Boy’d come to the end of the long row of cotton plants feeling uncomfortable about hoeing weeds alongside the vato from Burque. They became immediate friends when they started hoeing weeds in adjacent rows. The vato wouldn’t stop telling joke.
“You look hungry?” the vato said as a punchline for a joke about an obese person.
Boy couldn’t help but laugh. But he noticed the vato hadn’t been chopping many weeds.
Seeing this, Boy made sure to chop more frequently to compensate for the chirión’s bad work.
“I hope they can tell which rows were his and which were mine,” Boy thought to himself.
They walked silently alongside each other a long while, Boy’s hoe coming down harder and much more frequently than that of the chirión.
“So why you here, ese,” Boy asked him after a long while.
“Ran away from home and needed cash to spend the night in El Chuco this weekend,” the vato replied.
Boy calculated the vato wasn’t much older than him, maybe 16 or 17.
“Why?” Boy asked.
“Wanted to see the world. Borrowed my cousin’s pickup to do it,” the vato said.
“You even have a driver’s license, ese,” Boy asked.
“Nel. I drive when it’s dark so the jura can’t see me,” the vato said.
“Órale,” Boy said.
The vato sped up too, his hoe coming down even more infrequently as he tried to catch up to Boy.
“They’re gonna see you’re chireando,” Boy said when they reached the end of the row.
“Ahhh, I’m gonna quit at the end of the day before they can check anyway,” the chirión said.
“But I they pay only on Fridays?” Boy said.
The chirión looked back at the long row they’d just walked and took a long breath.
“Sura,” he said.
“Tell’em you can’t tell the difference between the cotton plants and the weeds,” Boy suggested.
“They’ll fire me…. Órale,” the chirión said.
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