With a list full of sick people
in a white truck full of medicine
I drive through Fresno,
past the billboard signs in Spanish,
telling me “McDonald’s usa 100% carne de res”
past the sidewalk melting into dirt paths
past the buildings and homes that look their age
to a street just off of Central and Highway 41
surrounded by grape fields.
I look for the address that matches the sick name
next to the dollar and twenty five cent C.O.D. tag.
I find a house that used to be
swallowed up by a fire
with forgotten furniture scattered around
the empty rooms swollen with rain water.
This half house, half tomb was
on a small lot surrounded by one room trailers and plywood huts,
each with a snake of smoke slithering into the sky
from their stoves that doubled as heaters.
A woman dressed in earth stained sweats
points me toward one of the trailers
with her broken English, “He there. He house.”
I knock on the door that swings open by itself.
I hear a wobbled, struggled walk
that gets louder and louder.
A short man stands in the doorway.
His jeans hug his legs, showing scars and holes
burnt into them from crawling on hot soil.
His skin peeling. In his eyes
I can see his campesino dreams.
I could smell that wine was his blood.
It once filled the bottles that line the shelves of his home.
The bottles, empty, waiting to be recycled like him
asking his jéfe for a higher wage every two months
and having him throw his question back onto the shelf
to keep company the emptiness of the bottles.
I ask him for his co-pay. He reaches into his pockets
his hands slightly trembling because he refused to stop
dreaming that with enough crates he could buy a house
in the city, to bring his family from the Sun rich state of Morelos.
I imagine him at his small improvised altar to the Virgin Mary
as he falls to his knees, bruised and throbbing.
I imagine him as he closes his eyes and bows,
bringing his hands together
in prayer. He reminds me of my grandfather
pulling at heads of lettuce in Oxnard, Ventura.
On his knees scooping up handfuls of strawberries.
He reminds me of that red flag with a huge black eagle
and his posters of U.F.W. hanging on his walls.
In his campesino dreams I see my grandfather’s dreams.
He pays and I retrace my footsteps back
to my truck. I think of how my grandfather
and all those like him
had only wanted the warm embrace of
a loved one, their wives, and their children,
a home to call their own. I climb
into my white truck. I drive away
wondering what part I play
in my grandfather’s dream.
David Campos delivers drugs for a pharmacy and is a student at CSU Fresno. He performs spoken word poetry at slams and open mics. He co-hosts a radio show called Pákatelas on KFCF 88.1 FM Fresno that focuses on interviewing writers of all types and genres.