One of the men sees me, realizes I am listening, calls me over. As I walk towards him, I wonder if I will still remember how to speak.
Him: You looking for work too?
Me: That’s what we’re all doing here? Looking for work?
Him: What else?
Me: How long have you been waiting?
Him: A couple of days.
Me: I just got here.
Him: Obviously. What do we look like, a bunch of fucking idiots?
He laughs, but warmly, and his friends laugh along with him. I feel I’m speaking like a child, or not quite like a child but definitely not like myself. Perhaps only like my younger self. At the same time, as I speak, more and more words come back to me, flooding back into my head.
I spend the afternoon with them, learning how it all works, amazed at how open and relaxed they become with me, maybe only because we’re speaking the same words and therefore they consider me family. You wait here in the field and a bus pulls up. A man gets out of the bus and announces the crop: oranges, cucumbers, soy, etc. Everyone scurries towards the bus and they count off the heads as people scramble on. The moment the bus is full it drives away. In the morning, often there are several buses for each crop. As it moves towards noon things slow down considerably until finally, around one, there are no more buses, and those left behind have to wait until tomorrow. When the sun goes down the buses return, drop everyone back here, and people cook, set up tents, drink, or just try to find sleep on some patch of dirt, hopeful for a more lucrative day tomorrow. The work is hard and the pay meagre, ‘like the dirt we’re all standing on,’ they joke, but if you’re lucky you can save a little to take home when the season is done.
What is clear is that the guys I’m talking to — and most of those who surround us, who practically litter this field, scattered haphazardly in every direction — must, each in their own way, feel they have no choice. Being here clearly sucks, standing around like some crappy products on a supermarket shelf that the buses can scoop up or leave behind, it makes little difference. Whatever awaits them back home is likely far worse. Actually, they don’t speak much to me about home, which is perhaps why I assume the worst.
The next morning, first thing, I find myself back at the edge of the same field. I have no desire to farm, but it feels good to speak my own language, a reminder of life before the piano, of long before one single-minded, murderous goal consumed the totality of my days. Maybe farming is good honest work, maybe I now need something honest in my life, but from the way I stand here, from the feelings I am sure are splashed across my face in Technicolor, I remain unconvinced. I slowly shuffle through the crowd, finding my friends from the day before. They receive me warmly and I think about how long its been since anyone has greeted me with genuine warmth. Is it possible the last time was when I was a child? And then, without me quite realizing what has happened, they all rush towards a bus that just arrived and, pushed forward by the crowd, I rush along with them, hesitating for a brief moment before I climb on, as others shove past me and the bus pulls away. They wave to me from the window, laughing, telling jokes to each other (or at least so it seems) about what a rank amateur I am, and how stupid I must look standing there alone as the bus recedes into the distance.
1.
What could I still do that would genuinely surprise? That would jolt those who had lost faith in me, pull the carpet out from under their preconceptions, force them to see me in a different light? One event directly preceded my current, endless traveclass="underline" the global market crash and the rather banal subsequent bailout. I’ve lived through a few big crashes in my life, but this was by far the most apocalyptic. I think few people to this day realize the actual, overwhelming extent of it. Maybe it had something to do with the attack, from which I was still recovering, but it takes a lot to shake me and I was shaken. This was back when I was drinking, so it was alcohol I’d most often make use of to calm my nerves. I was in the bar, around noon, when the calamity was first announced, and a few dozen of us leapt out of our chairs, hurrying back to our respective offices, but on my way to the front door I realized the bar was a considerably more attractive proposal, and as I looked around it was clear that half the room was panicking, rushing to work, while the other half was calm.
I was carefully scanning the room, or at least as carefully as I could considering I’d already had quite a bit to drink, making a mental note of each face, but mainly focusing on those who seemed a bit too relaxed, who were taking the whole thing in stride. These were not poker faces, I remember thinking at the time, not some calm exterior covering up a world of inner turmoil. These were people utterly convinced that, when all was said and done, they would come out ahead, in fact convinced the crash was the best possible thing that could happen to them, that when everything is given a good shake, some people lose while others take, each and every one of them certain they would be the one taking the most.
I was memorizing each of their faces because I wanted to know, to check later, when things had calmed down, whether each of these men were overconfident or accurate in their predictions. When I got back to the office I made a list, wrote down each of the names I could remember and left it on my desk, glancing down at it every few days as the chaos swirled around me, as we debated which divisions to sell off and if there were any that had to be shut down altogether. We came out the other end okay, but I realized so many others had done better, seized the opportunity more fully. A crash is a chance to expand, and yet we shrank ever so slightly, telling me I had done something wrong, hadn’t been fast enough.
And then I would look at the list on my desk. Almost every name on it had done better than me. Had they been prepared from the start? Or anticipated the calamity before me? Had the attack shaken my instincts, distracted me, made me less effective at the very moment the organization needed me most? Was I simply drinking too much? Or drinking too much in direct response to the attack? Then there was the question of who got how much in bailout cash. We lobbied with calm determination but so many others got more. And yet, since everyone knew the official numbers were nowhere close to reality, the question of who got what was an endless source of speculation. I heard a rumour that we got twice as much as everyone else put together. This is clearly untrue and strikes me as verging on slander. We did poorly in the shakedown and then, behind our backs, people were saying we did twice as well. I couldn’t think of any of this without fearing, almost to the point of panic, that I had lost my touch. In some ways, I became obsessed with these men who came out the other side far richer than they went in. It was unlike me to obsess over other people’s business. In the past I’d always remained productively, almost myopically, focused on my own, on the task at hand. This was a change for the worse.