Respect
April, 1994
When Santo R. stepped into my little office in Partinico last fall I barely recognized him. He'd been a corpulent boy, one of the few in this dry-as-bones country, and a very heavyset young man. I remembered his parents--peasants, and poor as church mice--and how I'd treated him for the usual childhood ailments--rubella, chicken pox, mumps--and how even then the gentlest pressure of my fingers would leave marks on the distended flesh of his upper arms and legs. But if he'd been heavy then, he wa...
