The Almanac of the Dead

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THANK YOU, Robert and Caz, for your patience, love and understanding these past ten years.

Thank you, Gus, for being there.

Special thanks to J. Roderick MacArthur (1917–1984) and to the John D. and Catherine T. Mac-Arthur Foundation for the 1981–1986 Prize Fellowship which launched this novel.

THE OLD WOMAN stands at the stove stirring the simmering brown liquid with great concentration. Occasionally Zeta smiles as she stares into the big blue enamel pot. She glances up through the rising veil of steam at the young blond woman pouring pills from brown plastic prescription vials.

Another old woman in a wheelchair at the table stares at the pills Seese counts out. Lecha leans forward in the wheelchair as Seese fills the syringe. Lecha calls Seese her “nurse” if doctors or police ask questions about the injections or drugs. Zeta lifts the edge of a sleeve to test the saturation of the dye. “The color of dried blood. Old blood,” Lecha says, but Zeta has never cared what Lecha or anyone else thought. Lecha is just the same.

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