Blanco County 04 - Guilt Trip by Ben Rehder

hair coloring and a twelve-pack of Miller High Life.
    “Y’all doing all right this morning?” J.D. asked, giving himself an excuse to run his eyes over the young lady.
    She smiled back at him, the kind of face that draws men like birds to fresh-mowed grass. “Real good. And you?”
    “Can’t complain.”
    The boy was grinning at him, too, kind of an I-know-what-you’re-up-to expression on his face. J.D. winked at him and rang up the first two items. “Awful early for a cold one, ain’t it?”
    “Doctor’s orders,” the boy said. “He told me to get lots of fluids.”
    J.D. gave a polite chuckle.
    “You got some ID? All you young’uns look like babies to me.”
    The boy slipped a wallet from his hip pocket and produced a driver’s license.
    J.D. eyeballed it, working the numbers in his head. “Now, my ‘rithmetic is a little rusty,” he said, “but I believe this here says you’re twenty. Drinking age is twenty-one.”
    The boy, cool as you please, reached into his wallet and dropped a sawbuck on the counter. J.D. shook his head. The boy dropped another. J.D. scooped them up and tucked them into his pocket, then added the beer to the total on the register. “What brings y’all over from Texas?” he asked, bagging everything up.
    “Selling Bibles,” the kid said, pulling hard on J.D.’s leg, all three of them knowing it. “The holy word of Jesus.”
    Now they were all smiling. These kids spreading the gospel was about as likely as J.D. cleaning the toilet twice per shift. “What, like missionaries?” J.D. asked, playing along.
    “Yeah,” the girl said. “You interested in that kind of work? We could use some help.”
    Damn, the girl’s voice was like honey on a biscuit. Flirting with him, too, all part of the joke.
    “I’ll have to pass,” J.D. said. “Can’t you see I’m making a solid fortune right here?”
    The boy grabbed the bag and said, “Well, if you decide you are interested in a missionary position, just talk to ol’ Stephanie here. She knows all about that stuff.”
    The girl giggled and swatted the boy on the arm. “Lucas!”
    Then out the door they went, and J.D. watched through the glass as the girl sashayed her fine little butt out to the Corvette parked at the curb.
    In Red O’Brien’s way of thinking, hiring illegal aliens was about like poaching deer. That is, he didn’t want anybody else to do it, no sir, but he didn’t see the harm if he did it now and again himself. If a large job came Red’s way—say, clearing a thousand acres of brush or building a rock wall or putting up a deer-proof fence—Red was more than happy to round up a crew of wetbacks and get after it. Those boys worked hard and cheap, any day of the week, and you didn’t have to hassle with insurance, Social Security, FICA (whatever the hell that was), or any of that other shit.
    Then there were the other times, the lean times, when Red wasn’t the boss but was working for somebody else. Instead of hiring the crew, he was on the crew. All at once, Red would be in direct competition with the illegal immigrants, and his attitude would change considerably. Red would suddenly realize that the same men he’d hired just last month were now taking jobs away from regular old white boys like himself.
    “Them border-crossing beaners are causing the downfall of American society!” Red had proclaimed to Billy Don one day, pointing toward two illegal aliens laying bricks.
    “Who, Manuel and Tony?” Billy Don replied. “Naw, they wouldn’t do that. They’re nice guys.”
    That certainly didn’t make Red feel any better. When he saw work slipping through his hands because of the illegals, it made him wonder—Lord have mercy on him—what good it was to be a native-born American anymore.
    And that’s exactly how Red felt when he pulled up to the job site on Vance Scofield’s ranch Tuesday morning and noticed a couple of extra Mexicans working the fence line. This was what Red had been afraid