Until his mother said it that night, Amadeo had no idea his father wanted to get him a dog. He doesn’t remember at all. For his father to want a dog for him—companionship, affection—he must have cared. Perhaps he knew he wouldn’t be around long.
“I should have been there more for your dad. But after Elwin—” His uncle cuts off. “I didn’t know how to help nobody.”
“I can’t think of anything sadder.” Losing Angel: the thought is unimaginable.
His uncle doesn’t answer for a long moment.
“The night before I left for basic training in 1942, my dad took me out walking, up to the old morada.” Tíve nudged his chin in the direction of the town. “My whole life my dad limped—in the war, he got mustard-gassed and his leg never healed. Even back then the morada was just a pile of dirt. He told me, ‘My dad held every office at some point: Hermano Mayor, rezador, sangrador.’ Told me he wished he’d kept it going.”
Amadeo thought of his uncle, so young, standing with his own father in the adobe ruins, plaster-cracked and doorless. Maybe he’d been thinking of the meal his mother and sisters were preparing for him back at the house, or of the inconceivable journey across the ocean that lay ahead of him. Perhaps Tíve’s father rolled a cigarette and handed it to Tíve, rolled a second for himself, then dropped the match and scuffed out the red glow.
Tíve shifts Connor’s weight. “My dad told me, used to be the morada was the heart of our village. He told me, ‘Make sure you come home, son. Las Penas isn’t dead yet.’ Maybe now it really is.”
Amadeo imagines the village as it was in those long-ago days, vibrant with fiestas and matanzas, weddings and bailes. If he strains, he can almost hear the ghostly whoops and accordion and stomping feet from some long-ago dance.
Dog and baby strain toward each other. Connor frowns, reaching, and Honey grins, breathing excitedly. When Connor makes contact, he closes his fingers around her wet nose, gives her whole snout a good shake. Honey submits, but twitches her pale eyebrows with worry at Tíve. At the sound of Connor’s happy, gurgling shriek, the old man laughs.
Amadeo smiles, but he’s troubled. “We’re still here, Tío. We’re still in this town. Connor’s growing up here.”
“It’s not right. I should go before your mom. I should have gone before all of them.”
Amadeo cannot formulate a response because behind them comes the sound of uneven steps, and the screen pushes out. “Dodo.”
They turn to see his mother swaying in the doorway above, watching them with a strange intensity. Amadeo thinks she’s about to reprimand them for letting the baby play with the dog.
“Yeah, Mom?”
Tíve clambers up unsteadily. Alarmed, Amadeo stands, too, his hand hovering under his uncle’s elbow. He can almost see gravity claw at the old man, sees in his mind the moment he tips down the concrete steps into the gravel with Connor, but then Tíve is on his feet. Connor wriggles to reach down for Honey.
“Can I take him, Tío? Let me take him.”
But Tíve grips the baby, watching Yolanda. The screen is between them, his uncle on the top step, his mother pushing out.
So Amadeo cups his uncle’s elbow and braces the handle of the screen door, because he doesn’t want to throw either his mother or his uncle off-balance. “Let’s go inside, Mom. Let’s all go inside.”
“No,” she says, and shakes her head fervently like a toddler. The cap has come askew, revealing pale scalp beneath her thin hair. She doesn’t budge from the doorway. Her fingers against the doorjamb are tense and gripping, purple. She pushes the screen against them.
“Dodo.”
Amadeo wants everyone inside. He wants his uncle to put down Connor’s squirming weight. He wants everyone settled on solid ground.