“A priest came by last night,” Mauricio finally said, his voice stronger. “A young guy. Skinny as a calaveras, a skeleton, and pale as fog.” He smiled, then glanced toward the hallway. “Everybody around here thinks all Mexicans are Catholics waiting for the magical words to escort them to the afterlife.” He laid his hand on his chest. “But the truth is that campesinos like me are Indian first and Mexican second, and the Day of the Dead is the only sacrament we need.”

“You talk to him anyway?”

Mauricio shook his head. “I pretended I was asleep. He said some stuff in Latin. I think it made him feel better.”

Donnally peered at Mauricio. “What about you?”

“I didn’t get the sense he was doing it for me. It was more like he was getting extra credit on a take-home assignment.”

That was the one thing he and Mauricio agreed on, but for different reasons. For Mauricio, religion was a straitjacket. For Donnally, it was an unknowable ocean.

“He the only one who’s dropped in?” Donnally asked.

“The third. I feel like one of those guys at the county fair who sits on the little seat above the water and people throw softballs at the target.” He smiled again. “Whichever child of the cloth dunks me wins a teddy bear and a place in heaven.”

The window rattled as a logging truck passing by compression-braked its descent toward the center of town.

Mauricio waited for the clattering to fade, then said, “A Mormon lady dropped in, too. She told me that she’d be coming back to baptize me after I’m dead.”

Donnally’s eyebrows furrowed and he drew back. “Isn’t that a little late? I thought the whole idea was that you needed the right state of mind to go to heaven. Seems to me that if you’re dead you can’t have any state of mind at all.”