ENCOMIENDA
Chapter 22
I took Nano with me. He stunk as if he’d been living with pigs. His clothes had begun to rot from the swampy moisture, and his own sweat and dirt. I took him back to the motel, so he could shower. I threw his clothes away and gave him some of my clothes to wear, though they hung a little loose on him: we had to roll up sleeves and cuffs. While he cleaned up, I checked everybody out of the motel.
I thought he might snooze on the trip back to Miami. But he was too excited to sleep, and with a little nudging from me and the resilience of youth, told me the story.
After irresponsible Jeff sideswiped them and sent them skidding into the railing, they got beat up as the Samurai tumbled in the air and landed right side up in the canal. Although bruised and stunned, both got out of the car and swam to the eastern bank of the canal. Paulie had twisted an ankle and bruised some ribs and couldn’t walk. Nano had suffered a concussion and a cut mouth and passed out once on land. By the time Nano was again conscious, night had fallen, Paulie’s adrenaline rush had subsided and his ankle and ribs ached. Together they stumbled away from the canal into the dark glades night.
They staggered right into Beanland’s shipment of marijuana being loaded from a boat onto a truck. Beanland at first thought they were drunk farm workers because Nano was disoriented and his speech was garbled, and Paulie spoke Spanish first and breathed shallowly. He loaded them into the back of his truck and took them to the compound. He stuck them inside a cabin.
The next morning he discovered his error. Once he realized that they weren’t his usual malleable victims, he shackled them and kept them in his shed. He used them to work his marijuana fields on weekends and days when he stayed at camp. He never intended to release them; they knew too much.
Nano’s and Paulie’s crash wounds healed, but they suffered through weeks of enslavement and misery among the hammocks and the sheds. Beanland had six hammocks planted with marijuana, thousands of plants. The boys’ job had been to harvest large buds and pack them in vegetable cartons stamped AGG.
He grimaced and said, “I hated and feared Beanland. The others weren’t quite so ruthless, but no one could stand up to Beanland. I think his own people were afraid of him.”
I said, “You really had a Christmas and New Year to remember.”
Nano said, “Maybe, but it made me appreciate my regular life more. I didn’t realize how good I had it until this happened.”
“How did Paulie take it?”
“Once his ankle and ribs healed, he was ok. In fact, he smoked some of the product to ease his pain and he got to like it. But I think he’ll be fine once he gets back to his normal routine. Please, don’t tell his father.”
“All right, I’ll let you handle it. What did you guys eat?”
“When we were in the shed, we ate whatever the farm workers ate. Rice and beans. White bread. Whatever the cook had made that day. Sometimes chicken soup or beef stew or ropa vieja. In the hammocks, we had less choice. Bread and coffee for breakfast. Bologna sandwiches and coffee at lunch. Peanut butter sandwiches for supper. Not a real healthy diet, but then we weren’t expected to survive anyway, were we?”
“No, I guess not. But I have a feeling you’ll get whatever you want tonight.”
“That would be great. You know what I’m craving the most? A big green salad with a great variety of vegetables.”
“Yeah?”
“A long, hot shower was the first thing I wanted, but the salad is next.”
I told him how we had discovered his whereabouts, going into his computer, tracing his movements through his bills. He didn’t mind. I said, “I saw that paper you had written on the encomienda system.”
He laughed. “Wow. The university. Academics. That seems so far away.”
“I was thinking that you have some personal experience now to add to that paper.”
“Oh, yeah. I see. My own living encomienda.”
End of Chapter 22
The boys ate a lot of sandwiches. Some can be nutritious. Some can be quite tasty. When I was a boy, I ate a lot of PBJs, and I still like peanut butter sandwiches. As an adolescent I got hooked on hamburgers and hotdogs. In my twenties I loved Rubens. When I became more educated about health and nutrition, I gave up those cardiac arrestors and turned to sandwiches heavy with vegetables and some fowl or fish. My favorite now is a turkey and vegetable wrap that I get at a whole foods grocery.
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