Respect

RespectWhen 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...