Tropic of Orange

Arcangel and Rodriguez labor together, building the wall around Gabriel’s property. Rodriguez tells Arcangel about the impossible bulge in the wall that Rafaela noticed. Rodriguez is confused and astounded: He has built walls his whole life, and they have always been known for their straightness and precision. Arcangel and Rodriguez “worked side by side laying mortar and bricks with a kind of rhythm that would suggest they had labored together all their lives” (123).

Rodriguez is glad that Arcangel came along; however, though Arcangel agrees that wall construction is noble work, he can only stay for this one day. Rodriguez laments that his son told him he is only working to die; his son thinks, “poor people are doomed to work to their deaths. That we eat and drink all our earnings because anyway we will die” (124). Rodriguez is not working to die: He is working to live. Rodriguez’s youngest son ran away and became a soldier; he died. Arcangel thinks of all the dying soldiers he has held. What they all had in common was youth and belief, though their beliefs varied with their cause.

Rodriguez shakes himself from his grief and offers Arcangel some tortillas and fruit for lunch. Arcangel, however, wheels his suitcase over and produces “tomatoes, onions, potatoes, corn, limes, cookies, fresh tortillas, small sacks of grain, cans of condensed milk, and the orange” (125). He begins to cook on an American-made portable gas stove he found in the garbage of a camp on a mountain in Nicaragua. Rodriguez is surprised as Arcangel prepares a hot meal for him. He asks how long Arcangel has been traveling, and Arcangel replies 500 years. Rodriguez thinks he is joking.

Arcangel falls into a reverie of memories. He thinks of the fruits of the labor of the poor people of central and South America being exported North for the benefit of Americans. He thinks of materials, cultures common knowledge being drained in return for technology, money, and guns.

Rodriguez reminds Arcangel of a Colombian gravedigger with whom he spent six years working. They buried 600 bodies found floating downstream due to a war over an indigenous plant. Rodriguez understands. He knows the drugs from central and South America go north, while the violence grows. His first son was involved with the drug trade. He acted like he was a big shot, but he was shot in the head.

The two men get back to work. Arcangel sees the wall as Rodriguez’s body, so he “set the bricks with special care, blessing and naming each brick, reconstructing Rodriguez’s dying body again and again into that very straight wall” (127). He thinks of the inequities caused by NAFTA and the longer history of colonization and revolution in Mexico.

Arcangel composes a political poem to himself about “the hard labor of people at the bottom/ with nothing, / nothing, / to lose” (128). Hard at work on the wall, Arcangel wonders “if it wasn’t a wall that could conceivably continue East and West forever. Labor for a lifetime” (128).

Rafaela holds Sol close; Doña Maria is confused why Rafaela missed her son so much, when they were only separated for five minutes. Clutching the bag with the tiny cooler, she feels terror looking back at the house. She makes an excuse to leave.

On the way back to Gabriel’s house, Rafaela thinks of how Mexico is now both familiar and unfamiliar to her, time and space becoming more elastic and confusing. She wonders if the sensation started with the disappearance of the orange. She knows there is no turning back after taking the cooler from the refrigerator. She now understands “what Bobby always felt: this fear of losing what you love, of not feeling trust, this fear of being someplace unsafe but pretending for the sake of others that everything was okay” (129).

Rafaela dumps Gabriel’s water faucets from the box and replaces them with the small cooler. She does not dare look inside it. At the corner of Gabriel’s property, she sees Arcangel squatting, sleeping next to his old suitcase, a snake coiled at his side. Rafaela peers at him and is shocked at the length of his lifeline on his palms.

Rafaela rushes to the hotel to mail the box with the cooler in it, and to call Bobby to finally reconcile with him. However, when she calls home, she only hears her own prerecorded voice on the answering machine. Instead, she calls Gabriel. In a rush, she asks Gabriel what the Tropic of Cancer is, to which he replies, “A line. An imaginary line” (131). She tells Gabriel that she is afraid because of Hernando. Rafaela’s fear triggers Gabriel’s instinct as a reporter. She tells him about the conversation she overheard about “body parts. Kidneys for a two-year-old” (131). She tells Gabriel that she is mailing him the package with the cooler because she was afraid to look. The arrival of the black Jaguar outside the hotel cuts their conversation short.

Wondering what to do, she spots Arcangel outside, she asks where he is going, and he says he is taking a bus to the northern border. Rafaela makes the split-second decision to go with him. From the bus window Rafaela sees the hotel manager bringing out the mailbag. She sees a man running to the black Jaguar and hugs Sol close.

Rafaela offers Arcangel an ear of corn; Arcangel thanks her and says it will keep his orange company. Rafaela glances into his suitcase and sees a flyer announcing “The Ultimate Wrestling Championship: El Contrato Con América. No Holds Barred. El Gran Mojado meets the challenger SUPERNAFTA” (132). The suitcase should be heavy, but Rafaela notices that Arcangel carries it as if it is light as air. Rafaela recognizes the orange in his bag: She “knew the orange as she knew the face of her child” (132). She sees the send line stretching through the poles of the orange and tangling around Arcangel; she recognizes it as the Tropic of Cancer. She looks to Arcangel for an explanation, but he is asleep. Dusk falls. The black Jaguar follows the bus but does not catch up.

Though Gabriel did not completely understand everything that Rafaela told him, his instinct as a reporter told him that it was important, so he transcribed the conversation as best he could. He wants to use this as an excuse to go down to Mexico, but the timing is bad: The news never stops, especially with his reporting on unhoused people, Manzanar Murakami, and the freeway incident.

Gabriel and Emi argue about whether the news is entertainment. Gabriel views it as an important component of civil society. However, he secretly knows that she is right.

The unhoused people of the freeway canyon have begun singing like a classical choir. Buzzworm reports to Gabriel that a whole new society is being built among the unhoused people on the freeway, complete with its own named streets, and infrastructure. The fires on both ends of the encampment are only growing: Rumor has it that the initial explosion has opened a pocket of natural gas below the freeway.

Buzzworm tells Gabriel that there is a rumor that the oranges were supposed to be the vehicle for whatever unknown narcotic they contain. Apparently, the oranges’ acidity increases the substances toxicity, which only grows deadlier overtime. Buzzworm tells him that his lead, C. Juárez, wants to meet Gabriel in Mexico City tomorrow. Gabriel is disappointed; the timing is bad.

Buzzworm asks Gabriel how things are going with Manzanar Murakami. Manzanar Murakami approved the article Gabriel wrote about him but told him that he wrote it with his head, not his ears, which hurt Gabriel’s feelings. Buzzworm says he knows what Manzanar Murakami means. He tells him that while Manzanar Murakami used to be a doctor, he is now a witch doctor, hearing and interpreting things that no one else can see or here.

Buzzworm is calling from a cellular phone and a gold Cadillac in the freeway settlement. Gabriel plans to meet him there in an hour at the newly named “street,” Limousine Way. While he was talking To Buzzworm, Gabriel picked up on the fact that Rafaela is sending him a package. He decides he will make the meeting in Mexico City to get a better understanding of the connection between the oranges and C. Juárez. While there, he can detour to his place to check up on Rafaela. He knows he is caught up in a conspiracy, and he must act now.

Bobby’s beeper goes off. He wonders who it is, suspecting one of his clients. He thinks of the bomb manufacturing plant in El Segundo, where the employees think he is Vietnamese. Today is the 25th, the day that Bobby his life insurance. The page was from Gabriel. When Rafaela was in Community College, Gabriel would edit her papers, “Getting articles out of the system to put in the papers. Putting ideas into Rafaela’s head” (138). Bobby would like to smack Gabriel call my buddy wants to get his wife and kid back first.

Gabriel wants to meet with him; he has news about Rafaela’s whereabouts. Bobby cannot meet today, however; he must drive to Tijuana to meet the snakehead. Gabriel thinks that Rafael is in trouble. He is unsure about Sol; he did not think to ask. Bobby wants to know how Rafaela is living. Gabriel tells Bobby not to worry, but Bobby tells him, “She’s my family. That’s my son. We don’t live off no one. No one” (139). Gabriel tells him he must take a trip to Mexico City, so he will check up on them while he is there.

Bobby takes Rafaela’s new Camaro down to San Ysidro and crosses the border on foot. In Tijuana, his taxi slows down at the corner he is looking for. He sees his cousin, who looks just like her picture, but scared. He recognizes in her face what he felt when he and his brother first immigrated.

While at the hairdresser, Emi gets a call from Gabriel. Gabriel is calling from a cell phone in a gold Mercedes in the freeway encampment. Emi tells him that the NewsNow van is still down there, along with her crew. She also tells him that all the oranges in the city have been recalled. Because he is going to Mexico City to meet with Buzzworm’s contact, he asks Emi to take over gathering information about Manzanar Murakami and the freeway encampment. He tells her that he has a hunch what is happening in Mexico is related to the recent events in Los Angeles. Emi reluctantly agrees.

In the afternoon, Emi meets Gabriel and Buzzworm at the encampment. To Gabriel’s dismay, she is carrying a lot of luggage, which she makes him carry all the way to the NewsNow van. Emi and Buzzworm immediately dislike each other. Emi brings supplies, including food, batteries, and computers to the NewsNow crew. She gives Gabriel a rundown of how they can communicate via computer while Gabriel is in Mexico.

Gabriel gets the news crew to have their helicopter zoom in on the face of Manzanar Murakami, who is on the overpass above them. Emi stares “at that face in disbelief. She knew this face. She knew it intimately from some time in the past. She knew this very man” (144). Unaware, Gabriel says goodbye to her, tells Buzzworm to take care of her, and leaves to catch his flight.

A brief lull in the flow of the city temporarily stops Murakami from conducting his symphony. He likens it to “a crossover—the pianist’s hand flowing to its destination on the opposite end of the keyboard in one breathless extending and endless motion like changing lanes” (144). The moment is like an out of body experience, and it causes Manzanar Murakami to think about his past, his childhood in the concentration camp, “the family he once had, a nine-year-old grandchild he was particularly fond of” (146). He sees “the man he had become over the years: a strange disheveled grizzled white-haired beast of a man wielding a silver baton” (146). He sees a vision sweeping out over the Pacific Ocean, and encompassing all of North and South America, with all the layers of civilizations built throughout time, moving toward an inevitable end. As night falls, his conducting resumes; the encampment is illuminated at either end by the great, burning blue fires.