The Last Altar

Remedios had wanted it that way. No numbers on the backs of portraits. No large ledger open in the alcove. Families who still wished to leave a photograph with her wrote their names on small envelopes they kept themselves. If they wanted to leave an account, the school had a room for that, with separate sheets, two cabinets, and don Fermín telling everyone the alphabet was not a sacrament.

Every Day of the Dead, the village remembers people who died here but survived elsewhere.