Chapter 15
The Nose

‘I’m not much of a believer,’ Juan Diego had once told Edward Bonshaw.

But that had been a fourteen-year-old talking; at first, it was easier for the dump kid to say he wasn’t much of a believer than it would have been for him to articulate his distrust of the Catholic Church—especially to as likable a scholastic (in training to be a priest!) as Señor Eduardo.

‘Don’t say that, Juan Diego—you’re too young to cut yourself off from belief,’ Edward Bonshaw had said.

In truth, it was not belief that Juan Diego lacked. Most dump kids are seekers of miracles. At least Juan Diego wanted to believe in the miraculous, in all sorts of inexplicable mysteries, even if he doubted the miracles the Church wanted everyone to believe—those preexisting miracles, the ones dulled by time.

What the dump reader doubted was the Church: its politics, its social interventions, its manipulations of history and sexual behavior—which would have been difficult for the fourteen-year-old Juan Diego to say in Dr. Vargas’s office, where the atheist doctor and the Iowa missionary were squaring off against each other.

Most dump kids are believers; maybe you have to believe in something when you see so many discarded things. And Juan Diego knew what every dump kid (and every orphan) knows: every last thing thrown away, every person or thing that isn’t wanted, may have been wanted once—or, in different circumstances, might have been wanted.

The dump reader had saved books from burning, and he’d actually read the books. Don’t ever think a dump reader is incapable of belief. It takes an eternity to read some books, even (or especially) some books saved from burning.

The flight time from Manila to Tagbilaran City, Bohol, was only a little more than an hour, but dreams can seem an eternity. At fourteen, Juan Diego’s transition from the wheelchair to walking on crutches, and (eventually) to walking with a limp—well, in reality, this transition had taken an eternity, too, and the boy’s memory of that time was jumbled up. All that remained in the dream was the developing rapport between the crippled boy and Edward Bonshaw—their give-and-take, theologically speaking. The boy had backtracked about not being much of a believer, but he’d dug in his heels concerning his disbelief in the Church.

Juan Diego recalled saying, when he was still on the crutches: ‘Our Virgin of Guadalupe was not Mary. Your Virgin Mary was not Guadalupe. This is Catholic mumbo jumbo; this is papal hocus-pocus!’ (The two of them had been down this road before.)

‘I get your point,’ Edward Bonshaw had said, in his seemingly reasonable Jesuitical way. ‘I admit there was a delay; a lot of time passed before Pope Benedict the Fourteenth saw a copy of Guadalupe’s image on the Indian’s cloak and declared that your Guadalupe was Mary. That is your point, isn’t it?’

‘Two hundred years after the fact!’ Juan Diego declared, poking Señor Eduardo’s foot with one of the crutches. ‘Your evangelists from Spain got naked with the Indians, and the next thing you know—well, that’s where Lupe and I come from. We’re Zapotecs, if we’re anything. We’re not Catholics! Guadalupe isn’t Mary—that imposter.’

‘And you’re still burning dogs at the dump—Pepe told me,’ Señor Eduardo said. ‘I don’t understand why you think burning the dead is of any assistance to them.’

‘It’s you Catholics who are opposed to cremation,’ Juan Diego would point out to the Iowan. On and on they bickered, before and after Brother Pepe drove the dump kids to and from the dump to partake in the eternal dog-burning. (And all the while the circus beckoned the kids away from Niños Perdidos.)

‘Look what you did to Christmas—you Catholics,’ Juan Diego would say. ‘You chose December twenty-fifth as Christ’s date of birth, simply to co-opt a pagan feast day. This is my point: you Catholics co-opt things. And did you know there might have been an actual Star of Bethlehem? The Chinese reported a nova, an exploding star, in 5 B.C.’

‘Where does the boy read this, Pepe?’ Edward Bonshaw would repeatedly ask.

‘In our library at Lost Children,’ Brother Pepe replied. ‘Are we supposed to stop him from reading? We want him to read, don’t we?’

‘And there’s another thing,’ Juan Diego remembered saying—not necessarily in his dream. The crutches were gone; he was just limping. They were somewhere in the zócalo; Lupe was running ahead of them, and Brother Pepe was struggling to keep up with them. Even with the limp, Juan Diego could walk faster than Pepe. ‘What is so appealing about celibacy? Why do priests care about being celibate? Aren’t priests always telling us what to do and think—I mean sexually?’ Juan Diego asked. ‘Well, how can they have any authority on sexual matters if they don’t ever have sex?’

‘Are you telling me, Pepe, the boy has learned to question the sexual authority of a celibate clergy from our library at the mission?’ Señor Eduardo asked Brother Pepe.

‘I think about some stuff I don’t read,’ Juan Diego remembered saying. ‘It just occurs to me, all by myself.’ His limp was relatively new; he remembered the newness of it, too.

The limp was still new on the morning Esperanza was dusting the giant Virgin Mary in the Templo de la Compañía de Jesús. Esperanza couldn’t come close to reaching the statue’s face without using a ladder. Usually, Juan Diego or Lupe held the ladder. Not this morning.

The good gringo had fallen on hard times; Flor had told the dump kids that el gringo bueno had run out of money, or he was spending what he had left on alcohol (not on prostitutes). The prostitutes rarely saw him anymore. They couldn’t look after someone they hardly saw.

Lupe had said that, somehow, Esperanza was ‘responsible’ for the hippie boy’s deteriorating situation; at least this was how Juan Diego had translated his sister’s words.

‘The war in Vietnam is responsible for him,’ Esperanza said; she may or may not have believed this. Esperanza accepted and repeated as gospel whatever she’d heard on Zaragoza Street—what the draft dodgers were saying in defense of themselves, or what the prostitutes said about those lost young men from America.

Esperanza had leaned the ladder against the Virgin Mary. The pedestal was elevated so that Esperanza stood at eye level with the Mary Monster’s enormous feet. The Virgin, who was much larger than life-size, towered over Esperanza.

‘El gringo bueno is fighting his own war now,’ Lupe mysteriously whispered. Then she looked at the ladder leaning against the towering Virgin. ‘Mary doesn’t like the ladder,’ was all Lupe said. Juan Diego translated this, but not the bit about the good gringo fighting his own war.

‘Just hold the ladder so I can dust her,’ Esperanza said.

‘Better not dust the Mary Monster now—something’s bugging the big Virgin today,’ Lupe said, but Juan Diego left this untranslated.

‘I don’t have all day, you know,’ Esperanza was saying as she climbed the ladder. Juan Diego was reaching to hold the ladder when Lupe started screaming.

‘Her eyes! Look at the giant’s eyes!’ Lupe screamed, but Esperanza couldn’t understand; besides, the cleaning woman was flicking the tip of the Virgin Mary’s nose with the feather duster.

That was when Juan Diego saw the Virgin Mary’s eyes—they were angry-looking, and they darted from Esperanza’s pretty face to her décolletage. Maybe, in the giant Virgin’s estimation, Esperanza was showing a little too much cleavage.

‘Madre—not her nose, perhaps,’ was all Juan Diego managed to say; he’d been reaching for the ladder but he suddenly stopped reaching. The big Virgin’s angry eyes darted only once in his direction—enough to freeze him. The Virgin Mary quickly returned her condemning glare to Esperanza’s cleavage.

Did Esperanza lose her balance, and attempt to throw her arms around the Mary Monster to stop herself from falling? Had Esperanza then looked into Mary’s burning eyes, and let go—more afraid of the giant Virgin’s anger than of falling? Esperanza did not fall that hard; she didn’t even hit her head. The ladder itself did not fall—Esperanza appeared to push herself (or she was shoved) away from the ladder.

‘She died before she fell,’ Lupe always said. ‘The fall had nothing to do with it.’

Had the big statue itself ever moved? Did the Virgin Mary totter on her pedestal? No and no, the dump kids would say to anyone who asked. But how, exactly, was the Virgin Mary’s nose broken off? How had the Holy Mother been rendered noseless? As she was falling, maybe Esperanza hit Mary in the face? Had Esperanza whacked the giant Virgin with the wooden handle of the feather duster? No and no, the dump kids said—not that they’d seen. Talk about someone’s nose being ‘out of joint’; the Virgin Mary’s nose had broken off! Juan Diego was looking all around for it. How could such a big nose just disappear?

The big Virgin’s eyes were once again opaque and unmoving. No anger remained, only the usual obscurity—an opacity bordering on the bland. And now that the towering statue was without a nose, the giant’s unseeing eyes were all the more lifeless.

The dump kids couldn’t help but notice that there was more life in Esperanza’s wide-open eyes, though the kids certainly knew their mother was dead. They’d known it the instant Esperanza had dropped off the ladder—‘the way a leaf falls from a tree,’ Juan Diego would later describe it to that man of science Dr. Vargas.

It was Vargas who explained the findings of Esperanza’s autopsy to the dump kids. ‘The most likely way to die from fright would be through an arrhythmia,’ Vargas began.

‘You know she was frightened to death?’ Edward Bonshaw had interjected.

‘She was definitely frightened to death,’ Juan Diego told the Iowan.

‘Definitely,’ Lupe repeated; even Señor Eduardo and Dr. Vargas understood her one-word utterance.

‘If the conduction system of the heart is overwhelmed with adrenaline,’ Vargas continued, ‘the heart’s rhythm will become abnormal—no blood gets pumped, in other words. The name of this most dangerous type of arrhythmia is ‘ventricular fibrillation’; the muscle cells just twitch—there’s no pumping action at all.’

‘Then you drop dead, right?’ Juan Diego asked.

‘Then you drop dead,’ Vargas said.

‘And this can happen to someone as young as Esperanza—someone with a normal heart?’ Señor Eduardo asked.

‘Being young doesn’t necessarily help your heart,’ Vargas replied. ‘I’m sure Esperanza didn’t have a ‘normal’ heart. Her blood pressure was abnormally high—’

‘Her lifestyle, perhaps—’ Edward Bonshaw suggested.

‘No evidence that prostitution causes heart attacks, except to Catholics,’ Vargas said, in that scientific-sounding way he had. ‘Esperanza didn’t have a ‘normal’ heart. And you kids,’ Vargas said, ‘will have to watch your hearts. At least you will, Juan Diego.’

The doctor paused; he was sorting out the business of Juan Diego’s possible fathers, a seemingly manageable number, as opposed to a purportedly different and vastly greater cast of characters who numbered among Lupe’s possible fathers. It was, even for an atheist, a delicate pause.

Vargas looked at Edward Bonshaw. ‘One of Juan Diego’s possible fathers—I mean, maybe his most likely biological father—died of a heart attack,’ Vargas said. ‘Juan Diego’s possible dad was very young at the time, or so Esperanza told me,’ Vargas added. ‘What do you know about this?’ Vargas asked the dump kids.

‘No more than you know,’ Juan Diego told him.

‘Rivera knows something—he’s just not saying,’ Lupe said.

Juan Diego couldn’t explain what Lupe said much better. Rivera had told the dump kids that Juan Diego’s ‘most likely’ father died of a broken heart.

‘A heart attack, right?’ Juan Diego had asked el jefe—because that’s what Esperanza had told her children, and everyone else.

‘If that’s what you call a heart that’s permanently broken,’ was all Rivera had ever said to the kids.

As for the Virgin Mary’s nose—ah, well. Juan Diego had spotted la nariz; it was lying near the kneeling pad for the second row of pews. He’d had some difficulty fitting the big nose in his pocket. Lupe’s screams would soon bring Father Alfonso and Father Octavio on the run to the Temple of the Society of Jesus. Father Alfonso was already praying over Esperanza by the time that bitch Sister Gloria showed up. Brother Pepe, out of breath, was not far behind the forever-disapproving nun, who seemed irritated by the attention-getting way Esperanza had died—not to mention, even in death, the display of the cleaning woman’s cleavage, of which the giant Virgin had been most dramatically condemning.

The dump kids just stood around, waiting to see how long it would take the priests—or Brother Pepe, or Sister Gloria—to notice that the monster Holy Mother was missing her big nose. For the longest time, they didn’t notice.

Guess who noticed the missing nose? He came running along the aisle toward the altar, not pausing to genuflect—his untucked Hawaiian shirt resembling a jailbreak of monkeys and tropical birds released from a rain forest by a lightning bolt.

‘Bad Mary did it!’ Lupe cried to Señor Eduardo. ‘Your big Virgin killed our mother! Bad Mary frightened our mother to death!’ Juan Diego didn’t hesitate to translate this.

‘Next thing you know, she’ll be calling this accident a miracle,’ Sister Gloria said to Father Octavio.

‘Do not say the miracle word to me, Sister,’ Father Octavio said.

Father Alfonso was just finishing with the prayers he was saying over Esperanza; it was something about her being freed from her sins.

‘Did you say un milagro?’ Edward Bonshaw asked Father Octavio.

‘¡Milagroso!’ Lupe shouted. Señor Eduardo had no trouble understanding the miraculous word.

‘Esperanza fell off the ladder, Edward,’ Father Octavio told the Iowan.

‘She was struck dead before she fell!’ Lupe was babbling, but Juan Diego left the struck-dead drama untranslated; darting eyes don’t kill you, unless you’re scared to death.

‘Where’s Mary’s nose?’ Edward Bonshaw asked, pointing at the noseless giant Virgin.

‘Gone! Vanished in a puff of smoke!’ Lupe was raving. ‘Keep your eye on Bad Mary—her other parts may start to disappear.’

‘Lupe, tell the truth,’ Juan Diego said.

But Edward Bonshaw, who hadn’t understood a word Lupe said, couldn’t take his eyes from the maimed Mary.

‘It’s just her nose, Eduardo,’ Brother Pepe tried to tell the zealot. ‘It means nothing—it’s probably lying around somewhere.’

‘How can it mean nothing, Pepe?’ the Iowan asked. ‘How can the Virgin Mary’s nose not be there?’

Father Alfonso and Father Octavio were down on all fours; they weren’t praying—they were looking for the Mary Monster’s missing nose under the first few rows of pews.

‘You wouldn’t know anything about la nariz, I suppose?’ Brother Pepe asked Juan Diego.

‘Nada,’ Juan Diego said.

‘Bad Mary’s eyes moved—she looked alive,’ Lupe was saying.

‘They’ll never believe you, Lupe,’ Juan Diego told his sister.

‘The parrot man will,’ Lupe said, pointing to Señor Eduardo. ‘He needs to believe more than he does—he’ll believe anything.’

‘What won’t we believe?’ Brother Pepe asked Juan Diego.

‘I thought that’s what he said! What do you mean, Juan Diego?’ Edward Bonshaw asked.

‘Tell him! Bad Mary moved her eyes—the giant Virgin was looking all around!’ Lupe cried.

Juan Diego crammed his hand in his crowded pocket; he was actually holding the Virgin Mary’s nose when he told them about the giant Virgin’s angry-looking eyes, how they kept darting everywhere but always came back to Esperanza’s cleavage.

‘It’s a miracle,’ the Iowan said matter-of-factly.

‘Let’s get the man of science involved,’ Father Alfonso said sarcastically.

‘Yes, Vargas can arrange an autopsy,’ Father Octavio said.

‘You want to autopsy a miracle?’ Brother Pepe asked, both innocently and mischievously.

‘She was frightened to death—that’s all you’ll find in an autopsy,’ Juan Diego told them, squeezing the Holy Mother’s broken nose.

‘Bad Mary did it—that’s all I know,’ Lupe said. True enough, Juan Diego decided; he translated the Bad Mary bit.

‘Bad Mary!’ Sister Gloria repeated. All of them looked at the noseless Virgin, as if expecting more damage—of one kind or another. But Brother Pepe noticed something about Edward Bonshaw: only the Iowan was looking at the Virgin Mary’s eyes—just her eyes.

Un milagrero, Brother Pepe was thinking as he watched Señor Eduardo—the Iowan is a miracle monger, if I’ve ever seen one!

Juan Diego wasn’t thinking at all. He had a grip on the Virgin Mary’s nose, as if he would never let go.

___________

Dreams edit themselves; dreams are ruthless with details. Common sense does not dictate what remains, or is not included, in a dream. A two-minute dream can feel like forever.

Dr. Vargas didn’t hold back; he told Juan Diego much more about adrenaline, but not everything Vargas said found its way into Juan Diego’s dream. According to Vargas, adrenaline was toxic in large amounts, such as would be released in a situation of sudden fear.

Juan Diego had even asked the man of science about other emotional states. What else, besides fear, could lead to an arrhythmia? If you had the wrong kind of heart, what else could give you these fatal heart rhythms?

‘Any strong emotion, positive or negative, such as happiness or sadness,’ Vargas had told the boy, but this answer wasn’t in Juan Diego’s dream. ‘People have died during sexual intercourse,’ Vargas told him. Turning to Edward Bonshaw, Dr. Vargas said: ‘Even in religious passion.’

‘What about whipping yourself?’ Brother Pepe had asked in his half-innocent, half-mischievous way.

‘Not documented,’ the man of science slyly said.

Golfers had died hitting holes-in-one. An unusually high number of Germans suffered sudden cardiac deaths whenever the German soccer team was competing for the World Cup. Men, only a day or two after their wives have died; women who’ve lost their husbands, not only to death; parents who’ve lost children. They have all died of sadness, suddenly. These examples of emotional states leading to fatal heart rhythms were missing from Juan Diego’s dream.

Yet the sound of Rivera’s truck—that special whine the reverse gear made when Rivera was backing up—made its insidious way into Juan Diego’s dream, no doubt at the moment the landing gear was dropping down from his plane, which was about to arrive in Bohol. Dreams do this: like the Roman Catholic Church, dreams co-opt things; dreams appropriate things that are not truly their own.

To a dream, it’s all the same: the grinding sound of the landing gear for Philippine Airlines 177, the whine that Rivera’s truck made in reverse. As for how the tainted smell of the Oaxaca morgue managed to infiltrate Juan Diego’s dream on his short flight from Manila to Bohol—well, not everything can be explained.

Rivera knew where the loading platform was at the morgue; he knew the autopsy guy, too—the forensic surgeon who cut open the bodies in the anfiteatro de disección. As far as the dump kids were concerned, there’d never been any need to perform an autopsy on Esperanza. The Virgin Mary had scared her to death, and—what’s more—the Mary Monster had meant to do it.

Rivera did his best to prepare Lupe for what Esperanza’s cadaver would look like—the stitched autopsy scar (neck to groin), running straight down her sternum. But Lupe was unprepared for the pile of unclaimed corpses awaiting autopsies, or for the post-op body of el gringo bueno, whose outstretched white arms (as if he’d just been removed from the cross, where he’d been crucified) stood in stark relief against the more brown-skinned cadavers.

The good gringo’s autopsy gash was fresh, newly stitched, and there’d been some cutting in the area of his head—more damage than a crown of thorns would have caused. The good gringo’s war was over. It was a shock to Lupe and Juan Diego to see the hippie boy’s cast-aside cadaver. El gringo bueno’s Christlike face was at last at rest, though the Christ tattooed on the beautiful boy’s pale body had also suffered from the forensic surgeon’s dissection.

It was not lost on Lupe that her mother and the good gringo were the most beautiful bodies on display in the amphitheater of dissection, though they’d both looked a lot better when they were alive.

‘We take el gringo bueno, too—you promised me we would burn him,’ Lupe said to Juan Diego. ‘We’ll burn him with Mother.’

Rivera had talked the autopsy guy into giving him and the dump kids Esperanza’s body, but when Juan Diego translated Lupe’s request—how she wanted the dead hippie, too—the forensic surgeon had a fit.

The American runaway was part of a crime investigation. Someone in the Hotel Somega told the police that the hippie had succumbed to alcohol poisoning—a prostitute claimed the kid had ‘just died’ on top of her. But the autopsy guy had learned otherwise. El gringo bueno had been beaten to death; he’d been drunk, but the alcohol wasn’t what killed him.

‘His soul has to fly back home,’ Lupe kept saying. ‘"As I walked out in the streets of Laredo,"’ she suddenly sang. ‘"As I walked out in Laredo one day—"’

‘What language is that kid singing?’ the forensic surgeon asked Rivera.

‘The police aren’t going to do anything,’ Rivera told him. ‘They’re not even going to say the hippie was beaten to death. They’ll say it was alcohol poisoning.’

The forensic surgeon shrugged. ‘Yeah, that’s what they’re already saying,’ the surgeon said. ‘I told them the tattoo kid had been beaten, but the cops told me to keep it to myself.’

‘It’s alcohol poisoning—that’s how they’re going to handle it,’ Rivera said.

‘The only thing that matters now is the good gringo’s soul,’ Lupe insisted. Juan Diego decided he should translate this.

‘But what if his mother wants his body back?’ Juan Diego added, after he told them what Lupe said about el gringo bueno’s soul.

‘The mom has asked for his ashes. That’s not what we usually do, not even with foreigners,’ the surgeon replied. ‘We certainly don’t burn the bodies at the basurero.’

Rivera shrugged. ‘We’ll get you some ashes,’ Rivera told him.

‘There are two bodies, and we’ll keep half the ashes for ourselves,’ Juan Diego said.

‘We’ll take the ashes to Mexico City—we’ll scatter them at the Basílica de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, at the feet of our Virgin,’ Lupe said. ‘We’re not bringing their ashes anywhere near Bad Mary without a nose!’ Lupe cried.

‘That girl doesn’t sound like anyone else,’ the forensic surgeon said, but Juan Diego didn’t translate Lupe’s craziness about scattering the good gringo’s and Esperanza’s ashes at the feet of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City.

Rivera, probably because there was a young girl present, insisted that Esperanza and el gringo bueno be put in separate body bags; Juan Diego and Rivera helped the forensic surgeon do that. During this funereal moment, Lupe looked at the other cadavers, both the dissected ones and the ones waiting for dissection—the corpses that didn’t matter to her, in other words. Juan Diego could hear Diablo barking and howling from the back of Rivera’s truck; the dog could tell that the air around the morgue was tainted. There was a cold-meat smell in the anfiteatro de disección.

‘How could his mother not want to see his body first? How could any mom want the dear boy’s ashes instead?’ Lupe was saying. She wasn’t expecting an answer—after all, she believed in burning.

Esperanza may not have wanted to be cremated, but the dump kids were doing it anyway. Considering her Catholic zeal (Esperanza had loved confession), she might not have chosen a funeral pyre at the dump, but if the deceased doesn’t leave prior instructions (Esperanza didn’t), the disposal of the dead is for the children to decide.

‘The Catholics are crazy not to believe in cremation,’ Lupe was babbling. ‘There’s no better place to burn things than at the dump—the black smoke rising as far as you can see, the vultures drifting across the landscape.’ Lupe had closed her eyes in the amphitheater of dissection, clutching the hideous Coatlicue earth goddess to her not-yet-noticeably-emerging breasts. ‘You have the nose, don’t you?’ Lupe asked her brother, opening her eyes.

‘Yes, of course I have it,’ Juan Diego said; his pocket bulged.

‘The nose goes in the fire, too—just to be sure,’ Lupe said.

‘Sure of what?’ Juan Diego asked. ‘Why burn the nose?’

‘Just in case the imposter Mary has any power—just to be safe,’ Lupe said.

‘La nariz?’ Rivera asked; he had a body bag slung over each big shoulder. ‘What nose?’

‘Say nothing about Mary’s nose. Rivera is too superstitious. Let him figure it out. He’ll see the noseless monster Virgin the next time he goes to Mass, or to confess his sins. I keep telling him, but he doesn’t listen—his mustache is a sin,’ Lupe babbled. She saw that Rivera was listening to her closely; la nariz had gotten el jefe’s attention—he was trying to figure out what the dump kids had been saying about a nose.

‘"Get six jolly cowboys to carry my coffin,"’ Lupe started singing. ‘"Get six pretty maidens to bear up my pall."’ It was the right moment for the cowboy dirge—Rivera was toting two bodies to his truck. ‘"Put bunches of roses all over my coffin,"’ Lupe kept singing. ‘"Roses to deaden the clods as they fall."’

‘The girl is a marvel,’ the forensic surgeon said to the dump boss. ‘She could be a rock star.’

‘How could she be a rock star?’ Rivera asked him. ‘No one but her brother can understand her!’

‘Nobody knows what rock stars are singing. Who can understand the lyrics?’ the surgeon asked.

‘There’s a reason the idiot autopsy guy spends his whole life with dead people,’ Lupe was babbling. But the rock-star business made Rivera forget about the nose. El jefe carried the body bags outside to the loading platform, and then put them gently on the flatbed of his truck, where Diablo immediately sniffed the bodies.

‘Don’t let Diablo roll on the bodies,’ Rivera told Juan Diego; the dump kids and Rivera knew how much the dog liked rolling on dead things. Juan Diego would ride to the basurero in the flatbed of the truck with Esperanza and el gringo bueno and, of course, Diablo.

Lupe rode in the cab of the truck with Rivera.

‘The Jesuits will come here, you know,’ the forensic surgeon was saying to the dump boss. ‘They come to collect their flock—they’ll be here for Esperanza.’

‘The children are in charge of their mother—tell the Jesuits that the dump kids are Esperanza’s flock,’ Rivera told the autopsy guy.

‘That little girl could be in the circus, you know,’ the forensic surgeon said, pointing to Lupe in the cab.

‘Doing what?’ Rivera asked him.

‘People would pay just to hear her talk!’ the autopsy guy said. ‘She wouldn’t even have to sing.’

It would haunt Juan Diego, later, how this surgeon with his rubber gloves, tainted with death and dissection, had brought the circus into the conversation at the Oaxaca morgue.

‘Drive on!’ Juan Diego cried to Rivera; the boy pounded on the truck’s cab, and Rivera drove away from the loading platform. It was a cloudless day with a perfect bright-blue sky. ‘Don’t roll on them—no rolling!’ Juan Diego shouted at Diablo, but the dog just sat in the flatbed, watching the live boy, not even sniffing the bodies.

Soon the wind dried the tears on Juan Diego’s face, but the wind did not permit him to hear what Lupe was saying inside the truck’s cab to Rivera. Juan Diego could hear only his sister’s prophesying voice, not her words; she was going on and on about something. Juan Diego thought she was babbling about Dirty White. Rivera had given the runt to a family in Guerrero, but the rodent-size dog kept returning to el jefe’s shack—no doubt looking for Lupe.

Now Dirty White was missing; naturally, Lupe had harangued Rivera without mercy. She said she knew where Dirty White would go—she meant where the little dog would go to die. (‘The puppy place,’ she’d called it.)

From the flatbed of the pickup, Juan Diego could hear only bits and pieces of what the dump boss was saying. ‘If you say so,’ el jefe would interject from time to time, or: ‘I couldn’t have said it better myself, Lupe’—all the way to Guerrero, from where Juan Diego could see the isolated plumes of smoke; there were already a few fires burning in the not-too-distant dump.

Overhearing, inexactly, Lupe’s not-a-conversation with Rivera reminded Juan Diego of studying literature with Edward Bonshaw in one of the soundproof reading rooms in the library of Niños Perdidos. What Señor Eduardo meant by studying literature was a reading-aloud process: the Iowan would begin by reading what he called a ‘grown-up novel’ to Juan Diego; in this way, they could determine together whether or not the book was age-appropriate for the boy. Naturally, there would be differences of opinion between them regarding the aforementioned appropriateness or lack thereof.

‘What if I’m really liking it? What if I know that, if I were allowed to read this book, I would never stop reading it?’ Juan Diego asked.

‘That’s not the same as whether or not the book is suitable,’ Edward Bonshaw would answer the fourteen-year-old. Or Señor Eduardo would pause in his reading aloud, tipping off Juan Diego that the missionary was attempting to skip over some sexual content.

‘You’re censoring a sex scene,’ the boy would say.

‘I’m not sure this is appropriate,’ the Iowan would reply.

The two of them had settled on Graham Greene; matters of faith and doubt were clearly at the forefront of Edward Bonshaw’s mind, if not the sole motivation for his whipping himself, and Juan Diego liked Greene’s sexual subjects, though the author tended to render the sex offstage or in an understated manner.

The way the studying worked was that Edward Bonshaw would begin a Greene novel by reading it aloud to Juan Diego; then Juan Diego would read the rest of the novel to himself; last, the grown man and the boy would discuss the story. In the discussion part, Señor Eduardo was very keen about citing specific passages and asking Juan Diego what Graham Greene had meant.

One sentence in The Power and the Glory had prompted a lengthy and ongoing discussion regarding its meaning. The student and the teacher had contrasting ideas about the sentence, which was: ‘There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.’

‘What do you make of that, Juan Diego?’ Edward Bonshaw had asked the boy. ‘Is Greene saying that our future begins in childhood, and we should pay attention to—’

‘Well, of course the future begins in childhood—where else would it begin?’ Juan Diego asked the Iowan. ‘But I think it’s bullshit to say there is one moment when the door to the future opens. Why can’t there be many moments? And is Greene saying there’s only one door? He says the door, like there’s only one.’

‘Graham Greene isn’t bullshit, Juan Diego!’ Señor Eduardo had cried; the zealot was clutching something small in one hand.

‘I know about your mah-jongg tile—you don’t have to show it to me again,’ Juan Diego told the scholastic. ‘I know, I know—you fell, the little piece of ivory and bamboo cut your face. You bled, Beatrice licked you—that’s how your dog died, shot and killed. I know, I know! But did that one moment make you want to be a priest? Did the door to no sex for the rest of your life open only because Beatrice got shot? There must have been other moments in your childhood; you could have opened other doors. You still could open a different door, right? That mah-jongg tile didn’t have to be your childhood and your future!’

Resignation: that was what Juan Diego had seen on Edward Bonshaw’s face. The missionary seemed resigned to his fate: celibacy, self-flagellation, the priesthood—all this was caused by a fall with a mah-jongg tile in his little hand? A life of beating himself and sexual denial because his beloved dog was cruelly shot and killed?

It was also resignation that Juan Diego saw on Rivera’s face now, as el jefe backed up the truck to the shack they had shared as a family in Guerrero. Juan Diego knew what it was like to have a not-a-conversation with Lupe—just to listen to her, whether you understood her or not.

Lupe always knew more than you did; Lupe, though incomprehensible much of the time, knew stuff no one else knew. Lupe was a child, but she argued like a grown-up. She said things even she didn’t understand; she said the words ‘just came’ to her, often before she had any awareness of their meaning.

Burn el gringo bueno with Mother; burn the Virgin Mary’s nose with them. Just do it. Scatter their ashes in Mexico City. Just do it.

And there had been the zealous Edward Bonshaw spouting Graham Greene (another Catholic, clearly tortured by faith and doubt), claiming there was only one moment when the door—a single fucking door!—opened and let the fucking future in.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Juan Diego was muttering when he climbed out of the flatbed of Rivera’s truck. (Neither Lupe nor the dump boss thought the boy was praying.)

‘Just a minute,’ Lupe told them. She walked purposefully away from them, disappearing behind the shack the dump kids had once called home. She has to take a leak, Juan Diego was thinking.

‘No, I don’t have to take a leak!’ Lupe called. ‘I’m looking for Dirty White!’

‘Is she peeing, or do you need more water pistols?’ Rivera asked. Juan Diego shrugged. ‘We should start burning the bodies—before the Jesuits get to the basurero,’ el jefe said.

Lupe came back carrying a dead dog—it was a puppy, and Lupe was crying. ‘I always find them in the same place, or nearly the same place,’ she was blubbering. The dead puppy was Dirty White.

‘We’re going to burn Dirty White with your mother and the hippie?’ Rivera asked.

‘If you burned me, I would want to be burned with a puppy!’ Lupe cried. Juan Diego thought this was worth translating, and he did. Rivera paid no attention to the dead puppy; el jefe had hated Dirty White. The dump boss was doubtless relieved that the disagreeable runt wasn’t rabid, and hadn’t bitten Lupe.

‘I’m sorry the dog adoption didn’t work,’ Rivera said to Lupe when the little girl had reseated herself in the cab of el jefe’s truck, the dead puppy lying stiffly in her lap.

When Juan Diego was once more with Diablo and the body bags in the flatbed of the pickup, Rivera drove to the basurero; once there, he backed up the truck to the fire that burned brightest among the smoldering piles.

Rivera was rushing a little when he took the two body bags out of the flatbed and doused them with gasoline.

‘Dirty White looks soaking wet,’ Juan Diego said to Lupe.

‘He is,’ she said, laying the puppy on the ground beside the body bags. Rivera respectfully poured some gasoline on the dead dog.

The dump kids turned away from the fire when el jefe threw the body bags on the coals, into the low flames; suddenly the flames shot higher. When the fire was a towering conflagration, but Lupe’s back was still turned to the blaze, Rivera tossed the little puppy into the inferno.

‘I better move the truck,’ the dump boss said. The kids had already noticed that the side-view mirror remained broken. Rivera claimed he would never repair it; he said he wanted to torture himself with the memory.

Like a good Catholic, Juan Diego thought, watching el jefe move the truck away from the sudden heat of the funeral pyre.

‘Who’s a good Catholic?’ Lupe asked her brother.

‘Stop reading my mind!’ Juan Diego snapped at her.

‘I can’t help it,’ she told him. When Rivera was still in the truck, Lupe said: ‘Now’s a good time to put the monster nose in the fire.’

‘I don’t see the point of it,’ Juan Diego said, but he threw the Virgin Mary’s broken nose into the conflagration.

‘Here they come—right on time,’ Rivera said, joining the kids where they stood at some distance from the fire; it was very hot. They could see Brother Pepe’s dusty red VW racing into the basurero.

Later, Juan Diego thought that the Jesuits tumbling out of the little VW Beetle resembled a clown act at the circus. Brother Pepe, the two outraged priests—Father Alfonso and Father Octavio—and, of course, the dumbstruck Edward Bonshaw.

The funeral pyre spoke for the dump kids, who said nothing, but Lupe decided that singing was okay. ‘"Oh, beat the drum slowly and play the fife lowly,"’ she sang. ‘"Play the dead march as you carry me along—"’

‘Esperanza wouldn’t have wanted a fire—’ Father Alfonso started to say, but the dump boss interrupted him.

‘It was what her children wanted, Father—that’s how it goes,’ Rivera said.

‘It’s what we do with what we love,’ Juan Diego said.

Lupe was smiling serenely; she was watching the ascending columns of smoke drifting far away, and the ever-hovering vultures.

‘"Take me to the valley, and lay the sod o’er me,"’ Lupe sang. ‘"For I’m a young cowboy and I know I’ve done wrong."’

‘These children are orphans now,’ Señor Eduardo was saying. ‘They are surely our responsibility, more than they ever were. Aren’t they?’

Brother Pepe didn’t immediately answer the Iowan, and the two old priests just looked at each other.

‘What would Graham Greene say?’ Juan Diego asked Edward Bonshaw.

‘Graham Greene!’ Father Alfonso exclaimed. ‘Don’t tell me, Edward, that this boy has been reading Greene—’

‘How unsuitable!’ Father Octavio said.

‘Greene is hardly age-appropriate—’ Father Alfonso began, but Señor Eduardo wouldn’t hear of it.

‘Greene is a Catholic!’ the Iowan cried.

‘Not a good one, Edward,’ Father Octavio said.

‘Is this what Greene means by one moment?’ Juan Diego asked Señor Eduardo. ‘Is this the door opening to the future—Lupe’s and mine?’

‘This door opens to the circus,’ Lupe said. ‘That’s what comes next—that’s where we’re going.’

Juan Diego translated this, of course, before he asked Edward Bonshaw: ‘Is this our only moment? Is this the one door to the future? Is this what Greene meant? Is this how childhood ends?’ The Iowan was thinking hard—as hard as he ever had, and Edward Bonshaw was a deeply thoughtful man.

‘Yes, you’re right! That’s exactly right!’ Lupe suddenly said to the Iowan; the little girl touched Señor Eduardo’s hand.

‘She says you’re right—whatever you’re thinking,’ Juan Diego said to Edward Bonshaw, who kept staring into the raging flames.

‘He’s thinking that the poor draft dodger’s ashes will be returned to his homeland, and to his grieving mother, with the ashes of a prostitute,’ Lupe said. Juan Diego translated this, too.

Suddenly there was a harsh spitting sound from the funeral pyre, and a thin blue flame shot up among the vivid oranges and yellows, as if something chemical had caught fire, or perhaps a puddle of gasoline had ignited.

‘Maybe it’s the puppy—it was so wet,’ Rivera said, as they all stared at the intense blue flame.

‘The puppy!’ Edward Bonshaw cried. ‘You burned a dog with your mother and that dear hippie child? You burned another dog in their fire!’

‘Everyone should be so lucky as to be burned with a puppy,’ Juan Diego told the Iowan.

The hissing blue flame had everyone’s attention, but Lupe reached up her arms and pulled her brother’s face down to her lips. Juan Diego thought she was going to kiss him, but Lupe wanted to whisper in his ear, although no one else could have understood her, not even if they’d heard.

‘It’s definitely the wet puppy,’ Rivera was saying.

‘La nariz,’ Lupe whispered in her brother’s ear, touching his nose. The second she spoke, the hissing sound stopped—the blue flame disappeared. The flaming blue hiss was the nose, all right, Juan Diego was thinking.

The jolt of Philippine Airlines 177 landing in Bohol didn’t even wake him up, as if there were nothing that could wake Juan Diego from the dream of when his future started.