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face. It’s loud as a college hoops game, and suddenly I hear her. Amost like she’s shouting at me, but I don’t dare turn toward the voice.
    She’s posted in my right ear, and when I finally look over, her wide-open mouth almost swallows me: “
¡Sí, se puede! Sí, se puede!
”
    Five thousand people packed into Santa Clara Street, and she’s found me. I nod, look forward again, try and pretend it’s not happening.
    â€œ
¡Sí, se puede! Sí, se puede!
”
    â€œGot it,” I say, smiling at her, speeding up.
    She speeds up with me. “
¡Sí, se puede! Sí, se puede!
”
    I know,” I say, not turning toward her this time, mumbling to myself. “I’m not deaf.”
    â€œ
¡Sí, se puede! Sí, se puede!
”
    I turn and shout, “Get your ass out of my face!”
    She retracts in horror, silent. Already she’s walking back across the guileless crowd pumping their fists. She tugs on the back of some paisa’s sleeve, and when I see the devotion on his face for this woman, good old prescience sets in and I try to make space, twist the hands of Fate to my pacifist liking. I gave the father a promise, yes, but I’d like someone up there to let me watch the rally in the veil of anonymity. Let me make a clean decision, unberated.
    We march past the classical Hotel De Anza and Market Street, under and out the concrete bridge of highway 87, beneath the lean palms and long-trunked elms of Guadalupe Park, the flaky bark floating off the trees like ash. I don’t want to look over, but I do anyway. She’s displaying the geometrical skills of an airport flagger, one arm raised over her head to bring attention to herself, the exact point of the compass, the other aimed at me with a slight lead to account for my quickened step. If she had a slingshot and a dead eye, she’d squint her aim at me, let it loose, and I’d be finished.
    Several paisas are in lockstep phalanx formation around her. Their wannabe proletariat goddess. I slide behind the cover of a paisa grandmother in a Mexican-flag muumuu, my right shoulder lifting ever so slightly to protect my chin.
    We’re separated by a forked barricade, the crowd divided to different sides of the stage. First dozens, then hundreds of people between us. That’s good. Bye-bye. A gringo in a flea-market poncho has been strumming an acoustic guitar all along, rollicking side to side like a deadhead on the Haight, singing:
    Â¡
No nos moverando
!
    Â¡No nos moverando!
    The air is warm now when it sits, cool in tiny gusts of wind. We move toward the music and take pamphlets from women in yellow shirts that say Trinity Episcopalian Church. We pass the booths of the United Farm Workers of Salinas and El Teatro Campesino, stacks of books for sale with Hispanic themes, Hispanic authors, American classics in translation:
El Viejo y El Mar, Las Pasturas del Cielo
.
    We weave our way around the cabin of a truck, a burrito house called La Victoria handing out samples of its creamy salsa in tiny plastic containers, security guards in shades on the bumper of the trailer. The grass cut low for our arrival, the trail around Guadalupe Park taped off. Joggers with headphones and bikers in racer’s gear share the dirt along the creek, paying no attention to us as we approach, pass, move on. The wind comes again and goes. The gringo’s squeaky voice grows with each step, and by the time we reach the stage, five speakers ten feet high are beating on our eardrums. The chanting dies down now, tech claiming its audio territory. The crowd slithers onto the field, fanning out by the dozens, empty spaces right there, and then gone.
    Native Azteca drums sound from the far end of the field. The gringo knows his cue and lets the song dwindle down, shouting, “
¡No a la guerra!
” as loud as he can.
    Father McFadden and other clerics are climbing the stage. He’s in his purple