The Son of Every Man

Chapter 6.6

Miguel woke to the sound of Eddie and the kid packing. He sat up and rubbed his eyes.

"You're alive after all," chided Eddie.

"We're going already?"

"We're doing three more camps today. I let you sleep as long as I could."

"Three?" Miguel noticed they each had a distinctly fresh appearance. "You both showered already? What the hell."

Eddie gestured toward the house. "Be quick."

Miguel stepped into the single-wide with a strong disinclination that made him ache. He did not look at the spot on the wall. He made his way immediately down the hallway. As he approached the doorway to the bathroom, the door to one of the bedrooms creaked open. Miguel stopped in his tracks. The taller woman emerged in only her underwear. Through the gap in the door, Miguel caught a glimpse of Vernon's fat, sickly-white legs splayed on the bed. He snored lightly. The woman closed the door as quietly as she could behind her, then all but passed through Miguel, disappearing silently into the other room. Miguel slipped quickly into the bathroom and shut the door.

He reentered the barracks ten minutes later only to find Eddie and the kid were gone, their belongings vacated. He threw his stuff together and caught up with them as they walked the dusty lane to the edge of camp.

"Vernon's still sleeping," Miguel announced as he came alongside Eddie.

"He keeps his own schedule," said Eddie.

"One of the women was in there with him. I saw her leave."

Eddie didn't reply. They approached the car. He used the remote to unlock the doors and open the trunk, then offered the keys to the kid. "You want to take this leg?"

"Sure," Gabe said. He slid easily into the driver's seat and started the car.

Miguel settled into the back seat on the passenger side, positioning himself so that he and Gabe could convene privately as needed through the rearview mirror. Eddie shut his door and Gabe shifted the lever into reverse, turning the car swiftly around in the small dirt clearing like he had done it every day of his life.

"We'll go back out to the highway and skip the next two camps," said Eddie. "But see where the road keeps going? It turns west and crosses back into California. Alvarez drives it once a week to Latchkey. After Latchkey is Homer. We'll skip both of them and end up at Nestor."

Miguel planned to put on blinders for their visits to the other camps. The technical functions of a given operation were one thing, but he wanted nothing to do with the the peripheral goings-on of the people who carried them out. He had seen enough of that already. "Where do they come up with these names?" he asked.

"Who knows?" said Eddie. "I asked Otero once. He said he doesn't think there's much meaning behind them."

"There's always a meaning," said Gabe, guiding the car slowly along the bumpy path.

Eddie looked over at him. "You think so?"

"Of course. Back then, it wasn't like now. People didn't just give a place a name for no reason at all."

"Let's hear it then," said Miguel.

The kid thought for a moment. "Well, just off the top of my head, Homer wrote the Iliad and Odyssey. Nestor is a character in both of them. Doesn't sound like a coincidence to me."

"What about—Eddie what did you call the first one?"

"Latchkey."

"What about Latchkey?"