Man was intended for something more important than the mere
gathering of prunes and apricots.  Of this Manuel felt sure.

                        THE CONFRONTATION
                         RAYMOND BARRIO
   No matter which way he turned, he was trapped in an endless maze
of apricot trees, as though forever, neat rows of them, neatly
planted, row after row, just like the blackest bars on a jail. 
There had to be an end.  There had to be.  There-trapped.  There
had to be a way out.  Locked.  There had to be a respite.  Animal. 
The buckets and the crates kept piling up higher.  Brute.  He felt
alone.  Though surrounded by other pickers.  Beast.  Though he was
perspiring heavily, his shirt was powder dry.  Savage.  The hot dry
air.  The hot dry air sucking every drop of living moisture from
his brute body.  Wreck.  He stopped and walked to the farthest end
of the first row for some water, raised the dented dipper from the
brute tank, drank the holy water in great brute gulps so he
wouldn't have to savor its tastelessness, letting it spill down his
torn shirt to cool his exhausted body, to replenish his brute cells
and animal pores and stinking follicles and pig gristle, a truly
refined wreck of an animal, pleased to meetcha.  Predator.
     Lunch.
     Almost too exhausted to eat, he munched his cheese with
tortillas, smoked on ashes, then lay back on the cool ground for
half an hour.  That short rest in the hot shade replenished some of
his humor and resolve.  He felt his spirit swell out again like a
thirsty sponge in water.  Then up again.  The trees.  The branches
again.  The briar branches.  The scratching leaves.  The twigs
tearing at his shirt sleeves.  The ladder.  The rough bark.  The
endlessly unending piling up of bucket upon box upon crate upon
stack upon rack upon mound upon mountain.  He picked a mountain of
cots automatically.  An automator.  A beast.  A ray of enemy sun
penetrated the tree that was hiding him and split his forehead
open.  His mind whirred.  He blacked out.  Luckily he'd been
leaning against a heavy branch.  His feet hooked to the ladder's
rung.  His half-filled bucket slipped from his grasp and fell in
slow motion, splattering the fruit he'd so laboriously picked.  To
the ground.  Robert happened by and shook his head.  "Whatsamatter,
can't you see straight." Manuel was too tired even to curse.  He
should have had some salt pills.
     Midafternoon.
     The summer's fierce zenith, passed overhead.  It passed.  Then
dropped.  It started to light the ocean behind him, back of the
hills.  Sandy dreams.  Cool nights.  Cold drinks.  Soft guitar
music with Lupe sitting beside him.  All wafting through his
feverish moments.  Tiredness drained his spirit of will.  Exhaus-
tion drained his mind.  His fingers burned.  His arms flailed the
innocent trees.  He was slowing down.  He could hardly fill his
last bucket.  Suddenly the whistle blew.  The day's work was at
last ended.
     Ended!     
     The contratista, Roberto Morales stood there.
     His feet straddled.  Mexican style.  A real robber.  A Mexican
general.  A gentlemanly, friendly, polite, grinning, vicious,
thieving brute.  The worst kind.  To his own people.

Despite his being a fellow Mexican, despite his torn, old clothing,
everyone knew what kind of clever criminal he was.  Despite his
crude, ignorant manner, showing that he was one of them, that he'd
started with them, that he grew up with them, that he'd suffered
all the sordid deprivations with them, he was actually the
shrewdest, smartest, richest cannibal in forty counties around. 
They sure couldn't blame the gueros for this miscarriage." He was
a crew chief.  How could anyone know what he did to his own people?
And what did the gueros care? So the anglo growers and guero
executives, smiling in their cool filtered offices, puffing their
elegant thin cigars, washed their clean blond bloodless dirtless
hands of the whole matter.  All they did was hire Roberto Morales. 
Firm, fair, and square.  For an agreed-upon price.  Good.  How he
got his people down to the pickings was no concern of theirs.  They
were honest, those gueros.  They could sleep at night.  They
fulfilled their end of the bargain, and cheated no one.  Their only
crime; their only soul crime indeed was that they just didn't care
how that migratory scum lived.  It was no concern of theirs.  Their
religion said it was no concern of theirs.  Their wives said it was
no concern of theirs.  Their aldermen said it was no concern of
theirs.  Their-
     Whenever Roberto Morales spoke, Manuel had to force himself
not to answer.  He had to keep his temper from flaring.
     "Now," announced Morales at last, in his friendliest tone. 
"Now.  I must take two cents from every bucket.  I am sorry.  There
was a miscalculation.  Everybody understands.  Everybody?" He slid
his eyes around, smiling, palms up.
     The tired, exhausted pickers gasped as one.
     Yes.  Everyone understood.  Freezing in place.  After all that
hard work.
     "Any questions, men?"
     Morales grinned, knowing everyone realized that he had the
upper hand, that that would mean a loss of two or three dollars out
of each picker's pay that day, a huge windfall for Morales.  "You
promised to take nothing!"  Manuel heard himself saying.  Everyone
turned in astonishment to stare at Manuel.
     "I said two cents, hombre.  You got a problem or what?"
     "You promised."
     The two men, centered in a huge ring of red-ringed eyes,
glared at each other.  Reaching for each other's jugular.  The
other exhausted animals studied the tableau through widening eyes. 
It was so unequal.  Morales remained calm, confident, studying
Manuel.  As though memorizing his features.  He had the whole
advantage.  Then, with his last remaining energy, Manuel lifted his
foot and clumsily tipped over his own last bucket of cots.  They
rolled away in all directions around everyone's feet.
     Roberto Morales' eyes blazed.  His fists clenched.  "You pick
them up, Gutierrez."
     So. He knew his name.  After all.  For answer, Manuel kicked
over another bucket, and again the fruit rolled away in all
directions.
     Then an astonishing thing happened.
     All the other pickers moved toward their own buckets still
standing beside them on the ground awaiting the truck gatherer, and
took an ominous position over them, straddling their feet over
them.  Without looking around, without taking his eyes off Manuel,
Roberto Morales said sharply, "All right.  All right, men.  I shall
take nothing this time."
     Manuel felt a thrill of power course through his nerves.
     He had never won anything before.  He would have to pay for
this, for his defiance, somehow, again, later.  But he had shown
defiance.  He had salvaged his money savagely and he had earned
respect from his fellow slaves.  The big bosses would never know of
this little incident, and would probably be surprised, and perhaps
even a little mortified, for a few minutes.  But they wouldn't
care.  It was bread, pan y tortillas out of his children's mouths. 
But they still wouldn't give a single hoot.  Manuel had wrenched
Morales' greedy fingers away and removed a fat slug of a purse from
his sticky grasp.  And in his slow way, in his stupid, accidental,
dangerous way, Manuel had made an extravagant discovery, as Don
Gaspar had also made two centuries before, in almost exactly the
same spot.  And that was -- that a man counted for something.  For
men, Manuel dimly suspected, are built for something more important
and less trifling than the mere gathering of prunes and apricots,
hour upon hour, decade upon decade, insensibly, mechanically,
antlike.  Men are built to experience a certain sense of honor and
pride.
     Or else they are dead before they die.