light, Rafael had walked up to the sheds to get a dolly
to move the old refrigerator out in preparation for the
new one
proached the empty shed, he had felt a great need to re-
lieve himself and so had stepped into the bushes there.
A moment before he finished, he heard the rusty hinge
squeak and saw the door open. Then Ernesto Palmeiro
had put out his head and looked all around.
Rafael had stood motionless. Something about the
man’s stealthy movements frightened him so that he
could not even pull up his zipper. The light was still so
poor that it was hard to be sure that it even
Especially since he was not supposed to be there. He
had been fired the month before.
Sanaugustin waited until he was sure the other was
gone, then curiosity compelled him to look inside the
shed.
“She says we know what he saw,” said Mrs.
Hochmann.
“Your father’s remains?”
She put the question to Felicia Sanaugustin and the
woman shook her head.
“
“But it was fresh blood. And it dripped from the back
of the car,” said Susan Hochmann, desperately trying
not to let the horror of the woman’s tale become per-
294
HARD ROW
sonal. “He closed the door and immediately went back
to the camp and said nothing of what he’d seen to any-
one. Everyone said that Palmeiro was crazy and he was
fearful for his own life if he accused him. He told himself
that he didn’t really know anything for certain at that
point. He did not know for sure what man or animal it
was that had been killed there.”
The migrant woman continued and Mrs. Hochmann
translated. Rafael had brooded all week as the body parts
began to appear along the road, yet no one else con-
nected them with their boss, even when word drifted
down to the camp that people were starting to ask for
him.
So last Saturday, Rafael had sneaked back to the shed.
The smell! The flies!
This time he had taken some of the money that they
were saving to get a place of their own and he had gone
into town and bought drugs and got arrested. And
what, she wailed, was to happen to them now?
