I woke up to my grandmother whispering to me: “It’s over. She’s passed.” Like a puppet on strings, I got up and forced myself to send the work assignment I had been working on before the frenzy of organizing a funeral began. A calm sky was lazily rising, as if nothing had happened. In the distance, the roosters were alerting the villagers that it was time to wake up. Their crowing, accompanied by the incessant barking of neighbors’ dogs, was the most precise alarm possible.
It wouldn’t take long until the first horse-drawn wagons passed by on their way to the fields. It was Sunday, but a few sinners would be seduced by the iridescent vineyards and the large corn or alfalfa fields.

They eye me as I walk towards them. But I must be so worn in appearance that all see I pose no threat, I am no bandit. And that appearance of mine must be very sorry indeed, for I have known bandits, and they are most ragged in face, tattered in clothing, and thin in frame. It helps that I come along an open road and alone. But degradation works in one’s favor at times.
One stands near the road, attempting to press an old rusty hoop onto a dilapidated and splaying barrel. Beside him a young girl, perhaps seven years of age, carrying her baby sister on her hip. When I greet them, a few others come around.