America Is in the Heart by Carlos Bulosan

Author:Carlos Bulosan [Bulosan, Carlos]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2019-05-21T00:00:00+00:00

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My hand was swollen when I arrived in San Francisco. The city was windswept at night, but in the daytime the sun was tropic hot. The streetcars were clanging everywhere and the people were walking up and down the streets. It was like Seattle—the streets going upward and downward, the dark alleys curving suddenly to Chinatown, and the women coming into the light on their short, sturdy legs.

I took a freight train that carried me to Guadalupe, a small Oriental town off the coast highway. The streets were lined with gambling houses. It was Sunday and the Filipino farm workers were riotously spending their wages. I found an empty shack under the bridge that connected Guadalupe and Oceano’s rich farm land. I nursed my wounds in this shack. At night I went to the gambling houses. I could not work yet. So I begged from the lucky gamblers. Then I met a man who claimed that he had come from Binalonan. His name was Cortez, and he had a crew of farm workers in Santa Maria. When I was well enough to work I joined his crew.

It was autumn, the season for planting cauliflower. I went to the field at six in the morning and worked until six in the afternoon. It was tiresome, back-breaking work. I followed a wagon that carried cauliflower seedlings. The driver stopped now and then to drop a handful of the seedlings between the long furrows. I picked up the seedlings with one hand and dug into the ground with the other; then, putting a seedling into the hole, I moved on and dug another hole. I could hardly move when six o’clock came. I climbed into the wagon that took me slowly to the town.

The bunkhouse was made of old pieces of wood, and was crowded with men. There was no sewage disposal. When I ate swarms of flies fought over my plate. My bed was a makeshift tent under a huge water tank, away from the bunkhouse. I slept on a dirty cot: the blanket was never washed. The dining room was a pigsty. The cook had a harelip and his eyes were always bloodshot and watery.

I became acquainted with Benigno, one of the men in the camp. He was big and husky, but a sinus infection in early life had ruined his voice. One Sunday night, when I was already asleep, he came to my tent and woke me up.

“There is fun going on in the bunkhouse,” he said.

“I am tired,” I said.

“Come on.” He flung the blanket away from me and jerked me out of the cot. “Come on!”

I followed Benigno into the bunkhouse where thirty workers were quartered. Their cots were arranged in two rows, fifteen in each row, running from wall to wall. There was only a foot of free space between them. I noticed four men holding up some bedsheets around a cot. A fifth man was standing by, holding a basin of water. A hand came out of the sheets and took the basin.

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