"I'll stop you whenever I can. I've decided to have a special chair constructed. In my chair I can look after the hacienda." "No, Father. Your day is past. It's my job!" Fernando spat. "You and your radical ways. God, you can't run this place!" "Why not?" "Everyone will laugh at you." In the tree behind Fernando, the iguana decided to climb higher, its head waggling, tongue forking. "That's the least of my worries. I'm thinking about the people and their chance to live as men ought to live." "They're not men," said Fernando, coughing over his cigarette. "They've been called animals, many things. I think they're men." "You'll ruin Petaca ... I could summon a lawyer and preserve my control. I suppose you could declare me physically or mentally incompetent. It would be touch and go, maybe one bribe against another. I'm not that kind of fool. We'd lose Petaca. I'm not that far gone." "The courts are no place for us," said Raul, knowing how easy it would be to expose the Medina crime; he began to walk away, thinking of Caterina, disliking the conversation, the grizzled face of his father. "I hadn't finished speaking," said Fernando. "I don't want to listen." "I've talked to Pedro." "I told him he had to go." "He'll stay," the old man croaked. "Let's keep sane," said Raul, curbing his emotions, shutting down on his voice. "You must accept my way; hostility will finish Petaca. We have to settle things between us. It's time I had the administration. You've had your day. There never has been any mutual planning, so now I have to work out the problems alone." "I tell you, you'll ruin Petaca!" Fernando exclaimed; his cigarette had died out, but he still held the stub between his fingers. Parrots jabbered and a few of them roosted in the iguana tree. "Get me out of here, before the parrots use me for a headstone!" "I wish we could work together." "That's sentiment--not sense. I've never wanted to work with you or anyone. In Europe, you picked up ideas. Hell, I know what men are. I know what life is!" He shouted for the men who had been lugging him; his voice broke and became that of an old woman. "Get me out of here," he quavered. Raul followed a palmera path that wandered toward the ocean. He thought: I won't forget that place with the old man's talk squirming among the graves. Tomorrow I'll go back and see whether her grave has been taken care of ... maybe I'd better go back later tonight....