She draws me in with her voice, her story voice, breathless,
distant, elusive as smoke.
"Death has a face," my mother says.
Did you know that?
I sit on my front porch step in Denver
sketching a shrine for Dia De los Muertos, for my father.
And she switches the conversation from folk art
to her childhood, pulling me through the phone line
into her world of secrets.
"The body stiffens" she continues,
"the back arches, that toes point,
and the face makes all these expressions.
Then the mouth opens wide, and the eyes open wide,
and all of a sudden, the body lets loose and relaxes.
Something just gives."
And she stops, as she always does,
mistaking my silence for disbelief,
and I slide into the space between what she says
and what I see.
The wind blew in hard from the North,
lashing the gnarled gray branches of the cottonwoods
until they twisted and writhe like witches.
Above white mesa, thunderheads bruised the sky.
Juan Mora stomped on the accelerator,
and his flatbed tore along the wagon trail
leading East from his Rio Puerco village.
He was running out of time, and he knew it.
He left the head gate open again,
and if he didn't get to his field soon,
his meager crop of Pinto beans would
drown in the torrent of Rainwater
set to roar through the Esechias like a stampede.
He'd had a string of bad harvests lately,
and with the hot breath of the dust ball
bearing down from Oklahoma and Texas,
he couldn't survive another.
Shovels clatter in the truck bed, his oldest son,
Vidal bounced on the seat beside him,
slamming his head on the roof.
Juan didn't notice.
His eyes were fixed on the anvil clouds sliding in
from Jemez Pueblo.
In 10 minutes, maybe 15, he'd lose it all.
Juan braked at the edge of a shallow furrows,
gravel sprang from his truck tires like a shotgun blast.
He hopped out, grabbed a shovel, and thrust it at Vidal.
Fix that brake at the North end.
Hurry.
Vidal sprinted away while Juan made for the head gate
at the South.
His lanky frame loping along the banks of a canal
he dug only four years earlier, when
he gazed into the buckskin folds of the Valley
and saw a shimmering he mistook for a promise.
His boots fell heavily on the thick sand, and for a moment,
he was dreaming, running in place, arms pumping,
sinking deeper into a land that would not be nourished
with anything less than blood.
At last, he reached the large iron wheel
regulating the flow of irrigation water.
He gritted his teeth and turned.
With all the strength, he turned.
Rotation after screeching rotation
until his chest heaved, his arms burned, and the heavy plates
sunk in the mud.
He'd made it, he told himself.
For once in his life, he made it.
Juan wiped his forehead with his shirt sleeve,
rested the shovel on his shoulder
and glanced back at Vidal.
As he opened his mouth to call his son,
the wind gusted, sending his straw cowboy hat
zigzagging over the fields.
"Shoot," he grumbled, and started after it.
50 yards away Vidal bent over a breach,
scooping silt with his hands, cold, tired,
cursing under his breath.
"Everyone knew the storm was coming,"
he thought, why did his father soak his field so long?
Couldn't he do anything right?
Then a flash, and a boom.
Vidal tumbled on to his side, ears ringing, enveloped
by the odor of burnt hair.
"Papa?"
He pushed himself up, and scanned the fields,
but couldn't see his father.
"Papa?"
He scrambled toward the head gate, but slipped and fell.
His mouth filling with the coppery taste of blood.
Sloshing ahead on all fours, he saw a yellow curl hidden
among the squat green leaves.
His father's hat.
As Vidal reached for it, other shapes took form.
A denim sleeve, and arm, a pair of overalls, a man on his back.
Papa.
It began to rain.
60 miles Southeast in the village of Corrales,
Abenicio Perea, my great grandfather,
dozed off on his broad iron bed when
a voice swirled into the room.
"Estoy muerto!"
Abenicio reached over to shake his wife.
"It's Juan, Juan Mora."
"I hear it."
She said, "be quiet."
The voice whipped around them.
Once, twice, and tore down the road
to the Adobe home of Carlos Candelaria,
my grandfather, Juan's brother-in-law and best friend.
"Estoy muerto."
Carlos covered his head with a bed sheet,
while his wife Desolina used a pillow
to shield their infant daughter, my mother, who
slept between them.
Estoy muerto.
I'm dead.
The foot of the bed rose 10 inches off the floorboards
before slamming down hard.
Desolina closed her eyes and made the sign of the cross.
May "God forgive your sins," she said, "leave us alone."
Then nothing.
The patter of rain on the sunflowers beneath the window.
Carlos listened a good 3 minutes before slipping on his boots
and rushing outside to investigate.
Desolina called after him, "check the baby", and followed.
My mother remained in bed, asleep.
A spirit had just come to them, an angry, anguished spirit.
Yet, she remained calm, content, dreaming.
Thank you.