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Al his voice "I told you I want Apodaca’s line and not any of the others I want gaffers I’m not interested in knife birds"

The short o up to Phoenix They’re getting goddamn tourists at those knife tourneys It’s a circus You can get two hundred birds through there in a day"

"Don’t tell affers out there, or did I just waste a tank of gas?"

Their voices dropped lower again I felt uncohtly appalled by the notion of "knife birds" It was encouraging that Loyd didn’t want them, whatever they were The words the men used were as mysterious as Loyd’s railroad talk He evidently spoke a lot of languages, not even counting Apache and Pueblo and Navajo

Across the street fro ashed church-the only white building in an adobe town It was shaped like the Alaround in front was planted with petunias, phlox, andHallie always said she loved about Indian reservations and Mexico was that there were no rules about color She was right It was really a splendid combination, now that I looked at it, but in some orderly country like Ger this in front of your house; in suburban Tucson they’d just avoid you Keep their kids inside when you went out to weed

People trailed out of the church in twos and threes,out the same color scheme in their blouses and skirts They all looked at me as they passed, not with hostility, but with the kind of curiosity you’d have if you noticed an odd plant had popped up in your garden: you wouldn’t yank it out right away You’d give it a few days to see what developed

I could hear roosters cock-a-doodling somewhere, and I was curious As I went down the steps an adobe-colored dog scooted out of my way and ran under the porch The store, I discovered, had a deep backyard The chain-link fence was overgroeedy vines, but I could still see in: it was a rooster garden in there Roosters in se They strutted and turned in circles, eying each other as if each moment were new, as if they hadn’t for all their natural lives been surrounded by these other birds They had red faces and glossy black feathers that threw off iridescent flashes of color, like a hubird’s throat Beautiful But the claustrophobic energy was tiring to watch

I heard a door slao, but not in the bad e of town he was s

I offered hias?"

He put his ar the nape of my neck, and shot me a sideways look "No way"

We weren’t headed back toward Grace, we drove north There were no more towns, just reddish hills and a badly rutted road "Was that Whiteriver?" I asked