Tata's own father died of malaria when he was three. As for the "piece of shit" that his mother married to replace his true father, Tata never felt anything more than contempt. Even seventy years later, his eyes would narrow into slits of anger towards anybody who referred to this son of a great whore as his father, as his stepfather, or even referred to him at all. One time, when Tata was nearly six years old, this mule punished him by tying him to a tree all night in his mother's garden. One afternoon, while the graceless savage napped on his father's hammock in his mother's yard, the eight year old Tata crept up on him. He coaxed a long-barrelled pistol from out of the slumbering beast's holster. While the imbecile snored, the young boy carefully aimed the gun right at his temple. With the first finger from each of his hands curled around the trigger, he squeezed the black piece of iron with all of his might. He squeezed it so tightly that his hands shook. He squeezed it until his arms and shoulders ached. He squeezed it until he finally had to give up, but only because his eight year-old grip lacked the physical strength it needed for him to spill the son-of-a-bitch's brains out onto the soil and petals of his mother's tropical garden. The man his mother had married continued to suck air through his nose and out a shapeless hole of a mouth for another twenty years, and the boy who would someday tell his grandchildren that he was the strongest man in the world silently slipped the gun back into its holster. Walking away, he cried for being such a weakling.

As Tata told this story to his oldest grandson sixty-two years later, the slightest trace of a tear shone in his eyes. He was no longer the strongest man on earth. The same cancer that caused his testicles to swell the size and color of a large papaya had shrunk his body and hollowed his face so that the most prominent feature on it would be a smile that revealed large, yellowed, and perfectly sculpted teeth all the way up to their gums. The smile flickered only for an instant and only because Raul had come from across the country to visit him.

The oldest of eleven grandchildren and a father now himself, Raul had only recently grown accustomed to the notion that great strength and heroic bravura, thick silver hair, tightly packed muscles, and a handsome smile would not endure for even three quarters of a century. It never fully dawned on him that what remained of his grandfather's features could expire altogether. He was returning from an errand for his parents at the supermarket. He walked on the painted cement pathway from the car to the house, carrying a few plastic grocery bags in each hand. For the rest of his life, Raul's father would feel so stupid the way he gave his son this news.

"Mijo, Tata se acaba de morir." Twenty-five years later, as if he let it happen. The thought of his son's face collapsing as he whispered these words could still bring tears to his eyes. "Son, Tata has just died." The muscles melted on his son's face and he reached out quickly to stop him from falling to the pavement. He caught him the instant his legs buckled and became momentarily useless. But the son might not have needed his father's help. Halfway down the young man dropped the grocery bags, and his body shot straight up again. With a clenched fist raised over his head, the strained tendons in his neck only inches from his father's face, Tata's oldest grandson looked at a smoggy, starless sky, and from the bottom of his lungs he cursed the god he had been taught to revere all of his life. The arrogant silence of the firmament, the absence even of an echo, made the two men feel insignificant, and, standing there in each other's arms, what it was like to be orphans.