Fields of Wrath (Luis Chavez Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

on that weekend that would have serious implications for their whole family.
    “Why are you being mysterious?” she’d asked. “It’s harvesttime, right? You think you’re going to make a big profit this year or something?”
    “I can’t talk about it on the phone,” Santiago had replied. “I’ll explain everything on Monday first thing. Okay?”
    “Okay.”
    Monday morning came and went. Though the shop owner, Mrs. Ponce, had a strict no-cell-phone policy, Maria had managed to slip out and check her phone a couple of times in the parking lot.
    Nothing.
    Her brother was a farmer. He owned his own land, over a hundred acres up in Ventura County, and was the only family Maria had in the States other than her son, Miguel. He’d left home when he was a teenager, lured to La Norte with the promise of a job. The family didn’t hear from him for a few years. Then, not long after Maria discovered she was pregnant, Santiago sent word that he wanted to bring her over the border.
    That was almost fifteen years ago. It had seemed so daunting at the time, but now Maria regarded her brother as her savior. That he hadn’t called after making such a point that he would deeply troubled her.
    Why couldn’t he have just said what was going on?
    She finally glanced to the clock. It was five. Half an hour before she could knock off. She plucked another six lilies from the flower box next to her and added them to the arrangement she was finishing up.
    “Mom?”
    She turned to the back doorway. Miguel stood there. He was out of breath.
    “What are you doing here?” she asked, afraid Mrs. Ponce could return any minute. “Why aren’t you at Mrs. Leñero’s? Did you take the bus?”
    That’s when she saw the look on his face. It was ashen and strained. He appeared much older than his fourteen years.
    “Mom. You need to see this.”
    He pulled his iPad out of his backpack and opened the cover. The front page of a Mexican newspaper was up in a browser. When she read the headline, she wasn’t sure what it meant. When she saw the photograph next to it, she screamed.

V
    After he left Los Angeles for divinity school, Luis returned only once, for the funeral of his mother. He’d flown in, stayed the night on a cot at Sacred Heart, and flown back to New York after the service. She was interred next to Luis’s brother, Nicolas, in a plot she’d purchased when she buried her oldest son. This was befitting. Luis believed his mother had left a lot of herself behind at the cemetery following Nicolas’s funeral.
    Luis’s father hadn’t attended his ex-wife’s services. In fact, Luis hadn’t seen him since they buried Nic. If a part of his mother had never left her first child’s grave, an even bigger part of Luis’s father believed he was responsible for digging it. The old man blamed himself for Nicolas’s death, as well as Luis’s trouble. Luis thought this was bullshit, the senior Chavez looking for another reason for self-pity.
    When he returned to Los Angeles for good, Luis made no attempt to contact his father.
    But he thought of his parents as he walked down South Alvarado Street. The sights and smells of the open markets were so familiar, the wave of nostalgia practically gave him a head rush.
    Moving past MacArthur Park, Luis spotted what he’d been looking for on the other side of the street. Called a phone room, it was just that—a retail space the walls of which were lined with a couple dozen sit-down phone booths and nothing else. Everything about it looked temporary, as if it had snuck in after the last business failed and could be packed up and moved out the moment a new tenant came along.
    Luis approached the bulletproof cashier’s cage and took out his wallet. Taped to the barrier were phone cards featuring the flags and outlines of an array of countries. Luis tapped one with a cartoon man wearing a sombrero.
    “Where in Mexico you calling?” the skinny Latino behind the glass asked.
    “Ixtlan.”
    The