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"Are you kidding? How ot in this town?"

"Five eleven," I corrected "I’m the shorter of the bean-pole sisters" I felt suddenly drunk, though I wasn’t, che Trish drifted off toward the barbecue pit

He looked atHis left hand was fingering the tip of an olive branch and I expected him to snap it off but he didn’t, he only took in its texture as soarette

"You want another beer?" he asked

So that was going to be it, no filling in the last fifteen years No constructing ourselves for each other-otherwise known as falling in love "Think you can get over to that ice chest and back before this party is over?" I kneouldn’t

"In case I don’t, I’ve got your phone number" He winked

"Don’t you worry You’ll be hearing froh I hadn’t held any conscious expectations of Loyd I looked around at other faces, wondering if they all held secret disappointments for me Dona Althea, the ancient wo court in a lawn chair under the fig tree She was the one who used to collect the feathers for pinatas She looked today like she always had, dressed in black, fierce andEven with her braided crown of silver hair she wasn’t five feet tall JT’s roup with her, fanning the beer JT and Loyd had apparently been cooat had been pronounced done People were beginning to move toward the makeshift table, which I’d helped Emelina improvise from the doors to Mason’s and the twins’ rooms, covered with embroidered tablecloths coh food to save an African nation Potato salad, deviled eggs, menudo, tortillas and refried beans and a thousand kinds of dessert I heard sohpitched voice, "Touessed that for love nor money"

I wasn’t in any hurry I moved out of the way of the principal rush and stood near the gate to the side yard, nearvery still and alert, just on the other side of the gate It looked like an oversized coyote but it was definitely a doreen bandana tied around its neck This dog didn’t belong to Emelina’s household-I was pretty sure I knew all the fahtly open and its ears cocked, staring steadily through the wire gate at the people inside

"You thinking about crashing this party?" I asked the dog

It glanced up at aze back on the crowd Oryou so to wait awhile," I said "Nobody’s going todidn’t respond to this promise

All the olddown into a huddle of folding chairs near the front door oftheir plates carefully horizontal above their knees I started toabout fruit drop I plainly heard one of theround" I stood four feet away and invisible, I suppose because they were men, and women talked to women They asked questions of each other, to which they apparently already knew the answers

"Do you kno ive Black Mountain thirty days to shut down that leaching operation"

"Da that on our trees?"

"When did anybody ever tell the Mountain what to do?" The man who said this had a remarkably wrinkled brown face, like an Indian mummy I’d once seen in a roadside s," he said

A ht the EPA It’s not worth it They been saying for ten years thatfro operation"

Anotherhis fork toward the head of the canyon "Just enough to pay the taxes That’s all They’ll shut her down"

"You think so?" asked the one who reold andpiles If they wasn’t, they wouldn’t keep running the acid through the to stop no leaching operation on account of our pecan trees" His voice trailed off and he was quiet for a arette I heard wo rando out instructions, reining in their kids The party see underwater, a lost continent, and I felt profoundly sad though it wasn’t rateful to Emelina, and slip back into my house