César Vélez From a Work in Progress When grandfather died, grandma, without crying and with her brittle bones, put him on the ground. She wrapped him with his bed covers and a few of his clothes. He rested in her back yard. She picked all of his belongings, many from the revolution era, and put them in a small pile next to his body. She burned the pile with his clothes, his bed, and his hat. They were all very old. That's how your uncle found out about grandpa’s death, from all the smoke. She told us to keep the old stuff burning. We all prayed. I don't know if this was her way of dealing with his death, or maybe that she had gone crazy in her ninety or so years. She said that this is how her mother would have done it. All I knew was that she was a strong woman. She told me to be like her, brave and strong. In Tijuana. She told me about the coyote, of how he could smell the money even before the bus came into the city. He cannot be trusted. They were nothing like the ones back home, in the mountains. She used to tell me stories when I was only a child. She said you could only hear them because they were too smart to be seen. Only when the coyotes wanted could you see them. Grandma said they helped to keep the fields and the land at peace. She was old and wise like the coyotes in the mountains. I wish she could be here with me, to deal with the coyotes. In Tijuana.