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Show 15 we have to pick up the Indians?" she asked. "No way," Joe said. "I paid them. They won't be coming back, at l e a s t not until i t s t a r t s getting cold." Vanda thought of the dozens of migrant workers who had slept in that long stucco house over the years. They might have been a hundred of them but she couldn't remember a single name. She thought of them only as the Indians or the Mexicans or the Dutchmen. Vanda drove home, since everyone else was too drunk. She swerved once for a jackrabbit and the pickup nearly went off the road, as she overcorrected. She eased herself between the sheets, pressing her cotton nightgown against her thighs, wishing she could feel her hip bones again. She pictured Toby in a Marine's uniform saying Property of United States across the back. Lying in bed beside him, she used to stroke his hair and touch the freckles on his back. She could hear the far-off whir of a combine, one of the neighbors working through the night in a fury to get his crop in before i t rained. "Giovanni Josef Gnicht," she said aloud in the darkness. "What a name." She wished her had kissed her. Her baby would make the cover of Sports I l l u s t r a t ed as a college freshman. Toby would read of him in Algiers s i t t i n g in Rick's Cafe and recognize the boy as his own flesh and blood and show the magazine to Kitty Fisher, who would be a fat, flabby waitress with mold growing on her kitchen sink. |