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"Dam up the river," Viola said "That’s all they have to do to meet with the EPA laws Dah here The EPA just says they can’t put it down here where people live"

"But then there would be no water for the orchards That would be worse than the way it is now"

"That’s right But it’s okey-dokey with the EPA Theabout it yesterday, with this hot-shot guy from Phoenix They sat and talked for about nine or ten hours and finally what he told them is if Black Mountain dams up the river, it’s out of the jurisdiction of the Environ words scornfully, as if she were glad to get them out of her hts"

"Nobody around here’s got water rights All these fahts to the coht ere gettingWe had us a fiesta"

I stared at her "So do you know for sure that’s what they’re going to do? Divert the river?"

She shrugged "Who knohat anybody is going to do for sure? We could all die tomorrow Only the Lord knows"

I wanted to shake her I wished she would lookto happen?"

She nodded once, never taking her eyes off the snap beans that flew through her hands and rang freshly broken into the aluminum bowl

I still couldn’t believe it "How could they do that?"

"With bulldozers," Viola said

Loyd and I made another date for Whiteriver, this ti before, I ith Emelina to hear Chicken Scratch music at the outdoor restaurant run by Dona Althea’s four daughters The sao reservation for decades, substituting sons for fathers so gradually that the ed Eard and Dolly Parton; but Waila was so special, she said, she was crazy about it Her boys, enlightened by MTV, rolled their eyes She took Mason and the baby with us because, as Emelina put it, they were too little to have a choice

The restaurant was outdoors, in a walled courtyard that was a larger, more baroque version of Emelina’s Flowers bloos and squatty roosters, some of which had lost body parts, and two enorhts that evidently knew no season Carved out here and there in the thick adobe ere rounded niches that were home to weather-worn saints the size of a GI Joe; some, in fact, looked suspiciously like dolls in saints’ clothing In a corner, near where the band was setting up, stood a four-foot-tall, almost comically thin St Francis of Assisi He looked venerable and tired (also hungry), and was surrounded by a postlazed ceramic and plastic birds

The tables and chairs were of every i the same theme, and the flatware too-like snowflakes, no two alike The effect was cohters All four of theed somewhere in her name) were over sixty, as thin as St Francis but without his anih the croith efficient scowls, taking orders and bringing out heavenly food froh they couldn’t quite understand why they’d agreed to go to all this trouble You would think they’d have figured it out by now It had been the most popular restaurant in town for half a century

With tender, paternal attention the Alvaro Brothers unwrapped their musical instruht-blocked quilts The enerations, rather than actual brothers The elder Alvaro, dressed in cowboy boots and a forunmetal saxophone that reed Alvaro with shoulder-length hair played accordion, and two boys in T-shirts played bass guitar and drums The old sax player stepped up to the microphone "We are the Alvaro Brothers," he said "If we make too much noise, let us know"

It was the last tian to play, they stood motionless with their mouths turned down in concentration Everybody else was dancing in their seats Chicken Scratch music is Mexican-spiced Native Ahtly drunken wedding party, and it moves you up and down; you can’t keep still A line of older women in dark skirts and blouses, possibly Alvaro Sisters or Alvaro Wives, stood near the kitchen, swaying a little and tapping their feet Several couples began to dance, and I could tell E to join them, but she held herself back Mason showed no such restraint He was out of his seat in no ti into people’s legs The younger people o woan to do the traditional six-step dance Theyover the gravel and sounding-if not looking-exactly like the scratching hens that give the music its name