VIEWSnThe Garden of Alejandra RuiznIt was April and beginning to warm up in the mountains.nSnow melted from the deep basins, especially from thenexposures facing south and, in shrinking, formed pictures onnthe slopes — a snow hawk, a pack of running coyotes, annantelope. Alejandra Ruiz knew these animals would disappearnas the sun slid into its higher arc, so she told thenneighbor children, who belonged to the woman ErnestonSaenz lived with. “That’s an antelope,” she said to them.n”Can you see it?” She pointed to the mountain peaks andnthe children nodded. “That’s a hawk,” she said, “and a bearnstanding on two legs.”nThe children smiled. “We see them,” they said.nBut Alejandra Ruiz knew the mountains were too farnaway for them to make out what she meant to show them. Itnwas too bad, she thought, because in a few days the antelopenand the hawk would be gone, and the bear standing on twonlegs would be water in the rivulets and streams and in thenriver which was already brown and filling with the melt.nOne afternoon on a day of fast clouds, with waterntumbling into the gullies, Aleja Ruiz set out from her adobenhouse to prepare her garden. The best earth was above thenriver on a narrow plateau. Her mother had planted there,ntoo, and with the same implements Aleja used. She had anhoe and a rake (whose handles had each been replaced bynThis story is included in Kent Nelson’s The Middle ofnNowhere, published this fall by Gibbs Smith in Layton,nUtah.n14/CHRONICLESnA Short Storynby Kent NelsonnnnErnesto Saenz, who had whittled the ends of two crookednjunipers to fit rightly into the metal collars) and a smallntrowel Aleja had bought at the K Mart in Espanola.nAleja was not so old as she appeared. Each year shengathered wood for her fires, baked bread, raised chickensn(from which she made egg money), hitchhiked into town fornher groceries on the days when Ernesto, though he promisednher a ride, could not get his truck started. She worked innher garden during the long dry season of summer. She hadnfine features, a skin tough from the weather, and sharp eyes.nBut she was prone to ailments. Her hip ached now and then,nand sometimes her shoulder. She healed them by working.nFrom the plateau by the river the dry land rose to the eastnin uneven hills of pinon and juniper laced with ridges of rednsandstone and troughs of arroyos and eroded ravines. Highernup were the foothills and then the mountains where thenhawk and the running coyotes and the antelope disappearednday by day. These mountains were called the Sangre denCristos for the color they bore in the evenings when sunlightnflowed down red against the line of ascending shadow.nTo the west was the river which, even though brown withnthe melt, glittered with sunpebbles as it curved awayndownstream. Beyond the river was a paler terrain of plainsnand mesas — lower, dryer, hotter.nThe crops for which Aleja was readying the soil were cornnand squash and beans and potatoes, the usual ones for whichnshe had culled the seeds the previous year and the samenones her mother had planted. Aleja bent over the hoe. Hern