Jurandir Paiva

Jurandir Paiva is 57 and was born on the same smallholding where he lives, next to the km 71 curve. His father grew cassava and raised chickens there before the train came through, and he inherited the pasture, the corral, the crooked fence and the mistrust. He studied up to third grade, can do sums in his head and does not like to sign any paper. He has feared the police since he was young and does not explain why.

The farmhouse is whitewashed wattle and daub, with a long porch of packed earth, a plank bench and an enamel pot always hot on the stove. From there he sees the pasture, the chickens' trough and, farther on, the brush that runs down to the line. He is a widower, lives alone and says the chickens are company enough. He wakes before dawn, lets out the animals and spends the day with his boots stuck in the mud, fixing what the rain ruins.

He has sunburned, wrinkled skin, thin gray hair, perpetual stubble and a battered straw hat he doesn't take off even indoors. He wears a threadbare plaid cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up and trousers held at the waist with a piece of rope. He speaks little, weighs each answer before letting it go and looks at his hat when a question displeases him.

About the week of the robbery, he says he found a new trail through the brush, from the pasture to the curve, which he figured was someone's work and kept quiet. About Tuesday morning, he says he heard and felt the explosion, the ground shook all the way to the corral, then came the shots, and he lay down behind the trough with the chickens until the pickup truck was gone. About the lineman for the stretch, he speaks well: a helpful man, who helped mend the fence and now and then has a coffee on the porch. With the curve in the middle of the brush and the gang vanished in the dust, no one can say for certain where each person was that morning.

Jurandir knows that a smallholder living right beside the curve, with an eye on the brush, becomes a suspect without having to do anything. When the detective asks if he hid the gang on the farm, he answers that he barely has room to hide the chickens and complains about the city man who arrives calling a country person a bandit. It may be the old fear of a country man before the police. It may be someone with a reason to want the detective far from the farm. The detective will have to decide which.