till he was hardly a speck in the landscape behind them? Maybe. Maybe not. For Pilar wouldn’t realize until later Pepe had been carrying her daughter with the last of his strength, that it had been God’s will all along he leave his bones in the desert. But that didn’t settle the matter, for Pilar had known in her bones that Pepe would never rise from that rock, had known that Pepe had known it too, had only pointed into the distance so definitely, with such certainty, to keep her going. But that didn’t settle it either, for there had been the survival of three to consider, two of them now comfortably, or uncomfortably, hoping to survive the trials of youth in the promised land. Pilar had begun her peregrination on wings of love, but she’d landed on feet that still hurt. That first night Juan had informed her, as gently as he could, of the other family, how, in his own words... “I love you all.” On the thought that it was all something to think about, and the knowledge that she needed her sleep, Pilar closed her eyes. Tomorrow, or the day after—pasado mañana—she would have time for looking back, for deciding what decision made at what moment had caused things to happen more or less as they had.
Michael McGuire’s stories have appeared in The Kenyon Review, The Paris Review, Hudson Review, and New Directions in Prose & Poetry. His plays have been performed by the New York Shakespeare Festival, the Mark Taper Forum of Los Angeles, and many other theatres, and are published by Broadway Play Publishing.
FALL 2015
WEBER
THE CONTEMPORARY WEST
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