“I need to go to the bank this morning,” I told Sherry. “I’m going to stop and have tamales for lunch when I’m done. Why don’t I pick up some for you?”
“It sounds like a plan,” she said. “I don’t want to cook.”
I was sitting at the big picnic table when a man walked up to me and said, “Mr. Dennis, will you buy me a tamale?”
“Juan, is that you?” I asked. “I didn’t even recognize you. I thought you were in the U.S.”
“I was,” he said, “until day before yesterday. It was time for me to leave the States and I still had the return part of my plane ticket. I been back and ain’t et nothing since I got here.”
“How was it in the States?” I asked.
“It was wonderful while it lasted,” Juan said. “Up until I got back here to Belize I had it all.”
“What do you mean?”
“All my meals were cooked, my clothes were washed and ironed and I had a roof over my head.”
“That sounds good,” I said.
“It gets even better. I had TV, the Internet, played basketball every day, went to the pool or the library and had time to finish high school.”
“What happened?” I asked. “Drugs? Alcohol? Divorce?”
“No,” Juan said. “I got out of prison.”
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