“I’m sorry. It’s just that gravity’s got me down today.”

“Well …” Pollack didn’t dare say much else.

“You ever wonder what they’re doing up on that secret mountain? On the Hill? What would you say if I told you they were making a machine to end the world? To blow up the whole thing?”

“Now I know you’re fooling.” Pollack started the engine, eager to get away.

“Yeah.”

“Well. Now we got that settled, Joe, I best be going. Good to see you back in your own home.”

“Yeah.”

Pollack backed up, U-turned and eased between the Reyeses’ yard and the goat fence that served as the boundary for outhouses, compost heaps, cornfields. With his eyes, Joe followed the Cadillac in gaps between adobe walls, past the Winter Squash kiva, into the plaza and under the cottonwood. He looked back to the dirt road between the outhouses and the homes. He hadn’t noticed before that Mrs. Quist’s Hudson had stopped halfway into a cholla cactus. Her door was open and he could see her hands over her face, although he didn’t realize she was crying until her dark glasses fell onto the ground. As she leaned to retrieve them, she almost fell out.

It was unbelievable, Mrs. Quist had been robbing Dolores for as long as he could remember; for years she’d paid Dolores a dollar a pot, fifty cents a pot, a twentieth of what she could get in Santa Fe or L.A. When Joe thought of the money she’d made off Dolores … It was a predatory relationship. It was like watching a cat cry over a mouse. It was insane.

He went into the house. On the table was the black seed pot, a dark moon with a seed-sized hole on top. In the air, released from the newspapers, was the dust of the pots, the starchy smell of dry clay and the overwhelming scent of memory. Dolores was there in the chair by the table; all he had to do was raise his eyes to see her. She was a small woman with fine features and unlined skin and complete concentration. Her hands worked quickly, moving her polishing stone over the pot. Starting from the bottom, she drew a straight line up to the lip, and a line beside that, and a line beside that, using only enough pressure for the clay to rebound brighter until the surface of the pot was faceted by hundreds of lines like the iris of an eye, and then her fingers gave the pot another pass, following the infinitesimal ridges between the lines. He couldn’t make out what she was saying, but he heard the musical sound of her voice. He pressed his back against the wall and looked.