Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
watched them tirelessly mobilize the chips of green leaves—heavy loads for<br />
their tiny frames. I found that I couldn’t wait to see the old man again.<br />
I loped up the last hill to San Antonio. The distinctly pungent stench of<br />
pigs and rotting cornhusks greeted me as I walked the last quarter mile to<br />
Panti’s compound.<br />
He was at home, sitting on the kitchen floor, vigorously chopping<br />
medicine. He was chatting <strong>with</strong> the mother of the sick child, whom I had<br />
met the month before.<br />
“Buenos días,” I said, as I came through the door. The woman<br />
introduced herself to me. Her name was Juanita, her daughter, María. “Yo<br />
soy Rosita,” I said. They were camped out on the floor, and Maria was<br />
asleep on an old door, <strong>with</strong>out a mattress or pillow.<br />
In the <strong>Maya</strong> tradition, it’s customary for healers to house their patients,<br />
since many are far from home and too poor to pay for room and board. By<br />
the time they had found Don Elijio, María’s family had spent their savings<br />
on medicines, hospital stays, and taxicabs.<br />
Panti didn’t even glance up at me. He said a polite hello, then continued<br />
chopping. He didn’t seem to notice or care that Juanita was at the moment<br />
straining to pull one of the wooden poles of the wall of his hut off its<br />
bracing to add to the fire. Already, more than half the wall was gone,<br />
leaving a large, gaping space. At this rate, the rest of the walls would burn<br />
up in a few weeks.<br />
Juanita sensed my astonishment. “Too much rain this week,” she<br />
explained meekly, as she stood surrounded by buckets and pots that had<br />
been called into service to catch the rain pouring in through the holes in the<br />
roof. “The wood is all wet and we must have a fire to warm Maria and cook<br />
our food.”<br />
“I built this house fifty years ago,” Panti chimed in. “<strong>My</strong> wife and I<br />
lived here like two kittens on a pillow. Now the roof is rotten but those<br />
corner poles! They would outlive you and I both. They are of Escoba, a<br />
palm that doesn’t even know how to rot. But this house is beyond saving.<br />
And when it is all gone, God will help me build another one.”<br />
When his wife had been alive, he explained, she had tended to patients,<br />
feeding them fresh beans, pumpkins, and homemade tortillas. She had<br />
always made sure the hut was snug and warm. Although he did his best, it<br />
could never be the same.