Page 17 of Claimed By my Father's Enemies
A car passes on the cross street. Headlights sweep the chain-link in a slow white bar that moves left to right across my hands. I hold my breath. The engine note drops as it turns the corner. I go back to staking the tomato cage I'm holding.
The sign goes on the end bed, facing the street. Dev staples it in four corners. The metallic clack of the staple gun is the loudest thing we've made all night, and I feel it in my molars.
GREEN GUERRILLA.
This space is yours.
Tend it. Eat from it. Share it.
Nobody moves for a moment.
Before, a dumping ground the neighborhood had stopped seeing.
Now, raised beds in clean lines, soil dark under the streetlamp, the first green of the seedlings showing above the rims. The mattress is gone. The glass is gone. The sour wet-cardboardsmell has been replaced by damp soil and the thin sweet note of herbs. Our work here is done.
I breathe in once, all the way down, for the first time since we parked.
We pack out faster than we unload. Tools in the truck bed, empty flats stacked and strapped, the contractor bags loaded into the van for the dumpster run Ana does on the way home. The crew moves quick, quiet, trained. Doors close soft. Engines start low.
I find Emilio by his scooter. Helmet already on, chin strap loose under his jaw. He's got a smudge of soil across his forehead that he hasn't noticed. His face is trying for nonchalant, but his eyes are shining with what I know is joy.
"Did you like it."
"Yeah." Too fast. Then quieter: "When are you doing another one?"
"Couple of weeks. Depends on the site."
"Can I come?"
"If you want to. And if you stay out of trouble."
He nods. He understands the subtext.
"You did good work tonight."
"I didn't dothatmuch."
"You did what I told you. You did it the right way. You didn't quit when it got boring." And looking straight into his eyes I say once more so he knows I mean it. "You did good work tonight."
He looks at the lot behind me. At the beds. At the sign.
"How long will it stay like this?"
"As long as people decide to keep it."
He thinks about that. I can see it on his face.
"Tighten your helmet strap."
He tightens it.
"Behave until I call you about the next one."
"I always behave."
"Sure you do."
He grins, unguarded for half a second. Then he kicks the scooter alive, and he's gone down the street, red taillight shrinking, the small engine's whine folding into the quiet.
