Free Coyotes: A Journey Across Borders with America's Mexican Migrants by Ted Conover

tractor.
    Nate, if you had chosen your tree wisely, would be no more than fifty feet away, having substituted the ladder trailer for two long trailers of large wooden crates. Standing next to this rig with cap and clipboard, he looked something like an airline baggage handler who had taken a wrong turn. He would watch while you hoisted the big bag up over the edge of a crate, dumped its contents, and then claimed your ticket. He would holler out a warning if you were falling behind. And, especially, he would holler if the fruit was not to his liking: if it had brown sunspots, or was too small or too big (a leftover from last year), or was bumpy with a superthick rind— gordos, these grotesque misshapen fruits were called. Sometimes he would dig out the offending fruit and throw it at you, though, of course, if you were moving at the proper speed, you would be back at your ladder and picking before he succeeded.
    To my distress, I discovered that the new rows of trees were not oranges but lemons. The Mexicans, of course, would be pleased: the rate per bag of lemons was higher—$1.15 as opposed to $0.63 for oranges—since the bags weighed more and it took longer to fill them. With harder work, they could make more money. My ambition, however, was merely to survive, and lemon picking was killer work. For one, the full sack of lemons weighed upwards of eighty pounds, more than half my weight and nearly sufficient to pull me off the ladder. If there was any question about whether the lemon was big enough, you had to size it with a ring provided for that purpose—and, for me, there was almost always a question. Lemons all looked alike to me. On your way to the lemon, you had to watch out for inch-long thorns the shape of pencil ends. Perhaps worst, lemons could not be twisted off—they had to be clipped, with special clippers that looked like wire snips. My friend Carlos had showed me how to keep the clippers ready by connecting them with a length of tape around my fingers—but there was nothing he could do to toughen the tender muscle in my palm, the one that registered arthritislike pain with every clip.
    I found a tree, muscled the ladder up, climbed it, and began to clip. I knew I wasn’t too far off the pace, because from my perch I could see several of the other guys in my cuadrilla still atop their trees. The view from on top of the ladder, when I had time for it, was one I loved: here, above the press of trees, you were out of view of the boss, bathed in sun between blue sky and the mass of green below. I called out to Carlos, a couple of trees away, and got a smile in return. Step by step, the bag slowly filling, I made my way groundward.
    It was as I was circling the bottom of the tree, crouching under branches to find the lemons I hoped would finish my bagful, that I noticed movement in the branches on the other side of the trunk. Normally this was something you had to live with: other pickers, on their way to the tractor, often pinched an easy ground- level lemon or two from someone else's tree. The savvy victim usually compensated by discreetly snagging a couple from his neighbor's tree in turn. "Borrowing" easy fruit from trees that weren't yours was known as coyoteando, from the noun coyote. Coyotes, as everyone knew, are sneaky, slinking hustlers, out to make it on their own in an inhospitable world. It was selfish and underhanded, but you lived with it. Indiscreet borrowing, however, amounted to stealing and required a response. I became angry as I noticed the branches continuing to shake, moving around the tree toward my ladder. Obviously the thief thought I was off emptying my bag at the trailer. I unshouldered my bag and stepped out from under the tree.
    “ Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” I demanded.
    The culprit was a picker known as Raul. Along with a man named Pancho, he was an outstanding picker, one who usually ended the day ten bags ahead of most. I was somewhat in awe of his speed and