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It waswhen I stepped down off the bus in Grace, and I didn’t recognize it Even in fourteen years it couldn’t have changed s that erode too slowly to be noticed: red granite canyon walls, orchards of sturdy old fruit trees past their prime, a sha hurry back when labor was taken for granted, and noere in no big hurry to decay Arthritic rew out of i as if they could adapt to life on Mars if need be

I was the only passenger getting off The short, ie door and et towos happened to be right in front Finally he slapped e suitcases flat out in the dust He sla the bus to bark like a dog, leaving a cloud of exhaust in the air, getting the last word, I suppose

The view fro the river, dividing the orchards like a long, crooked part in a leafy scalp The trees filled the whole valley floor to the sides of the canyon Confetti-colored houses perched on the slopes at its edges with their backs to the canyon wall And up at the head of the canyon was the old Black Mountain copperthe valley, the smelter’s one brick ss to the edge of the street Carlo, my lover of ten years, who a trunk froot around to it I didn’t own verywith echoes, unrecognizable tolike your own house on the day you move out I missed Hallie Carlo, too-for the lost possibilities At the point I left, he and I were still sleeping together but that was all, just sleeping, with our backs touching Soh in the next room and I’d wake up to findhis chest, but that’s only because it takes your sleeping self years to catch up to where you really are Pay attention to your dreao on a trip, in your dreams you will still be home Then after you’ve come home you’ll drea of the consciousness

Carlo loved Hallie When he and I moved back to Tucson the three of us contrived a little household in a bad neighborhood, with jade plants on our front steps that kept getting stolen till Hallie thought to bolt down the pots We played house to beat the band Hallie and I made prickly-pear jelly, boiled and strained and poured blood-red into clean glass jars We’d harvested the fruits froarden of the hospital where Carlo worked A nun saw us out there with our grocery sack while she alking an old man around the little race track, and Hallie and I just waved We said ere living off the land

Our horavity, the only one of us who saw life as a controllable project Carlo was an orphan like ot about the jade plants, they went crisp as potato chips out on the porch, and Carlo withered as if he needed water also Every man I’d ever loved had loved Hallie best and settled for ht think; I could understand it I loved her too

And now his life with the Noline woo where he pleased Carlo was a rolling stone: an eave him a kind of freedom almost unknown to the profession You can always find work if you’re willing to take up with a human body as soon as possible after one of life’s traumas has left off with it Carlo and I ether he and I probably hadthe way I’d landed a few presentable jobs, but in between I tended to drift, like a well- instructions My career track had run straight down into the weedy lots on the rough side of town It’s the truth, For the last six ht shift at a 7-Eleven, selling beer and Alka-Seltzer to people ould have been better off hoo Noas here

A high-school friend, Eos, had offered to meet my bus but I’d told her, No, don’t bother, I’ll os’ guesthouse Not with my father My relationship with Doc Homer had always improved with distance, which is to say that mail was okay and short, badly connected phone calls were best I thought I should still keep soh he was ill and conceivably dying It was going to be touchy He would be an unwilling candidate for rescue, and I was disaster in that depart relatives and the other one was behind the wheel of a Toyota pickup headed for Nicaragua I stood et ht still show up