Mean Streets

By two o'clock I'd gotten the weeds cleaned up and the plot squared away. Some helpful live children helped me find stones to replace the missing border around the grave, begging, in return, for 'mi calavera,' which confused me until Mickey showed up.

He made a face at them and started digging into one of the boxes of ofrenda decorations. 'They want these,' he explained, dragging out a box of small sugar skulls, coffins, and lambs we'd purchased in the market that morning. 'Like your trick or treat, but with skulls.'

He handed me the box and snapped at the kids to go away as soon as they had their 'calavera' in their sticky fists.

'Need to work, here!' he added to me, unfolding a small card table he'd snatched from the guesthouse. 'Usually the ofrenda's at home, but yours will have to be here.'

The ghost dog sat up and watched us work. We got a few odd looks from the humans, too, as we put up the decorations, but no one came to ask what we were doing. Mickey helped me bend long, slender poles into arches over the table and attach them to the legs. Then we put colored paper over it all and hung up the paper banners, which were decorated with punched silhouettes of skeletons dancing, riding bicycles, eating, and generally carrying on. We made patterns on the grave with the marigolds, magenta cockscomb flowers, and greenery, edging it all with white candles in tiny glass jars.

Mickey looked around. 'You should go wash while I put out the food-and bring back water in the big bowl for the spirits to wash in, too.” I shrugged, not minding a pause to clean the dirt and sweat off my face and hands while Mickey took over-he had managed to avoid the really filthy work of weeding, edging, and shoring up the grave, after all. Iko dogged me to a standpipe where a few other people were washing up and filling containers with water for flowers or washing. The old man was standing near the water spigot and grinned at me as I approached.

'It is going well, your ofrenda?'

'I think so. Does it look OK?'

He glanced toward Purecete's grave. 'Si. Is very nice for the angelitos-white is good.' 'Mickey picked the color.' 'Really?' the old guy said, raising his eyebrows. 'Surely for him, red is more likely.'

I turned to glance back at Mickey. He did have a lot of red in his aura…

'You mean Mickey?' I asked.

'Your amigo joven, si. So very angry…' He shook his head. I stared at the old man. 'What is it about Oaxaca? Is everyone around here tuned in to the freaky frequency?' I asked.

His laugh was like sandpaper. 'Only you, pequena faisan. But, you are staying to see the angelitos?'

'Si,' I answered, turning back to the immediate task, putting my hands under the cold water that streamed from the pipe, and then throwing several handfuls onto my sticky face. Iko stuck his muzzle into the water and tried to drink it, but I wasn't sure any was making it down his ghostly throat, no matter how fast his spectral tongue was going. 'Maybe it's not so bad that Mickey's supposed to be home with his family tonight.'

'Maybe.' The old man nodded. 'I also must go tonight, so I bid you buenas noches. Dress warm-the night takes the heat away. And give your amigo good wishes from Tio Munoz, eh?'

'I will, gracias' I replied, filling the washbowl for the spirits of dead children. My hands full, I nodded again to him and turned to head back to the plot, wondering what Mickey was up to.

'Buena suerte,' the man said with a chuckle as I started off.

I turned my head to look back at him over my shoulder and saw him scratch Iko's head, smiling. I guess I wasn't even surprised. Then he turned and walked away, vanishing into the crowd with a golden glitter in his wake. I stood a moment staring after him, not sure what he was; nothing about him seemed ghostly, yet in the mess of the active Grey of Oaxaca, I hadn't noticed he had no aura. What was he? I frowned, holding the heavy bowl of water. Iko pawed at my knee and barked, prancing impatiently on the path.

I shook off my surprise and walked to rejoin Mickey.

While I'd been gone, Mickey had laid out a small feast of sweets, soda pop, and pan de muerto as well as some more substantial food-all provided by his aunt. Small plastic toys were scattered among the cockscomb flowers that we'd piled up around a stack of empty boxes at the back of the table and an arc of small teacups and saucers surrounded a dish for the copal incense. A dozen more white candles now stood on the boxes. It looked like an album cover for something gothic and creepy.

'Nice, huh?'

'Umm… yeah. These ghosts eat a lot…'

Mickey shrugged. 'They eat the spirit of the food. My cousins say the food they leave behind has no calories.' He barked a derisive laugh. He pointed to the end of the table. 'Put the water, comb, and towel where the hot bottle is.” I saw a large vacuum flask where he pointed.

'Tia Mercedes made hot chocolate. You can put it on the ground till you need it,' he said. 'Pour some for the angelitos after you light the candles and the incense-they should come when they smell it. And there's a box under the ofrenda with some food and a blanket and stuff for you. Think you can make it?'

'It's not as cold as a stakeout during a Seattle winter.'

He snorted. 'Gonna be empty up here. Most people do this at home.' Mickey gave me an assessing look that clearly found me a bit wanting.

'I think I can handle it,' I said.

Yet another shrug as he started gathering up the excess supplies. 'The angelitos come at four and stay until the morning. You'll have to do it all again tomorrow for the adults, too. I'll pick you up when the sun comes up.'

'Hey, Mickey, Tio Munoz says Happy Birthday.'

He jumped back from me. 'What?'

'An old man near the water said I should tell you he sends his good wishes.'

He stared at me. 'Tio Munoz? Mierda! He's a legend in my family. He's a… a…'

'Ghost? Didn't look like a ghost____________________'

Mickey was shaking his head and gathering the excess stuff in a hurry. 'No, no… He's the one-you know: I said about my great-uncle? What's the word… a bad wizard.'

'Warlock?'

He shook his head. 'No… Not a brujo. He's… a black sorcerer. Undead.' He threw the last of the materials into a box and snatched it up against his chest, eyes wild-which was not what I'd have expected. 'I'm going back to Tia Mercedes. You'll be fine, yeah?'

'Yeah…,' I said, not sure why he was freaking so thoroughly, since his Tio Munoz wasn't any kind of undead I knew.

'Yeah, right. OK. I'll be back for you in the morning. Don't go talking to Tio Munoz! Don't believe what he says!'

Iko and I followed him with the rest of the boxes and loaded them into the Chevy under the weight of Mickey's red-and-orange brooding. Then we watched him drive away, leaving the ghost dog and me in the emptying panteon as the hour of dead children approached.

The last of the homeward-bound walked out of the gate-two small children in slightly rumpled clothes-strewing a path of marigold petals for the dead. I watched them lay the deep orange line down the road until they disappeared around a bend in a mood of strange solemnity. I walked back to the grave, Iko dancing before me all the way.

The ghost dog seemed more real than ever, if still a bit translucent. As the long shadow of the mountain began to steal the light, that became less apparent, but a new oddity began to show around him: a blue glow like marshlight that flickered over the dog shape and cast it into strange silhouette against the pockets of twilight forming in the cemetery as night crept forward.

I unfolded a camp stool from the box and set it aside, paused to put on my coat, and dug deeper for a box of kitchen matches. As the church bell began pealing four, I lit the candles and the copal, sending the sweet, musky scent into the cooling air. The breeze stirred the grasses near the fence to rattling. Smoke and Grey mingled, sparking with gold and white lights, and I could hear the Grey humming, the shapes of the mountains glowing in the silvery mist as great bulks of power.

Something splashed into the water bowl and I turned with a jerk to see nothing, no small shape lurking near the table end, as I’d half expected. I shivered as my skin prickled with a premonition of movement nearby. The darkness was still only a threat, but a presence seemed to gather with it, though nothing stepped forth. Yet.

I poured hot chocolate into one of the teacups and sat down to wait while afternoon advanced toward evening. The ghost dog lay down beside me and smiled with secret thoughts. We waited, swirled in the dizzying odors of the night and the sound of distant music from houses just out of sight, alone in the hush of sacred anticipation in the doorway to the Land of the Dead.

Something brushed past me, giggling. Iko barked and chased the formless whisper of laughter across the burial ground toward the iron gates. Then nothing. The ghost dog returned and threw himself down on the ground with a dog sigh. Candles smoked and the stream of incense swayed upward like a charmed cobra. The muttering emptiness of the cemetery held sway long past sunset, past the eight o'clock peal from the church tower.

I renewed the hot chocolate in the cup and sipped a little myself, finding it more bitter and spicy than American chocolate. It went better with the sandwich Mickey's aunt had packed for me than the coffee did, but I thought I'd better save it in case of tiny haunts. Maybe it was because I was thinking of it, but that was when a little cup of chocolate on the table rattled and I looked again at the ofrenda.

One of the cups was moving in its saucer, tilting forward and back. Tiny silver-mist hands clutched for it and missed again and again. I stood up and picked up the cup, saying, 'Here, let me help you.'

I held the cup low and filled it to the brim. Then I offered it down around my knees, holding it still until I felt something tug on it. I let myself slip all the way into the Grey, looking for whatever was pulling on the cup.

A skeleton child, barely as tall as the table, reached for the cup. Its bony, incorporeal hands met the porcelain, but couldn't grip. I tipped the cup and watched the steaming chocolate dribble onto the ground while the foggy skeleton seemed to nibble at the edge of the cup. It pushed the cup away and clacked its teeth in satisfaction.

The toys on the table moved. Smears of color hovered around the ofrenda, lined up in front of the other, empty, cups. I poured chocolate into all of them and watched shadows of the cups tilt and rise as spectral hands reached for the sweets. There was a burst of chatter-like radio static-and a dozen small skeletons dressed in the memories of their best clothes appeared around the table. They weren't as well formed as the adult ghosts I'd seen- as if they hadn't had time to get the knack of being alive before they were dead. None of the chatter was quite understandable to me-unlike the adult ghosts I'd talked to-coming through to my mind only in