Mean Streets

'Umm… the Santisima Muerte magic goes backward. Y'know: right to left and down to up. Counterclockwise and stuff like that.'

'But I never saw the woman do any magic,' I reminded him. 'I didn't know her.'

Big-eyed, Mickey nodded and drove. But I could see his thoughts grinding and the gold strands from his fingertips wrapped the steering wheel like a frantic vine.

We approached the last grave on the list as the sun was beginning to paint its farewell on the slice of sky above Oaxaca 's mountains. We'd taken a long drive into the hilly countryside to find the small panteon of San Felipe del Agua and then trudged through the crowds and the boiling Grey to discover an abandoned burial plot far in the back, under a stunted tree. Grass and weeds had grown over it undisturbed for years and no one was making an effort to clear it. I heaved a sigh of annoyance and got down on my knees to rip up the corn stalk-like growths obscuring the memorial stone. Mickey knelt down and helped brush the dirt aside, scraping the carving clear enough to read in the dimming light.

This time the list was right: Hector Purecete, born 1929, died 1996. Sixty-seven years old.

Mickey sat back on his heels and studied the filth-crusted memorial stone. 'He's been forgotten here.'

'Maria-Luz remembered him,' I said. I didn't know with what emotion she recalled Hector, however, or what she'd been up to with the dog and its black-magic spirit bundle. I'd have to take a look and see if the red thread wound counterclockwise around it.

'That's an irony,' I said, looking at the stone and thinking aloud. 'The only person who seems to remember this guy is already dead and has been for years.'

'You mean that other ghost? Ernesto? Yeah. And Iko.'

I nodded. 'Yeah, that's a problem. Iko seems like a nice dog, but who knows what will happen-if there really is black magic involved here? I was hoping to find Hector's family or someone who knew him or Maria-Luz. But the registrar will be closed tomorrow and it's not likely I'll find anyone who knew what their relationship was at this point.'

'The ghosts know.'

I rubbed my face, breathing in the scent of the broken grasses, the turned earth, and the spicy odor of the marigolds that had already been placed onto the grave decorations and ofrendas proliferating throughout the burial ground. I didn't enjoy interviewing ghosts, even when I knew where to find them. Obstinate, limited beings-when they qualified as beings at all-with axes to grind and personal quirks more annoying and unhelpful than a ward full of recovering heroin addicts. 'Yeah, but how would I find the right ghosts?' I asked, tired and, I admit, disappointed. 'This is going to suck. Purecete's grave wasn't even in Oaxaca proper but way out in this little mountain village.'

Mickey jumped up, beaming in the sudden magenta flare of mountain sunset. 'You can call them here! You know how and the ghosts will find you if you make the right offerings-it's the Day of the Dead! The living have forgotten this guy, but the dead haven't!'

I stared at him. 'I'm not sure I'm following you… The instructions just said to clean the grave and put the dog on it.'

'Yeah, yeah. Clean the grave, but you should do the whole thing. Decorate, make an ofrenda. Put out food and drink and stuff-throw a party for old Hector Purecete, and the ghosts of his friends will show up for it! It's not just the living who come visiting the graveyard, you know. Tomorrow is for the angetitos-the little kids. We can make an ofrenda and bring it here for them. If he ever had any kids, or if his family ever had any that haven't died the third death, they'll come. Then on Sunday we can make the party for the rest of 'em-and Hector. I'll have to hang out with Tia Mercedes, but I can help you first and come back later. Tia's big on this stuff, she'll understand-she'll probably even cook extra food for you if we go shopping early enough.'

I tried not to groan at the thought. 'What about the dog?' I asked.

He frowned. 'I'm not sure. Maybe if you don't bring the clay bits and hair, it won't matter, even if his ghost comes along.'

The ghost dog had come back from a nose-guided tour of the graveyard to sit down beside me and pant through his doggy grin. He looked increasingly like a real dog and less like the remnant of one. I wondered what he'd be like come Sunday night.

I looked around and saw the deepening colors of the sky. Shadows writhed with the spirits of the violently dead waiting to emerge once darkness fell. I shuddered and hoped we wouldn't have to go past the zocalo tonight and its slaughtered teachers.

'Let's get out of here,' I suggested.

Mickey jumped up and we nearly ran back to the car. Once in it, he chattered half in excitement and half in relief of terror, trying to persuade me his plan was solid. I would never have thought of throwing a party for ghosts. Mickey waxing enthusiastic over it was downright creepy to watch. He dodged silvery clots of horror as we barreled through the falling twilight.

Back in the guesthouse, normalcy reigned and most people would have no idea of the gruesome sights and sounds playing out in the night beyond the doors. Over dinner Mickey wheedled his aunt into agreeing to cook extra food for my ghost party. He finally let me go at the door of my room with a warning to be up early for our shopping trip. I hate shopping… especially in the morning. The surreal quality of the whole day left me dizzy and grateful to crawl into bed.

Bundled up against the chilly morning, we had to shed our coats by the time we were carrying home the third load of the stuff on which Mickey had insisted: colored paper and strings of paper banners; armfuls of flowers; incense cones; food; sweets; candles; tiny toys; papier-mache skeletons going about their daily business, including one lady called Catrina in an elaborate hat; and a set of combs and brushes for the dead to tidy themselves with, once they arrived for the party. If I didn't know better, I'd have thought he was enjoying himself, but of course Mickey managed to drag me thither and yon with disgusting amounts of energy, while still slouching, glowering, and shooting barbed comments, though almost none of them were now directed at me. I bought him a sugar skull with his name on it as a birthday present, getting a twisted, uncertain smile in return.

Iko followed us back and forth, barking and running through the stalls, playing with skeleton children and chasing skeleton rats. The odors of food and flowers and cones of copal incense waiting to be burned mingled with the odor of wet streets and warm bodies. Color rose in dust devils from the power grid of the Grey and spun off Mickey's shape like the golden spines of a religious icon. I felt light-headed and found it difficult to tell the Grey from the real, if not for the hard shapes of skulls and bones where I would normally expect flesh. More than once I excused myself to a specter after stepping on it and each time they nodded to me as any living person would. Mickey stared at me with a strange yearning expression that disappeared under the glower as soon as he noticed my attention.

I wasn't sure this crazy plan was going to work, but it was the best thing either of us had come up with. And frankly, it was nice to get out of the guesthouse before the smells of food overwhelmed me. Mercedes Villaflores and her daughters had been cooking since before dawn, starting with the pan de muerto- traditional loaves of bread that smelled of orange and spices and had dough bones crossed on top. By the time I'd gotten up, there'd already been half a dozen of them set on the patio counter to cool; excess seemed to run in the family.

After our shopping, Mickey dropped me off at the cemetery in San Felipe del Agua to clean the grave site, promising to come back with the ofrenda supplies later. Then he dashed back down the hill to join his family for their own work party. As I crossed the cemetery gate, Iko the ghost dog appeared and followed me to Hector Purecete's plot, making scent-led loops and discursions across the path as we went.

The morning was giving way to afternoon and in the thin air at fifty-five hundred feet, the sun warmed the graveyard and set the odors of earth and work, flowers and food toward the blue crown of the heavens above. Iko performed an inspection of the site and gave it his doggy approval as I rolled up my sleeves and began clearing weeds, hearing the chatter of others working at family plots, or setting up vendor booths in the square and street nearby. Some musicians started practicing in the distance, serenading our labors in fits and starts. After a while, the ghost dog hied off to hunt ghost rodents, leaving me alone with the weeds.

A while later, I paused to wipe the sweat off my face and found an old man in a wide-brimmed hat squatting at the edge of my efforts, grinning at me. I had to look hard through the thickened and colorful Grey to be sure he was no ghost, for he looked more like a vision than a man. But that might have been the elevation and my own sleep-deprived brain talking.

He held out a clear glass bottle. 'Agua?'

I took the bottle gratefully, muttering my 'gracias,' and sipped the warm water. It tasted of deep rock wells.

'I never see a gringa working out here before,' he said, watching me drink.

'Never been here before,' I replied, pushing my clinging hair back and returning the bottle to him.

He put the bottle down, digging its bottom into the dirt I'd softened with my weeding at the edge of the grave. 'You come for this man's angelitos?'

'I don't know if he had any. Did you know him?'

The dark-tanned old man shook his head. 'No. I live here all my life and I never hear of him until they bury him here. And no one comes to this grave for a long time. Until you. Why?'

'A woman named Maria-Luz Arbildo died last week and she wanted me to come here and take care of the grave.'

'Huh. But she never come here. I never see any woman here before.'

'No. She didn't know where the grave was. I had to find it. You ever heard of her?” He narrowed his eyes and searched the ground for his memory, brushing pebbles and bits of weed away from the headstone. 'No. Antonio Arbildo lived here, long time ago, but he moved away. Old man, then. He get rich, the whole family go to the D.F.- Distrito Federal, Mexico City,' he explained with a nod. 'I'm a little boy, then-so tall,' he added, holding his hand up about two feet from the ground, and cackling. He shot an amused glance at me from the corner of his yellowed eyes. The ghost of Iko trotted back from his hunting and threw himself down in the dirt about two feet from the old man with a contented dog sigh. The old man made no comment.

I nodded. Another interesting connection, but not complete. 'Are there Arbildos buried in this panteon? Maybe Maria-Luz?'

Again he shook his head, his gnarled stick fingers digging into the ground to pull a weed. 'Not her. Some a long time ago, si. Not now.' He pointed to a group of equally abandoned graves nearby. 'There.'

Hector Purecete had been buried within sight of the Arbildos of San Felipe, yet it seemed Maria-Luz had never found him on her trips to Oaxaca. But with the two false graves Mickey and I had found, maybe that wasn't so strange. Of course the Arbildos of San Felipe and those of Mexico City weren't necessarily the same family, but I doubted it.

I nodded to the old man and got up, unkinking my work-stiff knees and back, to go look at the graves of the Arbildos. The most recent had been buried in 1943. When I got back to Purecete's grave, the old man was gone, but his water bottle still stood in the soft earth between the gravestone and Iko's napping form sprawled in the dirt. I looked around for the man. A dozen hats identical to his bobbed in the field of graves, but I couldn't spot the old man under one. I took another sip of the water and went back to work, thinking Iko had it good.