SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS LATER, Flavio stood in the field behind the house that had once been his grandparents’ and then, after their deaths, his sister Ramona’s. His mouth was half open, and his breath came and went gently. He slowly became aware of the water rushing through the ditch, away from him and away from his alfalfa. It occurred to him that all he had really done for the past twelve days was drive across the village to torment his alfalfa, which deserved better. It was then, out of the corner of his eye, that he saw Felix García, a man too old and sick to be out by himself, walking through the piñons.
Felix García hadn’t walked anywhere for the past eight years other than to shuffle along with his son, Pepe, from his bed to a table in the café that carried Felix’s name. A vein had burst in Felix’s head one morning while he was preparing beans and chile in the kitchen of his small restaurant. And though Felix had always been a quiet man who kept to himself, the stroke left him utterly mute and slow and vacant, as if whatever had once been inside him had suddenly left. He now spent his days sitting alone in the far corner of the café while his son cooked in the kitchen.
Flavio and Felix had known each other all their lives and, before Felix’s stroke, Flavio would often stop at the café before going to his fields. He and Felix would sit and drink coffee, and through the smoke of their cigarettes they would watch light come to the village. Flavio had continued to go to the café after Felix fell ill, but in truth, the trembling that never left his old friend’s hands and the soft sounds that came from the back of his throat made Flavio feel uncomfortable, as if the two of them had become lost in the same place.
One day, a few years ago, Flavio had sat beside Felix and without even looking could see how badly Felix’s back was now bent and how he stared straight ahead with wide open eyes even though his head dipped low to the table. It was then Flavio realized not only that he no longer knew who this man was, but that he couldn’t bear to continue watching him approach death in such complete solitude.
That was the last time Flavio had been inside Felix’s Café. Even now, when driving past the restaurant, he would look elsewhere and think of his fields or of the wood he was to get at the lumberyard. He would think of anything and pass by the café as if the place was not quite real and those inside were only thoughts he used to have.
The first thing that went through Flavio’s mind when he saw Felix stumble to the base of the foothill and into the sagebrush was that what he was seeing couldn’t possibly be happening. The Felix García he remembered had difficulty walking just a few steps, and that only with help from his son.
“I am seeing a trick,” Flavio muttered. He closed his eyes and felt the sun hot on the back of his neck. He wondered how long he’d been standing in the heat, and he realized that somewhere along the way he had become an old man. Along with too much sun, that could make someone see things he would prefer not to. Flavio took a deep breath and let it out slowly. But when he opened his eyes, he could still see Felix wandering slowly through the sage as if lost in each step.
By the time Flavio had hurried and tripped his way through the brush to Felix, Felix had stopped moving altogether and was standing stone still staring straight ahead. His clothes were a mess. His trousers were ripped at the knees, and his shirt was torn where it had snagged on piñon branches. His hands were stained with pitch and crusted with dried blood. Flavio thought that he looked as though he had spent the morning not walking, but rolling up and down the foothills.
“Felix,” Flavio said hoarsely, out of breath from moving so quickly through the sagebrush. He reached out, almost more to steady himself, and touched his friend’s arm.
“Felix,” he said again, “what are you doing out here? This is no place for you.” Felix’s lips moved without making a sound. His face was streaked with dirt and saliva and was badly scratched, a thick clot of blood on one ear. Flavio shook his head and looked at the foothills. “Where’s Pepe?” he said. “How can this be?” The hills were empty, and with no breeze it seemed to Flavio as if nothing had ever lived there except loose rock and piñon and scrub oak whose leaves were now curled and yellowed with no rain.
Flavio leaned forward and in a whisper said, “Are you better, Felix?” As soon as the words left his mouth, he realized how foolish they were. No one as ill as Felix ever got better, and if they did the whole village would have heard. Even if Flavio had not been told such news, no one in Felix’s condition would suddenly get up one morning and go hiking in the mountains.
“I’m sorry, Felix,” Flavio said. “I didn’t mean to say that. Venga, primo,” and he reached out his hand again and took Felix’s arm gently. “Let’s get out of the sun.”
Flavio found that if he pulled Felix’s arm slightly, Felix would shuffle his feet and follow alongside him. They made their way slowly through the sagebrush and over the warped timber spanning the irrigation ditch into the alfalfa field. At times, Felix would stop and Flavio would talk to him about anything, as if his words carried the rhythm that would make Felix move his feet. By the time they crossed the field to Ramona’s house, the back of Flavio’s shirt was stained with sweat. He felt as though he had been walking in the sun for hours.
When Flavio pushed open the door of his sister’s house, he felt a rush of cool air against his face and could smell the heavy odor of dampness and musk. He had not been inside the house in the five years since Ramona’s death, and the place was exactly as it had been on the day she died.
A week after her funeral, Flavio had driven to her house with the intention of packing away her things in boxes, draining the pipes of water, and boarding up the windows. He had parked his truck under the cottonwoods in her drive and sat in the cab smoking. It was late spring that day. The leaves on the trees had just opened, and the air was warm. Looking at the house, he thought that this was where his grandparents had once lived and where his father had been raised. The earth around the house was full of their footsteps, and the old adobe walls were seeped with their scent. After he finished his cigarette, he had started the truck and left the place as it was.
There was talk in the village, especially among those who were older, that Flavio had left things the way they were just in case Ramona was to return, that he thought she would be upset if her favorite dress or her coffee cup was stuffed away in a box somewhere. Sometimes children would peer in the windows, in the thin space between the curtains, and they would see Ramona’s shoes on the floor beside the bed that was unmade or the pots still sitting on the stove. When they would see her paintings hanging on the walls, they would decide that there were better places to be than in this house.
Over time, the house became a place people gradually stayed away from, as if its emptiness was full of things that made them uneasy. Even Flavio, who had spent much of his youth there and later had drunk coffee with his sister in her kitchen, had come to feel uncomfortable when walking too near the house on his way to the alfalfa field.
Now Flavio stood before the open door and looked inside. He could see the sofa across the room. Hanging on the wall above it were a number of Ramona’s paintings, the oils dulled with dust. He thought that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea for him and Felix to stop here, that it was possible they would catch some disease from the air that had been trapped inside the house for so long. He wondered how much longer it would take the two of them to walk the distance to his truck. But he could see how ragged Felix’s breath came and went and how dry and cracked his lips were. Who knew how long it had been since he’d last had water. Flavio patted his arm.
“Come inside, my friend,” he said. “We’ll take a little rest in my sister’s house and then I’ll drive you home,” and they walked together inside the room.
Sunlight was coming in the small window above the sink in the kitchen. There was enough light in the room for Flavio to see that the surface of all the counters was thick with rodent droppings and the dirt that fell like mist from between the boards in the ceiling. The walls were stained a dank yellow from roof leaks and were so bad in one area that the plaster had swelled out away from the adobe. Bowls and pots and silverware