Fernando spent his summer days working at the construction site. He spent his summer nights roving about town with Chico and his mongrel crew. Smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and drinking cheap booze. Playing soccer under the flickering lamplights. Getting themselves into and out of scrapes.

It was a bit surreal, if Fernando paused to reflect on it, just how swiftly and seamlessly he’d folded himself into the grungy mix of Cortez. It was almost as if, like Chico had said, Fernando had always been here. He tried to imagine what it would have been like if he had—if instead of going off to live with his rich father in the city, he had grown up in this poor country town instead.

How much different would his life have been? Would things have been so much worse? Could they have even been better? How much would he still be the same? There was no point in asking himself these sorts of things. But Fernando asked them anyway.

With his first paycheck, which was shit, he bought mostly groceries and sundries to take back to his grandmother’s place. Stepping into the shadow of the jungle where she lived had not lost its uncanny effect on him. It felt like passing through a dark veil, from the trappings of modern civilization into the primeval wilderness of old. The tottering shack was the fulcrum joining together these two planes in precarious balance, the junction where godly order and heathen chaos aligned in curious fusion.

The old woman frowned at the parcels he laid out on the table before her. “I can’t eat such rich foods.”

“You ought to eat more than roots and goat cheese, Abuela,” Fernando said, unwrapping a hunk of gristly red steak.

Beaded blood coalesced, snaking down the wax paper in crinkled veins. The old woman pursed her lips at this. But as to the pretty beaded necklace he dangled before her, she made no complaints.

“Put it on,” Fernando said.

As she did, he smiled.

With his next paycheck, he got what he needed for the goat pen. This was made much easier by the fact that his friends helped him to procure most of these materials for free or for cheap.

“Pepe’s uncle has a bunch of wire gathering dust out back behind his bar,” Chico said, gesturing with his thumb in the general direction. “He probably wouldn’t miss it, would he, Pepe?”

Pepe shook his head. The five of them went over to the bar the next morning.

“Tío,” Pepe said, prodding the old man in his hammock where he lay, passed out in a drunken stupor.

Pepe turned and shrugged. Fernando and Chico exchanged a glance. Then Chico stepped forward and caught hold of the swaying hammock.

“Buenos días, señor,” he said as he gave the hammock a shake. The snoozing bar owner snorted awake in surprise. “We thought we’d take that old scrap wire of yours off your hands. How does that sound?”

The old man grunted groggily in response, and they presumed they had his blessing. They proceeded to roll out the wire wheels from the shed without delay. Scratching around in the yard, El Demonio was their only witness to the taking—and only half a witness at that. Cocking his limp-combed head to one side, he regarded them inscrutably with the one cloudy eye that he had.

Tito appropriated several boxes of nails, brackets and other miscellany—how and from where no one asked. Chico lifted saws and other tools from the job site with the jefe none the wiser. In the end, the only thing Fernando had to purchase was the scrap lumber and tin sheeting, which he got for next to nothing because Lalo’s father worked at the lumberyard.

Chico grinned over at Fernando, dusting off his hands. “Well, primo, I think that’ll do it.”

Calculating in his head, Fernando nodded. “It will.”

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