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if it acted upon everyone in different ways. Perhaps the stone became a part of a person or more likely it had already insinuated itself into their flesh even from the beginning.
    She decided it wouldn’t hurt to keep the piedra safe a while longer. Besides, Evalena might become angry when she found out it had been buried under the old church close by the chabola all this time. The stone inside the box might turn out to be something treasured and if lost, Yani imagined herself searching the rest of her life to find it.

Chapter 4
    No one seemed to remember how Rancher Ford hailed from the east.
    He came west as a boy of thirteen after running away from an abusive father and an uncaring alcoholic mother after living all his life in a dysfunctional family only they didn’t call it that back then... the man merely beat his son black and blue with a razor strap while sober and with his fists when drunk to teach the boy manners as everyone conveniently turned their heads including his own mother and the pastor at the church where father forced him to go each Sunday.
    Father Ford had named the boy Rancher as a drunken joke on his wife and by the time she came out of the anesthesia from the caesarean and he'd sobered up the birth certificate had been notarized and it was too late to change the name upon it without going out of their way. To Rancher Ford, however, it became one of the only good things his father ever did for him.
    The man had been a boxer in his army days but apparently not a good one from the looks of his nose that must have been broken and poorly set a hundred times until it resembled an ear gone bad. He constructed a boxing ring in the basement of the house and insisted upon teaching Rancher the manly art though mostly through body blows that used to send the boy shivering to his knees and stealing his breath.
    It seemed a cruel irony that the man so enjoyed honing his lost boxing skills upon his family yet when confronted by a worthy opponent—like the time the neighbor had gotten angry over the trash accumulating in the back and spilling over onto his property and threatened Father Ford with a beating—the man invariably retreated into the house and called the police.
    Mother Ford would win no mother of the year prize either. A short and squat woman with red hair gone bad and worse teeth she seemed to enjoy playing the punching bag. One time, when father had been giving her a particularly vicious beating, Rancher had the temerity to come up behind the man and cold cock him with the iron skillet mother cooked ham and eggs in every Sunday morning after church. When she saw what he'd done to her husband his mother had gone berserk on Rancher, tearing at his face with her fingernails and kicking at his groin like some old mule gone crazy.
    The hate he felt for them both lodged deep in his throat finally growing so large that as soon as he deemed he was old enough he set his sights on California where he felt sure he'd find fame and fortune on the stages and back lots of Hollywood. Rancher Ford had once played the role of Hamlet in his middle school play drawing rave reviews. The sound of applause had rung in his ears for a long time after that night.
    He only made it as far as Texas. After seven days and so many starts and stops he lost count the railroad box car in which he rode had lurched to a halt in a town called Guthrie and curious to get a good look around at a countryside he'd never seen the boy jumped down from the train and wandered up Main Street. He remembered that early morning well: the sun had yet to raise itself over the horizon, the sky just pink, and the town starting to wake up.
    The freshly-baked bread smell seemed as if it wafted up from the ground. The scent from the bakery had overwhelmed his senses and set his mouth to watering so that drool ran down his chin and he had to keep wiping it away with the back of his hand. Rancher Ford didn’t miss much about his home back in Indiana other