Lake Overturn by Vestal McIntyre Page B

ran again. He ran and ran until he saw the lights of the barracks. When he reached the door, the pig had vanished.
    The next morning his fever was gone and he was able to work. A few months later he had his brothers with him and, a year after that, his wife and children. Then the Hacienda.
    He confessed his sin and did penance many times over, but still feared that his soul was lost. All his life he worked with fatalistic determination. He rarely smiled and never sang, and he died young.
    Lina’s mother once told her that Papá ’s soul was trapped in purgatory—forever, she feared. God had forgiven him, but the Devil had him by the ankle and wouldn’t let him go. She knew this because she had dreamed it. There were tears in her eyes as she told Lina this; it was the only time Lina ever saw her cry.
    On Lina’s last visit to the Hacienda before Mamá died, two nieces, having heard that Mamá ’s health was in decline, had visited from Mexico with their children. The house was full to bursting. Enrique, who was growing up and turning shy, especially around all these cousins he didn’t know, would venture out among them, then return to Lina’s side. He slowly washed leaves of lettuce as Lina diced chilies with a plastic grocery bag covering her left hand like a glove. Her eyes watered, and she raised her wrist to her nose, letting the knife dangle.
    Enrique’s aunt approached with a steaming pot. “Enrique, muévate , I need that sink!”
    “There’s nothing for you to do, baby,” said Lina. “Go sit with Abuela .”
    Enrique’s grandmother sat under blankets in her wheelchair. She nodded when Enrique sat down, but then closed her eyes and said nothing. Someone played a guitar on the back porch, sang a call-and-response song with the children in Spanish.
    A horizontal bar repeatedly licked the fuzzy image on the screen of the old television in the corner. Abuela ’s head nodded and she seemed on the verge of sleep. (A week later Enrique would wonder if she had been on the verge of death, testing the waters of the black river, el rio negro , and then retreating. Old Mexicans, he felt, died in a very different way than old white people, who slipped away quietly in clean hospitals.)
    After dinner they all gathered on the steps out back for a family photo. Abuela squinted, let her jaw hang slack, and seemed to wonder, Who are all these fools? A cousin from Mexico named Julio sat on the step behind Enrique. Enrique had watched him roughhousing with the other boys earlier. He didn’t earn their respect by hitting or pinching, but by carrying himself with utter confidence, shoulders thrown back and a white smile blazing forward.
    At one point he had come over to Enrique. “You live here?” he asked in Spanish. Unlike the others, he wasn’t ashamed that he only spoke Spanish.
    “No, I live in Eula.”
    “But you live in the United States?”
    “Yes.”
    “I live in Juárez.”
    “Yes, I know.”
    “But I’m going to move here.”
    And with that he had run off.
    Enrique had watched him for a while and fantasized that, when Julio moved here, they would become best friends.
    Now Uncle Víctor said, “ A ver, sonrían. Say cheese!”
    Enrique leaned back against Julio’s knees. The group said “cheese” with the hardest ch and the softest s ever: “Tcheeees!”
    Uncle Víctor snapped the picture and said, “Hol’ on, don’ move, I got another camera here. Momentito, por favor .”
    All the kids squirmed except for Enrique, who couldn’t move for the thrill of being supported—even gently clutched—by Julio’s knobby knees.
    “Okay, sonrían !”
    In a brash moment, Enrique leaned farther back and draped an arm over Julio’s knee, and—rapture!—Julio lay his hands on his shoulders.
    Julio never ended up moving to Idaho.
    That night Mamá didn’t say good-bye, even when Lina took her hands and repeated “Adiós,” and “Te amo, Mamá,” until her voice broke. Lina couldn’t stay over—all the