“See you boys,” Clive slurred, tucking the ledger and satchel into his saddlebag. “Thanks for a good time.” He turned the mare and trotted off.

He was past the turn when Jivan said in a low voice, “The boy is a fool.”

“He drinks too much,” Karak said. “But he doesn’t interfere. That is the important thing.”

“Eggenberger is satisfied,” Jivan said. “That is the important thing.”

“The important thing,” Karak countered, “is Ram should learn Americans do not give sweets to announce a wedding.”

“I have learned it,” said Ram.

10

November 1914

THE LAND THAT KARAK AND RAM LEASED FROM EGGENBERGER HAD BEEN planted in alfalfa, then left fallow for long enough that it would once again need leveling; the ditches would need to be redefined. First they plowed, then they borrowed Jivan Singh’s team of mules, drove them out to their new cotton fields, and hitched them up to the Fresno scraper. Ram told Karak how much they should slope the soil, how to subdivide the tract to irrigate efficiently; he insisted on digging a pond to receive water from the delivery ditch before it was dispersed to the fields. He argued that 160 acres half-cultivated was less desirable than 40 acres closely cultivated. Karak deferred to him but he questioned why certain things needed to be done. Ram was surprised at how little Karak knew. Ram had steadied a leveler behind a mule since he was a child.

One morning Jivan and Amarjeet came with them, driving a second team, attaching another scraper borrowed from Tomoya. Karak was grateful, but Ram felt unsettled: now he owed something to the man from Japan. He did not like that feeling.

When the work was finished, the land lay neat, raw and pungent, sloping away from the canal headgate where the zanjero would meet them regularly to dispense water. Jivan Singh returned the borrowed leveler to Tomoya. Ram never acknowledged the loan; that way he did not have to feel indebted. Through the winter chill, he and Karak plowed and disked. When the threat of frost was past, they were ready to plant. Then the early March winds grew strong and warm. Wildflowers dotted the scrub and desert prairie, and the earth was crusted with alkaline. Soon it was time for Jivan and Karak to harvest their cantaloupe. Of course, Ram would help. He had become part of them now.

This season, they were lucky to find help easily. The men were building crates in the packing shed when pickers arrived one evening, nine men and two women kicking up dust along Rural Route 9, wearing sombreros, leading two burros weighed down by burlap sacks. One of the men carried an accordion, another a guitar; two teenage boys leaned against the weight of bags slung on their shoulders. There was an older man too, of unknowable age, with wrinkled skin but a strong back.

Both Jivan and Karak rose when they saw them.

“They are here already?” Karak said.