Heat 55 Another bucket sat on the sand and another fisherman stood fishing two hundred feet south; this time Jack just nodded and smiled. The man smiled back and went back to pulling his bait across the ocean’s floor. Another four hundred steps and another white bucket; this time the white bucket held a strange flat fish with both eyes on the same side of its body. “What kind of fish is that?” Jack asked the short man covered in several sweat shirts, fur lined gloves, insulated khaki pants and rubber boots. From deep inside two sweatshirt hoods a round brown face filled with a smile in which his eyes and cheeks took prominent roles. “Pescido?” the man questioned holding his rod a little higher for Jack to see. Jack pointed to the white bucket and hunched up his shoulders to illustrate his question mark. “Hipogloso” the fisherman replied his smile capturing a bit more of his face. Jack said, “thank-you”, and waved good-bye. The man waved and turned back to the work at hand. As Jack walked fishermen and fisherwomen multiplied, and then children ran across the sand while mothers and fathers sat on blankets and talked. There was no crowd like Pismo held. No cars dared to leave their asphalt security and challenge the soft sand like in Oceano. Maybe thirty vehicles, aged pick-ups and SUVs with flaking paint mainly, sat patiently awaiting their owners in a small parking lot surrounded on all sides by mounds of sand. A hard packed trail led to the parking lot from the beach and a paved road almost completely covered in sand headed east. On each side of the road nylon ropes were strung from thin post to thin post. Signs announced birds on the other side of the ropes were being protected. Jack walked in the sand on the right side of the drift-covered road. The sand beside the road turned to swampy ponds, a few trees tried to establish residence, Jack navigated forty feet of drying mud with the aid of the road’s crown and then miles of black farmland covered in green life bloomed on each side of the road at once. Thousands upon thousands of plants with long blue-green leaves protruding from thick light green stocks grew in city block sized squares. Worker’s cars lined the sides of the road. A tractor pulling a platform filled with diligent people stopped just feet from where Jack stood watching. Some of the workers looked up and smiled, no hands stopped moving round balls of food into waiting boxes. Jack watched a husky man move a loaded cardboard box to the top of a roll of similar boxes. The man paused long enough to study Jack. “You work?” the man asked pointing to the short moving belt on the platform. Jack tossed his pack next to the front wheel of a worker’s car and climbed the yellow metal ladder to the platform. The husky man found him a place in the line of people facing the wide belt and quickly showed him which bussel sprouts went into the boxes and which fell back to the earth. Without giving thought to anything but sorting the best of the sprouts Jack filled two hours of his life between two hard working humans. He fell in love with the lady to his right and the man to his left without saying a word. The workday ended early for people that started early. Jack was given cash for his limited labor and may have been invited back. The language the husky man used was not one Jack understood. The smiles and a few hugs translated easily. The road to the east became wider. The asphalt held less mud from tractor tires. Cars replaced pick-ups and houses all of the same species hid behind peach colored, stucco covered, concrete block walls. A traffic light announced a nearby town and Jack turned to the left in hopes of a hot meal in trade for his two-hour workday.
Posted on: Thu, 15 Jan 2015 00:16:02 +0000
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