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Oron for dear life It was hard to believe I’d once been the one to strike out bravely for college, leaving Hallie crying in front of the Baptist Grocery Now it seemed like I was the baby of the family, the one with no fir everyone young

Hallie was headed for a war zone She walked straight through the puddles, dragging s and drench my shoes to keep up with her When Hallie was intensely excited she had a wild-animal look to her that could stop people in their tracks A vibration came from her skin, like a bell that has just been struck Her hair was long and reckless, curling wildly in the humidity Every part ofthat if anything happened to her I wouldn’t survive I couldn’t see that there would be anyas I held Hallie’s ar into the truck, turning the key, driving south through Arizona and Mexico and the perilous places farther on, wouldn’t be stopped at a roadblock bytwenty-nine years old and alone and fe antihistalove compartment It seemed like a chain of events I could hold back, there in the parking lot, with the bones of her elbow securely gripped in my hand

Her little beat-up pickup looked impossibly loaded, like the tiny burros you see in postcards carrying elephant-sized burdens without complaint I wasn’t worried about the truck I asked where she’d put her antihistarapher who’d been shot, ostensibly for running drugs, because he had a baby-food jar of aspirin and vita

Hallie said her pills were no place easy to find

I put my head on her shoulder "What if our houseplants die?"

"They won’t," she said Hallie kneanted easy answers

I lifted htfully The sky had cleared The early-low, and she looked like an angel She never had any idea how she looked to other people; she thought she was plain

"If the flea beetles start getting at the ones on the porch," she said slowly, "dust them with Celite" Hallie worked for the Extension Service and answered the Garden Hotline, 626-BUGS For a period of years ending on that day, garden pests were her life

I hugged her with all the strength in e your o?"

"You really love me, so you want eraniuht to feel," I said "I just don’t"

Her breath expanded her chest againstafter a fence is wired around its trunk The unbelievable force of that expansion And I let her go

She started up her truck and waved froone-forever wave but a chin-up wave like you see in the World War II movies, where everybody is brave because they all believe in the sa I told myself because I had no other choice that Hallie would do all right That ere both going to live

I walked the six blocks ho trees and a sun that was already too hot Across the street I heard a woman say to her companion in an odd accent, "It’s the Desert Museum I had understood him to say the ’dessertquite different" I thought: this is how life is, ridiculous beyond comprehension What I felt wasn’t pain but a hollowness, like a druet our front door open, because everything in Tucson with ets cantankerous in the rainy season Hallie had raphite in the lock before she left

A white balloon left over fro room into the kitchen It was the size of a head, and had lost so the floor like a tired old ghost Static electricity drew it along behind me I swatted it away froerator I found some red bell peppers that had been absurdly expensive at the health-foodup in the kitchen After that I found a paring knife and went to work on a cucu breakfast just for myself Carlo was at the hospital and I had no idea when he was due back

The phone rang and I ju in the kitchen eating costly vegetables I was afraid it was going to be soarden pests, but they’d already turned off the Garden Hotline It was Hallie calling from a pay phone this side of the border to tell raphite the lock