Buck must find two college students CH14

Guard tower at Auschwitz

ENCOMIENDA


Chapter 14


Melvin Alcorn seemed pensive, focusing on his driving on the trip to AGG’s eastern camp. I thought that he seemed even younger than he did standing outside, and that the crisis he was about to be involved in would probably be the most crucial and transforming of his brief career. Confronting evil is always bracing. So I began our conversation lightly.

“How long have you been with AGG?”

“Almost three years.”

“Have you always worked in agriculture?”

“More or less. I grew up in a small town in Central Florida. My grandfather had orange groves for many years, so I grew up around farms. My father was an agricultural inspector for the state. However, my degree was in business administration. My first job was with a supermarket chain, but I quickly realized that I wanted to be closer to production than distribution. I wasn’t great with customers. So, I networked a little and found an internship at AGG. Last year, I was hired full salary. That’s when I came to Immokalee.”

“How’s the job going?”

“Not bad, but I have to tell you, I wasn’t really prepared for the squalor that some of the migrants live in. I interned at corporate headquarters in Kansas. This is my first real assignment, so I’m really still learning the ropes.”

“Do you get along with your boss?”

“Al Genepri? Sure. He’s a great guy, but very busy. I sometimes wish he had more time to instruct me. When he does, I always learn something valuable. In fact, he’s in a meeting in Kansas right now. That’s why I’m doing this. Which reminds me, what exactly is going on at the eastern camp?”

“You should be able to tell me that. For instance, what do you think of Joseph Beanland?”

He glanced at me and said, “Well, I can’t say we have a lot in common. In fact, I don’t care for him much at all. He’s crude, tells jokes I don’t appreciate. But his crew seems pretty efficient.”

“No complaints?”

“Well, there was one incident in November last year when a farm worker complained that Beanland was terrorizing him. Beanland came to the office and explained things to Al’s satisfaction. According to the office grapevine, the worker had been harassing some of the women in the camp and Beanland sat on him, literally.”

“Ouch. That’s quite a load.”

He laughed.

We were in the lead vehicle and he turned the caravan onto a gravel road heading roughly east, northeast. The road had been elevated above the swampland, so there were deep water-filled ditches on either side of the road. Beyond the ditches were sabal palms, palmetto brush, scotch pines and waterlogged land. The tires crunched over the gravel and threw up thin dust clouds.

A few miles down the road the truck eased up onto a ridge that flattened out for a hundred yards and extended northward for hundreds of yards and in the middle of the ridge was the camp, at which the road ended. The truck skidded to a halt, the dust settled and we stepped out.

A ten-foot-high chain-link fence ran from one ditch to the other. A gate was in the center of the fence. Centered on the gate were a green triangle and the white letters AGG. A wooden guardhouse sat just inside the gate. I thought, Arbeit Macht Frei.

A skinny, baseball-capped guard carrying a shotgun appeared from inside the guardhouse. He recognized the company truck and unlocked the gate. He said, “Howdy, Mr. Alcorn. Beanland told me he didn’t want anybody coming in and to stay out here. But I guess he didn’t mean you.” The guard was in his fifties, Caucasian, well-worn and nearly used up: missing teeth, unshaved, tufts of hair unruly from the rim of the baseball cap. And when he got close, his smell told a smoker’s unwashed tale.

Alcorn said, “How ya doin’?” However, I could tell that he didn’t remember the guard’s name. This verified Alcorn’s difficulty with customer relations. Front people had to remember customers’ names; they had to love people. It also verified that he hadn’t been to the camp in some time.

“Ok.” The guard nodded at the deputies and looked at me inquiringly.

“Lieutenant Suarez,” Suarez said and showed his badge.

“Hi, name’s Bob Cocker.”

“We’re looking for a couple missing boys. Seen any newly arrived young men around here.”

“Well, Lieutenant, migrants come and go. We get plenty of new ones all the time. I don’t know half the crew anymore. Everybody’s out working now.”

“So you can’t verify that they’re not here?”

“Can’t say ‘yes,’ can’t say ‘no.’”

“Who else is in camp?”

“Just me and an old feller that’s sick.”

I showed the guard the pictures of Nano and Paulie. Cocker looked at them, removed his cap and scratched his head. “All I can tell you is I don’t recognize ‘em. These fellers look a trifle highfalutin to be migrants.” He didn’t seem to be lying, but he also didn’t seem very bright and perceptive. He was just a worn-out old guy who had found a job that would carry him to the end of life. He didn’t know much and didn’t care to know much more. Just the kind of person Beanland could rely on.

Alcorn said, “We’re going to look around. You can stay at your post.”

Cocker looked relieved that his powers of conversation and knowledge would be stretched no further. He pulled a thin pack of Camel cigarettes and a match book from his shirt pocket, extracted one cigarette, flipped the matchbook open – all these practiced physical motions he did very well – struck the match and inhaled the first carcinogenic puffs with great pleasure. I envied his blissful ignorance a bit, but not enough to share his and Suarez’s habit.

Alcorn, the deputies and I turned to the camp. Near the gate was a doublewide mobile home and four smaller trailers around it and two sheds and a pen of some kind behind this cluster. Alcorn indicated that that was where Beanland, the camp cook, the custodian and the guards lived. A rusty, ancient Oldsmobile sat next to the trailer closest to the fence. Beyond was the main camp. It was laid out very precisely in rows of cabins centered on a central building. Eight rows of cabins twenty deep bracketed the central building. One hundred sixty cabins in all. The uniformly white cabins were prefabricated dwellings set up on cinder blocks and anchored to the ground by staked cables. Each had a door and steps in front and two screened windows, one at the back and one on one side. These were always open because the units had no air conditioning.

As we walked down the middle rows, I looked inside. Each cabin was about as large as my bedroom and had two metal bunk beds and four simple, plastic, straight-back chairs and one circular plastic table on a central pedestal. Other furnishings were varied depending on the residents. I did the math: 160 times 4 equals a designed capacity of 640 workers for the workforce. None of the cabins had plumbing.

Plumbing was in the central communal building, which was a concrete block rectangle with three areas: the west end was a kitchen and cafeteria; the central area was a community recreation area with a television, Ping-Pong tables and vinyl couches; the east end held toilets and urinals and showers and wash basins – a dozen of each. I did the math: the 640 residents would take about two hours to cycle through the restroom area at the end of the day if each one spent about ten minutes washing. I imagined that the line at the toilets could get pretty desperate after dinner. However, at the north end of the camp were a row of twelve port-a-johns, so that would relieve the pressure on the toilets.

We walked up and down each row of cabins until we came to one with coughing sounds inside. We peeked in and there was the “old feller,” probably the same age as Cocker. He was unconscious, coughing in a fitful, shivering, feverish sleep. We left him in peace and walked on.

The camp was very secure from both ingress and egress. North, east and west, the camp was surrounded by bogs and swampy land full of reptiles of various sorts. Not an area that any sane person outside of Survivor would want to pass through. South was the supervisor’s compound, fence and gate and guardhouse.

At the end of this trudge, Alcorn said, “I guess the guard is right. Nobody’s home. Are you guys satisfied?”

I said, “Let’s take a tour through the administrative area.”

Alcorn shrugged, “Whatever.”

The trailers surrounding Beanland’s doublewide were uniform, no doubt bought wholesale: one for the cook, one for the custodian and one each for the two guards.

As we approached, we heard the dogs for the first time and that explained the pen we had seen. They must’ve heard and smelled us approaching, so they started growling and barking and howling. None of our scents or voices were familiar to them. We went straight to the snarling, barking dogs: an assortment of six in a three-compartment pen: two Rottweilers in one, two Dobermans in another, one shepherd and a hound in the last. The fence was a ten-foot chain link just like the entry fence. The three doors to the pen were just large enough for a big man to enter. Behind the pen, a small airboat was tied to a tree.

The male Deputy Johnson whistled.

The female Deputy Johnson said, “These dogs are not pets.”

Suarez said, “Guard dogs.”

Alcorn said, “I think it’s Beanland’s hobby.”

I said, “Could we take a look inside the sheds?”

Alcorn hesitated. “Gee . . . I don’t know . . . I’d have to call . . .”

I said, “This is all AGG property, isn’t it?”

“Well, yeah, technically, but I’m not sure if the sheds are for our stuff or Beanland’s. I’d have to get an attorney’s approval.”

“Nevermind. Let’s go. I’ll ride back with Suarez.”

On the way out I spoke to Bob. “Say, what’re all those dogs for?”

He said, “Them’s Beanland’s.”

“Yeah, I figured that, but what does he use ‘em for.”

“Night patrol.”

“What’s night patrol?”

“You know, after lights out, he lets the dogs out.”

“When’s lights out?”

“Ten o’clock.”

“He lets them all out?”

“Naw. Two at a time. Fer a few hours each. That’s their run time.”

“Isn’t that dangerous?”

“Naw. He flashes the lights at the community center at ten. Then he walks to the pen and lets a pair out. Everybody knows to keep their doors closed after that.”

“Thanks. Have a nice day.”

End of Chapter 14
 
Arbeit Macht Frei is German and was the motto at the main gate into Auschwitz, where Eichmann ruled his slaves and victims; in English it reads "Work Shall Make You Free."
 
Neither Dobermans nor Rotweillers are inherently vicious animals.  They must be trained to be guard dogs or attack dogs.  However, they are quite territorial and will not allow strangers into the home area without the permission of the owners.  That they were originally German breeds and used to patrol concentration camps is meaningful.
 
John Steinbeck's masterpiece Grapes of Wrath concerns the migrant stream that left the Dust Bowl for California during the Great Depression.  It's a wonderful treatise on suffering and compassion and righteous anger.
 
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