That afternoon when they were supposed to be napping Guillermo led him down a path through the forest of stunted pines behind the house. It took them ten minutes, following the old, twisting path, to reach the small clearing. The smokehouse was a large, windowless box. Unpainted, its timbers were bleached by the sun and silvered by the rains.

Inside, it was night.

“Go ahead,” Guillermo urged. “I’m right behind.”

But as he entered, leaving the world of light and green, the door behind him swung shut, and with a click the bolt was thrown.

He bawled.

In a moment he stopped.

“Guillermo,” he said, laughing. “Don’t fool me.”

Whether he opened or closed his eyes, light remained bunched up behind his lids. Purple shadows swung by him, at him, through him, shapes he did not want to recognize, the color of the blood of the great swine which had hung here. Several times his father had taken him to the slaughtering. He remembered the smells and the blood and the grunting, the wild rolling of the eyes.

“Guillermo,” he shouted, “you can have Fabio.”

The silence was black.

Crying, he threw himself forward to smash unexpectedly into the unseen wall he had envisioned several feet beyond. A great pain at once replaced his nose. As his knees gave, a projecting nail tore the softness of his cheek, narrowly missing his right eye. Something wet was on his face, which hurt, hurt; and in the corner of his mouth, salt. As he sank to the coolness of the hard dirt floor he felt a soft warm spreading, a terrified trickling down the inside of his thighs.

In the dark corner, leaves rustled and a small thing scurried.

“I’ll be a big boy. I’ll be a big boy,” Rafael screamed.

Five hours later, after the searchers shouting his name had passed him again and again, someone—the handyman, Leo—had thought to open the smokehouse door and look inside.

That night, sedated, tenderly bathed, the slash in his face sutured and his nose grotesque but cared for, he slept in the arms of his mother.

Leo had reported that the smokehouse had been bolted from the outside. Fabio was discovered in the kidnapper’s bed, and Guillermo confessed and was duly beaten. On the following morning he presented himself to his brother and delivered an eloquent and contrite apology. Ten minutes later to the amazement of their parents the two boys were playing together and Rafael laughed for the first time in twenty-four hours.

But he had an I.Q. of 147 and even at the age of five he was intelligent enough to know that he had learned something.

His life was shaped by avoidance of his brother.