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At soain I felt I’d been on that train for the whole of my life We approached Grace froo by the junkyard There was a tunnel through the granite cliffs and we entered it fast-the dark rock wallclamor of tons of forward ht again I blinked against the overexposed world By the tiht don behind the old jailhouse, pulling the sighing brakes, slowing down We calinted on its pleated tin roof, and I noticed a carob tree there with a trunk the size of a rain barrel It must be the male-the mate to the one up by the liquor store The one I’d been looking for

The conductor looked a little surprised when I pulledoff the rack and hopped down onto the concrete apron of the depot

"This isn’t anywhere, sweetheart," he said, looking down at me from the doorway He was a very old, very dark-skinned man whose uniform looked as if it could hold up its shoulders without hiet back on," he warned "Ten e, and then we’re headed out for El Paso"

"I know I don’t want to get back on I live here"

"Well, how do you do," he said He stepped back into the car and waved at loved hand fluttered like a dove

A hundred yards up the line I saw the fireine It was soer Bristol Loyd tossed down Roger’s grip and his own, one at a ti himself easily down the ladder as if he were born for this work He talked briefly with two other uessed They would speak in theircatchers and sun kinks and the ones that had died on the line, picking up trains fro on They parted ways and the ne cliine The other two rips and lunch buckets: one short and stocky, the other taller, broad-shouldered, with his hair in a ponytail The people you love always look perfectly proportioned froain, very slowly, the speed of a living creature You could still run and catch it Loyd and Roger kept walking towardwhat he didn’t, I had so much power and none at all I was on the outside, in a different dimension I’d lived there always

Then he stopped dead, just for a second I’ll reer ht up toover his shoulder like a ready traveler

"Thanks for the ride," I said

He put one arave me the kind of kiss no fool would walk away from twice

Chapter 26

26 The Fifty Mothers

For several days I kept co back to this: we had no body I wanted to have a funeral for Hallie, but I was at a loss I knew the remains should not have been i a place to focus their eyes We sit facing it, bear it on our shoulders, follow it down the road in procession and finally long to follow it into the ground The body would have provided an agenda and told one

I went to look for so else that in my mind stood for her: the semilla besada, one of the supernaturally blessed trees that in the old days were festooned like Christmas trees with the symbols of people’s hopes We could hold a funeral there, outside, under the leaves I wanted to find the exact plum tree where we’d hidden a lock of our intertwined hair I knew the orchard but couldn’t find the tree Either it was gone, or it was no longer exceptional Maybe the trees all around it had stretched their taproots and found the sa vein

It was June, a week before Hallie’s thirtieth birthday The canopies were in full green, each one as brilliant as a halo The blosso three and four to a cluster, not yet pruned by nature or by hand Every tree in every orchard looked blessed So we had the funeral there, in the old Do that rehan on the ground and we stood around that Instead of decorating a tree with our hopes for the future, we decorated a blanket with icons from the past All the women from Stitch and Bitch were there And JT and Emelina, of course, and Loyd All of my students, as well Doc Hoo very far out of his house these days, or very far out of his head