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After
- University of Arkansas Press
- Chapter
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P E T E R M A K U C K After In the low afternoon light, a long row of cottonwoods led us out of Santa Cruz, a small cemetery off in the desert. That day, a few days before Christmas, your father in front beside me, I kept seeing the seat beside you empty, and him, as I drove, stare through the passing mesquite to some other place perhaps, silence enforcing a distance. Lame, he had held my arm, looked down at the unhealed turf, then crossed himself, thin shoulders quaking. I looked beyond the wall, across the creosote flats, and watched a coyote drag something limp toward a culvert. Back in the car, I kept seeing, tethered to stones, all those mylar balloons—“Feliz Navidad” or “Te quiero” in the shape of a heart— emblems of another culture, telling us how far from home we were, the balloons tormented in the desert wind. Before houses again rose up 180 ❚ The 1990s and the gaudy lights of Phoenix hid an endless sky where stars began to glimmer, we stopped at a traffic light, emptiness everywhere but this rancho of cracked adobe, chickens and a single goat. In front of the corral, a Mexican sat on a kitchen chair, his face tipped back and bronzed like a mask. We watched a young woman trim his hair, then lean down for a whisper and a kiss, their faces wrinkled with laughter, making me ease the car ahead to center and frame them in the open gate at our side, while we waited for the light. Your father turned and watched them too, and though his face was shadowed, I saw his features tighten and focus. After the woman ran her fingers through her husband’s long dark hair and trimmed again, your father closed his eyes and smiled. Their voices came inside but they never looked our way as we watched, oblivious as a family photo finished by a boy in a red bandanna entering from the right, chasing a black chicken and making it fly. Before we left that crossroads with whatever it was we needed, the light went green two or three times, I think. The 1990s ❚ 181 ...