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Life goes on.

The family comes with the body, and they are a half hour late for the funeral. They do not come into the church but have a benediction said in the parking lot. They are afraid more people will be killed if they linger with the corpse of their murdered family member.

She sits on the piano bench, her black hair clean and shining as she bends over the keys. The moon is full and rides the sky hunting for more bodies. Two days ago, they killed seven. Yesterday, in the afternoon sometime in October, six went down. Or was it seven? It is getting very hard to keep track of the daily or monthly count. Even the grand total for the year seems like a smear of blood on a wall. No matter how hard I work at my tally, I fall behind. I write down numbers in my black notebook, and then take a sip of coffee in the dawn light, and before I return the cup to the immaculate white saucer, the number is gone. Juárez, even now as I sit in the room, wine in hand, moonlight playing off the walls, yes, at this very moment Juárez marauds through my mind: corpses, ghosts, bullets, knives, severed heads, all manner of carnival moments, a parade from a lively hell, shapeless, formless, and often meaningless. She leans forward flicking her fingers on the white keys as the rhapsody pumps so much energy and hope into the room.

So I sit, glass of wine in hand, as she strokes the keyboard and plays “Rhapsody in Blue.” The opening is bold, the bellowing of a young century and a cocksure country. She stumbles on parts and apologizes, but there is no need for such comments. Her playing is beautiful, as her black hair and fair skin glow in the moonlight washing over the dark room. The moon walks through the window and plays on the white wall. Branches and leaves dance as shadows.

It was like this. Three cars arrive and empty out. Six human beings are lined up against the wall of a gymnasium in the bright light of the afternoon. Or the dimming light of early evening. Facts are slippery here, perhaps, because of the blood. The men were taken from Colonia Azteca and brought to this location. One of them is said to be a former policeman, but we cannot be certain of this. Here is what we can be certain of: Six men line up against a wall, their faces turned to the blocks. Children are playing in the street. There is a settling of accounts about to take place. The men are in their twenties or thirties, they wear jeans of various colors and T-shirts. Except for one guy in gym shorts. Then, the guns fire and now the men lie side by side on the ground. Spent cartridges, at least a hundred spent cartridges from AK-47s and AR-15 rifles and .40-caliber and 9 mm pistols litter the ground around the bodies.

The locals later remember a few things. They said the shooting lasted ten minutes, but my God, they insist, it seemed like ten hours. The police are called, but it takes them a very long time to arrive.

Later, one local says, “We don’t understand how it is that the police did not catch them, because the bullets sounded very loud, and it went on for a long time.”

What fills the air is not sirens but this: cries of pain, voices begging for mercy, the roar of guns. Then silence. But this pure and sacred silence is broken by moans and screams. And so more shooting is required. Finally, it is finished.

The shooters have thoughtfully brought a sign that they leave by the bodies.

MESSAGE FOR RATS: THIS WILL CONTINUE.

About the same time, in another part of the city, a carpenter sits outside his house. Neighbors later report that the carpenter was a peaceful and hard-working man. This could be true. It hardly matters. Reasons are for people who seek to avoid the killing. The rest of us, those truly committed to death and slaughter, we need no reasons.

So a man has lived forty-three years and he is a carpenter. A car comes down the street and moves very slowly.

When the police finally do bother to come, they find eleven cartridges.

And the body.

But, I am