Chapter 22 THE PREROGATIVE

Little Carnota Roa was dead, and they were burying him.

The father came first, bearing the coffin on his shoulder. He was a ma?angete; that is, for a living he climbed the coconut trees, hanging his buckets till full of tuba sap and then carrying them, balanced at the ends of a bamboo pole, seven miles to the pueblo, on the trot. This occupation