Canyon of remembering

by Lesley Poling-Kempes

Artist Whitney Slope does not understand what compels him to flee Santa Fe at the hour of his greatest professional triumph and follow the waning light to a forgotten corner of the desert. Is it the pull of something holy? He couldn't say, but like others whose paths he crosses here, Whitney is willing to trade the ghosts of his past for the promise of a miracle. Dominga Garcia de Jesus has always known the holiness of this place where as a child she and her brothers rode unrestrained after the cattle that had strayed. And even now, at forty-seven, the widowed, beautiful mother of Atencio hasn't stopped believing in miracles; she just knows that they are desperately in need of one. Before Vietnam, Atencio carved fragrant cedar in to holy santos for the village church. Five years later, the war-haunted veteran believes he has fallen from grace. But on the crumbling steps of an abandoned gas station at the Canon's edge, Atencio finds a frightened family of illegals and a last chance at r