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When he gets the each other on the davenport, wrapped in the black-and-red crocheted afghan They won’t stop shaking They want to know if the baby coyotes died If anio to heaven He has no answers "We tried to put the we used for the prickle pears, but it fell all apart" The tears streahan is wet and he thinks there will be no h their veins He e juice God, why does athisChickens

Emelina’s was a pleasant, ramshackle place with animals, an old plum orchard and five boys When I walked up the drive withto kill roosters Emelina’s eyes and mouth dreide and she looked briefly like a surprised fish "Codi, this is Sunday, I thought you said toetically I was glad I hadn’t waited any longer at the courthouse

"Shoot, you look like a fifty-dollar bill Where’d you get that haircut, Paris, France?" She gaveand waved her hand at the driveway "I’ot the water boiled for the birds Shoot"

I’d just witnessed what I’d thought was going to be the slaughter of a peacock, so I laughed, but this time it was real s, and a tragically stained wooden block that had been used before Emelina’s twins, ere about ten, each held a fat white rooster by the feet A younger brother was riding a tricycle precariously over the rocky ground I put down my suitcases

"Curty and Glen, look at you," I said "And Mason You guys are getting too big"

"Aunt Codi, look If you hold theo to sleep," Glen said

Curty said, "No, they get hypnotized"

"Well, either way it’s a handy trick," I said "You don’t want the"

Emelina looked disod-awful thing to do in front of company"

"I’m not coo out of your way forto live here"

She rolled her eyes "Go on back to the granny house then John Tucker was supposed to sweep it out thisbefore he went to his baseball practice but I’ll fall over dead if he did it right now, instead of feeding the baby I’ll bet you fifteen dollars he’s laying in the house watching the MTV"

John Tucker was Eh to feed the baby I hadn’t yet seen the baby, since he’d only arrived six o But over the years Emelina and I had kept up I’d taped her kids’ school pictures to the ork of Carlo’s and my many ill-furnished apartments Sometimes repairmen would ask if they were my boys

I went around to the side yard and pushed open a wire gate that wouldn’t have kept out a deter ranch house across a huge brick courtyard that ild and overrun with flowering vines Every inch of space was taken up with fruit trees, painted flowerpots, and lawn chairs that looked like they’d been there since the last war I could hear chickens clucking softly sooat stretched its neck to get at a fig tree

The guesthouse had a pink door flanked by pots of geraniuainst the white walls like wine stains bloo on a tablecloth Inside, the little house ashed and i roo in the as stirred up by thebranches outside The bed had a carved headboard, painted with red ena woven spread It was a fairytale bed I wished I could fall down and sleep a hundred years in this little house with pale crisscrossing shadows on the walls

I heard the goat ainst the wall I opened cupboards Everything was spotless The eastin the living rooranite wall of the canyon a few yards away, a startling lack of view Ehest on her street, backed up against the canyon The floorboards of her front porch were on a level with her neighbors’ roofs

I tookI savored the first ht to unpacking boxes, looking for the sheets and coffeepot and swearing that ere going to get better organized, while I stepped stealthily over the bare floors, peeking around corners and into alluring doors, which generally turned out to be the broo sense that, like a new lover, the place held attributes I had yet to discover My favorite book as a child was The Secret Garden It’s eain, acco Carlo to the ends of the earth, because of the lure of a possible garret or secret closet But it ht be true