A week after the wedding reception, Karak rented a motorcar, and he drove Rosa to the barrio. She would spend a leisurely Sunday with Esperanza. He did not stay. He drove for hours on the new Plank Road, crossing the sand dunes, heading east to the Colorado River. The wooden box sat on the seat next to him. It was late June; even at sunset the heat was strong and stifling, but the river still flowed with the strength of the spring rains draining from the Rocky Mountains.

Sacred things must not be thrown away, his mother had said long ago, to a different boy who had borne his name and whom he no longer was. But they may be placed in water, and the water must be flowing, and the flowing water must merge with the sea.

He parked off the roadway near Winterhaven. The sky was filled with birds that were not of the desert, that flew from the green lagoons of the Colorado River Delta, where life teemed on the boundary of sea and land. He had been there before, when he had first arrived in the Valley. He picked his way through the shrub and grass and kneeled by the water. He opened the box.

The hair lay in a neat coil, gleaming black. Quickly, before he could think, he topped the box and released the coil into the river. His gut clenched. The hair unwound and swirled and floated off, downstream.

17

August 1916

FOR A MONTH, RAM STAYED AWAY FROM THE EGGENBERGER HOUSE AND its newly curtained windows, its swept porch, its painted trim. He could not name his feelings. Karak had not acted properly in marrying outside his community, but it was more than that. Was Ram jealous of him? Ram already had a wife and child. What, then?

He and Karak still needed to work as partners, to review accounts together so that Ram could plan how many harvests it would take to earn the dowry for his cousin. When Karak did not emerge from the Eggenberger home at the agreed-upon time one morning, Ram climbed up the porch steps and knocked on the door.

There was no answer. Because Karak would enter Jivan’s home without knocking, Ram found himself doing the same, stepping into the parlor, peeking into the bedroom, assessing the furniture, the kitchen.

A rug lay under the new couch. There was a piano, which Ram had heard Rosa play in the evenings; lamps, tables, an armchair wrapped in a dust cover. He had seen so many deliveries to the home in the previous days, wagons drawn by draft horses. Ram could not deny it; he felt a great wave of jealousy.

Suddenly, he heard a sound near the front, and he rushed toward the door. He startled Rosa, who jumped and gave a yelp, dropping the basket she was carrying. It was full of onions she had picked from the garden she now shared with Kishen.