Full Measure: A Novel Read Free Page B

is down but prices are okay. It killed me to let Miguel go. I actually cried. You realize he arrived here without even one dollar in his pocket because the smugglers had robbed him? They’d even taken his shoes. But your grandfather liked the look in his eyes and hired him on the spot, got him papers. He was with us for forty years but I had to let him go. My watch. Me. Of course, there’s still goddamned Lew Boardman across the valley hiring one hundred percent illegals, so his bottom line doesn’t look half bad. He only lost a couple of acres. But even without the drought and the fire, this place isn’t worth near what it was before the recession. And I can’t break it up and sell it to a builder, not with the twenty-to-one zoning we’ve got. I don’t think I could sell it for that purpose anyway, in good conscience.”
    “I don’t think you could, either.”
    “I haven’t listed it but I told the realtor six months ago I’d entertain offers in the three million range. We had some interest. Then, three months ago, a two million dollar offer from a Newport Beach doctor. Of course I told his realtor to go to hell. A day after the fire came through, he dropped the offer to a million-three. It’s an insult offer. It would cover our debt and leave us with very little. Our cash flow is down to almost nothing. We lost a big part of last season’s paycheck to the frost. And of course, because of this fire, our spring fruit probably won’t develop.”
    Archibald sighed and shook his head in the closest thing to defeat that Patrick had ever witnessed. In him Patrick saw himself some decades from now. He tried to imagine himself here in Fallbrook as a grower, but he could conjure to mind no more than rough sketches of this land and a small town, and the faint silhouettes of what might be a family. They seemed like the drawings of a child.
    Suddenly the artillery on Pendleton boomed. Patrick saw a blast of bright light and his ears roared as panic surged through him, then he fell. The roar grew and he was grappling with something, then everything disappeared—the fear and the sound, even the light. He lay on the burnt ground, breathing hard and covering his father. He felt his father’s heartbeat and smelled his aftershave as he disentangled from him and helped him stand. Patrick laughed quietly, partly in humor but mostly in embarrassment. His ears were ringing so loud he wondered if his father could hear. Sweat drenched his back and he tried to brush the soot from his uniform while his pulse settled. “Car doors slamming are the worst.”
    “It’ll take a while, Pat. It’s hard to come back. But few things in the world will ever mean more to you than what you did over there.”
    The “meaning” part still escaped Patrick but he knew that he had done his duty. And now it was time to do it again. Maybe this would mean something. “All right. I’ll do what I can here on the farm, Dad. But there’s a condition—we bring Ted on board. He’d love to pitch in. It’s what he needs.”
    “He’s not fit for it. I don’t mean to be judgmental.”
    “Then don’t judge. He knows you don’t believe in him. But it’s time to try again anyway.”
    “He posted hateful things about the mayor. I can’t go into Fallbrook without feeling notorious.”
    “If we work his ass off he’ll be too tired for nonsense like that.”
    “I’ve tried, Pat. A thousand times I’ve tried. I don’t need to catalogue his failures and his utter lack of attention.” Patrick considered the double meaning of “attention.”
    “We’re just putting him to work, Dad. It’s the right thing.”
    “Okay. He’s your responsibility. It shames me that I can’t pay either of you.”
    “Ted can drive the taxi evenings and weekends. I can probably deliver pizza again.” Patrick felt constricted, as if by a large snake, and he could see his dreams puff right out of him and vanish into the foul air.
    “You were just eighteen when you