Jack shook the sleep fog from his head and tried to get his bearings. He was in a rural, residential neighborhood, several miles from his intended location. The pale, harsh sunlight filtering in through the the thick foliage indicated that it was near midday. Judging by the pitifully small watermelon in his hands, Jack surmised that he had dozed off on the bus and Emma, the red-headed girl he'd been sitting next to, had become incensed and somehow gotten him off the bus while he slept. Now, he would have to walk the rest of the way, and he wouldn't get his other watermelons back. Drat. Maybe he could store the melon and the containers in some nearby bushes and come back for them? He picked a direction and started to walk.
Soon, he dropped into the upper floor of a nearby treehouse, a quaint affair of wood planks interwoven with the branches. At the other end of the room, a group of Mexicans watched him.
"Hola!" Jack said in a friendly manner.
"Hola!" came a smatter of replies and waves.
"¿Cómo estás?" asked Jack, walking over to them.
"Muy, muy," they replied. Jack would have to switch to his native tongue now and hope they knew English.
"Uh, yes," he said, holding up some containers, "I have these containers, see, and I need to store them. They're from, uh..."
"Yes, from headquaters, right?" asked one woman.
"Yes, yes! That's right," replied a relieved Jack.
"You want us to store them, right?"
"Yes, if you would be so kind. I just don't want them to get lost."
"That is no problem. You know, you are very friendly to us."
"Well, of course!" smiled Jack.
"The last man, Sadom, he did not talk to us. He was, ah, not friendly," the woman said, emotion creeping into her voice. The other people let out a collective shudder, remembering their harsh taskmaster.
"Oh, well, you know," Jack said, touched, "you guys are just doing a fantastic job. You're all really hard workers."
