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husband she was gone. I broke a window to get in and once in her bedroom I punched holes in the empty walls where the picture frames once hung. My hands bloody from breaking the window. When a neighbor came to her apartment I beat him until he did nothing more than groan lying on the floor. That night I went looking for the ghost of her husband. Yelling his name down brick alleyways and into the dark of windows that held my reflection.
    One of the sheriffs deputies of Burnridge that arrested me was a short but strong young man with a blond mustache and serious blue eyes. I fought five deputies before he hit me in the back of the head with his revolver when I was not looking. He leaned against the bars of my cell picking at his teeth with the end of a key. I sat on the floor and held the knot in my head but I smiled at him and then he smiled back. His teeth straight and white and the most perfect in my memory.
    I bet that smile will be the end of many men. He spit on the concrete floor at my feet. And then I bet it will be the end of you.
    Because the man I killed was another Mexican the case was not looked into. For breaking into the empty apartment I forfeited the money I had and was only deported. On the train returning to Mexico I rubbed the palm of my hand with my thumb remembering how sweaty my hand slipped down the handle of the knife. I was surprised how easily the blade had entered the husbands chest. For three years I had spoken only a handful of words and most had been wasted on Perla. But in that time work turned a young mans body into a more terrible strength.
    At the age of nineteen I returned to Veracruz. In Tijuana I bought a bus ticket and in the noise of the engines I said over and over in my mind.
    You are a weak man. My voice once again that of my grandfathers whisper. Your wife and child died in your hands. And now you will die in mine.
    Feeling the words deep in the muscles of my forearm to remind myself how easily a knife can end another mans life.
    On the morning of the third day I found him. He wore tattered clothes and held a mud stained book tied with a leather strap close to his chest. For the entire day I followed him. Watched him argue with street vendors. A knife sharpener. Old religious women. Himself. His glasses were gone and he spent much of the day muttering or yelling and laughing and pointing at walls. The sky. He wore no shoes. At one time several boys less than half his size took the book from him and kept it. His words were not words when he yelled now but only yelling. They laughed wild and whistling. Swinging the book like some weapon above their heads. I chose to do nothing. They left him crying.
    By night I followed him to where he was searching for food. He smelled of urine and the cuffs of his shirt were stained from digging through trash heaps. The flesh of his face ruddy like that of a workingman and not a doctor. I opened the blade of my new switchblade knife alongside my leg and he turned at the sound.
    Anything. He begged.
    But I gave him nothing. Not even his own death. I wanted my father to fear me but he did not recognize me when he turned with his scarred hands out in front of him. The burned out shadows of his eyes disappointed me. And there I left him for the last time.

Two
    F rom Veracruz I traveled north to Guadalajara and then more north and to the west to the sunlit city of Topolobampo on the eastern edge of the Sea of Cortés. In this city I learned of the need for workingmen to cross the sea to the small city of Canción to construct a large hotel there. In a dim room in Topolobampo a man with a pockmarked face sat behind a writing desk swatting at flies and promising me hard work on the hotel but good pay also and the chance for more work on the hotels and roads that were to follow.
    First we need to fill the bones of this one. He spoke without looking in my eyes. Great things are happening in Baja. He said. You will tell your grandchildren one day that you