Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 15, 1995                   TAG: 9503160007
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THE TRUTH PUTS THE BITE ON EL VIEJO

The old man washed the tooth carefully after it broke so that he could show it to the woman, who was very clean in her ways.

It is like that, the old man thought. A part of a man that has lasted for years gives way to time.

We prove our mortality in pieces, he thought, and not all at once; the way a brave man would prefer.

"Attencion, mujer," the old man said. "Here is a tooth that has served me well and suddenly is no more. Es nada."

"I would hope thee has washed this thing thee show me now," the woman said. "Does it not strike thee, esposo, that it is somewhat in bad taste to display a tooth of such magnitude that has just fallen from one's own cabeza?

"I mean no offense, madre de mi nino y ninas," the old man said. "I was illustrating the truth. The truth is that we come apart in little pieces rather than die whole and at the top of our youth in perhaps a charge of infantry along some sullen river. Is it not better to fall that way than to go to God little by little?"

"Viejo," the woman said with a patience life had taught her, "thee knows there is no chance thee will now fall in a charge of any kind anywhere. Go to el telefono. Call el dentist to say thy tooth has broken off."

"Si, madrecita," the old man said. "And will they not want to know how this occurred? And will I not have to tell them that it happened as I chewed on a red jellybean? There is no honor in that. They will think I am a fool."

In his day, the old man thought, men were esteemed for honest wounds. In his day, a man who wounded himself with a red jellybean would be scorned everywhere.

Such a wound is not like the clean, swift goring of the bull, he thought. It is not like the sudden, honorable thud of a bullet in one's body.

"I will tell them my tooth broke when a brigand struck me as I was successfully defending your honor," the old man said.

"Aiyee," the woman said. "Thee surely will be thought of a fool as well as a liar if thee tell them such stories."

The old man knew she was right and yet he regretted the dishonor the truth would bring a brave man.

"Dost thou think they will resort to the great needle?" he said to the woman. "I relish a charge of infantry, but I fear the great needle."