This morning after my arrival in Jocuixtita a small, very slender dark-skinned girl came to the house of Teófilo and stood quietly watching as I doled out medicines. She did not speak until I turned to her and asked if she were waiting for treatment. In a very soft voice she asked me if I would go with her to her house—her mother had asked me to come.

I followed the little girl up the steep rocky hill behind Jocuixtita, then down again into a small arroyo. At the upper end, about a quarter mile from the main part of the village, we came to a small house, decked, as are so many houses in Jocuixtita, with bougainvillea. This was the home of Eustaquio Morones. La señora met us at the doorway of the earthen house, and bid me inside.

Sitting on the edge of the bed was a little boy, and it was to examine him that I had been called. Apparently another victim of polio, the child had been struck by the crippling disease before he completed his first year of life. Now he is fifteen, although he looks no more than 9 or 10. As his mother explained the condition of the child, he sat quietly, motionless, his large black eyes fixed on me and a strange smile frozen on his face.

It always disturbs me to talk about someone when the opportunity presents itself to talk to them. I tried placing several questions to Pipi but could draw no speech from him. Yet always he kept those same eyes fixed upon me. Always the same frozen smile. When I turned away to talk with his mother, the smile—like a hapless flower that has been pieced and discarded—began to wilt, but needed no more than a glance or nod on my part to spring back to life.

Pipi is paralyzed from the thighs down; both legs, and his knees and the tops of his feet are calloused from dragging over the earth floor of the casa and the yard. I asked if he could walk at all.

“Pipi”, said the mother, “Anda con tus bordones para el señor.”

The boy dragged himself to a corner where two staffs were leaning against the wall, hauled himself erect, and supporting much of his weight with the poles, slowly transported himself across the yard, and back again, and back and forth and back and forth, at a snail’s pace but with surprising stamina. I thanked him and said it was enough but Pipi continued, time and again, until I was exhausted. And the smile remained transfixed upon his round young face.

This was Pipi’s one big day: This dragging of himself upright, back and forth across the yard was his big achievement. He never ventured beyond the yard. He had never attended school in the village a quarter mile away. He had not even seen the village in many years, not since he has grown too large for his mother to carry. When the family goes “to town”, Pipi stays home.

Although the child’s behavior and fixed smile suggest retardation, his mother assured me that, while his speech is slow, he has a good memory and apparently normal intelligence. When I learned that his mother could read and write, though poorly, I suggested she try to instruct the boy, and if he responded, that she send him to school the coming year—if there is a teacher. (This year there is no profesór in Jocuixtita. The government-appointed teacher said that the village was too “retirado y atrasado” and left after a few days.)

It occurred to me that, with crutches, Pipi could learn to transport himself much more efficiently than with the two staffs, and it surprised me that they had let fourteen years elapse without them. I asked if there were no one in the family who could make a set of crutches. The mother replied that her husband—as a carpenter—could, and would. On my next visit to Jocuixtita I shall inquire if the crutches have been made, and if not (and I fear not) I shall make Pipi crutches myself. Or perhaps we shall make them together, for he has strong hands.