He was looking for a job, he said.

I told him I had some new fence to build and then had to move some cattle. "What do you do?" I asked him.

"I am a truck driver," he said, in a salsa-flavored voice. "But I know how to make fence."

I sized him up. He was a slight, wiry young fellow; probably wouldn't weigh over 150 pounds with his pockets full of rocks. He spoke pretty good English (as good as mine, probably) but with a hard-to-place accent.

His name was Tom, he said, short for Tomas. It took awhile for him to warm up to talking about himself. Turns out he'd only been in this country 4 years. He was from a little farm in Zacatecas, Mexico, and slipped into the U.S. near Del Rio, Texas. He got on at a beef packing plant in the Texas Panhandle, worked there for a year, then drifted on north. Most recently, he had worked at a poultry processing plant in southwest Missouri.

"But I do not like the inside work," he told me. "I am a truck driver."

"Well, I don't have any trucks to drive, but if you can set posts and string wire, you've got a job," I said.

Tom didn't have a vehicle, so I picked him up next morning at Faye's Diner, just down the road from his rent-by-the-week motel. Faye fixed us some sandwiches and potato salad for a lunch and we drove to the fenceless place I had leased.

For the next few days, we built fence. Tom worked hard, and worked efficiently. He didn't make many wasted moves as he chopped brush, set posts and stretched wire. Then one morning, I drove the one-ton flatbed off into a marshy place below a wet-weather spring and the truck sank to its axles--all the way around.

"She is stuck, no?"

"She is stuck, yes."

She was good and stuck, and the only way to get her out was to walk more than 2 miles to borrow my neighbor's tractor. But before I could take off on the hike, Tom picked up a shovel and started trenching in front of the mired-up wheels. He crammed hedge posts under the tires and started playing out the fence stretchers to a scrubby tree just down slope from the bog. In half an hour, we had the truck back on solid ground.

"Thanks, Tom," I said. "You saved me a long walk."

"De nada," he said. "It was nothing."

Tom stayed until we got the place fenced, weaned spring calves and moved the cows onto the leased pasture. Then he worked for a few months helping a logger cut and haul timber--and actually got to drive a truck. Just before Christmas, Tom came by our place. It was good to see him.

"I am going home," he said. "I have saved money for my family, and I am going home."

I gave Tom a ride to the bus station and wished him well. If times get tight in Zacatecas again, Tom may be back--if not here, then somewhere there's work to be done, whether it be working in a packing plant, putting up hay, picking apples or maybe even driving a truck.

There are a lot of Tomases and Joses and Robertos in this country, not all of them here legally. But those I've met are willing to do the tough, dirty jobs not many native-born Americans want to do. They need the work, and we need them.