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woman.”<br />
I left them chatting and went out to scrounge for wood scraps and came<br />
back loaded down <strong>with</strong> enough firewood to last the rest of the day. Then I<br />
made two more trips to a stash I’d piled under a tree near the edge of the<br />
village.<br />
When I got back, Panti was tending to the child, who dangled her legs<br />
over the bed. He carefully washed out her open sores <strong>with</strong> a hot, green<br />
liquid, before taking out his tattered handkerchief and drying them. Then he<br />
reached under the bed for a musty glass jar <strong>with</strong> a rusted lid, and, tipping it<br />
on its side, he shook out a tiny bit of greenish black powder onto each sore.<br />
I noticed that some sores had healed while others were beginning to heal.<br />
The child winced as the powder fell, crying out to her mother, “Me quema.”<br />
It burns me.<br />
With gentle assurance and ample confidence in his herbs, Panti spoke<br />
softly to the child. “Yes, yes, my heart. It burns, but it cures.”<br />
Piling the firewood under the hearth, I pulled out my machete from its<br />
leather scabbard and sharpened it <strong>with</strong> Panti’s file. “May I help you chop<br />
medicine, Don Elijio?”<br />
He peered over at me <strong>with</strong> his soft, weary eyes, asking, “Are you sick?<br />
Tell me first, because soon there will be many people arriving on the<br />
transport from town. It is better to tell me of your sickness now.”<br />
It was painfully obvious once again that he didn’t remember me by<br />
voice or face. I gently reminded him that we had met twice. “Yo soy<br />
Rosita.” His eyes crinkled at the edges and a smile creased his leathery face.<br />
He humbly apologized for his eyes. American doctors had visited the<br />
village the week before and informed him he had cataracts, leaving behind<br />
eye drops and sunglasses.<br />
He pointed <strong>with</strong> his worn machete to the far corner toward another<br />
chopping block. “Those sacks hanging from the rafters—spread them out,”<br />
he instructed. I did and then sat down on the dirt floor across from him and<br />
his hand-hewn wooden block. He pushed a pile of gnarled, brown vines in<br />
my direction and motioned for me to watch how he chopped. “Not too big.<br />
Not too small. Just so.”<br />
We worked in silence <strong>with</strong> only the sounds of the machetes on wood<br />
and the rustling of the vine tendrils. “What vine is this?” I asked, cutting<br />
through the quiet as gently as I could.