Q PAUSED IN HIS STORYTELLING, closing his eyes as he struggled with his emotions.
Everybody had gathered at the table now, their rapt attention on the teenager. Q didn’t seem to notice. He was still caught in the memory of his mother. He wasn’t the only one struggling with emotions. Claire had turned pale, and Maria was wiping tears away.
Q’s story had struck a raw nerve.
“She was already sick,” Q finally continued. “She’d sent Dad into town to pick up some antacids and stuff for her.” He looked around him sadly. “But as we know now, those weren’t going to do any good.”
His gaze became lost as he remembered.
They were sitting in their small but tidy living room that evening, watching the local news. Q could see the looks that his mom and dad were exchanging. They were worried. Very worried. Not about the animals dying, and the first people getting sick... No. They were worried about the crops going bad. If the crops went bad, there would be no work on the farms. And no work meant no pay. And no money meant a heap of trouble.
The house that they had lived in for over twenty years did not belong to them. They had rent to pay. Without income, that would be exceedingly difficult.
Q had witnessed what happened to anybody who got unlucky. He knew what happened if you made enough mistakes, or pissed off the wrong people, or didn’t kiss enough ass.
You lost your job.
And losing your job on one farm meant no job on any farm in the area. Q had long suspected that all the farms around there were loosely associated with each other.
He had seen families forcibly evicted from their houses. One such memory stood out for him — mostly because that family, the Molinas, lived two houses down, and Q had a bit of a crush on the daughter.
One morning, the landlord’s man had come in on a truck. The bed was filled with guys. The only white guy was the driver — the rest were probably migrant workers just like the one they were about to evict.
But that was the way of the world...
They stood around the truck as the white guy knocked on the door. After a heated conversation, the guy got a door slammed in his face. Q remembered thinking that it was odd that this guy, who had just got insulted, turned back to the truck with a victorious smile on his face. It made sense afterwards. The man had gotten exactly the response he had been hoping for.
Two guys went around back of the house while the rest walked to the front. Ten seconds later, one of them had kicked in the door, and they all stampeded in there like they were some kind of SWAT team about to make a drug bust. Q didn’t see what was going on in the house, but the sounds of violence and screams told him that somebody was getting their ass kicked.
Q remembered how his mom held his dad back from getting involved. He remembered the pain, and later the shame in his eyes.
They dragged Mr. Molina out and dumped him unceremoniously on his front lawn, right at the white guy’s feet. Q saw the guy put his foot on Mr. Molina’s head. It reminded Q of that rum commercial, and he almost laughed.
That laughter died in his throat when they dragged Mrs. Molina out. She had also been beaten and was bleeding from her nose and mouth. Her top was torn nearly off, and her breasts were hanging out. She still had some fight in her when she saw her husband under that white guy’s boot, though. She shoved violently at one guy and he lost his grip on her arm. She made it halfway to the white guy before they were able to tackle her to the ground.
The sound that Mr. Molina made was piteous. Then the worst part happened: Elise was screaming inside the house. Mr. and Mrs. Molina doubled their efforts and fought off two guys each. Dad also shook off Mom’s clutch and made a beeline for them, as did several other neighbors.
The white guy saw this and yelled at the guys inside the house to bring out the girl. They did, and the thugs also let her parents go. The three of them collapsed in each other’s arms on the far side of the front lawn.
Things settled down after that. The white guy spoke a few words to Mr. Molina but then ignored them for the rest of the hour as the thugs went into the house to collect the family’s belongings. These were dumped onto the lawn. Half of their shit was broken by the time it got out there.
Q’s mom made him go inside their own house after that. He never had a chance to say goodbye to Elise. That evening, they were gone. Some of their stuff was left on that lawn for weeks afterwards. It wasn’t until the next spring that another couple moved in.
At the time it happened, Q remembered his mom talking to his dad about keeping his head down and working hard. She seemed to blame the Molinas for the fate that befell them. Q figured that this was around the time that he started to feel a real hatred towards the establishment.
Q’s parents were worried about losing their jobs. Little did they know just how bad things would get. Little did Q realize that his life was going to turn upside down within forty-eight hours...
THE NEXT DAY, SCHOOL was canceled. His parents also got a call telling them not to bother going to the farm that day. They spent the day working the garden, sitting at home, and watching the local news. Q could tell they were anxious. They were also both showing symptoms of this HAPS thing that was going around. Q never noticed that his symptoms had all
