YES

The man used to be part of the Wild, Wild West. He grew up this way, horses being ridden to carry their masters towards a worse part of town infested with murderers, thieves and other criminals who don't like the sun. The shade is more appropriate. The blood of victims is darkened by the shade; it doesn't glisten in the sun.

No one knows why his wife and he moved down south to the Amazon rainforest. He didn't know himself. Maybe because his wife didn't like the desert. It didn't rain enough.

So he moved with her, to make her happy. Plus, none of the children ate her pies. So the wife decided to make some pies for those who didn't have full bellies--like the tribe they met and from whom they learned the language well enough for a conversation.

But the revenge never died.

The American man was looking for someone—the young kid, a native, who had stabbed his dead wife over and over for not giving him a piece of the pie that had been sitting outside on her window sill. He, and the tribe, were starving. Now, the hunter became the hunted.

The thief hid among the dense foliage, the thick Amazon evergreens hiding him. He was from a tribe deep in the Amazon known as the Secret Tribe. But everyone was bilingual, speaking their own language and English. The man was American, his wife American, but the young man—who looked like a kid—was of this tribe. He could communicate with this man and his wife.

Could communicate with his dagger, too.

“Where are you?” The man yelled angrily, swiping at the lengthy leaves blocking his way. “You murdered her. You know you did. No one escapes wrongdoing!”

The jaguar growled softly to himself. “I know I should have, because she wouldn’t feed us. She knew we were starving! And she didn’t give us a finger of her batter.” His stomach growled, and he crouched, the branch supporting his burly weight. When he became a man again, he dashed like mad, taking to the sky. He pretended to just be a bird, but the man threw his dagger. A cry was made, and the bird fell, blood on its terribly shrunk abdomen.

“Hah!” Chided the man, grinning like a little child as if he had won a prize all on his own. After the bird thumped to the ground, the man lunged at it, ejecting his dagger from its stomach. “Stupid fool.”

A crunch of leaves and branches on the ground whizzed the man around. With bulging eyes, the man stared. “Who—you’re the thief?” Then his face twisted into something fierce. “I thought I killed you!”

“Killed an innocent bird.” The thief’s eyes were stinging with tears. He had to wipe them away.

“I—” The man turned around, and, ignoring the growling stomach of the scrawny thief, stared hopelessly at the bird. His eyes burned with tears. “I...” He choked back sobs. “A fool forgets when he is mad for food. Hunger drives him crazy!”

“Now all the village will know you’re a murderer! Fool. When will you be wise?”

“Fools aren't born. They make themselves into them. We not only shapeshift, but we apparently turn into monsters!”

“I was starving.”

“You all are.”

“The only way is—”

“To end my wife’s life?”

The man’s stomach growled. And then he fled, disappearing into the heavy forest full of the loud chirping of birds and growling of jaguars and drippings of rain. He ran a hand over his forehead, and looked at the sweat glistening in the sunlight. He wished he were taking a hot shower with soap and shampoo available, his wife in the bedroom reading a book. But he wasn’t. he took his dagger, growling as jaguars do, and charged after the man. Sneaking up on him to slice his head from his shoulders, the man tread very lightly on the straw and mud underneath him. Slowly, slowly, he encouraged himself, the dagger hilt right in his hand, ready to go at the flesh.

The man who had murdered.

He deserved it, for he had committed the deed, too.

The man’s tough, big hands suddenly grabbed the half-naked kid’s neck, throttling it. The man tried getting off of him, screaming, kicking, punching, but the man attempted to throw him to the dirt earth and kick him in the chest where he had looked like he had died instantly. The dagger went high in the air, the man shrieked that he was sorry, for only wise people are sorry—

Another cry pierced the air. some woman was running up to him, a slingshot with an egg—no, a rock—in it. ready to kill this man right in the forehead. She slung it, but the man swiped it away with his dagger, quick like lightning. He could dodge anything, especially when using something small like a dagger or even a spoon. If she had an egg, he’d catch it if he had a spoon. But she charged him, he yelling at her to back off.

“How dare you attack my grandson?” She whirled around to him, checking him over. Pushing her away, he leapt up to his feet and stared darkly at the man.

“Your grandson murdered my wife!”

Sparks flew from the grandmother’s dark eyes. “My grandson—”

“Deserves to die!”

The grandmother fell to her knees. “It is not wise to kill for revenge. No. No!”

“I’m not avenging. I’m just giving this man what he deserves. He deserves death!”

“Not wise.”

“What do you know about wisdom, woman? What do you know about—”

“Calling me ‘woman’ is respect!” The grandmother changed the subject, but the man was not persuaded.

“Fool. You think he—”

The grandmother got up and put her hands in front of her face as if to protect herself. “Please—” And she spoke in her own tribe’s tongue, which the man and his wife knew well. “Please. Killing for killing never satisfies. Then my tribe will be after you.”

“Let them. I’d rather die than be without my wife.” The dagger had been down, but the man clenched it with his hands.

“Your wife is dead because of me!”

The young man beat his chest, tears in his eyes. “Tribe and Grandmother will forsake me.”

“You forgot, my grandson, that the tribe doesn't deal with fools like you!”

The grandmother beat her grandson on his head with a cane with which she found nearby, and the young man wept, the American man jerked his eyes over to the grandmother. “Now—you are silenced.” The tribe soon gathered around the man, bound his hands and feet together behind him and dragged the sobbing man to what the man muttered under his breath was the sound of a rushing river. He followed them, watching as they ignored the screams of the man and grabbed his hair and thrust his head underwater. He thrashed, his feet kicking, his hands pounding the rocks underneath until he didn’t move anymore.

The penalty, the man said to himself, for murder was death.

They drowned him because he was a murderer.

Now he can eat all the pie he wants, while his victim makes them all.