“Yes. But I’ve gotten other deliveries and not phoned until the next day. Working for extra money. You know, we just live simple. There’s no set time for my arrival. One day don’t mimic the next.”

When evening comes, Jack is stinking and miserable. His stomach churns, and he has a cramp embedded deep in his left side. They walk back to the lab. Off to one side is a row of big blue plastic drums. Carlos gives Jack and Matías bright yellow rubber gloves several sizes too big for their hands. They look like dish-washing gloves. After pulling them on, they begin taking big bundles of the leaves and throwing them into a wooden tub, where they are sloshed back and forth with the squeegee while a kid dumps kerosene into the leaves. Jack and Matías gag and cough from the breath-stealing fumes. Matías explains the process to Jack as they stand covered in sweat, their nostrils singed by the harsh vapor.

The lab is open—no walls, just tarps or canopies over a floor of packed dirt, with wooden posts cut from trees to support the corners. Jack watches the kids with their grime-printed smiles, rubbing eyes and faces irritated by the fumes. He feels his entire being dissolving.

He asks Matías, “What kind of life is this?”

“The only one they know.”

“But how can they live this way?”

“How can they not? This isn’t America. Here is different. Here, people make bigger sacrifices for smaller gains. Those gains usually have to do with feeding your family, keeping a roof over your head. Waking to see another day. This is all they know.”

Urging Jack and Matías to get up, Carlos points for them to come and watch. They have loaded the slurry of kerosene-soaked leaves into fifty-five-gallon drums perforated with holes, then rolled the drums, heavy with the liquid, to several rectangular wooden frames. Taking a long shaft welded to a steel disk only centimeters shy of the drum’s diameter, Carlos shows Jack and Matías how to twist the contraption down into the drum, tighter and tighter, pressing the liquid from the leaves into large plastic buckets below the drums. It reminds Jack of a giant coffee press. The kids stand with Carlos’s son, making sure the rivulets of liquid drain into the buckets. Carlos directs Jack and Matías to carry the buckets of liquid to men who dump cans of kerosene into each, while a kid uses a long stick to stir the mixture. It forms a bubbling soupy paste that is then dumped into large cloths that look like bedsheets, over large stainless-steel kettles. As the liquid drains off, the paste thickens up into a solid the color and consistency of spackle. But this white stuff will be filling nostrils, not nail holes.