Part II, Chapters 7–8: "The Hammon and the Beans" by Américo Paredes

My mother hated it, especially because of the pigeons that cooed all day about the eaves.

At this time Jonesville-on-the-Grande was not the thriving little city that it is today.

The post was the town's clock, you might have said, or like some insistent elder person who was always there to tell you it was time.

That must have been when we had just studied about George Washington in school, or recited "The Song of Marion's Men" about Marion the Fox and the British cavalry that chased him up and down the broad Santee.

But at other times we stuck out our tongues and jeered at the soldiers.

Perhaps the night before we had hung at the edges of a group of old men and listened to tales about Aniceto Pizaña and the "border troubles," as the local paper still called them when it referred to them gingerly in passing.

On these occasions even Chonita would join in the mockery, though she usually ran home at the stroke of six.

But whether we taunted or saluted, the distant men in khaki uniforms went about their motions without noticing us at all.

Clearing brush and building irrigation ditches he sometimes pulled down as much as six dollars a week.

He was the breadwinner, you might say, while Chonita furnished the luxuries.

"Pneumonia, flu, malnutrition, worms, the evil eye," he said without turning around.

My father made a deprecatory gesture. "It wasn't his daughter anyway."

"I'm a conservative, the son of a conservative, and you know that I wouldn't be here except for that little detail."

"It depends on how you define radicalism," the doctor answered. "People tend to use words too loosely. A dentist could be called a radical, I suppose. He pulls up things by the roots."

I lay there for a long time while behind my darkened eyelids Emiliano Zapata's cavalry charged down to the broad Santee, where there were grave men with hoary hairs.