“Suppose she’s right, suppose if you went back to being a curandero, this would cure up, you’d be all black again?”

He plunged his hand into the coconut shell, fed himself.

“I don’t believe it,” he said. “But anyway, I prefer to pat the bull by the horns.”

“Take the bull by the horns.”

“In Brazil, we pat it.”

He waited for my gag line.

35

So I return to Catherine and Ernest to pat the horns of the bull, or to pat its balls. It’s your choice.

36

“I am not a very talkative man,” says the maker of straw chairs. “I do not talk for talking’s sake. When I talk, I speak from the heart or from the teeth.”

I stand and watch him work. Some of the straw chairs look like they were woven from the heart and others from the teeth. I start to buy two from the heart but change my mind. I buy one from the heart for Ernest, and one from the teeth for Catherine. I cannot decide which to buy for myself. You decide.

37

“I never talk about devils, never, never,” said Encobierta.

We sat at the kitchen table, drinking ipecacuanha tea. My luggage was at my feet. Ensinanco had gone to borrow a car to drive me to the airport.

“Never. When you talk about devils, they appear. I talk about angels.”

“Do they appear?”

“No, but sometimes I hear the flutter of their wings.”

She placed a bag of the dried medicinal plant in the pouch of my overnight case.

“Do you feel your time’s been wasted with him?” she asked suddenly, her eyes like a squirrel’s.

“No,” I said more sharply than I’d intended.

She didn’t back off.

“Sometimes a woman should let the grass grow under her feet.”

“I always slip on grass.”

What was the American saying? About a rolling stone gathering no moss. I bet if you examined one under a microscope, you’d discover flecks of it. All those sayings, cliches in one language, something fresh in another. Like the Welsh for it’s raining cats and dogs: it’s raining sticks and witches’ brooms.

We heard Ensinanco’s footsteps and hushed as he came into the kitchen.

“Have you girls been talking about me?” he asked.

Encobierta winked at me. “You’ve appeared, haven’t you?”

She scooted out of her chair, picked up my overnight bag. Ensinanco picked up the suitcase and we marched out.

I sat in the jeep saying nothing.

“When I first met you,” he said, “I thought you were too quiet for an American girl. I thought all American girls did was talk and talk. I thought they were made out of chitchat.”

I laughed, leaned over and kissed his jaw.

The sides of the road were tree filled.

“Aren’t those trees you can get oil out of, what’s the name of them?”

“I don’t know the name of them. But you tap them like you’d tap a maple tree to get syrup out.”