Gabe was yet another one of his mother’s rotating cast of beefy, oft-unemployed German-Scottish-Irish companions. Ramón had no love for him; Gabe was notable to him for three things: that he was much younger than Ramón’s mother, that he had a fearsome tattoo of a black ram on his right shoulder almost covering his entire bicep and that he regarded Ramón, and children in general, with as much tolerance and affection as a wolf had for its fleas.
When Ramón was barely twelve, he told his mother that he’d seen Gabe coming out from somewhere behind the bushes at the back of their modest house, zipping up his pants, and muttering something to whoever that was there with him. Ramón thought he heard a feminine voice giggling from behind the rustling bushes. Gabe brushed leaves out of his grey wif
