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It ard getting started I re I could hold on and stop our lives right there I took soua," I said "She wanted that To enrich the soil of a jungle But I wanted so here too" I stopped, because it sounded toI looked around at the unpretentious faces like slices of bread, all the black dresses, the dark shoes, and I looked up at the bright leaves lit from above It was a brilliant, hot day and I didn’t feel at all like crying The black dressesseeathered in the trees behind our heads, keeping their distance, but curious, probably hoping for food A peacock wouldn’t know the difference between a picnic and a funeral The outward signs were si?" I asked

"Yes," said E"

"What?" I couldn’t think of any particular song that Hallie liked, except soe years "Mother and Child Reunion" and "Maggie May" I thought of Hallie ht abstractly about never seeing her again, what that reallywhen she would coested "Let the Circle Be Unbroken," so we sang that, and then we sang "De Colores" because everybody knew it Noruitar

Then it was quiet again People shifted slightly on their feet, the sahout the crowd, like the dancers at Santa Rosalia Except unconscious, and unrehearsed I pulled some letters out of my pocket and read parts of them that Emelina had helpedto save the world, that you didn’t choose your road for the reward at the end, but for the way it felt as you went along And I read so to sell tractor parts, then wondering why people would turn to Yugoslavia for tractors I are that , but I felt there was soic to it, and people were tolerant Truly, I think they would have listened to ht be the better part of love

I read a quote she’d writtensaid by Father Fernando Cardenal, as in charge of the literacy crusade: "You learn to read so you can identify the reality in which you live, so that you can becoonist of history rather than a spectator" I waited a minute, while a peacock screamed Then I read some words of Hallie’s: "The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for And the most"

Another peacock suddenly howled nearby I saw E to spot it I went on:

"And the most you can do is live inside that hope What I want is so sih to eat, enough to go around The possibility that kids row up to be neither the destroyers nor the destroyed"

I finished by reading the letter from Sister Sabina Martin She said thousands of people joined us in rief any smaller," she wrote "But I believe it er Certainly, she won’t be forgotten"

Several peafowl had hopped to the ground and were uttural noises, impatient for food I saw Glen and Curtis sneak off into the trees in pursuit of a peacock they’d never catch

"This is what I brought" I knelt by the afghan and set down a pair of Hallie’s srade size They could have been mine, it was impossible to tell, but I said they were Hallie’s I put them in the center of the red-and-black crocheted blanket "I brought these because they just rely shoes It was just one of the iether I don’t know We felt kind of alone soh the curtain of water in olds She had on her polyester, the funeral dress for all seasons, and she was perspiring; broad damp spots underlined her bosom "Whenever I think of you kids I think of the ceraveyard for All Souls’ You were always a very big help"

I looked at Viola She stared back, rubbing the bridge of her nose There was the faintest light of a ss they claimed we’d left in their houses e played there as children: a doll with unpleasant glass eyes and a gruesoish plastic horse; a metal hen that, when you pushed her down on her feet,Also a pink sweater, size 6X Mrs Nunez swore it was Hallie’s "It was behind the refrigerator I didn’t find it till last year when the refrigerator give out and we had to call the et us a new one in there The dust, I hate to tell you! And there was this little sweater of Halimeda Noline’s She used to set up there on top of the refrigerator, because I told her she couldn’t drink beer till she was as tall as her daddy"