Page 57 (1/2)

"Well, he was the boss"

"Right He was the boss"

E ahead, but I was pushing the stroller over gravel and Viola was over sixty, so we both had an excuse to lag We were a harvester-ant clan ourselves, burdened not only with flowers but with food and beer and soft drinks and sundry paraphernalia John Tucker was carrying a new, largish St Joseph for Viola’s husband’s grave JT was still in El Paso, and Loyd was on a switch engine in Yuma, but we didn’t seem to need them all that -carton flowers A festival of women and children and old people and dead ancestors

Viola stopped for breath, holding the boso down at the canyon I waited with her, adjusting the red handkerchief Emelina had tied over Nicholas’s bald head to shield it from sun As he vibrated over the corduroy road the kerchief kept slipping down over his eyes, and he looked like a drunken pirate I bent over and looked into his face, upside-down He enlightened me with a wicked pirate smile

It was a spectacular day The roadside was lined with bright yellow plumes of rabbitbrush, apparently too corave, but I liked them I would try to remember to pick some on my way back down, to stick into the clay ollas around my house; I was determined to prove to Emelina that I wasn’t completely bereft of domestic instincts

From where we stood we could look down on the whole of Grace plus the many s out along the length of Gracela Canyon and its tributaries, often inhabited by just a few faraveyards These settlements were ht up when Black Mountain chased a vein of copper under their floors; others had been buried; the co where it pleased Grace’s huge main cemetery was located on the opposite side of the canyon, as far as possible froraveyards were sacred

At the upstreas of the dam that would divert the river out Tortoise Canyon There had been a ridiculous photo in the local paper: the co cere delicately on shovels with their wing-tip shoes These , and would drive right back They all had broad salesmen’s smiles They pretended the dam was some kind of community-improvement project, but from where Viola and I stood it looked like exactly what it was-a huge grave Marigold-orange earth round

"So what’s going to happen?" I asked Viola

"The Lord in heaven knows," she said

I prodded "Well, there was a ht Have you talked to anybody?"

"Oh, sure The s about it and decided to have a lawsuit A lawyer came up from Tucson to meet with Jimmy Soltovedas"