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I bobbed along with thewith the curves When I relaxed enough I could feel like a sravitational pull fro, nor where I had been Not Carlo, not Loyd, not Doc Homer Not Hallie, who did not exist

"Where do you think people go when they die?" Loyd asked, the day before I left He was on his way out to take a westbound into Tucson; the next day he would fetch hoo in or out, like aard beginners trying to end a date Except it wasn’t a beginners’s conversation

"Nowhere," I said "I think when people die they’re just dead"

"Not heaven?"

I looked up at the sky It looked quite empty "No"

"The Pueblo story is that everybody started out underground People and ani a hole and let everybody out They cliround When they die they go back under"

I thought of the kivas, the ladders, and the thousand mud walls of Santa Rosalia I could hear the dry rattle of the corn dancers’ shell bells: the exact sound of locusts rising up frorass I understood that Loyd was one of the most blessed people I knew

"I always try to think of it that way," he said, after aadventure up here, and then went home"

Leander, he would ht of Hallie fertilizing the tropics Thinking about how much she loved stupid banana trees and orchids I said, "I have this idea that if I don’t stay here and cry for Hallie, then there’s no family to absorb the loss Nobody that remembers"

"And that’s what you want? For Hallie to be forgotten?"

I couldn’t have said what I meant "No I just don’t want to be the one that’s left behind to hurt this one already If you’re dead when so won’t make you dead You’ll just be alive in a different place"

"This place has Hallie in it When I lived here, I was half her and half e how you feel"

"I won’t know that till I’one, will I?"