I.
The rays of the rising sun broke through the yellowed curtains of the cabin and bathed the old man's face. The old man grunted, wheezed, and farted, and then sat up in bed. He picked at his beard and then pulled his withered frame to the side of the bed and up onto the ancient wheelchair beside it. The effort tired him and he sat unmoving for two minutes. Sonorously clearing his throat, he grabbed the wheels and began to move out into the hallway and then into the kitchen.
The small boy sat seriously at the kitchen table, watching it fill with morning light. His bare feet were black with the dust that covered the floor of the house. He scratched his shaven head, the old man's quick remedy for the threat of lice. The squeak of the rusty wheels of the old man's chair caught his attention, and he watched his grandfather cough and gasp as he pushed the wheels forward and come to stop at the rough-board table. The old man coughed violently until a thick ball of phlegm shot out of his mouth, landing on the floor and moistening the dust. He then looked at the boy.
"What's for breakfast, shit-for-brains?"
II.
Encarna paused outside the village church in the cold morning air, looked around the plaza to see if anyone could see her, and then took the handkerchief out of her purse. She unfolded it and took out a clove of garlic that she had cut halfway through that morning in the kitchen. Breaking the clove completely in half, she rubbed it under her nose, the rich smell of the garlic oil filling her senses. Then she pushed open the outer and then the inner door to the church, and walked over to the confessional where the priest, don Wifredo, sat, his breath reeking with the stench of halitosis.
III.
The boy silently cut the bacon from the slab that hung in the pantry. His aunt would come early in the morning every two weeks and leave a box with a few essentials--bacon, coffee, salt, chicken feed. The boy, who always woke just before dawn, would hide the box in the pantry. The old man never asked where it came from. Two weeks was probably out of his sphere of reckoning, the boy thought.
IV.
Encarna knelt down at one of the pews to say her habitual penance. The hard wood kneeler was unforgiving to her bony knees.