The morning air was brisk, the sky thick with clouds. A warm breeze gently stirred the brittle branches of dying trees.

Alejo stood beside a wagon outside a general store waiting for Lina, his wife, and sons Eusebio and Pedro.

The store was a ramshackle building set in the heart of San Jose de Las Lajas, a town now little more than a burnt shell of ruined buildings and overgrown roads occupied by several hundred souls squeezing existence from ground once rich with sugar cane but now arid and cracked from relentless drought.

Alejo and family were on their weekly excursion from Havana, bartering for supplies unavailable in the city, simple items that commanded steep prices.

But that was the way of things since the Great Blight.

Whistling tunelessly, Alejo placed a string of pineapples into a canvas sack and drew it shut when anxious sounds from a gathering crowd caught his attention. Curious, he crossed a street to join the townspeople as they viewed a plume of black smoke rising in the distance. It was soon joined by another plume appearing close to the first. The townspeople reacted in hushed and nervous tones.

Alejo felt his guts twist. He mumbled, "Fires. Those are fires.”

A woman stared at him, and soon his words raced through the crowd.

Increasingly uncomfortable, Alejo stepped back, turned, and saw his family waiting by the wagon. He jogged over.

"What is it?" his wife asked. Lina was attractive, late thirties, short with a round face and prematurely graying hair.

The boys Pedro and Eusebio, in their mid-teens, echoed her question, their youthful faces etched with concern. Alejo took Lina’s hand and said, "We must return to Havana straight away.

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