Avenue of Mysteries

26. The Scattering

The dislocations of travel had been a familiar theme in Juan Diego’s early novels. Now the demons of dislocation were besetting him again; he was having trouble remembering how many days and nights he and Dorothy had stayed at El Nido.

He remembered the sex with Dorothy — not only her screaming orgasms, which were in what sounded like Nahuatl, but how she’d repeatedly called his penis “this guy,” as if Juan Diego’s penis were a nonspeaking but otherwise obtrusive presence at a noisy party. Dorothy was definitely noisy, a veritable earthquake in the world of orgasms; their near neighbors at the resort had phoned their room to inquire if everyone was all right. (But no one had used the asswheel word, or the more common asshole appellation.)

As Dorothy had told Juan Diego, the food at El Nido was good: rice noodles with shrimp sauce; spring rolls with pork or mushrooms or duck; serrano ham with pickled green mango; spicy sardines. There was also a condiment made from fermented fish, which Juan Diego had learned to be on the lookout for; he thought it gave him indigestion or heartburn. And there was flan for dessert — Juan Diego liked custard — but Dorothy told him to avoid anything with milk in it. She said she didn’t trust the milk on the “outer islands.”

Juan Diego didn’t know if only a little island constituted an outer island, or if all the islands in the Palawan group were (in Dorothy’s estimation) of the outer kind. When he asked her, Dorothy just shrugged. She had a killer shrug.

It was strange how being with Dorothy had made him forget Miriam, but he’d forgotten that being with Miriam (even wanting to be with Miriam) had once made him forget about being with Dorothy. Very strange: how he could, simultaneously, obsess about these women and forget about them.

The coffee at the resort was overstrong, or perhaps it seemed strong because Juan Diego was drinking it black. “Have the green tea,” Dorothy told him. But the green tea was very bitter; he tried putting a little honey in it. He saw that the honey was from Australia.

“Australia is nearby, isn’t it?” Juan Diego asked Dorothy. “I’m sure the honey is safe.”

“They dilute it with something — it’s too watery,” Dorothy said. “And where’s the water come from?” she asked him. (It was her outer-islands theme, again.) “Is it bottled water, or do they boil it? I say fuck the honey,” Dorothy told him.

“Okay,” Juan Diego said. Dorothy seemed to know a lot. Juan Diego was beginning to realize that, increasingly, when he was with Dorothy or her mother, he acquiesced.

He was allowing Dorothy to give him his pills; she’d simply taken over his prescriptions. Dorothy not only decided when he should take the Viagra — always a whole tablet, not a half — but she told him when to take the beta-blockers, and when not to take them.

At low tide, it was Dorothy who insisted they sit overlooking the lagoon; low tide was when the reef egrets came to search the mudflats. “What are the egrets looking for?” Juan Diego had asked her.

“It doesn’t matter — they’re awesome-looking birds, aren’t they?” was all Dorothy had said.

At high tide, Dorothy held his arm as they ventured onto the beach in the horseshoe-shaped cove. The monitor lizards liked to lie in the sand; some of them were as long as an adult human arm. “You don’t want to get too close to them — they can bite, and they smell like carrion,” Dorothy had warned him. “They look like penises, don’t they? Unfriendly-looking penises,” Dorothy said.

Juan Diego had no idea what unfriendly-looking penises resembled; how any penis could or might look like a monitor lizard was beyond him. Juan Diego had enough trouble understanding his own penis. When Dorothy took him snorkeling in the deep water outside the lagoon, his penis stung a little.

“It’s just the salt water, and because you’ve been having a lot of sex,” Dorothy told him. She seemed to know more about his penis than Juan Diego did. And the stinging soon stopped. (It was more like tingling than stinging, truthfully.) Juan Diego wasn’t under attack from those stinging things — the plankton that looked like condoms for three-year-olds. There were no upright-swimming index fingers — those stinging pink things, swimming vertically, like sea horses, the jellyfish he’d heard about only from Dorothy and Clark.

As for Clark, Juan Diego started getting inquiring text messages from his former student before he and Dorothy left El Nido and Lagen Island.

“D. is STILL with you, isn’t she?” the first such text message from Clark inquired.

“What should I tell him?” Juan Diego asked Dorothy.

“Oh, Leslie is texting Clark, too — is she?” Dorothy had asked. “I’m just not answering her. You would think Leslie and I had been going steady, or something.”

But Clark French kept texting his former teacher. “As far as poor Leslie knows, D. has just DISAPPEARED. Leslie was expecting D. to meet her in Manila. But poor Leslie is suspicious — she knows you know D. What do I tell her?”

“Tell Clark we’re leaving for Laoag. Leslie will know where that is. Everyone knows where Laoag is. Don’t get more specific,” Dorothy told Juan Diego.

But when Juan Diego did exactly that — when he sent Clark a text that he was “off to Laoag with D.”—he heard back from his former student almost immediately.

“D. is fucking you, isn’t she? You understand: I’m not the one who wants to know!” Clark texted him. “Poor Leslie is asking ME. What do I tell her?”

Dorothy saw his consternation as he stared at his cell phone. “Leslie is a very possessive person,” Dorothy said to Juan Diego, without needing to ask him if the text was from Clark. “We have to let Leslie know she doesn’t own us. This is all because your former student is too uptight to fuck her, and Leslie knows her tits won’t stay perky forever, or something.”

“You want me to blow off your bossy girlfriend?” Juan Diego asked Dorothy.

“I guess you’ve never had to blow off a bossy girlfriend,” Dorothy said; without waiting for Juan Diego to admit that he hadn’t had a bossy girlfriend — or many other kinds of girlfriends — Dorothy told him how he should handle the situation.

“We have to show Leslie that she doesn’t have an emotional ball-and-chain effect on us,” Dorothy began. “Here’s what you say to Clark — he’ll tell Leslie everything. One: Why shouldn’t D. and I do it? Two: Leslie and D. did it, didn’t they? Three: How are those boys doing — that one kid’s poor penis, especially? Four: Want us to say hi to the water buffalo for the whole family?”

“That’s what I should say?” Juan Diego asked Dorothy. She really did know a lot, he was thinking.

“Just send it,” Dorothy told him. “Leslie needs to be blown off — she’s begging for it. Now you can say you’ve had a bossy girlfriend. Fun, huh?” Dorothy asked him.

He sent the text, per Dorothy’s instructions. Juan Diego was aware he was blowing off Clark, too. He was having fun, all right; in fact, he couldn’t remember when he’d had this much fun — the quickly passing stinging sensation in his penis notwithstanding.

“How is this guy doing?” Dorothy then asked him, touching his penis. “Still stinging? Still tingling a tiny bit, maybe? Want to make this guy tingle some more?” Dorothy asked him.

He could barely manage to nod his head, he was so tired. Juan Diego was still staring at his cell phone, thinking about the uncharacteristic text message he’d sent to Clark.

“Don’t worry,” Dorothy was whispering to him; she kept touching his penis. “You look a little tired, but not this guy,” she whispered. “He doesn’t get tired.”

Dorothy now took his phone away from him. “Don’t worry, darling,” she said to him in a more commanding fashion than before — the darling word impossibly sounding the way it had when Miriam had said it. “Leslie won’t bother us again. Trust me: she’ll get the message. Your friend Clark French does everything she wants — except fuck her.”

Juan Diego wanted to ask Dorothy about their trip to Laoag and Vigan, but he couldn’t form the words. He couldn’t possibly have expressed to Dorothy his doubts about going there. Dorothy had decided—because Juan Diego was an American, and one of the Vietnam generation — that he should at least see where those young Americans, those frightened nineteen-year-olds who were so afraid of being tortured, went to get away from the war (when, or if, they could manage to get away from it).

Juan Diego had meant to ask Dorothy, too, where exactly the doctrinaire certainty of her opinions came from — you know how Juan Diego was always wondering where everything came from—but he’d been unable to summon the strength to question the autocratic young woman.

Dorothy disapproved of the Japanese tourists at El Nido; she disliked how the resort catered to the Japanese, pointing out that there was Japanese food on the menu.

“But we’re very near to Japan,” Juan Diego reminded her. “And other people like Japanese food—”

“After what Japan did to the Philippines?” Dorothy asked him.

“Well, the war—” Juan Diego had started to say.

“Wait till you see the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial — if you actually end up seeing it,” Dorothy said dismissively. “The Japanese shouldn’t come to the Philippines.”

And Dorothy pointed out that the Australians outnumbered all the other white people in the dining hall at El Nido. “Wherever they go, they go as a group — they’re a gang,” she said.

“You don’t like Australians?” Juan Diego asked her. “They’re so friendly — they’re just naturally gregarious.” This was greeted by Dorothy’s Lupe-like shrug.

Dorothy might as well have said: If you don’t understand, I couldn’t possibly have any success in explaining it to you.

There were two Russian families at El Nido, and some Germans, too. “There are Germans everywhere,” was all Dorothy said.

“They’re big travelers, aren’t they?” Juan Diego had asked her.

“They’re big conquerors,” Dorothy had said, rolling her dark eyes.

“But you like the food here — at El Nido. You said the food is good,” Juan Diego reminded her.

“Rice is rice,” was all Dorothy would say — as if she’d never said the food was good. Yet, when Dorothy was in a this-guy mood, her focus was impressive.

Their last night at El Nido, Juan Diego woke with the moonlight reflecting off the lagoon; their earlier, intense attention to “this guy” must have distracted them from closing the curtains. The way the silvery light fell across the bed and illuminated Dorothy’s face was a little eerie. Asleep, there was something as lifeless as a statue about her — as if Dorothy were a mannequin who, only occasionally, sprang to life.

Juan Diego leaned over her in the moonlight, putting his ear close to her lips. He could not feel the breath escaping her mouth and nose, nor did her breasts — lightly covered by the sheets — appear to rise and fall.

For a moment, Juan Diego imagined he could hear Sister Gloria saying, as she once had: “I don’t want to hear another word about Our Lady of Guadalupe lying down.” For a moment, it was as if Juan Diego were lying next to the sex-doll likeness of Our Lady of Guadalupe — the gift the good gringo had given him, from that virgin shop in Oaxaca — and Juan Diego had finally managed to saw the pedestal off the mannequin’s imprisoned feet.

“Is there something you’re expecting me to say?” Dorothy whispered in his ear, startling him. “Or maybe you were thinking of going down on me, and waking me up that way,” the young woman indifferently said.

“Who are you?” Juan Diego asked her. But he could see in the silvery moonlight that Dorothy had fallen back to sleep, or she was pretending to be asleep — or else he’d only imagined her speaking to him, and what he’d asked her.

THE SUN WAS SETTING; it lingered long enough to cast a coppery glow over the South China Sea. Their little plane from Palawan flew on, toward Manila. Juan Diego was remembering the goodbye look Dorothy gave to that tourist-weary water buffalo at the airport, as they were leaving.

“That’s a water buffalo on beta-blockers,” Juan Diego had remarked. “The poor thing.”

“Yeah, well — you should see him when there’s a caterpillar up his nose,” Dorothy had said, once more giving the water buffalo the evil eye.

The sun was gone. The sky was the color of a bruise. By the far-apart, twinkling lights onshore, Juan Diego could tell they were flying over ground — the sea was now behind them. Juan Diego was staring out the plane’s little window when he felt Dorothy’s heavy head make contact with his shoulder and the side of his neck; her head felt as solid as a cannonball.

“What you will see, in about fifteen minutes, are the city lights,” Dorothy told him. “What comes first is an unlit darkness.”

“An unlit darkness?” Juan Diego asked her; his voice sounded alarmed.

“Except for the occasional ship,” she answered him. “The darkness is Manila Bay,” Dorothy explained. “First the bay, then the lights.”

Was it Dorothy’s voice or the weight of her head that was putting him to sleep? Or did Juan Diego feel the unlit darkness beckoning?

The head that rested on him was Lupe’s, not Dorothy’s; he was on a bus, not a plane; the mountain road that snaked by in the darkness was somewhere in the Sierra Madre — the circus was returning to Oaxaca from Mexico City. Lupe slept as heavily against him as an undreaming dog; her little fingers had loosened their grip on the two religious totems she’d been playing with, before she fell asleep.

Juan Diego was holding the coffee can with the ashes — he didn’t let Lupe pinch it between her knees when she was sleeping. With her hideous Coatlicue statuette and the Guadalupe figurine — the one Juan Diego had found on the stairs, descending from El Cerrito — Lupe had been waging a war between superheroes. Lupe made the two action figures knock heads, exchange kicks, have sex; the serene-looking Guadalupe seemed an unlikely winner, and one look at Coatlicue’s rattlesnake-rattle nipples (or her skirt of serpents) left little doubt that, between the two combatants, she was the representative from the Underworld.

Juan Diego had let his sister act out the religious war within her in this childish superhero battle. The saintly-looking Guadalupe figurine at first appeared overmatched; she held her hands in a prayerful position, above the small but discernible swell of her belly. Guadalupe didn’t have a fighter’s stance, whereas Coatlicue looked as poised to strike as one of her writhing snakes, and Coatlicue’s flaccid breasts were scary. (Even a starving infant would have been turned off by those rattlesnake-rattle nipples!)

Yet Lupe engaged the two action figures in a variety of emotionally charged activities: the fighting and fucking were equally intermixed, and there were moments of apparent tenderness between the two warriors — even kissing.

When Juan Diego observed Guadalupe and Coatlicue kissing, he asked Lupe if this represented a kind of truce between the fighters — a putting aside of their religious differences. After all, couldn’t kissing mean making up?

“They’re just taking a break,” was all Lupe said, recommencing the more violent, nonstop action between the two totems — more fighting and fucking — until Lupe was exhausted and fell asleep.

As far as Juan Diego could tell, looking at Guadalupe and Coatlicue in the loosening fingers of Lupe’s small hands, nothing had been settled between the two bitches. How could a violent mother-earth goddess coexist with one of those know-it-all, do-nothing virgins? Juan Diego was thinking. He didn’t know that, across the aisle of the darkened bus, Edward Bonshaw was watching him when he gently took the two religious figurines from his sleeping sister’s hands.

Someone on the bus had been farting — one of the dogs, maybe; the parrot man, perhaps; Paco and Beer Belly, definitely. (The two dwarf clowns drank a lot of beer.) Juan Diego had already opened the bus window beside him, just a crack. The gap was sufficient for him to slip the two superheroes through the opening. Somewhere, one everlasting night — on a winding road through the Sierra Madre — two formidable religious figures were left to fend for themselves in the unlit darkness.

What now — what next? Juan Diego was thinking, when Señor Eduardo spoke to him from across the aisle.

“You are not alone, Juan Diego,” the Iowan said. “If you reject one belief and then another, still you aren’t alone — the universe isn’t a godless place.”

“What now — what next?” Juan Diego asked him.

A dog with an inquiring look walked between them in the aisle of the circus bus; it was Pastora, the sheepdog — she wagged her tail, as if Juan Diego had spoken to her, and walked on.

Edward Bonshaw began babbling about the Temple of the Society of Jesus — he meant the one in Oaxaca. Señor Eduardo wanted Juan Diego to consider scattering Esperanza’s ashes at the feet of the giant Virgin Mary there.

“The Mary Monster—” Juan Diego started to say.

“Okay — maybe not all the ashes, and only at her feet!” the Iowan quickly said. “I know you and Lupe have issues with the Virgin Mary, but your mother adored her.”

“The Mary Monster killed our mother,” Juan Diego reminded Señor Eduardo.

“I think you’re interpreting an accident in a dogmatic fashion,” Edward Bonshaw cautioned him. “Perhaps Lupe is more open to revisiting the Virgin Mary — the Mary Monster, as you call her.”

Pastora, pacing, passed between them in the aisle again. The restless dog reminded Juan Diego of himself, and of the way Lupe had been behaving lately — uncharacteristically unsure of herself, perhaps, but also secretive.

“Lie down, Pastora,” Juan Diego said, but those border-collie types are furtive; the sheepdog continued to roam.

Juan Diego didn’t know what to believe; except for skywalking, everything was a hoax. He knew that Lupe was also confused — not that she would admit it. And what if Esperanza had been right to worship the Mary Monster? Clutching the coffee can between his thighs, Juan Diego knew that scattering his mother’s ashes — and all the rest — was not necessarily a rational decision, no matter where the ashes were deposited. Why wouldn’t their mother have wanted her ashes scattered at the feet of the enormous Virgin Mary in the Jesuit temple, where Esperanza had made a good name for herself? (If only as a cleaning woman.)

Edward Bonshaw and Juan Diego were asleep when the dawn broke — as the caravan of circus trucks and buses came into the valley between the Sierra Madre de Oaxaca and the Sierra Madre del Sur. The caravan was passing through Oaxaca when Lupe woke up her brother. “The parrot man is right — we should scatter the ashes all over the Mary Monster,” Lupe told Juan Diego.

“He said ‘only at her feet,’ Lupe,” Juan Diego cautioned his little sister. Maybe Lupe had misread the Iowan’s thoughts — either when she was asleep or when Señor Eduardo was sleeping, or during some combination of the two.

“I say the ashes go all over the Mary Monster — make the bitch prove herself to us,” Lupe told her brother.

“Señor Eduardo said ‘maybe not all the ashes,’ Lupe,” Juan Diego warned her.

“I say all of them, all over her,” Lupe said. “Tell the bus driver to let us and the parrot man out at the temple.”

“Jesus Mary Joseph,” Juan Diego muttered. He saw that all the dogs were awake; they were pacing in the aisle with Pastora.

“Rivera should be there — he’s a Mary worshiper,” Lupe was saying, as if she were talking to herself. Juan Diego knew that, in the early morning, Rivera might be at the shack in Guerrero or sleeping in the cab of his truck; probably he would already have started the hellfires in the basurero. The dump kids would be getting to the Jesuit temple before the early-morning Mass; maybe Brother Pepe would have lit the candles, or he would still be lighting them. It was unlikely that anyone else would be around.

The bus driver had to make a detour; there was a dead dog blocking the narrow street. “I know where you can get a new dog — a jumper,” Lupe had said to Juan Diego. She hadn’t meant a dead dog. She’d meant a rooftop dog — one used to jumping, one who hadn’t fallen.

“A rooftop dog,” was all the driver said, about the dead dog in the street, but Juan Diego knew this was what Lupe had meant.

“You can’t train a rooftop dog to climb a stepladder, Lupe,” Juan Diego told his sister. “And Vargas said the rooftop dogs have rabies — they’re like perros del basurero. Dump dogs and rooftop dogs are rabid. Vargas said—”

“I have to talk to Vargas about something else. Forget the jumper,” Lupe said. “The stupid stepladder trick isn’t worth worrying about. The rooftop dog was just an idea — they jump, don’t they?” Lupe asked him.

“They die, they definitely bite—” Juan Diego started to say.

“The rooftop dogs don’t matter,” Lupe said impatiently. “The bigger question is lions. Do they get rabies? Vargas will know,” she said, her voice trailing off.

The bus had navigated the dead-dog detour; they were approaching the corner of Flores Magón and Valerio Trujano. They could see the Templo de la Compañía de Jesús.

“Vargas isn’t a lion doctor,” Juan Diego said to his little sister.

“You have the ashes, right?” was all Lupe said; she’d picked up Baby, the cowardly male dachshund, and had poked the dog’s nose into Señor Eduardo’s ear, waking him up. The cold-nose method brought the startled Iowan to his feet in the aisle of the bus, the dogs milling around him. Edward Bonshaw saw how tightly the coffee can was held in the cripple’s hands; he knew the boy meant business.

“I see — we’re scattering, are we?” the Iowan asked, but no one answered him.

“We’re covering the bitch from head to toe — the Mary Monster will have ashes in her eyes!” Lupe raved incoherently. But Juan Diego didn’t translate his sister’s outburst.

At the entrance to the temple, only Edward Bonshaw paused at the fountain of holy water; he touched it and then his forehead, under the portrait of Saint Ignatius looking to Heaven (forever) for guidance.

Pepe had already lit the candles. The dump kids didn’t pause for even a small splash of holy agua. In the nook after the fountain, they found Brother Pepe praying at the Guadalupe inscription — the “Guadalupe bullshit,” as Lupe was now calling it.

“¿No estoy aquí, que soy tu madre?” (Lupe meant that bullshit.)

“No, you are not here,” Lupe said to the smaller-than-life-size likeness of Guadalupe. “And you’re not my mother.” When Lupe saw Pepe on his knees, she said to her brother: “Tell Pepe to go find Rivera — the dump boss should be here. El jefe will want to see this.”

Juan Diego told Pepe they were scattering the ashes at the feet of the big Virgin Mary, and that Lupe wanted Rivera to be present.

“This is different,” Pepe said. “This represents quite a change in thinking. I’m guessing the Guadalupe shrine was a watershed. Maybe Mexico City marks a turning point?” Pepe asked the Iowan, whose forehead was wet with holy water.

“Things have never felt so uncertain,” Señor Eduardo said; this sounded to Pepe like the beginning of a long confession — Pepe hurried on his way, with scant apology to the Iowan.

“I have to find Rivera — those are my instructions,” Pepe said, though he was full of sympathy for how Edward Bonshaw’s reorientation was progressing. “By the way, I heard about the horse!” Pepe called to Juan Diego, who was hurrying to catch up to Lupe; she was already standing at the base of the pedestal (the ghastly frozen angels in the pedestal of Heavenly clouds), staring up at the Mary Monster.

“You see?” Lupe said to Juan Diego. “You can’t scatter the ashes at her feet — look who’s already lying at her feet!”

Well, it had been a while since the dump kids had stood in front of the Mary Monster; they’d forgotten the diminutive, shrunken-looking Jesus, who was suffering on the cross and bleeding at the Virgin Mary’s feet. “We’re not scattering Mother’s ashes on him,” Lupe said.

“Okay—where, then?” Juan Diego asked her.

“I really think this is the right decision,” Edward Bonshaw was saying. “I don’t think you two have given the Virgin Mary a fair chance.”

“You should get on the parrot man’s shoulders. You can throw the ashes higher if you’re higher,” Lupe said to Juan Diego.

Lupe held the coffee can while Juan Diego got on Edward Bonshaw’s shoulders. The Iowan needed to grasp hold of the Communion railing to rise, unsteadily, to his full height. Lupe took the lid off the coffee can before handing the ashes to her brother. (Only God knows what Lupe did with the lid.)

Even from his elevated position, Juan Diego was barely eye-level with the Virgin Mary’s knees; the top of his head was only thigh-high to the giantess.

“I’m not sure how you can sprinkle the ashes in an upward fashion,” Señor Eduardo tactfully observed.

“Forget about sprinkling,” Lupe said to her brother. “Grab a handful, and start throwing.”

But the first handful of ashes flew no higher than the Mary Monster’s formidable breasts; naturally, most of the ashes fell on Juan Diego’s and the Iowan’s uplifted faces. Señor Eduardo coughed and sneezed; Juan Diego had ashes in his eyes. “This isn’t working very well,” Juan Diego said.

“It’s the idea that counts,” Edward Bonshaw said, choking.

“Throw the whole can — throw it at her head!” Lupe cried.

“Is she praying?” the Iowan asked Juan Diego, but the boy was concentrating on his aim. He hurled the coffee can, which was three-quarters full — the way he’d seen soldiers in the movies lob a grenade.

“Not the whole can!” the dump kids heard Señor Eduardo cry.

“Good shot,” Lupe said. The coffee can had struck the Virgin Mary in her domineering forehead. (Juan Diego was sure he saw the Mary Monster blink.) The ashes rained down, dispersing everywhere. There were ashes falling through the shafts of morning light and on every inch of the Mary Monster. The ashes kept falling.

“It was as if the ashes fell from a superior height — from an unseen source, but a high one,” Edward Bonshaw would later describe what happened. “And the ashes went on falling — as if there were more ashes than could possibly have been contained in that coffee can.” At this point, the Iowan always paused before saying: “I hesitate to say this. I truly do. But the way those ashes wouldn’t stop falling made the moment seem to last forever. Time — time itself, all sense of time — stopped.”

In the ensuing weeks — for months, Brother Pepe would maintain — those worshipers who’d arrived early for the first morning Mass continued to call the ashes falling in the shafts of light “an event.” Yet those ashes that appeared to bathe the towering Virgin Mary in a radiant but gray-brown cloud were not heralded as a divine occurrence by everyone arriving at the Jesuit temple for morning Mass.

The two old priests Father Alfonso and Father Octavio were annoyed by what a mess the ashes had made: the first ten rows of pews were coated with ashes; a film of ash clung to the Communion railing, which was curiously sticky to touch. The big Virgin Mary looked soiled; she was definitely darkened, as if by soot. The dirt-brown, death-gray ashes were everywhere.

“The children wanted to scatter their mother’s ashes,” Edward Bonshaw started to explain.

“In the temple, Edward?” Father Alfonso asked the Iowan.

“All this was a scattering!” Father Octavio exclaimed. He tripped on something, unintentionally kicking it — the empty coffee can, which was rattling around underfoot. Señor Eduardo picked up the can.

“I didn’t know they were going to scatter the entire contents,” the Iowan admitted.

“That coffee can was full?” Father Alfonso asked.

“It was not just our mother’s ashes,” Juan Diego told the two old priests.

“Do tell,” Father Octavio said. Edward Bonshaw stared into the empty can, as if he hoped it possessed oracular powers.

“The good gringo — may he rest in peace,” Lupe began. “My dog — a small one.” She stopped, as if waiting for Juan Diego to translate this much, before she continued. Or else Lupe stopped because she was wondering if she should tell the two priests about the Mary Monster’s missing nose.

“You remember the American hippie — the draft dodger, the boy who died,” Juan Diego said to Father Alfonso and Father Octavio.

“Yes, yes — of course,” Father Alfonso said. “A lost soul — a tragically self-destructive one.”

“A terrible tragedy — such a waste,” Father Octavio said.

“And my sister’s little dog died — the dog was in the fire,” Juan Diego went on. “And the dead hippie.”

“It’s all coming back — we did know this,” Father Alfonso said. Father Octavio nodded grimly.

“Yes, please stop — that’s enough. Most distasteful. We remember, Juan Diego,” Father Octavio said.

Lupe didn’t speak; the two priests wouldn’t have understood her, anyway. Lupe just cleared her throat, as if she were going to say something.

“Don’t,” Juan Diego said, but it was too late. Lupe pointed to the noseless face of the giant Virgin Mary, touching her little nose with the index finger of her other hand.

It took Father Alfonso and Father Octavio a few seconds to catch on: the Mary Monster was still without a nose; the incomprehensible child from the dump was indicating that her own small nose was intact; there’d been a fire at the basurero, an infernal burning of human and canine bodies.

“The Virgin Mary’s nose was in that hellish fire?” Father Alfonso asked Lupe; she vigorously nodded her head, as if she were trying to dislodge her teeth or make her eyes fall out.

“Merciful Mother of—” Father Octavio started to say.

The falling coffee can made a startling clatter. It’s not likely that Edward Bonshaw had intentionally dropped the coffee can, which he quickly retrieved. Señor Eduardo may have lost his grip; he might have realized that the news he was continuing to withhold from Father Alfonso and Father Octavio (namely, his vow-ending love for Flor) would soon come as a greater shock to those two old priests than the burning of an inanimate statue’s nose.

Because he’d seen the Mary Monster cast a most disapproving glance at his mother’s cleavage — because Juan Diego was aware of how animated the Virgin Mary could be, at least in the area of condemning looks and withering glares — Juan Diego would have questioned anyone’s supposition that the towering statue (or her lost nose) was inanimate. Hadn’t the Mary Monster’s nose made a spitting sound, and hadn’t a blue flame erupted from the funeral pyre? Hadn’t Juan Diego seen the Virgin Mary blink when the coffee can had struck her forehead?

And when Edward Bonshaw clumsily dropped and retrieved the coffee can, hadn’t the resounding clatter drawn a fiery flash of frightful loathing from the all-seeing eyes of the menacing Virgin Mary?

Juan Diego wasn’t a Mary worshiper, but he knew better than to treat the dirtied giantess with less than the utmost respect. “Lo siento, Mother,” Juan Diego quietly said to the big Virgin Mary, pointing to his forehead. “I didn’t mean to hit you with the can. I was just trying to reach you.”

“These ashes have a foreign smell — I would like to know what else was in that can,” Father Alfonso said.

“Dump stuff, I suppose, but here comes the dump boss — we should ask him,” Father Octavio said.

Speaking of Mary worshipers, Rivera strode down the center aisle toward the towering statue; it was as if the dump boss had his own business to attend to with the Mary Monster; Pepe’s mission, to go fetch el jefe from Guerrero, may have been merely coincidental. Yet it was clear that Pepe had interrupted Rivera in the middle of something—“a small project, the fine-tuning part,” was all the dump boss would say about it.

Rivera must have left Guerrero with some sense of urgency — who knows how Pepe might have announced the scattering to him? — because the dump boss was still wearing his woodworking apron.

The apron had many pockets and was as long as an unflattering, matronly-looking skirt. One pocket was for chisels, of varying sizes; another was for different patches of sandpaper, coarse and fine; a third pocket was for the glue tube and the rag Rivera used to wipe the residue of glue from the nozzle of the tube. There was no telling what was in the other pockets — the pockets were what Rivera said he liked about his woodworking apron. The old leather apron held many secrets — or so Juan Diego, as a child, had once believed.

“I don’t know what we’re waiting for — for you, maybe,” Juan Diego said to el jefe. “I think the giantess is unlikely to do anything,” the boy added, nodding to the Mary Monster.

The temple was filling up, though there was still time before the Mass, at the moment when Brother Pepe and Rivera arrived. Juan Diego would remember, later, that Lupe paid more attention to the dump boss than she usually did; as for el jefe, he was even warier around Lupe than he usually was.

Rivera had his left hand thrust deep inside a mystery pocket of his woodworking apron; with the fingertips of his right hand, the dump boss touched the film of ash on the Communion railing.

“The ashes smell a little funny — not an overpowering smell,” Father Alfonso said to el jefe.

“There’s something sticky in these ashes — a foreign substance,” Father Octavio said.

Rivera sniffed his fingertips, then wiped them on his leather apron.

“You’ve got a lot of stuff in your pockets, jefe,” Lupe said to the dump boss, but Juan Diego didn’t translate this; the dump reader was miffed that Rivera hadn’t responded to the giantess joke — namely, Juan Diego’s prediction that the Virgin Mary was unlikely to do anything.

“You should snuff the candles, Pepe,” the dump boss said; pointing to his beloved Virgin Mary, Rivera then spoke to the two old priests. “She’s highly flammable,” el jefe said.

“Flammable!” Father Alfonso cried.

Rivera recited the same litany of the coffee can’s contents that the dump kids had heard from Dr. Vargas — a scientific, strictly chemical analysis. “Paint, turpentine — or some kind of paint thinner. Gasoline, definitely,” Rivera told the two old priests. “And probably stuff for staining wood.”

“The Holy Mother won’t be stained, will she?” Father Octavio asked the dump boss.

“You better let me clean her up,” the dump boss said. “If I could have a little time alone with her — I mean before the first morning Mass tomorrow. The best would be after the evening Mass tonight. You don’t want to mix water with some of these foreign substances,” Rivera said, as if he were an alchemist who couldn’t be refuted — not your usual dump boss, in any case.

Brother Pepe, on tiptoe, was at work extinguishing the candles with the long gold candle snuffer; naturally, the falling ashes had already snuffed out those candles nearest to the Virgin Mary.

“Does your hand hurt, jefe — where you cut yourself?” Lupe asked Rivera. He was a hard one to read, even for a mind reader.

Juan Diego would later speculate that Lupe may have read everything on Rivera’s mind — not only el jefe’s thoughts about his cutting himself, and how much he was bleeding. Lupe might have known all about whatever “small project” Pepe had interrupted Rivera in the middle of, including what Rivera had called “the fine-tuning part”—namely, what exactly the dump boss was working on when he slashed the thumb and index finger of his left hand. But Lupe never said what she knew, or if she knew, and Rivera — like the pockets of his woodworking apron — held many secrets.

“Lupe wants to know if your hand hurts, jefe — where you cut yourself,” Juan Diego said.

“I just need a couple of stitches,” Rivera said; he kept his left hand hidden in the pocket of the leather apron.

Brother Pepe had thought Rivera shouldn’t drive; they’d taken Pepe’s VW from the shack in Guerrero. Pepe wanted to drive the dump boss to Dr. Vargas right away for the stitches, but Rivera had wanted to see the results of the scattering first.

“The results!” Father Alfonso repeated, after Pepe’s account.

“The results amount to a species of vandalism,” Father Octavio said, looking at Juan Diego and Lupe when he spoke.

“I need to see Vargas, too — let’s go,” Lupe said to her brother. The dump kids weren’t even looking at the Mary Monster; they weren’t expecting much in the area of results from her. But Rivera looked up at the Virgin Mary’s noseless face — as if, her darkened visage notwithstanding, the dump boss expected to see a sign, something bordering on instructions.

“Come on, jefe — you’re hurting, you’re still bleeding,” Lupe said, taking Rivera’s good right hand. The dump boss was unused to such affection from the ever-critical girl. El jefe gave Lupe his hand and let her lead him up the center aisle.

“We’ll see that you have the temple to yourself, before closing time tonight!” Father Alfonso called after the dump boss.

“Pepe — you’ll lock up after him, I presume,” Father Octavio said to Brother Pepe, who’d returned the candle snuffer to its sacred place; Pepe was hurrying after Rivera and the niños de la basura.

“¡Sí, sí!” Pepe called to the two old priests.

Edward Bonshaw was left holding the empty coffee can. Now was not the time for Señor Eduardo to say what he knew he needed to say to Father Alfonso or Father Octavio; now was not the time to confess — there was a Mass upcoming, and the lid to the coffee can was missing. It had simply (or not so simply) disappeared; it might as well have gone up in smoke, like the Virgin Mary’s nose, Señor Eduardo was thinking. But the lid to that secular coffee can — last touched by Lupe — had vanished without a flaming blue hiss.

The dump kids and the dump boss had left the temple with Brother Pepe, leaving Edward Bonshaw and the two old priests to face the noseless Virgin Mary and their uncertain future. Perhaps Pepe understood this best: Pepe knew that the process of reorientation was never easy.