The Barbarian Nurseries A Novel - By Hector Tobar Page 0,43
and their boss made for the side gate and their truck, while Maureen contemplated la petite rain forest for the last time. A few minutes later the contractor was back with his laborers, each of whom was holding a machete and studying the boss as he consulted with Maureen. He gave the workers a set of instructions with wide sweeps of his hands and pointing fingers. Not one of these workers, Araceli guessed, had been in this country for longer than a year. The one with the droopy mustache and the sweatshirt that said loudon county high wrestling team was likely a grandfather. The stringy young guy next to him was wearing a Banamex giveaway T-shirt and appeared to be the newest one in this country. The grandfather looked intently at the boss, suggesting he was anxious to prove himself, and they all seemed to have a need to get a good day’s work out of their systems, having just won the lottery and wrestling match back at the hiring site.
The boss was addressing the workers, and through the window Araceli could make out his bad, shouted Spanish. “¡Comienzan con estos! ¡Con puro machete!” At the sound of the first machete whacks Araceli felt the briefest pang of nostalgia. Adiós to Pepe’s garden, to the green leaves and flowers that carry the memory of his hands. The hacking machetes reverberated loud enough to be heard even when Araceli retreated to the kitchen and turned on the water in the sink. She heard them too in the laundry room, the messy, sickening sound of blades cutting into fleshly stalks. A whack, whack, whack filled the house, punctuated by the long, rising whistles of the men calling back and forth to one another. “¿Qué hago con esto?” “¿Todo?“ “¡Está bien duro el bambú!” Each time she wandered past the sliding glass doors of the living room, she turned to catch glimpses of the day laborers raising their machetes and slashing, stalks and branches falling to the ground starkly and suddenly, as if murdered. These roustabouts were machete experts and each of their blows sent a living thing flying into the air: they worked in a line, advancing into la petite rain forest like men assigned to clear a cane field.
“They’re chopping down the garden!” Brandon said as he came running into the living room, drawn by the sounds. “Keenan, look! They’re chopping it down! The bamboo! Look!”
Brandon watched them work and remembered the British children in Lord of the Flies, on a tropical island armed with spears and a knife, behaving like savages—and he thought he’d like to pick up a blade and join them.
“They’re taking away our jungle,” Keenan said. Once the boys ran through shady caves formed by the healthy branches and jumped over the tiny stream, and arranged toy soldiers between the stalks of bamboo. They hadn’t played there in ages, not since Pepe left, as if they too were put off by the garden’s slow death in the dry, Pepe-less air.
After forty minutes of chopping, nothing in the garden was left standing and the plants were an organic heap the men walked over like soldiers in a battlefield, checking to see if any of the vanquished were still living. For the first time, Araceli could see the entirety of the curving, adobe-colored cement wall that marked the boundary of the Torres-Thompson property. Like an empty canvas, it assaulted the eyes with its blankness: she could understand why Maureen and Scott had gone to the trouble of planting a big tropical garden to cover it.
Maureen reappeared to examine the work, and tapped at some of the fallen stalks with her sandaled foot. The roustabouts began grabbing armfuls of chopped-up plants and carrying them back to the truck, and two of the workers appeared with rusty pickaxes and shovels, and started hacking away at roots. The men were covered in dust, soil, and a sprinkling of shredded bamboo leaves, ferns, and flower petals. Araceli heard an engine start on the street, and then a series of high-pitched, banshee screams. Following the sound, she stepped away from the glass doors facing the backyard and drifted to the picture window in the living room, but could still not see the source of this deathly wail until she walked out the front door. The roustabouts were tossing the remains of la petite rain forest into a machine attached to their truck, which was spitting a verdant cloud into the back. Pepe’s garden was