Read Six Feet Over It for Free Online

stone, crop it close. Headstone haircut.
    Wade waves. The person waves back, tugs off the goggles, silences the spinner.
    “Okay, listen … you are now Sierrawood Hills’ official interpreter! You ready?”
    “No. Wait, what ?”
    The person is walking through the graves toward us.
    Wade gets all sotto voce. “He got here last night. He’s got some English words, but I don’t know how much he understands, so just talk … really … slowly. ”
    I wince and wipe my sweaty hands on my jeans.
    “Dario!”
    He is taller than Wade and a lot younger, but older than me and dark—dark hair, dark skin, dark eyes—smiling in blue jeans and a brand-new blue T-shirt, Sierrawood Hills Memorial Park in loopy white script across the shoulders. This is Wade’s idea of a uniform for us all—members of the most ridiculous softball team in America. “Leigh, say hello to Sierrawood Hills’s brand new director of grounds maintenance!”
    I nod.
    “Dario,” Wade plows on, “this is my youngest, Leigh!” He gathers me in a smothering one-armed embrace. “And today is my baby’s birthday! Lucky fifteen today, how do you like that? Brand-new coworker, not a bad birthday present!”
    So much for talking slowly.
    “¡Quinceañera!” Dario says to my blank expression; then abruptly joyful, he clasps both my hands in his before turning to run back up the hill. “Wait for me!” he calls. “Wait!”
    Wade is practically bursting with the awesomeness of it all; he can barely contain himself.
    “What do you think?” he says, grinning like a fool. “He’s from Mexico !”
    “Yeah, I got that,” I hiss. “You don’t have to shout it.”
    “He saved every penny he had,” he says near my ear, fast, “worked his whole life on a farm … or landscaping, I don’t remember which, but this kid is industrious and smart, knows what the hell he wants, gave all his money to one of those jerkwads, what is it, a coyote? Who of course took it all and bailed halfway to the border when the feds caught up. San Diego border patrol swarmed them, for real, he said, helicopters and everything! So there’s ten guys stuffed in the back of the coyote’s van and they all scatter, this is the middle of the damn night, and he hides in some rusted-out car in a ditch, right under the hood! Jeez Louise.”
    “I thought you said he doesn’t speak English.”
    “No, I said he had some words.”
    “He told you all this?”
    “Yes!”
    “Okay, that’s not ‘some words,’ that’s … all the words.”
    He rolls his eyes. “ Any way, so he crawls through a bunch of drainage ditches and barbed wire for, like, ten hours till he crosses into San Diego and he scrapes a few bucks together somehow or other, I didn’t ask, and he buys a bus ticket and twelve hours later he’s in Sacramento. Can you believe that?”
    “No. When was this?”
    “I don’t know, like a year ago? It’s true! He’s been staying on people’s sofas, friends of friends of cousins …”
    “ Cousins? Really?”
    “What?”
    “Like all Mexican people are related?”
    He tosses his hands, and his voice jacks right back up to full volume. “I’m just telling you what he said, he told me this!”
    “All right.”
    “He did!”
    “Okay.”
    This Dario person answered Wade’s ad in the PennySaver classifieds the first day it ran: Yard Work. Xlnt Pay. (Cash, of course, under the table) Bnfts.
    Yard work. Jesus.
    I’m just relieved my “interpreting skills” may not be needed after all. I’m perfectly happy letting Howard the coroner keep translating for Spanish-speaking clients over the phone for me, which he’s only had to do twice anyway and both times for At Needs who seemed content to just sign on all the X s, write a check, and call it a day, no chitchat necessary.
    Dario comes jogging briskly back over the crest of Poppy Hill, his left arm raised over his head, hand clenched in what looks like triumph.
    “Happy birthday!” He offers me his open palm, a