One afternoon Mama Baca’s little daughter fell into the Rio Ancho and was swept clean away. The boys formed a posse and probed the river with poles, but they couldn’t find anything. (Her last breath had risen alone.) For days afterwards you could hear Mona and Kid padding up and down the river path at twilight, calling softly. But Sundew never answered.
A week later, Lone Jones found Sundew’s bloated little body caught in the sluice gate of his irrigation ditch, so he trucked her up to Dos Garcias for a good simple burial into the Earth with sprinkled offerings.
The next spring Papa Baca planted a pecan tree over her grave as a memorial. "She always liked pecans," he said.
Every fall, Mama Baca would go up there and pick the nuts from the tree for a pecan pie to remember Sundew by. She always left a few pecans on the grave.
