I ask Abuela Colque if she knows whose tierra negra¹ is piled in the street in front of our houses.

Can I take some?

And can I borrow their wheelbarrow also?

(I just assume they have a wheelbarrow because they work the fields.)

She says something about the dirt that I interpret as Don’t touch that shit; with this barrio you never know.

She starts explaining how she helped people here get luz y agua twenty years ago and later those same people called her sons thieves.

She says to go out into the fields where they cut the road and just pull the tierra negra from there.

She says they don’t have a wheelbarrow,  they use the patron’s. ²

What about a strong bucket? I ask.

We walk to the structure behind their house.

The fat kid whose mom rents part of the Colque’s house follows us over there.

It’s a half-finished two-story concrete bunker.

They want to rent it out this summer.

They’re not working the fields anymore.

Pretty soon there won’t be fields to work anyway.

On the floor are buckets for mixing concrete.  She flips one over, bangs it on the floor, and hands it to me.

On the way back I show her the beds for the vegetable garden I made.

She says Qué Lindo.

On the way out she gives me a patch of green onions seedlings.

Later I’ll give you some strawberries too, she says.

I go out to the fields looking for the piled up dirt she’s talking about.

It’s Sunday and there’s nobody working.

All the dirt is gone, I don’t see anything.

I walk back and see one of Abuela’s sons.

They all look like her.

I ask if he knows To whom this dirt pertains.

I use the subjunctive Pertenezca, as if dirt belonging to someone were purely hypothetical.

Anna, he says.

He nods to the house across the street.

I go and clap in front of Anna’s gate.

A daughter I’ve never seen before sticks her head and breasts out of the door and asks Si?

I say something about bucketfuls of tierra negra. Is it ok?

She says Let me ask mom.

She comes back out and says ‘Sta bien.

On the way back to get the shovel I see Carolina.

One of the barrio puppies walks out to the middle of the road towards us.

I tell her how they ambush our front and back door.

She explains how they run inside their house their house too.

We talk about how the lady renting from the Colques never feeds them, just lets them run everywhere.

She asks if I knew that Pedrito is sick. He’s in the hospital now with menangitis.

I tell her I didn’t.

She says he’s going to be alright though.

I ask her how it’s going in Bariloche.

She calls it Bari.

I ask if they have a wheelbarrow. She says let me ask _____, a nickname for Sergio I don’t fully understand.

She asks if I want to come get it.

Later while wheelbarrowing loads of dirt back to the garden all different thoughts and images run together:

1. Anna’s father, the old man with palsy, opening the curtain and looking out.
2. Somebody I’ve never seen before pulling a tape measure across the opening to the fields.
3. The Colques’ dog, Bito, lying on a gravel pile, barely seeming to breathe.
4. Every time I look around it seems more open here, more trees cut down.
5. Opening of a short story started but never finished:

I got up thinking about rivers. There was a certain stream I could see, an eddy lapping and cutting into a sandbank. It made me think of things washing away, eroding, like the way I signed my name, the letters collapsing into one another, missing the line they gave you to sign on by a little bit more each year.

By the fourth wheelbarrow load, Layla is helping me.

We bring her small trowel so she can shovel too.

After filling the beds we rake them out.

I tell her I need to start cleaning up now.

The puppies are sort of camped out in the pile of fenceboards stacked beside our house.

I clean up some of their shit from the corner.

There are all these cardboard boxes here that I don’t know what to do with.

The smallest puppy watches me break down one of the boxes and stuff it in a garbage bag.

She’s shivering.

It’s gotten cold, there are cloud moving in after 4 weeks of sun.

I think: light a fire.

I dig out a small circle of grass in the back yard.

Layla watches me light it and says Qué Lindo.

I turn 8 cardboard boxes into ash.

I ask Lau for a glass of wine.

Later I transplant the green onion and strawberries to the new beds.

The puppies lie in a pile by the fire.

They don’t have names yet, they’re just the Grande, the Mediano, and the Chiquito.

The Grande and Mediano fall asleep by the fire and look like Bito, like nothing will ever happen.

The Chiquito looks around every time a dog barks, every time a car starts, every time a door opens, then she looks at you hard like Damn, what’s happening, and please,  can’t you do something?

____________

¹ topsoil

² the landowner’s