On the hidden road of deep country we head over sandy roads east to west. This Brazilian backland, once ocean, is now sand. We all know that without opening a book. The Atlantic, current version, is behind and to our right. Cacti gain purchase on the sky; jurema's tough leaves give away not a drop. The driver of the jeep stops at the cluster of figures. A man holds out a small baby. "Take him, American," he says to me, "Give him the life I cannot." I am twenty-two. I think and I say, no. Softly. The no still lives.
James Shapiro writes at dawn in an old chair; during the day he happily teaches at a school in his home town of New York.