When Ernesto finished his cigarette, he tossed the butt into the gravel and stomped it with his brown work boot, trying to crush the nub of ashes on the end flat. He lingered with the last drag of smoke in his mouth and looked east, past the near vineyard field, toward the pad of clouds that rolled over the distant San Sebastian hills under the yellow morning light. He exhaled slowly, savoring the flavor.

The sunlight, mingled with humidity from the sea, was already too close and hot, and his neck and forehead were moist.

He thought about his daughter, Maria Elena, who this day turned four- his little zorra, with raven hair and giant darting eyes, who would wake up in her bed at her mother’s house, and eat a cinnamon roll smeared with peanut butter for her special breakfast.

He thought about when Maria Elena was born, about her mother’s long labor and screaming eyes, about how she told him to leave the room when the child was about to breach, about his shaking hands when he sat in the waiting room waiting to hear about the child, about when her mother let him enter the tiny and dully-lighted delivery room to hold the child, when the mother would not look at him.

He thought about her mother, Sofia Lucia, a tiny rigid Catholic beauty with full lips and anxious eyes he had met at a dance in the town square when he had a wallet bursting with cash after working a summer harvesting in the valley. He thought about when she had loved him for two years. And then came the news about the coming child, and then Sofia became cold, and then closed, and then the child came, and Ernesto was told to leave and find somewhere else to live.

Ernesto stared into the distance and pondered until Santiago opened the screen door behind him and called.

“Ernesto, the dishes are piling up, amigo.”

Ernesto looked at the ground briefly, and then turned and smiled half-heartedly at Santiago. Santiago returned the smile followed by an appreciative nod, and then clapped the door closed as he wheeled back into the cafe kitchen.

Ernesto thought about Maria Elena and her being four, and probably eating her peanut butter cinnamon roll.

“San Antonio, por favor, encuentrala”, he prayed out loud, and then he pulled a silvery crucifix that hung on twine around his neck out of his shirt and kissed it and then returned it.

“Bring her to me.”

He then cinched the apron snugly around his waist and turned and entered through the screen door to the kitchen, where nearby a large pile of white dishes, saucers and mugs awaited him by the large utility sink.

He rolled up the sleeves of his white work shirt, grabbed the dangling utility nozzle over the sink and started filling one of the two bays with hot water. Soon he was focused on his chore, and the morning passed steadily as locals wandered in and out of the cafe, keeping him cleaning their plates and utensils.

He took a break after the breakfast rush and ate a sausage and egg sandwich with Santiago behind the building.

Santiago talked about his hens not laying many eggs and the bad water running behind his house and the possibility that the senora next door was a witch and had cursed his birds, but he laughed at her for Ernesto and Ernesto listened and chewed his food and then smoked a quick one. Santiago liked to laugh and that made Ernesto like coming to work, because Santiago quieted him.

Their break was short but the sandwich was flavorful with the seasoned house mayonnaise on it, and after Ernesto’s cigarette, they went back inside to work. Santiago returned to his post as captain of the bussers, where he told two teenage boys what tables to clean up when he wasn’t out on the floor. Ernesto returned to his sink.

At 2 in the afternoon, the dining room closed for the day, and the workers spent the next hour cleaning up and preparing the restaurant for the next day’s visitors.

Ernesto mopped the kitchen floor after the dishwashing was complete, and then he transported a large plastic trash can to a large bin hidden behind a wooden lean-to thirty yards behind the back door.

When he dumped out the last one, he set it down, and stood in the shadow of the lean-to and felt sweat run down his arms and neck.

He pulled a cigarette from the pack in his back pocket and lit it, and puffing on it, looked out of the shade and across the dirt lot back at the little cafe, a clean white building surrounded by a semi-circle of evenly spaced poplars that offered light shade to a dining patio.

The afternoon was quiet at the moment and white puffy clouds dotted the sky above him.

His thoughts wandered again to his daughter Maria Elena, his little fox, who was turning four today, and then he thought about Sofia Lucia who used to love him, and the hand raising the cigarette to his mouth started to shake, and then his lips bent into an awkward, grotesque smile as they clamped down on the smoke. His eyes moistened. He then he removed the cigarette from his mouth and exhaled long and hard, loudly. He returned it to his lips as he stared blankly at the diner. The cigarette dangled and bounced on his lower lip for a long moment as his eyes stared, fixed in thought, until he awoke, removed it from his mouth and tossed it into the dirt on the ground, and then picked up the trash can and made his way back across the lot and into the rear of the kitchen.