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Sunny Blue Skies and a Brand New Day

It’s all a ruse, a game, a formidable but futile attempt to intimidate by veiled threat. Antonio knows this in the first hour or two but will not succumb to arrogance, nor will he submit to what is not true. Well, he might submit; what else can you do? But he won’t confess, because he’s innocent. Quincy has nothing but stumbling utterance of his brother or someone else’s brother, or you know, or he knows.

Get some clues, hombre!

Antonio wants to yell it or convey it with a smirk. But among the lessons assimilated early on by a young man on the fast track is the practical value of the low profile. Punch lines might be golden with a straight man wry as Quincy making the set-up. But such a rickety stage can make for hazardous delivery to a policeman, and Antonio knows it is sometimes better to concede the spotlight to the pudgy straight man with the bumpy face. Let him shine and have his say. See what follows, laughter or applause or the numbing stillness of an empty cell. Any way it goes, where can the fat man go from here?

Quincy may be fat and have a bumpy face but he’s far from pudgy in the brain. He’s lean and mean between the eyes. With his first twenty plays scripted on his clipboard he paces the sideline, at a distance, watching, seeking greater control.

Antonio answers carefully, weaving elliptical obtusion and dialectic lexicon like a seasoned apologist of the smoke and mirrors school. The exchange is tape-recorded. So why say anything that can and will be used against you? It’s not easy to feign a most sincere yet obscure regret while staying on your feet and giving the illusion of progress.

You know what happened on the night of the twenty-second on the beach near the Hotel Oaxtapec, when Esteban Silvestre was murdered.

What? That’s it? Is this a question? Or one of those veiled accusations designed to draw reaction, a confession, as it were? A twitch, a blink, a furrow or uncertain, nervous flex can give you up for guilty, but nobody speaks body language more fluently than Antonio; with chin up, back straight, eyes proud and everything relaxed, Antonio budges not one millimicron as he sighs, “No, sir. I am sorry to say that I do not.”

“Your brother did it.”

Who would respond to such nonsense? Not Antonio, who can stare into next week. He will offer no denial or equivocation. The statement has no more meaning than, say, the sky is green Jell-O.

So they sit and stare.

Antonio won’t blink but finally states for the record, “Señor, my brother is a boy of fifteen years and a mute.”

“Do you fish?”

“No, Señor. I’m sorry to say that I don’t.”

“Did you ever fish?”

“Yes. A long time ago, with my father.”

“Your father is dead. Is he not?”

“Yes, Señor. He is.”

“Did he … make you fish?”

“No, Señor. He did not.”

“Then you liked to fish?”

“I liked being with my father. I can no longer be with him, except spiritually.”

“Did you know Esteban Silvestre?”

“I don’t think I know him.”

“You know he is dead?”

“No, Señor. I don’t know that.”

And so on round the bend, slow and rickety as a cart dropping junk off the top now and then when Quincy mumbles aside something like, “Your brother carries a machete.”

Antonio treads carefully behind the wagon, neither retrieving the trash nor stumbling over the big pieces, like this one that merits a nod and a clarification. “He uses a machete in his work.”

“What is his work?”

“He opens coconuts for guests at the hotel.”

“Hm. He doesn’t take care of the turtles?”

“Yes. As of yesterday he takes care of the turtles.”

“Where is his machete?”

“I don’t know.” Here Antonio slips with a half-smile tweaking past as he notes the need for a disposition on the machete. But the need is Quincy’s; the machete has yet to be found.

Furthermore, Quincy misses the slipped half-smile because he reviews his play list too closely, proving the superior benefits of improvisation. How can you go to question nineteen just because it comes after question eighteen, if nineteen is a digressive query on turtle care after eighteen exposed a flank on a missing machete? You will surely miss your chance, and Quincy does.

Antonio hides his irrepressible relief with another sigh and a slump, which is not a loss of posture but a ruse, a distraction, in which he stares at Quincy’s hair, calculating the mix between natural oil and bottled oil that lubricates the sheen. So the telltale smirk is not avoided but not detected either.

The game goes on. Into the night they volley from opposing baselines with neither man rushing the net. A tennis overlay gives a maestro a system in which to work that is better than free form. Let Quincy mumble innuendo and insult. Antonio hangs back and lets the ball come to him. No need to hurry the point.

In a few hours the harsh florescence loses its edge as first light fills the windows. Quincy rises too, saying that should do it.

Antonio doesn’t ask what it is, but sits still as a trained, professional witness.

Far from insensitive to such acute skill, Quincy doubletakes on his initial hunch that such a performance may actually prove his premonition. He hesitates, and Antonio trumps him by taking a bumbling initiative that a trained professional would never take.

“You work very hard, Señor Quincy.”

“Please. My name is not Quincy,” Quincy says, but he doesn’t say what his name really is.

“I think sitting in a jail cell all night asking questions must not be your first choice.”

Quincy allows for another smile, the first since his last smile, and he sits back down. “No it is not. Tell me something. What is your first choice?”

Antonio smiles big; it’s a fake, but Quincy takes the bait. “My first choice, Señor, would be for something good to eat and then maybe a beer, and then I would like to go back to the hotel, you know, if something is on TV, or else I will read from a book. I like to read books on business and the American stock market.”

“Is that what you did last night? Go back to watch TV?”

“No. 1 only went back to bring something to eat to my brother. He is guarding the turtles now and he’s very diligent. I had too much to drink. You know, Saturday night. I fell asleep.”

“But you have a room at the hotel?”

“No, Señor. I watch the TV in the lobby bar.”

Quincy takes notes for the first time, then stands and nods and again says that should do it. He moves ponderously on, taking leave, but turns abruptly to ask how Antonio, making better money than most in the area, could risk everything on a simple hatred.

Antonio squints for meaning, confident that he hates nothing.

Quincy spells it out. “Hector Diàz. You bludgeoned him for no reason on his way home from his office. Or maybe you have a reason. Lorenzo Lorca. You killed him with a knife in a similar way.” Quincy waits.

Antonio looks up and says, “No sir. I did none of these things. I do not know these men. I’m sorry you cannot solve these crimes.”

Quincy leaves, leaving Antonio to wonder if this last exchange will in fact do it. Perhaps the bumbling human touch helped assuage suspicion. A maestro must often depend on the corollaries rather than on assessment, and this is one of those times.

The corollary in this application is: Who knows? Nobody can know until later. So why worry? It can only mess you up. He reclines to the soft comfort of the corollary and closes his eyes to sleep.

In a short time he is comfortably certain that his final flourish was effective in diluting suspicion. He also realizes that he can’t sleep with the sun rising, and here he is, on a tortuous side road off his proven path to development. Then again, no man is absolved from detours like this one, with its harsh conditions and disrespect and critical doubt on personal progress and, with the onset of fatigue, doubts on life itself.

Antonio has lived blessedly free of doubt, first as a child and then as a man who clearly perceived the changing world and its intolerance of caste. All the noise over Mestizo, Castizo, Espomolo, Mulatto, Zambiago, Cambujo and the rest of that ancient, hand-me-down constraint has no place in the modern world now geared to performance. Just look around.

Take a place like Jimi Changa’s, where the dance floor goes wild with people meeting the common need, swinging, flailing, writhing, and grinding, enjoying life to the maximum, because that is all we have.

Do the wild dancers ask who your parents or grandparents were? I don’t think so. Do they consider the lowly shrub that represents Jaime Ruíz’s family tree? It doesn’t matter, because Jaime Ruíz is now Jimi Changa. And what’s that? A cross between the rock icon Jimi Hendrix and the deep-fried gut bomb called chimichanga is what. It works, because people see and laugh, which is all they want to do, because it’s all they have time for. Even Quincy knows this is true, though Quincy appears far less tuned to modern times and most certainly doesn’t laugh.

Antonio remembers his late father recalling the ancestors of two and three generations ago, with tales of caste distinction and of proper rising through the ranks of structured society. Borquino, Cambujo, Mestizo, Coyote, Mulatto, Alvarazado and the rest. Who can know which was best or worst? Who can say that one person is of higher birth than another? Look at Antonio Hector Molina Garza, with a touch of the yellow, a dash of the red, hued dark as madroña and lit above all by the rare spark of the maestro. What does Quincy know? Perhaps he too is aware of the ancestors and their superstitions that imbued the people with fear and constraint for too long. Surely Quincy can see in today’s world who exactly is whom and where they are going.

Yet a short while after these comparative analyses between the rigid past and the overwhelming present in which each man will adapt or fail, interrupting the marginal numbness of the half-sleep, two men enter the cell. Perhaps now it is time to go home.

But then, why two men?

But of course Antonio Hector Molina Garza knows why two men have come to visit, just as he knows of the rigid past. He sits up as they sit him up, and he thinks again of the laughter that is a potential with every audience and, moreover, that every audience requires the laughter, no matter how bad the weather or their mood or state of digestion.

Except of course for this audience, who have come to work themselves, to extract that which fills a different need, to warm him up, as it were, in spite of his stormy night and foul outlook. They have brought another chair, a metal one just for him, and several lengths of rope. They bind him to it, hands behind and feet below. He wonders why not the cuffs again, but then he knows why not. The cuffs are also metal, which tends to scorch the wrists, which looks unsightly and reflects poorly on the investigative team.

One of the men goes back out for a small table, on which he sets a dirty jar of chili powder and a tall plastic cup of soda pop with three straws, no ice. The label on the jar is smudged with dirty red fingerprints, but Antonio can read it with little effort: Tehuacàn. It is the brand most famous for its complexity relative to hot surges, and for its efficacy in tehuacanazo.

One man reaches for Antonio’s cojones as the other steps out again, this time for the twelve-volt battery and the jumper cables. The negative cable is clamped to Antonio’s balls. The positive is set on the leg of his chair. The second man dumps three spoonfuls of chili powder into the soda, and as it fizzes, he sticks all three straws into the foam. Two straws go up Antonio’s nose, which he can easily resist, until the positive cable is touched to the appropriate battery post, and resistance becomes Pyrrhic.

With two straws up Antonio’s nose, the cap is secured to the rim of the plastic cup, and the second man blows into the third straw, driving the spicy foam up and into Antonio’s head.

He has heard of such a thing but never in his wildest dreams anticipated its practice so close to home, or at least not on such a one as himself. In less time than the best schtick in the world can make the gamest audience giddy with laughter, Antonio Hector Molina Garza understands that a few things can never go away.

At least it seems like never, once your brain comes to a boil on chili pepper and your nuts soak another twelve volts concurrently.

When Quincy re-enters, Antonio’s eyes are bigger than ever, and the bumpy-faced man smiles his sweetest smile, perhaps at this rare moment of professional efficiency.

“Now, Señor. We will try again.”

Suffice to say that Antonio Hector Molina Garza proceeds posthaste on the path to maturity, instantly learning what makes a man. It’s the pain that tells him he is a man beyond the doubts of boyhood and into the full power of manhood. The single transforming influence is pain. Some men take years to feel enough pain and make the change. An unfortunate few cross over in mere minutes.

Antonio Garza will admit to murdering your mother or your son.

He will confess to illicit sexual relations with a turtle or his fiancée’s mother.

Mass murder or any of the unsolved murders that Quincy wants to solve? No problema.

He will scream on cue.

He will blow huge red wads of snot from his nose and hock similar gobs from his throat. He will believe that blood is mixed in, and he will laugh, though his laughter is silent and within.

He will brace for the crack to his shins and his ribs. He will believe them broken and proceed to further confession; whatever is required.

Quincy says he doesn’t like this, but then asks what else he can do. He can repeat the therapy, but then at a certain point, the questions twist so only a clear mind can follow them. And what good will a confession do for anyone if the suspect is screaming, “¡Síííííí! ¡Síííííí! I killed them all!”

Quincy remains calm, even in witness of such apparent pain. “How can you say you murdered the fisherman as well as the nun and the bartender, when you were working on both the thirteenth and the seventeenth?” Twelve volts and some spicy foam complete the question.

Antonio can only screech his confirmation, “¡Síííííí!”

A very long time later, Quincy and cohorts fade away, leaving a twitch and a scorch in their wake. And maybe a whimper or two.

Antonio awakens far down the road, beaten to a daze, sweating into the heat of the day. He jolts with alarm, sensing human presence, and he feebly fends off the hands reaching toward him.

But it is only Simón Salvador, a man maybe fifteen years older than himself and impeccably dressed in a suit of apparently Italian cut and shoes that look as soft and pliable as Mrs. Mayfair.

And there, beyond the initial haze of disbelief, are Mrs. Mayfair’s tetas. They press into the sartorial arm. Not to worry; she slides them on around and heaves them forward to their place of greatest comfort, nestling under Antonio’s haggard face. She touches him gingerly as heirloom china that might chip or break. The well-dressed man steps back with austere indifference and authority. He winces in disgust and calls for the guard.

This meticulously groomed man waits for no woman, sundown or payday. He is official but not governmental. His dress and demeanor make his independence as well as his position eminently clear to anyone entertaining the slightest doubt that here stands the other side of power. The man smiles as coldly as Quincy did, but unlike Quincy he offers his hand for a shake, which gesture conveys magnanimous dimension, because this man should touch nothing here, including a trembling client and especially if said client survives a recent and most personal inquisition. Which may be why the impeccably dressed man of power shakes only with the tips of his fingers.

But who can blame him in such a sty?

He doesn’t look at Antonio but rather through Antonio. He pauses for calibration, and in a voice smooth as silk, soft as cashmere, and as notably scented by curiously strong mints, he says, “Come with us. You’re going home.”

Mrs. Mayfair is beside herself with constraint. This is not the time or place to demonstrate joy or relief or even the slightest affection. Besides these considerations of tact, who wants snot all over her taffeta? She steps back like a representative of society’s divisiveness, as it were, approaching her love on the one hand yet avoiding him on the other.

Like a man rising from the ashes, Antonio rises. Testing his mangled senses with a blink, a nod, a bow, and a feeble grasp, he follows the lawyer out, leaving Mrs. Mayfair to bring up the rear.

Let Quincy see this entourage and wonder who’s who and where we’re going.

Outside in mere minutes, Antonio Hector Molina Garza experiences that phenomenon so common among professional athletes, politicians, and convicts of el Norte, which is that of the rebirth. Keening less on the instrumental injunction of Jesu Cristo than on the wealth and influence of Mrs. Mayfair, he steps simply into the outside world as if for the first time. His arms open in cruciform deference to suffering, and he breathes. Muscles ease their grip on bones, and the harsh imprint that no man wants on his curriculum vitae falls behind, already part of the past.

That’s the kind of man he is, a man who knows his potential, who will redeem and follow his potential as long as the heart of Mexico pounds in his broken chest.

He knows now as well what some men know about freedom by way of its denial. Breathing deep for the clean, fresh feel of it, even though the air is hot and muggy and tainted with an oily mist, he savors the difference between here and just inside.

Señor Salvador recognizes the symptoms of severe inconvenience. But, he suggests, now is the best time to retire to his office to build a solid foundation, upon which can be erected the bulwarks, framing, and final polish of the sturdiest defense.

Antonio is speechless. The all-night interrogation proved his durability, but he has nothing more to say. So he shrugs and falls in line again, because nothing is left in him with which to resist. He wonders briefly what else is gone for the short term or the long one. Never mind, every battery needs a chance to rest. With faith in the magic that comes from nature, he will recharge just like the twelve-volt battery in the jail and soon be restored to proper energy. He turns to Mrs. Mayfair and nods in affirmation of everything she might suspect, including the horror of last night and the fantasy of the night ahead. Surely she understands. He senses only a dull, singed pain where once his pinga would have wagged playfully as the tail of a happy dog, a purebred with proper training who lives on a hacienda.

Well, it’s hardly been an hour. The surge will return.

For now he is supremely relieved to be among friends and the other power. Happiness abounds, and he can’t keep his arms from wrapping around his soft and scented savior, the female of the liberation. Slowly they embrace, which is quite a moment for both—clothed and far from playfulness or the physical conjunction binding their past.

They tremble as one, perhaps feeling a bit of the hard-earned manhood acquired last night.

He shudders with a wave of relief.

In their first such embrace the spirits join in the meaning of abrazo. Yet he falters, ever sensitive to unseemly appearance; this looks like a gamy mismatch. He is so dirty. She is so clean. “Never you mind,” she whispers. “We’ll get you fixed up right after. Good as new.”

Grossly frayed around the edges, Antonio wants to know the cost of such a splendid defender, as if practicality must be measured against the extreme violence he would surely suffer again if the money weren’t there. The question is hazardous and tasteless. For one thing, it could establish a debt that could set him back years on the rapid rise. For another, an act of love has no monetary measure.

So he doesn’t ask again but simply sits and retells the evening of the twenty-second from beginning to end three times for Señor Salvador. He further enumerates the names of those apparently dead people who are still in need of an identifiable murderer.

The kinks untangle at the soft, skilled hand of the splendid lawyer, who obviously doesn’t care what’s fudge or embroidery; each has its place in times of need. He laughs at the people named, some of whom he says are only half-dead and in need of facilitation but not yet in need of Antonio as a fall guy.

With focus on cohesive timing and placement, they buff the smooth transitions for a snug fit of the fifteen-minute intervals that comprise the night in question, intervals now on the table like body parts awaiting reassembly after a crude dissection.

A few documents are signed here and here and here.

Mrs. Mayfair signs a few too, scanning them quickly with assurance by the impeccably elegant Simón Salvador, who encapsulates those terms and conditions already discussed with her spouse, the esteemed Mister Mayfair. In short order it’s down to farewell and heartfelt wishes for safe passage.

Antonio takes note of this Señor Salvador, who has nothing on anyone’s historical or cultural legacy and who obviously mastered the lessons of rapid rising at an early age. The man is perfectly free of friction, so smoothly does the world turn in his presence. Antonio hopes his own foundation will lead to élan and savoir-faire of equal dimension.

Señor Salvador brings his heels smartly together with a quarter millimeter to spare between them. Silence underscores his departing drama, as he bows to kiss Mrs. Mayfair’s hand with his gaze aimed directly at the floor rather than the dazzling abyss between her breasts. Ignoring this splendid buffet as only a giant among men can do, Señor Simón Salvador hopes they will meet again soon. He steps forward for a timorous fingershake with Antonio and says, “All of us will meet again.” His perfectly manicured hand settling onto Antonio’s back makes for self-consciousness in the once and future up-and-comer. But residual grit and grime from a night in jail become incidentals equal to cero as Señor Salvador presses knots in the rippling muscle mass. Working them deftly with a soothing touch, he counsels no worries; Quincy has nada. “¡Nada! Footprints in the sand are what he has. Ha! He better hurry. Do you hear me?”

Antonio doesn’t say that survival the last thirty-two hours was hinged on this same presumption but rather says thank you.

Mrs. Mayfair slips into moderate flirtation, which includes the subtle but suggestive pucker that dazzles with a fresh application of lip gloss. Gratitude is capped with an easy cleavage squeeze and a sultry “Thank you so much.”

Then it’s down the stairs, out the door, and into a cab, alone together at last, on their way in the wondrous glow of another lazy afternoon. Silence is golden and more. They hold hands, Antonio and his heroine in humble ardor.

In a few minutes he is compelled to ask aloud if he’s best served by going to the hotel just now. Moreover, should he not go home to relieve the tension for his brother and Lyria, and to clean himself?

Mrs. Mayfair says he could call them if they had a phone, which they don’t. So going home is indeed necessary, except that it will pre-empt what will best serve her, which is to care for his wounds and clean him up. And, perhaps, to clean him out by opening and clearing the passageways of his manhood, which is not to suggest a claim on him or his time, except for the next two hours. Because she has, after all, sustained terrific expense and, worse yet, suffered profound anxiety herself, which isn’t like what he suffered, but still. She asks only a chance to participate in the warmest homecoming a man or woman could ever want, which will enable him to pursue a proper homecoming at home. Because he can’t very well check in with his fiancée and then check out for a little while for some of the hot and sweaty with his savior.

Well, she has a point. And a man on the far side of a hard lesson in the value of freedom does want to let it ring, wants to tell the world with a cock-a-doodle-doo that it might be sundown but it’s the dawn of life anew. Besides, she will send word by way of a note that she can compose right now and have this very taxi deliver. Besides that, he can tuck his shirt in properly and stand tall and use the side entrance and take the service elevator. Then who’s to know? And what if they do?

Finally, besides all that, she’ll have him home by eight, eleven at the latest.

Oh, and besides that, they must review the legal documents and plan strategy and budget the defense. She slips the b-word in there slyly with a wry eyebrow so he won’t feel tacitly indebted, but give a gal a break.

Antonio knows the score and in fact appreciates the leverage. Freeing him from free will, it also allows for the most efficient means available of calming everyone down, alleviating tension, and settling back to life as normal, which is what life should be.

Besides, she says with a tormenting look of sadness and joy, she is leaving tomorrow because she must, or maybe the day after. This will not only be a reunion but a farewell.

She has a point here too, and Antonio feels a tinge of regret for his failure as a noble man, who catches himself counting the four hundred fifty pesos surely accruing to such an evening. For shame, after all she’s done. Do you think the spit-shined Simón Salvador would even answer the telephone for four-fifty, much less make a personal trip to the jail on behalf of a scorched and beaten client?

No, he would not, nor would he likely be so crass as to count mere tips where real loyalty is displayed. “But, my beautiful woman, I must ask you to be patient.”

“Patient?” The wry eye waits for sophistry.

“I have suffered. Quincy has possibly hurt me. I must go very slowly. I don’t know if I can.… You see …”

But Mrs. Mayfair saw hours ago that the fundamental process of caring and cleaning up would require the softest touch with a purr and a coo to see what is ready and what needs a day of rest. Her needs and ministrations come from spiritual love, only love.

Well, perhaps a half-hour of rest will do for starters. Who can know at this juncture? But still, care must be taken to ease the delicate parts back to the job they do best.

Compelled to atone for the sins of greed and ingratitude and for the other sins that never stop lurking in the shadows, he concedes her point of view. In mere moments he is laughing courageously at the sight of himself, the once and future maestro reduced to filth and grime, ascending if not truly rising in the service elevator. Gladly yet slowly, peeling off his shredded clothing as if shucking his torment, he promises to be brief in the shower. By the fifth minute, however, the steaming hot luxury is so far from the muggy dungeon, he can hardly break away. The mistress enters with exotic gels and lotions and the soft touch that will soon tell them both the condition of the patient.

Redemption appears to be conditional and marginal, then breaks free to fulsome recovery for a thorough thank-you. Expressions of gratitude work out conveniently in the shower, so dinner can be savored without the nagging pressure. The savior and the saved dress partially and settle in to dinner by candlelight, which arrives shortly after initial hellos.

Following a light white wine with a smooth cognac, desert, and a reasonable step up in pace to a rightfully romping homecoming, the hours roll easily past eight and eleven, but not much past midnight, when consensus holds for departure.

The documents are signed, the man groomed, decompressed, and presentable.

“I may stay another day,” Mrs. Mayfair sleepily says, reaching for a hug and advising, “Take a cab. The bus doesn’t run this late.”

How does she know the bus schedule? But what she knows is incidental to what she does with a roll of bills, which is stick it into his pocket. She tells him he is the very best of the loveliest men she’s known, and she would be a fool to leave him in jail.

“And you too,” he says in the way of freebooting men. Feeling spry and pleasantly numbed and certainly free of pressure, not to mention rigor, he ambles out the main elevator to the lobby and asks Jose for a taxi. Who cares who is looking? It’s after midnight, and in this pocket are—hold on, wait …

He tells the taxi driver, “Noches. Calle de Madera, por favor.”

And he counts: one, two, three, four(!), five hundred pesos! ¡Caramba! ¡What a lady!

He rides as if weightless on a magic carpet, keenly aware of the difference one person can make and where he would be this minute without her. Strolling into the little casa, he is quiet so as not to waken Baldo. He lights a candle, and there they are, Lyria and Baldo, sleeping in each other’s arms like children, as he and Lyria once did. He feels another wave of gratitude for love so bountiful it drives his fiancée and his brother together in his absence, as if their love helped bring him home. He thinks it did but feels something more, which is hard to place but has to do with innocence and the changes life holds in store.

Look at Lyria. She is pure as the day he first remembers them in the same bath. She retains that innocence, always has, though his innocence feels long gone, traded, as it were, for the benefits of development. Such is the toll life takes. Good life, hard life; it doesn’t matter. At least the rise of Antonio will continue to bring the whole family up. Let no man or woman doubt the loyalty and devotion here.

Yet a tinge of remorse accompanies his gratitude for this day of liberation. Torture leaves a permanent stain. The days of innocence are gone. Then again, a certain type of man is grateful even for the opportunity to make sacrifice, lest so many lives be lived without a chance for improvement.

Never mind the regrets; his pain shall be everyone’s gain.

He undresses and slips into his own hammock, grateful as well that Baldo is man enough to fill his shoes in his absence. Who better to comfort such an innocent than his perfectly innocent brother? Well, maybe not perfectly innocent. That will take some sorting out. But he is innocently motivated, at any rate. And he never said an unkind word about anyone or anything.

Antonio resists the urge to wake them and celebrate, to tell them all that happened, and to learn about the pillowcase and the machete. He knows what they’ve been through, working as if yesterday and today were simply two more working days, tormented by not knowing. But he slides in quietly and joins the peace, sighing deeply as a man whose homecoming is now complete, surrounded by those who love him. Hardly as insensitive inside as he often appears on the surface, Antonio closes his eyes to better halt the welling tears.

He regrets the whole turn of events but feels worse about the pressure imposed on his own family. We cannot know if Esteban Silvestre was a bad man, but we can get a fairly good sense of it. We saw him in ruthless murder, as if no life counted but his own. A man given to killing so freely should sense the eternal presence of the Greater Judge. In this case God moved through the hands of the bailiff, an innocent who merely carried out the sentence of the court.

Antonio looks aside at the raft moving slowly downstream to join his loved ones in sleep. He is on board, yawning hugely where the delta meets the sea, drifting further on placid waters until the sorting process settles flat to every horizon.

Is a solid foundation as a maestro a good place from which to begin a career of elegance and good taste in the legal profession?

And soon all slumber.