—It’s my time, Don Chan said, walking away from Miraluz. The mosquitoes nipped at Don Chan’s arms and chest. The cane leaves sliced his face. He didn’t feel the blood come down his left eye. He saw the bright blue, the blazing sun. His clothes stuck to his skin, the sweat ran down his body. It wasn’t until he was far away that Bobby yelled after him, —Abuelo, where are you going? He tried to follow him, but the cane was tall, even taller than Bobby.

—Leave the old man alone, Miraluz said. —The cacique death of honor is when he doesn’t fear it.

—What are you talking about? Bobby walked after him. Miraluz pulled him back.

The sun was falling. It didn’t spread like the sunset spread in New York City, it stayed whole, the sun on one side of the sky, the moon on the other.

Don Chan thought back to the day when the land of Dominican Republic was new to him. When he was left with no choice but to study the journeys of the Chinese families who sailed to the Americas for a better life and a bit more freedom. With each fact he dug up from history books and campesinos’ lips, he couldn’t help but think that his poor old father was one of the unfortunate ones who had found himself indentured, trapped in a credit system where he worked forever to pay the landowners back. Perhaps his father died in the fields, like so many Chinese immigrants who worked the cane. Or maybe his father did the impossible and fled. That was Don Chan’s favorite interpretation. That his father looked at his future, working in the fields of Cuba, and all he saw was misery. He imagined his father begging for work just so that he could provide his family with a few meals a day, so that his skin wouldn’t stick to his bones and his family would have a roof over their heads. He was convinced that his poor old father found so much ill-paying work, he could no longer feel his hands, his body, his tongue. That’s why his father had fled and never looked back, fearing that if he did, he’d get killed for it. He fled to the ocean, yes the ocean, because the ocean seems infinite, vast and cleansing. He found work on a big warship. And to his father, it was the most impressive ship he’d ever seen. It had a sail as tall as a palm tree, which ballooned out against the sky’s canvas and sang a song, large conch seashells whistled into the ear. The ship had a calling to another place, an urgency to chase the song of the wind.

Don Chan told his father’s story often. He sometimes forgot which stories came from people’s lips, books, or his own imagination. To him, all his stories were true.

—And what about your mother? You never talk about her, his adopted mother, la señora Colón de Juan Dolio asked him one day.