By the end of the workday, Fernando wasn’t sure what he’d accomplished besides busting up himself and everything around him. Chico seemed impressed with him, however. Onto a shaded beam Fernando collapsed, chugging water from an old milk jug and trying to catch his breath. Grinning, Chico clapped Fernando on the back where he sat.

Chico turned out to be the heavy-browed, sharp-eyed youth who’d questioned Fernando earlier. The other three churlish young men were called Tito, Pepe and Lalo. Pepe was very skinny, Tito was very ugly, and Lalo was very stupid. Chico, being the meanest of the bunch, was naturally their leader. All four of them glared at

If Fernando was going to make a proper pen and shelter for the goats, he was going to have to buy the materials to do so. His money had run out about the time he’d arrived in Cortez. He could send word back to Bogotá for more, but he found himself reluctant to do so.

The old woman’s bony brown hand seized Fernando’s elbow like a claw. It was as if he’d been about to stroll blindly through the gates of hell, the way she was restraining him. If she wasn’t so clearly distraught, Fernando might have laughed at the absurdity of it. Instead, he kept his face calm and

Since Fernando’s grandmother wasn’t keen on him doing her chores for her—and since it hadn’t proved a fruitful tactic in wheedling more information out of her—he took to working on her shack instead. She protested this as well, saying that everything was fine as it was. Fernando ignored this. He needed something to do with

One day Fernando rose well before the sun. In the premorning dark he went about fetching water from the well, milking the ornery old she-goat, and chopping and carrying in wood. At the first light of dawn, his grandmother stirred awake from her deep, death-like sleep, as though waking from a spell. Sitting on the