farms the day after I last saw him. That was Monday,
the twentieth of February. The last page is the people
still here.”
Again, they marked the pages and when they were
finished, the farm manager held out his hands. “Want
to take my prints first?”
“Why don’t we go down to the camp and do them all
at once?” Denning said.
“Fine. I don’t know if everybody’s there, though.
Hard as it’s raining, we couldn’t get the tractors into
the field so I gave everyone the morning off.”
As migrant camps go, this one was almost luxurious
compared to some the deputies had seen. It reminded
Richards of motels from the fifties and sixties that
sprouted along the old New York–to-Florida routes
through the state before the interstates bypassed them—
long cinder-block rectangles falling into disrepair.
Here, communal bathrooms with shower stalls and
toilets, one for each sex, lay at opposite ends of each
rectangle. The men’s bunkhouse was a long room lined
209
MARGARET MARON
with metal cots. Most were topped by stained mattresses
bare of any linens, but some still had their blankets and
pillows and a man was asleep in one of them. At the far
end was a bank of metal lockers. Most of the doors hung
open, but a few were still secured by locks of various
sizes and styles. At the near end was a battered refrig-
erator, cookstove, and sink. An open space in the center
held a motley collection of tables and chairs where three
more men were watching a Spanish-language program.
Richards was pleased to realize that she could catch
the gist of the reply, which was that the crew chief and
his wife, along with another woman and two men, had
gone into Dobbs to do laundry and buy groceries. And
when Lomax could not seem to make them understand
what the deputies wanted, she was able to explain with
the generous use of hand gestures.
They knew, of course, that
dered in the shed over by the big house?
Whoever did such an awful thing had left fingerprints
on the axe handle, she explained, so they were there to
take everyone’s prints.
At this, the men exchanged furtive looks and started
to protest, but Richards tried to reassure them by prom-
ising that they were not there to check for green cards
or work visas and the fingerprints would be destroyed as
