Fruit Of Labor

Tony Rehagen: The Mexicans—thirty-two of them—wait for the pickup truck. They are dressed, almost to a man, in dirty jeans, boots, long sleeves, and baseball caps. Some wear bandannas to shield their necks and ears from legions of gnats. The rising late-summer sun is starting to cut through the morning mist that clings to the orchards and fallow pastures of Peach County like a thin coat of fuzz.

The Mexicans, who woke at 5:30 and ate a breakfast of Frosted Flakes or eggs, now stand between the two vans that brought them two miles from their bunkhouses. At their feet, their foreman has emptied a pile of peaches. In the distance they hear the pickup, which soon materializes through the fog.…