you still protecting him?”
“He made the workers go into the field before it was
safe?” asked her daughter.
“Sid Lomax described your father as somebody who
couldn’t bear to see workers standing around idly while
the clock was running,” Dwight said. “You yourself de-
scribed the trailers he used to house them in, trailers
that had no running water where they could wash off
the pesticides. Why did they need to wash off the pesti-
cides, Mrs. Harris? They would have been safe if they’d
waited forty-eight hours to go back in the fields.”
Susan Hochmann looked sick.
“Oh, Mother,” she whispered.
At that moment the light finally broke for Dwight as
he looked at the older woman’s weathered face. “You’re
afraid of another fine, aren’t you? Another OSHA inves-
tigation. Maybe a huge lawsuit. You don’t want another
scandal for Harris Farms. Did you give Maria Palmeiro
money to go back to Mexico, Mrs. Harris?”
“She wanted to go home,” Mrs. Harris said angrily.
“She’d lost her baby. The marriage was a mess. She
just wanted to leave and forget it all. So yes, I gave her
money. But that doesn’t mean Harris Farms caused the
baby’s birth defects.”
Susan Hochmann’s shoulders slumped as if weighted
291
MARGARET MARON
down by a ton of guilt and she shook her head in dis-
belief.
“It all fits, doesn’t it?” Dwight said wearily. “Buck
Harris was killed in that empty shed, but it was a shed
that held spraying equipment. He was dismembered to
look like the baby. Then his head and his”—he hesitated
over leaving that second grisly image in the daughter’s
mind—“his head was left in the field where his wife was
contaminated. It
Mrs. Harris nodded. “She didn’t go in too soon,”
she said dully. “She was there while they were spraying.
When I got down there that day and saw what was hap-
pening, I screamed at them to come out of the field and
I sent them back to the camp to take showers. They were
all green with it. But it was the second day of spraying
and she was at the most vulnerable stage of pregnancy.
I didn’t know she was pregnant. I don’t think she even
knew for sure at that point. Buck and I got into it hot
and heavy then. Sid Lomax wouldn’t have let it happen,
but Sid was in California. His father had died. So Buck
was in charge and by God he wasn’t going to coddle
anybody or pay a dime for people to stand around and
wait till it was safe. ‘You made me put in fancy hot and
