Animal Dreams

They hired me. The state had some kind of emergency clause that in a pinch allowed people to teach without certification. And of course I did have a world of education in the life sciences. Also, I believe my last name had something to do with it. Nothing else I put down in my wobbly writing on that application could have impressed anyone too much.

I dumped the shards of the flowerpot into a plastic trash bag, making the satisfactory sound of demolition. I started in with Emelina on the honeysuckle vines. As we dragged them out she looped the long strands around her arm like strings of Christmas tree lights. "You excited about starting?" she asked.

"Nervous."

"Well hell, Codi, you're bound to be better than the last one. John Tucker says she was scared of her shadow. Some senior boys chased her into the teachers' lounge with a fetal pig."

Emelina's faith in me was heartening.

"Did I tell you J.T. called this morning?" she asked. "They're going to make it home for the fiesta. Him and Loyd. Do you remember Loyd?"

I yanked at a vine that was rooted right into the crumbling adobe. "Sure," I said.

"I didn't know if you would. I think you were the only girl in the whole high school that never fell for him."

It was humid and hot. I'd tied a bandana around my forehead and already it was soaking wet. The salt stung my eyes.

"I went out with Loyd a few times," I said.

"Did you? Him and J.T. are real good buddies. He's straightened out a lot. He's real sweet." She unburdened herself of the loops of vines, laying them in a pile, and stood up with her hands on her waist, arching her back. "Loyd, I mean." She laughed. "Not J.T. He's just the same as he always was."

I took off my bandana and wrung it out. The dark drops on the hot brick dried up instantly, leaving behind a white lace of salt. Just like the irrigation water on the alfalfa. In just this way the fields get ruined, I thought to myself.

Emelina kicked tentatively at the brick barbecue pit. "You think this thing will stand up after we get the vines out of it?"

"I think they're what's holding it together," I said.

She cocked her head and looked at it thoughtfully. "Well, if it falls down we'll just have us a roasted-goat disaster. We'll just have to get extra beer."

On the morning of the fiesta she sent John Tucker and me to town for last-minute supplies, including extra beer, although the barbecue pit showed every sign of standing through another Labor Day fiesta. I followed John Tucker down a path I didn't know, a short cut through a different orchard. "What kind of trees are those?" I asked John Tucker. The branches were heavy with what looked like small yellow-green pomegranates.

"Quince," he said, with a perfect short "i," not "queens." The Spanish-flavored accent of Old Grace was dying out, thanks to satellite TV, I suppose. I watched the back of his shorn head; the path was narrow and we walked single file. At thirteen he was my height, a head taller than Emelina. It must shift your liaison with a child when you have to look up to him.

I caught a glimpse of bright car windshield through the trees, and knew where we were. You could picture Grace as a house, with orchards for rooms. To map it of course you'd have to be a botanist. We left quince and entered pecan, where the ground was covered with tiny, immature nuts. "So what's happening with these orchards?" I asked, kicking at a slew of green pecans the size of peach pits. "I've been seeing this all over."

"Fruit drop."

John Tucker was already a man of few words.

The Baptist Grocery was nondenominational, but harked back to a time when everything in Grace, including grocery stores, was still segregated. This wasn't recent, but maybe a century ago. Here the Hispanic and Anglo bloodlines got very mixed up early on, starting with the arrival of the Gracela sisters. By the time people elsewhere were waking up to such ideas as busing, everyone in Grace had pretty much given up on claiming a superior pedigree. Nowadays the Baptist Grocery peddled frozen fish sticks to Protestant and Catholic alike.

John Tucker shopped like an automaton, counting out bags of chips and jars of salsa. Since he seemed interested in efficiency, not congeniality, I suggested we split up. I would go to the liquor store and meet him in front of the courthouse.

Drinking establishments had proliferated in Grace since my day. The mine had closed in the interim, of course; bars and economic duress are common fellow travelers. I passed the Horny Toad Saloon and the Little Dipper plus the one I remembered, the State Line, which was no more situated on the state line than the grocery was Baptist. New Mexico lay thirty miles to the east. I think the name referred to the days when Gracela County was dry and people had to drive to the border for beer.