Daniel Macias

     The music at the dance was very loud.  St. Patrick's installed a new sound system last week for the parish hall and the D.J.'s at this dance evidently decided that they had to crank the volume so all of El Valle could hear the music, even the dead, who where resting in the ground just across the gravel camino. It was a cool, dry evening in June and the sky was rather still, so sound could carry itself as far as it wished.   Jimmy Garcia and mi primo, David Cordova sat with me in the otherwise unoccupied lunch table that encircled a giant, concrete dance floor in the middle of the hall.  Deacon Andrada later joined us, after dancing with his wife for about a hour.  
     My two compadres were telling me how small the mesas seemed when the returned from Albuquerque a month ago.  I joked that I was in Denver during that time, and to me, everything in El Valle seemed smaller.  Deacon Andrada laughed at the joke, but warned me about leaving this town and forgetting about it.  "Remember, Arthur Montoya, you're familia is part of this town, and if you neglect your town, you neglect your familia."
     He would later tell me in private that I am the only one of the three which he constantly tells this lesson.  He believes that Jimmy already knows it, and David doesn't give a damn.  "But then again, he has no familia to begin with," the deacon said, which is true, except for the fact that I am his primo.
     The parish hall had never been more alive.  It had been built four years ago and the people wanted to have dances there. The people were excited about the new sound system.  Most of them came to the hall in Wranglers and cowboy boots.  Some of the younger people wore
cross trainers.  The three of us wore casual clothes, and for that, we looked like outsiders.  The people didn't care because that already knew who we were.  We watched them dance to Tejano and country music.  Every once in a while we heard an old rock and roll song.  The dancers did the two-step and the changa for hours.  They wanted to have a dance at the hall every weekend now.
     "The music doesn't need to be this loud," yelled Jimmy.
     Deacon looked surprised.  "I thought young people loved loud music."
     Jimmy went on to say that this music was becoming a disturbance, and that the D.J.'s must have forgotten that some people live near the church.
     "They're all Catholics and they're all here.  They want a nice fiesta.  We're doing them a favor."
     "Those aren't the people I'm talking about," Jimmy answered.
     David told us then that he wanted to dance.  He spotted a trio of girls in the farthest corner. "Mira, they're even dressed like us," said David.  The girls wore long sleeved shirts and jeans with casual shoes.  It was almost imperative to him that he not request a dance if the girl next to him was not also asked to dance sometime that night, even if he had to ask her.  He wanted to dance with Lisa Soto.  I wanted to see who else was there before committing myself to a dance in that crowd of jolly dancers.  I have never been a good dancer.  It was difficult to tell who was with Lisa Soto in that corner.  We kept looking carefully and when the girls stepped into a moon beam, we recognize them.
     The first one I saw was Erica Marquez.  I told David I would ask her to dance.  Jimmy decided to stay.
     "You want to ask her?" David said.
     "Why not?"
     "She's a lot different from you."     
     I asked her to dance anyway, and to my surprise, she accepted.  We danced for two songs in the mob.  We tried to carry a conversation but the music drowned our voices.  I had to yell into her ear to tell her anything.  We decided to sit down where our ears would be safer.  She came back to the table with David and me.  We traded phone numbers and the addresses to our dorm rooms and promised to write each other.
      She asked if I would like to take a little walk and I said yes.  Erica walked to the corner to tell her friends where she would be.  She came back a few minutes later and we left the hall.
     Outside the moon brighten the clear sky and everything was in view.  We walked along the gravel camino, and as we looked into the cemetery I had the feeling that we weren't alone. This was no strange feeling, except for its degree.  The feeling was stronger than any other time I walked by the grave site.  It was of anxiety and joy, and I never had such a feeling in all the days I had lived in El Valle.
     "I can't wait to go back to Denver," I said.
     "Why do you want to go to that mass of dead life and concrete?  Enjoy resting here for awhile."
     "All that I can do is rest here awhile.  I've rested here a month already.  I want to go where I can do something.  I'm like the city mouse.  David and I used to call ourselves Los Ratones Ciudades."
     "So you think this town is dead?"
     "I guess so," I answered.  "I don't hate it here.  I just like to do all kinds of things."
     "Like what?  What are you going to do when you get back to Denver."
     I thought about it for a moment.  "Write a letter to you," I finally said.
     We walked back to the hall and the crowd at the dance floor was still crowded.  "It looks like no one has left," said Erica.
     "You know, it looks as if some more people showed up.  How many people are in this town."
     While we stood by our table in the hall we saw something very peculiar.  A viejo in an Army officer's uniform walked right by us, without noticing we were there, and moved toward the center of the hall.  He was pale and his eyes were nearly completely black.  His dark brown hair looked as if it was stitched on.  His walk was more like a sleepwalk.  Each step was very slow and rhythmic.   He stopped and looked around the gigantic room then walked again.  
     Jimmy saw the sleepwalker too and said that he recognized the guy.  "That's Lieutenant Jose Gonzales," said Jimmy, "and he's been dead for seventeen years."
     Lieutenant Gonzalez stopped in front of Mrs. Diana Romero, his daughter.  She was a teacher at the Middle School.  Mrs. Romero took a long look at the viejo.  Her eyes, even from my distance, revealed her shock, and the lady's head suddenly dropped toward the ground and her body fell with it.  The people around Mrs. Romero at the time crowded around the teacher.
     Then we saw other sleepwalkers coming toward us, and we knew they were dead.  Some of the dancers recognized a few of them and ran away.  The dancers used all the fire escapes and set the alarms which contact the police and fire departments, for the Parish also installed a security system that would do such a thing.  When the emergency vehicles pulled into the parking lot, the only people in the hall were the somnambulists and ourselves.  David still had the nerve to ask, "Why the hell are we still here?"
     Jimmy and I tried to talk with a couple of the viejos.  I looked for relatives of mine but I
couldn't find any.  Jimmy told me it was probably because of my familia's history of being comfortable where they are.  "Why aren't you that way?" he asked me.
     I had no answer but kept trying to talk to the muertos.  No matter what we said to them we had no answer from them.  We concluded that they had no voices and just sat down while they sleepwalked in circles.
     It was good that we stayed because the chaos of all the dancers leaving in a great hurry caused four car accidents.  The police had little idea of whether to treat the accidents first or to find out the cause of the fire alarm.  The Chief of Police was called in to handle the situation. He decided to go to the parish hall and send the cars to report on the accidents.  "Don't you fellas get in car wrecks too," I heard him say on the intercom.
     We were placed in police protection the moment they saw us in the hall.  They asked us why we were in the room at the time.  While a pair of officers and the Chief asked us other questions about the night, we wondered what they were going to do with the sleepwalkers.  A group of policemen strapped themselves in bullet proof vests, grabbed shotguns and ran in formation toward the hall.
     "No, don't!" shrieked Erica.  She stepped toward the hall but the Chief held her until the quit moving.
     A few minutes later one of the cops escorted Deacon Andrada out of the front doors of the hall and gave his strict instructions to stay with us until the police resolved the situation.  The cops talked to the Chief in private for a moment.  Later the Chief told us, "Don't go anywhere right now."  Then he walked into the hall and took the cop with him.  It wasn't long before the Chief came back and nearly yelled to the deacon, "Those are a bunch of dead people!  You get them out."
     The editor of the town's newspaper had just arrived and wanted to interview the Chief about the incident.  The Chief said, "Talk to that guy," as he pointed to Deacon Andrada.  The editor strolled toward all stay to tell him about what happened and we agreed, probably because we did not believe that she would make it a front page story.  She asked us how the night was before the incident began.  Then she asked, "Under what circumstances did you see the strange people?"  It sounded as if she expected a specific answer.  Her following question was, "No one was intoxicated or anything, right?"
     The editor asked us to repeat the scenario of the event three times before asking where the priest may be.  We pointed toward the house and told her that Father Mitchell never stays to see the end of any church function except for mass.
     "Well, can I talk to him now?"
     "Why would you want to?" asked Deacon.  "He didn't see any of this."
     After the reporter left we walked back into the hall.  Some of the muertos had already left.  The ones who remained were sitting down in the tables.  A few of them had tears in their eyes.  David and I sat at the tables with a couple of them. We were silent for at least half an hour.  One by one the muertos left the hall.  We followed them out the front doors and to the gravel camino, where we stopped and saw them crossing into the sacred ground and disappearing from our sight.  We noticed that the hour was approaching midnight and we ought to go home.  Deacon Andrada asked if we could help clean the hall the next day so he could leave the hall as it was and go to bed.  He told him that we would and so he went home.  David and Jimmy followed the deacon and went to David's house, since Jimmy did not want to tell his mother what had just happened.
     I wanted to say goodbye to Erica and tell her that I wanted to see her before the summer
ended.  I walked back inside the hall to look for her.  I found her in the middle of the dance floor.  She was waltzing with one of the muertos.  Their feet shuffled in unison.  One long step followed by two short steps, and they continued this rhythm twice around the dance floor.  Erica hummed a tune I had never heard before.  Her voice sounded like a gentle breeze was blowing through the mouthpiece of a wooden flute.  Her hair reflected the light and spread it out to the rest of the room.  Even when the lights dimmed the hall was still lighted.  As the seconds approached twelve o' clock the muerto slowly faded away from our view, from all view, with each step he took.  I saw no fear in his dark eyes, but comfort.  Then those eyes began to turn white.  From the eyes pure light disseminated throughout his body and grew more intense as it became larger.  For a few seconds I covered my eyes and saw nothing but the same hue of white that I saw in the muerto's eyes.  It also spread heat as strong as a flame's around the hall.  The muerto, as his eyes were growing white, let go of Erica.  She did not walk away or even move. When the light was becoming very bright and hot she turned her head and closed her eyes.  The light did not burn or blind her, but seemed to give her a new energy, for she looked brighter too, as if she were part of that white light.  Then the light, just like the dancing muerto, faded away until each particle of it was gone and the parish hall was dark once again.
     All that was left to see was from the moonlight.  Erica walked over to me and took me by my left arm.  "I think I am ready to go home now," she said.
     We walked together to her house.  It was about a half a mile and we saw no muertos around.  When we approached the front door of her house Erica thanked me for walking with her a gave me a pico on the cheek.  She stepped into the house and I began walking home.  The mesas were little larger that night.  Once I made it to my house I stammered into my room and fell asleep knowing that El Valle was at rest again.