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"My sister," I said, and then stopped, afraid of the lie I was about to tell I was going to say, "isn’t dead" I heard an old voice inaway from home We are from Zanzibar, we’re froh constructing

Several seats ahead of us, a teenage couple had begun necking enthusiastically You couldn’t bla and would drive you to anything, but they made me feel hopelessly alone

"Well," Alice said, apparently rereed to talk about "What would you do for the slugs?"

"I really don’t know, I’ood with plants" I considered the problem for a while "I think what Hallie used to do was put out beer for thes are attracted to it and they fall in, or so I know that sounds crazy but I’ht"

"Well" She stared at htfully "My husband and I aren’t drinkers, but I guess I could go out and get sos Do you knohat brand?"

"I don’t think it ht, I’ll do that," said Mrs Kiain to the incendiary four o’clocks, but then closed it right back up, holding the place with her finger "You ought to try to keep in touch with your sister," she toldwill ever happen You should treasure your family while you have it"

"Well, really I don’t have it," I said, resentful of her assuone My mother died when I was little and my father will probably be dead before the year’s out, and my baby died, and nowas you think"

Mrs Kimball looked stunned "Your sister? The one on the phone?"

"She got killed by the contras The ones down there that we send all the money to I think you probably heard about it"

She looked uneasy "I don’t know I ht have"

"It ot That’s the great Aet We watch the disasters parade by on TV, and every tiet it This is so, as Rita Cardenal would say, mental I didn’t look at Mrs Kiazine drift slowly to her lap I looked at the bright garden on the ely cal in a cotton field," I said "They kept her as a prisoner for weeks and weeks, and we kept hoping, but then they moved everybody to another caht of them Hallie and seven men All of the men were teachers They tied their hands behind the in a line at the side of a road, in a forest, right near the border All facing south"

I felt a hard knot in e I saw most clearly I still do My voice sounded like a voice that would come from some other person’s throat, sos "Thethe road, and at first when he saw theht, ’Oh, that’s too ive them all a ride, they won’t fit in ain after that I looked out theFar to the south, low cone shapes pushed up against the flat, bright sky Those distant h borders in this barren land seee of her azine We’d been silent for over an hour before she first spoke up about the four o’clocks, but the silence was much more noticeable now, after we’d broken it with our little conversation Awareness is everything Hallie once pointed out to me that people worry a lot more about the eternity after their deaths than the eternity that happened before they were born But it’s the sa out in all directions from where we stand

My airplane was said to be bound for Denver, but it sat on the runway for a very long time I had aseat and could watch other planes lift their noses one after another and plow their way up an invisible road into the sky I wasn’t iht o to cotton, but today my viscera were still It didn’t matter especially if we burned in a fiery crash