Animal Dreams

"They used to always say they'd hire again up there when the price of copper went up."

"Well, you know, that's talk. Nobody's waiting around anymore, Now it's pecans and plums. And the railroad, thank God for that. I think we could live off the orchards if the boys didn't eat like horses and outgrow their shoes every ten days. Get this, now they're too fashion conscious to wear each other's hand-me-downs. Remember when boys didn't give a shit what they wore? We never should have got satellite TV." She turned around, drying her hands on her apron. "Is that rascal gone to sleep? Thanks. Codi. I'll take him upstairs and put him down for his nap." She lifted the baby onto her shoulder like a sack of valuable flour. "You got big plans for today?"

"I thought I'd make an excursion into the city," I said. "Check out the dry goods at the Baptist Grocery."

She laughed. "If you can wait awhile I'll go with you. Grammy can listen for the baby. She ought to be home pretty soon from her meeting." Emelina rolled her eyes as she left the kitchen. "Stitch and Bitch Club on Mondays, bright and early."

I stood at the window looking out at the grove of trees that ran the length of the canyon. Plum, pear, apple. And quince, I believe, though I couldn't identify a quince tree to save my life. I only remembered the word because of the way people here pronounced it-"queens"-with their Spanish-influenced vowels. In the distance I could make out white satellite dishes perched among the cacti on the red cliff-one to each house, like dogs. Well, that was something new. The sky was overcast. In the orchards on the other side of the river I could see men working among the trees. I remembered them beating the branches with long poles, bringing down scattered showers of pecans. Frailing, that was called. In the older orchards sometimes they had to climb up into the tallest trees to reach the upper branches with their poles. But it was too early in the year for that. Pecans didn't ripen till late fall.

Hallie and I had played in this house once or twice as children, when a pair of pigeon-toed girl cousins of J.T.'s had lived here. Now it belonged so securely to Emelina. It was hard to realize how fully life had gone on. Of course, it would. I could have stayed here, or gone away as I did, it made no difference to Grace.

I washed the baby's cup, running my finger around the inside rim. While the sun left the windowsill and moved on to other things, I noticed, the prayer plants had closed up when I wasn't watching. They stood in a self-satisfied row, keeping their thoughts to themselves.

"You keep some of the dirt on them, and you just stuff them down in paper bags and keep them somewhere dark," said Lydia Galvez. "Do you have a root cellar?"

"No, uh-uh. We did, but the boys got into it and figured out how to cave it in some way," Emelina said.

"Well, you could put them anyplace dark. The bottom of a closet would do."

Lydia Galvez was the wife of John Tucker's little league coach. I'd been introduced. We'd discussed John Tucker, baseball, and Emelina's talent for producing boys. The whole town had been betting this last one would be a girl, Lydia Galvez told me. Now they were talking about dividing gladiolus bulbs.

"I've got some black," Lydia was saying. "Do you have any black? I could spare you some. They're not a true black, I'd really call it purple, but they're supposed to be important."

Emelina gave me a glance, so I knew she was trying to wind things up. Our whole afternoon had gone pretty much this way. Lydia, like everyone else, had no earthly notion of what to say to me, or I to them; I rarely even remembered who they were. But we were all polite, as if I were Emelina's lunatic maiden aunt.

I sat down on the wall in front of the courthouse and watched myself in the plate-glass window of Jonny's Breakfast, which was empty at this hour. My reflection stared back, looking more alone than anything I'd seen in my life. It occurred to me that I'd never drawn a breath here without Hallie. Not one I could be sure of. I was three when she was born. Before that I wasn't conscious of my place in the world, so it didn't matter.

Later, it mattered more than anything. Doc Homer drilled us relentlessly on how we differed from our peers: in ambition, native ability, even physical constitution. The nearest thing to praise, from him, was "No one else in Grace knows that!" Or, "You are Nolines." We stood out like a pair of silos on a midwestern prairie. As far as I could see, being Nolines meant that we were impossibly long-limbed like our father and all the Noline relatives we never got to meet. He and mother came from a part of Illinois (this is a quote) where people were reasonable and tall.