and their hearts in their throats and on a good day the Mexican cops don't bother them. On a bad day, they make them wake up the kids, take down their hammocks, and move into somebody else's district. It's a collective death. A whole land-based culture is being relocated out of its land-like a body trying to move out of its skin. Only the portable things survive. The women have their backstrap looms and woven clothes, like you see sometimes in import stores. All those brilliant colors in this hopeless place, it kills you.
Right this minute I'm sitting in the rain, waiting for the mail truck/water delivery (I keep expecting that same guy with his Fanta truck) and watching four barefoot kids around a cook fire. The one in charge is maybe six. She's sharpening cooking sticks while these damp black chickens strut around shaking themselves and the toddlers pull logs out and roll them to make sparks. I'm just on edge. You live your life in the States and you can't even picture something like this. It's easy to get used to the privilege of a safe life.
I know you're worrying but you don't have to, since we've established that I'm the luckiest person alive. Even though I don't feel like it. I'll write from Nica next. I'm sure I'll be happier once I'm put to some use. I miss you, Codi, write and make me feel better.
Love from your faithful adoring slave-for-life,
Hallie
The ending was an old joke: in our letters we used to try to outdo each other with ingratiating closures. The rest of the letter was pure Hallie. Even in a lethargic mood she noticed every vanilla orchid, every agony and ecstasy. Especially agony. She might as well not have had skin, where emotions were concerned. Other people's hurt ran right over into her flesh. For example: I'll flip through a newspaper and take note of the various disasters, and then Hallie will read the same paper and cry her eyes out. She'll feel like she has to do something about it. And me, if I want to do anything, it's to run hell for leather in the other direction. Maybe it's true what they say, that as long as you're nursing your own pain, whatever it is, you'll turn your back on others in the same boat. You'll want to believe the fix they're in is their own damn fault.
The strangest thing is that where pain seemed to have anesthetized me, it gave Hallie extra nerve endings. This haunts me. What we suffered in our lives we went through together, but somehow we came out different doors, on different ground levels.
Friday night after the first week of school, the dog with the green bandana showed up again at the gate. I saw it when I came outside after my solitary supper to water the morning glories and potted geraniums on my front step. The heat seemed to wilt them right down to death's door, but water always brought them back. I could only wish for such resilience.
"Hi, buddy," I said to the dog. "No barbecues today. You're out of luck."
Thirty seconds later Loyd was standing at the door with a bottle of beer. "I told you I'd get back to you with this," he said, grinning. "I'm a man of my word."
"Well, okay," I said. "I guess you are." I wasn't sure how I felt about seeing him in my doorway, other than surprised. I pulled a couple of folding chairs onto the patio, where we could see the sunset. The sky was a bright, artificial-looking orange, a color you might expect to see in the Hollywood Shop. "Are you going to have one too, or do I drink this alone?" I asked him.
Loyd said he'd just take a soda because he was marked up and five times out. I was mystified by this information.
"I'm marked up on the call board at the depot," he explained. "To take a train out. Five times out means I'm fifth in line. I'll probably get called late tonight or early tomorrow morning."
"Oh," I said. "It sounded like baseball scores. The count is three and two and it's the bottom of the seventh."
Loyd laughed. "I guess it would sound like that. You get used to talking railroad talk like it was plain English. Around here that's about all everybody does, is railroad."
"That, and watch the fruit fall off their trees."
Loyd looked at me, surprised. "You know about that, do you?"