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How odd, to have found love at this age. How odd and how wonderful. She is my happiness, he thinks, la sonrisa de mi corazón—the smile of my heart. I will make her my wife within a year. A quick divorce, then a quicker marriage.
Why not? he asks himself. Is Althea right? Do I love this crusade more than my own family? “Don’t you get it?� she asks. “This isn’t about the Barreras. It’s about you. It’s about you not being able to forgive yourself. It’s not them you’re obsessed with punishing, it’s yourself.�
The Americans take a product that literally grows on trees and turn it into a valuable commodity. Without them, cocaine and marijuana would be like oranges, and instead of making billions smuggling it, I’d be making pennies doing stoop labor in some California field, picking it.
Just across the border is the Texas town of El Paso, through which El Verde ships tons of cocaine, marijuana and even a little heroin. Now he sits down and looks at the newspaper. He can’t read, but he likes pretending that he can, and anyway, he enjoys looking at the pictures.
Okay this is actually a funny inclusion.
And maybe that’s the best we can do in this world, he thinks as he gets up to resume watering the flowers—tend to the garden and maintain the hope of a God.
