Strawman's Hammock by Darryl Wimberley

nine-millimeter in Jarold’s Jeep and made sure that he was seen to be unarmed. He took a long time to explain that the armed warden at his side was here to enforce laws related to fish and game.
    â€œ(He’s not INS,)” Bear assured in Spanish the wizened elder, who stared suspiciously from the shade of a water oak. “(He is a constable in charge to make sure that hunters and fisherman do not break the law.)”
    â€œ(We only fish for food,)” a younger man protested.
    â€œSí, señor.” Barrett smiled warmly. “No es un problema. No problema.”
    A gaggle of children clung to their mothers’ skirts as the conversation jerked haltingly forward. Barrett realized quickly that his Spanish, while sufficient for polite conversation, was nowhere near fluent enough when he had to inquire about blackmail or extortion.
    â€œ(How do you live?)” he tried that tack. “(How do you earn money?)”
    The elder man shrugged.
    â€œ(We wait for El Toro,)” he said.
    â€œThe Bull?” Barrett replied in English and saw that this much, at least, the older man understood.
    â€œ(He is the jefe, señor.)”
    â€œYanqui?”
    â€œNo, no.” The old man shook his head. “(Mexicano. He finds us work.)”
    â€œ(What kind of work?)”
    A self-deprecating shrug of the shoulders. Eyes that suddenly shift and lose contact.
    â€œ(All kinds.)”
    â€œ(All kinds. Yes. Like in the straw, señor? Does the Bull get you work baling straw?)”
    â€œ(We just fish,)” a younger man broke in. “(We fish and we wait for work. That’s all.)”
    â€œ(That’s fine.)” Barrett nodded. “Muy bien. (If you need help with anything—a doctor, maybe? For the children? You can call this number.)”
    Barrett gave the elder his card.
    â€œ(My name is Bear,)” he said. And, still smiling, “(I am a good match for Señor Bull!)”
    The gathered workers laughed nervously. But Barrett noticed as he swung into Jarold’s Jeep that their patriarch tucked his card carefully into a dirty shirt pocket.
    â€œWho the hell is this Bull?” he asked when Jarold had them safely around a sandy bend.
    Jarold shook his narrow head.
    â€œSome kind of go-between, maybe?”
    â€œMaybe,” Barrett nodded. “But you notice they weren’t about to give us anything but his street name.”
    *   *   *
    They made perhaps a half-dozen camps that day. The stories were all about the same. Workers waiting for work. Waiting for salvation. Waiting for Godot. Only one camp seemed regularly employed. When Barrett asked if the contract came through El Toro, the younger Latin denied it so furiously that Bear knew it was true.
    Clearly, Señor the Bull was someone well known to the migrants in these isolated camps. Barrett made a note to call the county clinic, see if they couldn’t get somebody out to check up on the children. A sort of depression had set in, which he did not expect. These desperate residents, their hollow homes carved in the woods, stirred memories Barrett would just as soon forget.
    Barrett knew what it was like to be raised in a shack. He knew what it was like to wake up in the night sweating hot, or shaking cold, depending on the season. Barrett knew what a piss bowl was, and a thunder jug. But that beat the hell out of running to an outhouse where the first thing you did before you squatted was to rattle the box with a stick to scare off the snakes. Barrett Raines had lived as these people had lived. He was surprised and ashamed, therefore, to find himself resenting these poor people for making him remember.
    *   *   *
    It was late afternoon by the time Barrett and Jarold Jeeped back along the sinuous sandy roads that would take them to the warden’s seaside residence and alternate transportation. Jarold had become positively garrulous in the course of the