As he bends over, helping Matías dump the liquid waste, Jack can’t tell whether he is high from the raw cocaine or poisoned by the solvents in the air. They carry buckets and a sheet-metal trough to a ditch that leads to a nearby stream, poisoning the fish, polluting whatever it touches.

The paste will be packed, Carlos explains, then rolled in plastic by morning for transport to a connection within a Colombian cartel. There, it will be further broken down and mixed with other chemicals to create cocaine for distribution.

That night, lying in the heat, sore from the day’s labor, Jack thinks of the children pulling leaves from the coca limbs, nimbly stripping one plant, moving to the next. Never missing a leaf, filling one bag after the next, lugging them back to the courtyard. Lifting containers of fuel, bleach, kerosene, never complaining. Lifting. Filling. Pouring. Grunting. Never spilling a drop. Never resting until Carlos gives the word. The kids work to help their older brother. Their father. The family is an integrated unit, an engine of human enterprise.

Carlos gave the command to take a break, and they flopped down on the dirt floor. This world was foreign and unfamiliar to Jack. Things he had never seen or even imagined. The war on drugs was something he has been only vaguely aware of, seen on the news or glanced at in the paper as he turned to the business section. But he has never really thought much about the business of narcotrafficking. Or maybe he has always found it easy enough to pretend it isn’t real.

He thinks about his mother and how strong she had been, leaving his father for an unknown future. She was tough. And the working-class environment he had grown up in was sheer luxury compared to the living conditions that now surround him. Yes, it appears that everybody is tougher than Jack.

The fear and uncertainty of that life had pushed Jack to rise above his past, to earn all that money. He realizes now that he never really suffered. Beyond making tax-deductible donations to various not-for-profit organizations, he has done little to nothing for humanity.

Lying on the thin mattress, he hurts. He feels as if a contagion has entered his body, inflaming and stiffening his tendons and joints. A discomforting pang from all that he has seen. He thinks of those children. Of Carlos and his wife and this life they live. How they work. Carving out a meager existence with just enough money to feed their family. Supplying a cartel that will earn a thousand times what they pay Carlos. Somehow, Jack had to help these people. They are killing themselves to make paste that in turn creates cocaine. And for pennies, while their bosses earn millions. Where is the balance in that?