She gives us the Argentine sign [ arm / hand  swung in the direction of the road ahead, then held up] for “do you want a ride?”

She does this without smiling.

Through the passenger side window we look at each other’s faces for a second. Then I nod. “Si.”

Layla and I get in to her dented van.  Her small feet are pushing the clutch and brake pedals.

“Sorry about the dust,” she says. “Last night we had to take these dogs home. They got loose in the storm.”

“No, no, por favor.”

She’s maybe 43.

“They were roaming all over the place and our dogs were going crazy.”

“Which dogs were they?”

“A black lab, well taken-care of, and a doberman.”

“I always see those dogs along Camino de Los Nogales.”

“Si.”

“Where do you live?”

“In the chacra back there where it says ‘ceramic workshop.’ What about you?”

“We live next to Los Colque,” I tell her.

“Oh. Did you buy a place?”

“No, we’re renting. But we bought a little terrenito on the other side of the arroyo.”

“Really? That all used to be our land.”

“En serio?”

“Si. We had 5 hectares. Then in 2000–you know about the crisis right?-we had to sell it or lose everything.”

Her eyes fill up with tears.

A few seconds pass. The van is rattling forward on San Martin. We’re all looking through the windshield. It’s been raining and windy for the last 2 days.

“Yeah, um, we bought it in 2005,” I say. “When we came back this year nos dio tanto bronco .. . I mean bronca . . at how they’d cut down all the forest along the arroyo.”

“Si si si. Imagine: we planted that sausal (willow forest) so it wouldn’t erode.”

“Oh. Can you drop us off here?”

We were just about to the Feria.

Somewhere back in the last minute the road had switched from dirt to pavement.