tray wet down with a can of beer is the bomb. Gotta tell ya, my wife loved it too. And when mama is happy, everybody is happy.”

“Hey dude,” Chad said, “I gotta thank you for the heads up. I will let you know if I need anything special. ‘Preciate the help.”

The semi pulled into the loop that ran alongside the shipping shed. A nattily dressed man with a bushy mustache got out of the passenger side. He walked over to Chad and handed him a document.

“My name is Branch. I am from the Department of Education and I am auditing your compliance to your production quotas.”

“Isn’t that somebody else’s sandbox?” Chad asked.

“The moral character of our education vendors, that would be you, is of the highest concern to the Cali Department of Education. We are trying to raise good citizens. That means that we need to weed out people who use fraud and sleight-of-hand to meet their quotas.”

“I am not disputing you, but how do you intend to audit my operation?” Chad asked, secretly amused.

“I intend to personally weigh every bag of potatoes loaded onto this truck. Furthermore, I intend to audit the contents of random bags to ensure that you are not shipping dirt, rocks or rotten produce.” Terry Branch said.