He stood as Rosa approached the cell. He knew how much he had changed from the way she looked at him. His chains shifted and rattled, but something humiliated him even more—he had led Rosa to this place, where prostitutes and thieves came, where lowly drifters stayed the night before they were run out of town. They had lived together in a house, owned a car, a piano. Now the sheriff, Hollins, Jasper Davis, all of them would know that his wife had stepped into this place because of him. He had last seen her several weeks before, when the lettuce was being thinned. When that lettuce field would have set everything right again.

“Entonces, ¿es verdad?” she finally asked. Her voice sounded deeper than usual, bouncing off the hard brick walls, filling the empty space of the cell.

“It is not true in the way they say it happened,” he said in Spanish.

She frowned, tilted her head. “What do you mean?” The words caught in her throat.

Karak drew closer. She was looking at him with anger, eyebrows knit, but also distance, as if she did not recognize him. He could not tell if she had been crying. She had lost her youth, but still, he felt drawn to her. She had worn her best dress. The dress protected her against the dirtiness he had brought to her, protected her against him and what he had done.

He felt a familiar resentment stir again. After all, he had done it for her, hadn’t he? Because that lettuce would have earned the money that would have brought her back, he was sure of it.

“I am not crazy, Rosa, as that lawyer said.” His hands gripped the bars. “I was mad. A farmer has a right to be mad when his crop is stolen from him.” He was tired of explaining this to everyone.

She seemed frightened by his fervor. Her silence left him flailing. Where did she stand? With him, or with them? He would not allow her to question his dignity.

“That is what I told the district attorney.” He saw the surprise on her face. “That’s right! He visited me in El Centro. He came to the cell.”

“He came to your cell? In person?”

So she did not believe him. Did she respect him more because the D.A. had come to visit?

“Did you tell him anything?” she asked.

“I told him everything.” He saw her expression change. She spoke slowly, as if talking to a child, as if talking to their children.

“He came to trap you. Don’t you see?” She said it without feeling, as if he did not matter anymore. “You Hindus always trust the Anglos too much.”