WHAT DO WE LEAVE WHEN WE LEAVE THINGS BEHIND?

            The rain was still at least ninety miles away, down below the Mexican border, but Ernie knew the storm was coming. He could smell it and see it in the gusts of wind that blew through the neighborhood, raising clouds of dust that whirled around the corners of the brick houses and along the narrow alleyways.

            His pickup truck jostled along, and Ernie leaned toward the windshield, trying to see the street through all the dirt and scratches. Even as he watched, the wind was picking away at what little paint was left on the hood. The transmission squealed as if it were about to seize up, the brakes felt like sponges, and Ernie wondered how much longer he could keep the old truck running.

            As he passed the neighborhood center, a group of teenaged girls ambled across the road in front of him, heading back from the Sonic drive-in across the street. He turned south, passed the newly-whitewashed church, the elementary school, and the tiny park where a woman sat on the bottom of the slide, watching her children on the roundabout.

            To his right, the domes of the new movie theater rose where the screens of the drive-in used to be. He could remember years ago being hoisted onto the roof of the family’s three-room house by his brothers and sitting there, watching the actors stride like giants across the screens while the boys made up stories and put words in their mouths. Now it was a multiplex; twelve theaters in one giant, air-conditioned building, the movies hoarded and secret.

            A couple of blocks more, and he drove up alongside Addie’s house, almost hidden by the balls of still-green tumbleweed that choked her chain-link fence. He pulled into the yard, mashed on the brake, and the motor died, but the truck kept rolling. Kind of like a snake with its head chopped off, he thought. Pulling back on the hand brake, he slowed the truck to a standstill. When he pushed open the door, it screeched like a cat with a stepped-on tail.

            Drawn by the sound of the truck, a mangy old dog came stumbling around the corner of the house. Clumps of yellow fur wafted away on any strong breeze, and one eye lolled around in its socket with a mind of its own. All the kids of Old Pascua were scared of Sandy Guy – rumors of his demon birth were whispered at school and on All Hallows’ Eve. Most adults were leery of him, too, though no one would admit they were afraid of such an ancient mongrel with only one good eye and no teeth.

            Sandy Guy stood a moment watching Ernie, then plopped down, boneless as a bag of beans, grunting as he hit the ground.

            “Good dog.” Ernie stooped to scratch the hound’s ear.

            In front of Addie’s house stood a small whitewashed cross wreathed in plastic flowers. All the newer homes in the village were brick, but Ernie stood watching slivers of clay flake off Addie’s adobe. He was looking for any signs of human life. “Addie?” he yelled. “Addie? You ready yet?” He called in Yaqui, knowing the old woman wouldn’t pay any attention to English or Spanish.

            He limped up the two steps of the porch and paused in the shade. Taking off his baseball cap, he dragged out of his hip pocket a bright red bandanna and wiped the sweat off his face.

            Inside the house, two suitcases, each tied shut with rope, sat on the bare floor of the front room. They both bulged dangerously, as if they might burst at any moment. That was the way Addie usually packed, though, and now, even though she had little left, she was making sure it all went with her.

            The way his footsteps echoed in the empty room made Ernie nervous. The sofa and chairs and tables were gone, leaving hollow spots on the floor and against the walls where they had sat for longer than Ernie had been alive. Dark squares and crosses showed on the faded wallpaper where pictures and crucifixes had hung. The snippets and clutter that had piled high over Addie’s long life had either been moved to Ernie’s apartment, or given away to relatives, neighbors, and friends.

            He stood staring at one of the dark squares on the wall. The picture that used to hang there had been one of the icons of his childhood. It had been a pencil drawing of Jesus Ernesto, his grandfather – the man he was named after.

            Addie had walked with a lot of men after Jesus Ernesto had gone back to Mexico. In 1918, he went to fight in the Yaqui uprisings against Adolfo de la Huerta, another in a long line of tyrants that ruled the northern Mexican state of Sonora, but Jesus only managed to disappear completely.

            Eventually, Addie married again, but Jesus had always been the only one she ever respected. They had gone to the Stockton fair one year when they were still young and foolish enough to want to do something they could brag about. And brag they did. Year after year. Child after child. Grandchild after grandchild. Everyone in the family knew the details of that trip by heart. That was where Jesus had sat for the drawing. It cost almost a dollar, and Addie had been the one to suggest it. Jesus wanted to spend the money on rides on the Ferris wheel, but Addie insisted. She wanted more to remember the trip by than just memories. Whatever that meant.

            At any rate, maybe Ernie could talk her into giving the picture to him. He liked the idea of having something to remind him of his grandfather. Then again, since Addie would be living with him, he would have it anyway. There was no need to say anything to her about it. No telling what might upset her if he wasn’t careful.

            Ernie picked up one of the suitcases and started out the door. “I’m taking your bags to the truck,” he called. He had to carry the suitcase in his left hand because his right leg jerked so badly when he walked. He had put up with the limp all his life, and hardly noticed it. Ernie weighed more than he should – but not so much as most of the men he knew – and if anyone were to say that he had a game leg, that person would be right.

            Outside, Sandy Guy followed Ernie’s movement with his good eye, never lifting his head. Ernie slung the suitcase into the bed of the pickup, then went back in for the second bag. It was bigger, weighed more, and took longer to lug out. The wind blew through the yard, and was filled with the powerful smell of rain.

            After heaving the second suitcase in beside the first, Ernie leaned against the fender and peered to the south, checking on the progress of the storm. It was still on the other side of the mountains, so maybe it would dry out before it got this far north. Still, no need to push their luck.

            He clumped back into the living room, yelling, “Addie! You coming or not?” There was no answer, so he walked to the back of the house.

            The kitchen was as bare as the front room. Even the table was gone. Next to the sink sat a cardboard box filled with mismatched plates, butcher and paring knives, and spoons of all kinds of patterns and metals. Where the front room smelled like the desert, the kitchen was full of hints of coffee and honey and lye.

            “Addie!” There was still no answer. Ernie looked around the jamb of the hallway door, and there Addie stood, staring into her empty bedroom.

            She had never been as big as the other women from Ernie’s childhood, and the older she got, the more weight she lost, until now she was nothing but wrinkles and grit. Her thin dress hung like veils from her shoulders, the midnight-purple it had once been was faded to a blue as light as the sky at high noon, after so many washings with such strong soap. Her shoes were still shiny, though, the scuff marks and gouges hidden under layers of polish, with buckles bright and gleaming.

            Those buckles were Addie’s pride. Jesus Ernesto had given her a pair of new shoes for their wedding, and even though the shoes had disintegrated long ago, she had saved the buckles and kept switching them to new pairs of shoes every few years.

            She sighed. It was a long sound, as if from deeper inside her than just her lungs. “Addie?” Ernie stood looking over the top of her head into the room. Her sparse hair had the hazy color and sharp smell of wood smoke, and a few willful wisps curled up from her skull. “You said no crying.” His tone of voice wasn’t disrespectful, just curt.

            “No,” she said in a creaky voice so close to tears it scared him. It wasn’t the same resounding voice that used to tell him about the family’s flight out of Mexico. Her father had fought against the Mexican usurpers – the Yori – and the Yaqui traitors – the torocoyori – beside the great hero Cajeme. After Cajeme was killed and Rafael Izabal became governor of Sonora, Yaquis by the hundreds were rounded up and deported as slaves to the Yucatan or Oaxaca, or were scattered from their eight towns along the Yaquis River through Hermosilla, where Annie was born, and on through Nogales to Tucson where the refugee village of Pascua was growing up.

            Now Annie’s rich voice was as dry and cracked as kindling, filled with the same melancholy that came with the cooling of the stars and the leaving of the rain. “I said I wouldn’t cry,” she admitted. “So I won’t.”

            However, she did step into the empty room one last time.

            Without the thin curtain that had hung over the window, sunlight fell onto the floor, glowing like a fire. Addie hiked her long skirt above her ankles and crouched, tracing the pattern of wood that her father and her grandfather had laid down almost a century ago. Theirs had been one of the first houses in Pascua not dirt-floored. The house had been built soon after the family had come from Mexico, and Addie loved it more than it maybe deserved.

            “Why can’t y’all leave me alone?” she said in a meek voice. Her eyes flitted around the room like a bat caught inside by some grave mistake. “Why can’t you let me die in my own house?”

            The texture of her voice surprised Ernie. It scared him. There was a strained quality in the bedrock of it that he had never heard before. Words seemed to be called for – not specific words, just talk. Something to fill up the space between them. Something to get her mind off the future. “You’re not going to die, Addie.” It was what he thought she wanted to hear, and it was what he believed: there would never be a time without her. The world would end before Addie died.

            “Of course, I’m going to,” she said, so angrily it caught him off guard. “We’re all going to die – everybody dies – but I don’t want to give up my house.” Addie was a hard woman: she had always been hard with the men in her life, with her children, with herself. Now though, her tough voice broke, scattering up the range to higher octaves. “I don’t want to go,” she cried in a voice sharp as a whip. “Only a Fariseo would make me go!”

            The barb struck Ernie squarely. The Fariseos, based on the Jewish Pharisees, were part of the Yaqui tribe’s Easter celebration, and along with the Judases and soldiers, stood for the evil that had to be overcome by the power of the risen Christ with the help of the deer dancer and flower girls. Ernie had played a Fariseo role in the ceremony for years now and was respected for the zeal which he brought to the part.

            “Addie,” he wheedled.

            She clucked her tongue and didn’t look at him. “What?” she asked, resorting to her little-girl pout.

            Hearing that inflection, Ernie realized he had to try another route; he became gruff and businesslike. “If you don’t want to come home with me, fine. Stay here alone. Fall again. Fall and lie there again. Lie there for a long, long time, because this time no one will be coming to see about you.” He knew that this was what held the greatest terror for her. “This time I won’t be checking up on you when you’re late for church. And you know no one else will either. And this time, you’ll lie there for days, and may never get up again.” He was troweling it on thickly, he knew, but she never paid attention to any blows but the hardest.

            Still crouched on the floor, running the tips of her fingers over the boards, she looked around the room.

            Ernie squatted close behind her. He could smell the burnt-wood smell of her clothes, and every scrape of her shoe, every tap of her fingernail on the floorboards, released echoes of the life which had filled the house for most of a century.

            “What are you doing?” he asked softly.

            “Listening to ghosts.”

            “Listening or saying good-bye?”

            She stood up and moved to the window. “You never say good-bye to ghosts. They follow you like memories. They’re always with you. You take them wherever you go. The best that you can do is listen to what they want to tell you. Remember that, boy, so maybe you’ll pay more attention to me after I’m gone.”

            Addie leaned on the windowsill, watching outside, and Ernie knew what made her shiver: the sunlight on the desert sand; the shriveled apple tree that had always been barren. These were familiar spirits that didn’t want to be left behind. They were family that Addie couldn’t abandon.

            “What are they saying?” he asked on impulse.

            “They’re telling me to remember,” she said without looking at him. “Not to forget them.”

            “As if you could.” He signed and sat down, pulling his legs into a stiff, cross-legged position. His knees cracked and he groaned. He watched as Addie prowled the empty room.

            Her shapeless blue dress hung from her shoulders as if it were part of her long hair. She moved through the patch of late afternoon sunlight, and her thin skin seemed bright and glowing. She might have been a ghost herself; she might have been fading away even as he watched. It was impossible to be sure.

            He pushed himself to his feet. “I’ll be out in the truck,” he said calmly. “Take your time.” As if he knew he could trust her to realize that she had to come with him.

            His movement and the sound of his voice distracted her, though, pulled her out of her past and back to his present. “No,” she said. “If you’re ready, I am too.” The light from the window glowed in her hair like the halos on all the saints he had ever seen. She slipped her arm through his, and they made their way down the hall into the kitchen, walking through corridors of time as well as space. He picked up the last box from the counter.

            At the front door, she paused and looked out. In the yard, Sandy Guy lay, contemplating them on the porch. To the south, dark storm clouds were stalking nearer.

            Ernie stepped off the porch, but as soon as Addie’s foot touched the sand, she stopped again.

            This last hesitation, though, was one too many.

            “Addie.” Ernie’s voice wasn’t stern, but it was insistent.

            She took a step forward. “What?”

            “Come on.” He took another step, and, holding his arm, she had to take two more.

            “What’s your hurry?” she asked.

            “Nothing,” he said. “What’s your problem? Why don’t you come on?”

            “I’m coming,” she answered. “It’s just that I’d like to go a little more slowly.” She turned to look at the house behind them. “I can’t just leave it that easily.”

            “Sure you can,” he insisted. “It’s just a house.”

            She frowned, puzzled. “It’s not just a house. It’s me.” Her hand dropped away from his arm, and she wandered back toward the front door. “It’s my life.” She trailed her fingers over the cross, then caressed one of the posts of the porch. “I’m not just me.” She shook her head. “I’m all the things I’ve ever learned from anyone, and all the things they’ve learned from me. People aren’t any one solid thing. We’re all ripples spreading out on a pond. How can you separate one ripple from the next? How can you separate me from what I’ve done? From where I am?”

            He stared, not knowing how to answer. “Addie –.”

            She walked back to him and took a butcher knife out of the box under his arm. “If this knife were sharp enough to cut blocks of air,” she said, “it still couldn’t separate me from this house. It would be like trying to cut away my past and that’s impossible. I am my past. I am my house.”

            She stopped and shook the knife at him. “Whatever happens in the world affects the thing next to it, and that affects the thing next to it, and that comes round and affects us, too. We are everything.” She touched the blade to her scrawny chest. “We are everything that has ever been, and everything that will ever be.”

            Ernie stood holding the box, not knowing what to say or do. So he did what his father would have done, and his father before him. He turned and walked away.

            He hefted the box into the back of the truck, and set it beside the suitcases. Sandy Guy finally managed to raise his head when Ernie walked toward him, but picking up the old dog was like trying to hold onto a cowskin full of water. With the dog grunting and himself groaning, Ernie staggered to the truck with his boneless burden and heaved the dog up onto the tailgate. When Sandy Guy was slung down on the metal, it knocked the breath out of him, and he grunted, but never complained otherwise. By pushing and pulling the dog, first by the shoulders, then by the rump, Ernie managed to work him back into the bed of the truck, like he would a sack of grain.

            He walked to the driver’s side, jerked open the door, slid in under the wheel, and tried to ignore the oily smell of the truck. He started the motor, and sat staring down the street at the clouds a long way off and at two buzzards circling close by.

            After several minutes, he got back out of the truck, and stood facing Addie. He squared his fists on his hips, and said, “Do I have to load you in like I did the dog?”

            They stood staring at each other for more heartbeats than he cared to count. Finally, she said, “Two husbands I had. I don’t know how many other men. Four sons of mine lived past a few days. And a dozen grandsons came from them. Not one blessed girl. Now they’re all gone. They walked, they ran, they jumped, they flew – anything to get away from here. All except you. Only the cripple is left to talk to me any way he likes.”

            The heat on Ernie’s face was sudden and fierce, like the desert sun after a cloud had rolled away. “Believe me, old woman, if I could, I would have been gone long ago, too. I would have skipped out of here in a fancy, and then you wouldn’t have had anybody to bother you. You could just rot in peace.” His dad, he knew, would have kicked his teeth in for talking to Addie like that. His mom would have slapped him.

            Dad, though, was gone, as Addie had said. Gone the way of brothers and uncles, nephews and cousins. Gone on legs that could walk and legs that could run; the only one still around was the one who couldn’t leave.

            Mom was gone, too, but differently. Ernie remembered his mother, a raven-haired woman with short legs and a laugh as wide as the world. It had been many years since she had died, though, and those who were living had to go on.

            He knew his parents would have switched him good for talking to his grandmother the way he had. He had to, though. Whether he wanted it or not – even whether or not she wanted it – she was his charge now. His duty. And it was the one task he could accomplish. He would love and care for the old woman even if she wanted no love or care.

            At first, Addie matched Ernie’s glare stubbornly, but finally, she muttered, “Jesus,” and looked away. He couldn’t tell if she were calling on the Son of God or her dead husband.

            In either case, she sidled to the truck, opened her door, and got in, sitting on the edge of the tattered seat. When Ernie climbed into the cab, she laid the knife between them, planted her feet among the papers and candy wrappers and soda-pop bottles on the floor, and never looked back when he pulled away from the house and out onto the street. She looked ahead, peering through the grime and dirt of the windshield, out past the houses, past the other Yaqui families sitting under their carports, all neighbors she had known forever, past the children playing, out toward the dark of the approaching storm.

***