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Place into his home.
    The cramped living room had a single couch squatting in it with one of its two cushions missing. One remaining faithful cushion bulged with padding, pushing up through a gushing tear. Next to it, a renegade metal spring spiraled upward from the base of the couch. As Place stepped into the living room, a white tailless cat ricocheted into another part of the house. Straight back from the living room was a small kitchen. There was an old enameled white and rusted stove with a smaller camp stove placed directly on top of it. A small wooden table stood a few feet from the stove, and there was a solitary milk can positioned close to the table to indicate that this was where the diner sat. The limited kitchen window looked out to an unpainted wooden wall which Place would later find out was the side wall to Salvador’s outhouse, as his house had no functional toilet. Rays of light leaked through the roof where the short hallway led to a tiny boxlike bedroom.
    Place sat tentatively on the edge of the couch thinking he might become infected by something. He pinched at his nose repeatedly and wiped his upper lip to help his nostrils battle the thick mustiness that hung heavily in the living room. He delivered Jacqueline’s message and waited for Salvador’s response, which was one of understanding as he nodded his head and said, “Sí, yo sé.” The previous owners had already explained the situation to him, and Jacqueline had days earlier tried to reinforce the same message but only in English and with primitive hand signs. He was well aware of his time and his rights, and he told Place this.
    Aside from the intended business, Place was as curiously interested in Salvador as Salvador was in him. They asked each other tentative questions about where they came from, where they had been, and where they were going.
    Place gave his story first. With intense concentration, he explained in a jerky, bucking Spanish, which Salvador patiently coaxed out of him and corrected, that his parents were from Mexico and he had been born in the Imperial Valley in Southern California. He had nine brothers and sisters who were born in various other valleys and lived in different states. He told Salvador that he had lived in many towns, had gone to many schools, and had picked many types of fruits and vegetables. He also left out many details, not wanting to reveal his entire existence in this initial encounter and not feeling comfortable talking about himself.
    Diverting the discussion from himself to Salvador, Place’s first question was an abrupt “¿Eres legal?” He wasn’t sure why he asked this. His own father had never taken the time to become a legal citizen of the United States, and the family never concerned themselves with the issue. It was something everyone, including labor contractors, took for granted or didn’t want to know about in the first place. Citizenship was not a prerequisite to doing work that legal citizens did not want to do or felt by their birthright that they should not have to do.
    Salvador recognized that Place could be Mexican; his name indicated that. But Salvador could see and hear that Place was distinctly more American. And as the opposition of thoughts collided in his mind, Salvador wondered if he could trust Place. The Mexican part of Place merited cultural and ethnic allegiance. The American part of Place could bring with it uglier things, the things many Americans felt about immigrants and immigration, like meddling officiousness, misguided indignation, and maybe even meaningless envy.
    Salvador looked at Place dubiously. He wondered who this culturally filtered and watered-down Mexican was. He knew only too well that Americans employed legal Hispanics to work for them as spies for la migra. But it also did not make sense that Place asked a single individual. It was always preferable to catch a whole bunch of illegals—like trapping rabbits—and then set them free in the wilderness