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that once belonged to a child’s exercise book and was covered <strong>with</strong> the<br />
repetitive strokes of alphabet letters. He rummaged around in another cloth<br />
bag and removed a slice of stark white, sticky Copal resin from a ball the<br />
size of a man’s fist. He added the resin to the powder, then shook in dried<br />
Rosemary leaves.<br />
I smiled. Panti was always sifting through gunnysacks. Sometimes he<br />
looked like a tropical version of Santa Claus, <strong>with</strong> his bag of roots, vines,<br />
barks, and leaves. They were his treasured presents from the <strong>Maya</strong> Spirits<br />
and he was jolly old St. Nick, right down to his boisterous chuckling.<br />
He wrapped up the mixture and tied it up <strong>with</strong> a single strand of plastic<br />
he had ripped off an old flour sack. “Burn this incense on coals in your<br />
house every Thursday for nine weeks and outside your house on nine<br />
Fridays. Say this prayer: All evil and envy should leave this place now<br />
because it is causing much harm. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the<br />
Holy Ghost. Amen.”<br />
With this part of his work completed, Panti proceeded <strong>with</strong> the comic<br />
entertainment. Several times he made her giggle, despite the traces of tears<br />
on her cheeks.<br />
Eventually she clutched her bag of herbs and started toward the door,<br />
muttering to herself, “Praise God. Praise God. God bless you, old man, <strong>with</strong><br />
a long life to help us who have nowhere else to go. There’s no one like God<br />
and Don Elijio.”<br />
He shrugged modestly and smiled at her. “Have no worry, child. Soon<br />
you will be well again. God will help us all.”<br />
After Carla left, Panti turned to look at me <strong>with</strong> his eyebrows bent<br />
across his brow in warning. “You see, mamasita, that is why the people in<br />
these parts always sleep <strong>with</strong> their doors and windows closed tightly. The<br />
Winds favor no one.”<br />
The comment was intended to convince me once and for all not to<br />
complain about him closing up the windows and doors at night so not a<br />
whiff of fresh air seeped in. With the tropical heat lingering into the night,<br />
though, the cement house was often unbearable for sleeping. But he<br />
especially feared the Night Wind. “It is pure Spirit and can harm the people<br />
it touches.”<br />
Although he’d told me before about the Winds, Carla was the first case<br />
of physical symptoms that I’d heard blamed on them. The Winds are<br />
intelligent entities to many Latin American cultures, known as Ik in <strong>Maya</strong>n