Free Desert Boys by Chris McCormick Page B

Mexican men, five in all, parked the trucks at sharp angles at Mr. Reuter’s house. They worked in an assembly-line sort of way between the trucks and the front lawn. Cars took care to move slowly past the equipment, which created a sort of barricade around the driveway and into the street. Some of the drivers even pulled over to investigate further the work that was being done.
    The curiosity spread. As the hours passed, a fleet of neighbors emerged from their homes to witness the transformation of Mr. Reuter’s yard. My own parents, if they hadn’t been working, would have been among them. I imagine that some of the witnesses must have worried that the Mexicans, yelling their Spanish at each other between heaves, were moving in.
    As for me, I chose to watch from my living room, parting the blinds with my fingers.
    The next day, my parents left again for work, and—wouldn’t you know it?—the trees arrived. Three huge supplanted palm trees rolled in on the towed trailers of a new armada of white trucks followed by green-and-yellow John Deere machinery. This time, the news spread even more quickly, and neighbors and passersby came together in the street. Even I had to go outside to watch. People who had heard about the activity the day before also came, anticipating more action today. What you had then was a group of people from all over town, the largest assembly I’d seen of them, and yet the only sounds came from the machinery.
    A John Deere drilled a hole within my circle for each tree. Another, with an extended mechanical arm, plucked one of the palms from its trailer bed and hinged it toward the hole. The machine tilted its pull on the tree until, slowly, accompanied by the eerie creaks of the pulley, the palm stood upright in the air. It hung there for a moment like a specter, swinging perilously in the wind, and the people beneath it had no choice but to fear and worship. Carefully, the machine lowered the bulbous root of the tree beneath the ground. This process was repeated twice more, and each time it happened, the crowd held its breath as the tree, like some monster, stood unaided for the first time. We half expected a roar from the trees, and when—as the workers began to hose down the bark—no roar came, we ourselves supplied it.
    XIV. THE TALLEST TREES IN THE ANTELOPE VALLEY
    They still own the record. The tallest of the three clocks in at over fifty feet. You can see them from the 14, if you’re riding through the high desert: Three pineapple tops watching over everyone on the east side of town.
    I ended up telling my dad one night about my involvement in their planting. He came to me after I’d snapped at my mother, and asked very seriously why we weren’t so close as we’d been when I was younger. The question was a simple one, and he said it with this grainy, soft voice like I’d never heard. We were in my bedroom. I sat on my bed, and he’d chosen to sit on the carpet. It’s amazing how powerful that memory is for me, a grown man sitting on the floor, asking for something he felt was important. He wanted to understand why things had changed. I didn’t have my complicated Pester/Foster analyses at hand, so I just said, “I don’t know.” Then I felt as though I owed him something more, so I told him the story.
    â€œDon’t worry,” he said. “We’ll get you your money.”
    But he wasn’t listening. It wasn’t about the money.
    XV. THE LAST TIME I SAW MR. REUTER
    He’d lost his hair. I hardly recognized him. I saw him only for a moment—I was coming into the house late one night, much later than my curfew. I was expecting a fight when I got home. And before I turned from the sidewalk toward my door, a light came on across the street. Mr. Reuter stood on a short stepladder, arms shaking above his bald, bespectacled head, installing what I found out later to be a motion-sensor light on the rim of