Avenue of Mysteries (17 page)

He would dream intermittently all the way to Manila—foremost, the horrible history of Edward Bonshaw’s scar. That is exactly what taking
two
Lopressor pills will get you! Yet, tired though he was, Juan Diego was grateful to have dreamed at all, even disjointedly. The past was where he lived most confidently, and with the surest sense of knowing who he was—not only as a novelist.

• • •

T
HERE IS OFTEN TOO
much dialogue in disjointed dreams, and things happen violently and without warning. The doctors’ offices in Cruz Roja, the Red Cross hospital in Oaxaca, were confusingly close to the emergency entrance—either a bad idea or by design, or both. A girl who’d been bitten by one of Oaxaca’s rooftop dogs was brought to the orthopedic office of Dr. Vargas instead of the ER; though her hands and forearms had been mangled while she was trying to protect her face, the girl did not present any obvious orthopedic problems. Dr. Vargas was an orthopedist—though he did treat circus people (mainly child performers), dump kids, and the orphans at Lost Children, not just for orthopedics.

Vargas was irked that the dog-bite victim had been brought to him. “You’re going to be
fine,
” he kept telling the crying girl. “She should be in the ER—not with me,” Vargas repeatedly said to the girl’s hysterical mother. Everyone in the waiting room was upset to see the mauled girl—including Edward Bonshaw, who had only recently arrived in town.

“What is a rooftop dog?” Señor Eduardo asked Brother Pepe. “Not a
breed
of dog, I trust!” They were following Dr. Vargas to the examining room. Juan Diego was being wheeled on a gurney.

Lupe babbled something, which her injured brother was disinclined to translate. Lupe said some of the rooftop dogs were spirits—actual ghosts of dogs who’d been willfully tortured and killed. The ghost dogs haunted the rooftops of the city, attacking innocent people—because the dogs (in their innocence) had been attacked, and they were seeking revenge. The dogs lived on rooftops because they could fly; because they were ghost dogs, no one could harm them—not anymore.

“
That’s
a long answer!” Edward Bonshaw confided to Juan Diego. “What did she say?”

“You’re right,
not
a breed,” was all Juan Diego told the new missionary.

“They’re mostly mongrels. There are many stray dogs in Oaxaca; some are feral. They just hang out on the rooftops—no one knows how the dogs get there,” Brother Pepe explained.

“They
don’t
fly,” Juan Diego added, but Lupe went on babbling. They were now in the examining room with Dr. Vargas.

“And what has happened to
you
?” Dr. Vargas asked the incomprehensible girl. “Just calm down and tell me slowly, so I can understand you.”

“
I’m
the patient—she’s just my sister,” Juan Diego said to the young doctor. Maybe Vargas hadn’t noticed the gurney.

Brother Pepe had already explained to Dr. Vargas that he’d examined these dump kids before, but Vargas saw too many patients—he had trouble keeping the kids straight. And Juan Diego’s pain had quieted down; for the moment, he’d stopped screaming.

Dr. Vargas was young and handsome; an aura of intemperate nobility, which can occasionally come from success, emanated from him. He was used to being right. Vargas was easily perturbed by the incompetence of others, though the impressive young man was too quickly inclined to judge people he was meeting for the first time. Everyone knew that Dr. Vargas was the foremost orthopedic surgeon in Oaxaca; crippled children were his specialty—and who didn’t care about crippled children? Yet Vargas rubbed everyone the wrong way. Children resented him because Vargas couldn’t remember them; adults thought he was arrogant.

“So
you’re
the patient,” Dr. Vargas said to Juan Diego. “Tell me about yourself.
Not
the dump-kid part. I can smell you; I know about the basurero. I mean your foot—just tell me about that part.”

“The part about my foot
is
a dump-kid part,” Juan Diego told the doctor. “A truck in Guerrero backed over my foot, with a load of copper from the basurero—a heavy load.”

Sometimes Lupe spoke in lists; this was one of those times. “One: this doctor is a sad jerk,” the all-seeing girl began. “Two: he is ashamed to be alive. Three: he thinks he should have died. Four: he’s going to say you need X-rays, but he’s just stalling—he already knows he can’t fix your foot.”

“That sounds a little like Zapoteco or Mixteco, but it isn’t,” Dr. Vargas declared; he wasn’t asking Juan Diego what his sister had said, but (like everyone else) Juan Diego was not fond of the young doctor, and he decided to tell him everything Lupe had proclaimed. “She said all
that
?” Vargas asked.

“She’s usually right about the past,” Juan Diego told him. “She doesn’t do the future as accurately.”

“You
do
need X-rays; I probably
can’t
fix your foot, but I have to see the X-rays before I know what to tell you,” Dr. Vargas said to Juan Diego. “Did you bring our Jesuit friend for divine assistance?” the doctor asked the boy, nodding to Brother Pepe. (In Oaxaca, everyone knew Pepe; almost as many people had heard of Dr. Vargas.)

“My mom is a cleaning woman for the Jesuits,” Juan Diego told Vargas. The boy then nodded to Rivera. “But
he’s
the one who looks after us. El jefe—” the boy started to say, but Rivera interrupted him.

“I was driving the truck,” the dump boss said guiltily.

Lupe launched into her routine about the broken side-view mirror, but Juan Diego didn’t bother to translate. Besides, Lupe had already moved on; there was more detail concerning
why
Dr. Vargas was such a sad jerk.

“Vargas got drunk; he overslept. He missed his plane—a family trip. The stupid plane crashed. His parents were onboard—his sister, too, with her husband and their two children. All gone!” Lupe cried. “While Vargas was sleeping it off,” she added.

“Such a strained voice,” Vargas said to Juan Diego. “I should have a look at her throat. Maybe her vocal cords.”

Juan Diego told Dr. Vargas he was sorry about the plane crash that had killed the young doctor’s entire family.

“She told you
that
?” Vargas asked the boy.

Lupe wouldn’t stop babbling: Vargas had inherited his parents’ house, and all their things. His parents had been “very religious”; it had long been a source of family friction that Vargas was “not religious.” Now the young doctor was “
less
religious,” Lupe said.

“How can he be ‘
less
religious’ than he used to be when he was ‘not religious’ to begin with, Lupe?” Juan Diego asked his sister, but the girl just shrugged. She knew certain things; messages came to her, usually without any explanations.

“I’m just telling you what I know,” Lupe was always saying. “Don’t ask me what it means.”

“Wait, wait,
wait
!” Edward Bonshaw interjected, in English. “
Who
was ‘not religious’ and has become ‘
less
religious’? I know about this syndrome,” Edward said to Juan Diego.

In English, Juan Diego told Señor Eduardo everything Lupe had told him about Dr. Vargas; not even Brother Pepe had known the whole story. All the while, Vargas went on examining the boy’s crushed and twisted foot. Juan Diego was beginning to like Dr. Vargas a little better; Lupe’s irritating ability to divine a stranger’s past (and, to a lesser degree, that person’s future) was serving as a distraction from Juan Diego’s pain, and the boy appreciated how Vargas had taken advantage of the distraction to examine him.

“Where does a dump kid learn English?” Dr. Vargas asked Brother Pepe in English. “
Your
English isn’t this good, Pepe, but I presume you had a hand in teaching the boy.”

“He taught himself, Vargas—he speaks, he understands, he
reads,
” Pepe replied.

“This is a gift to be nurtured, Juan Diego,” Edward Bonshaw told the boy. “I’m so sorry for your family tragedy, Dr. Vargas,” Señor Eduardo added. “I know a little something about family
adversities
—”

“Who’s the gringo?” Vargas rudely asked Juan Diego in Spanish.

“El hombre papagayo,” Lupe said. (“The parrot man.”)

Juan Diego deciphered this for Vargas.

“Edward is our new teacher,” Brother Pepe told Dr. Vargas. “From
Iowa,
” Pepe added.

“Eduardo,” Edward Bonshaw said; the Iowan extended his hand before he regarded the rubber gloves Dr. Vargas was wearing—the gloves were spotted with blood from the boy’s grotesquely flattened foot.

“You’re sure he’s not from
Hawaii,
Pepe?” Vargas asked. (It was impossible to overlook the clamorous parrots on the new missionary’s Hawaiian shirt.)

“Like you, Dr. Vargas,” Edward Bonshaw began, as he wisely changed his mind about shaking the young doctor’s hand, “I have had my faith assailed by doubts.”

“I never had any faith, hence no doubts,” Vargas replied; his English was clipped but correct—there was nothing doubtful about it. “Here’s what I like about X-rays, Juan Diego,” Dr. Vargas continued in his no-nonsense English. “X-rays are not spiritual—in fact, they are wholly less ambiguous than a lot of elements I can think of at the moment. You come to me, injured, and with two Jesuits. You bring your visionary sister, who—as you say yourself—is more right about the past than she is about the future. Your esteemed jefe comes along—your dump boss, who looks after you
and
runs over you.” (It was fortunate, for Rivera’s sake, that Vargas’s assessment was made in English, not Spanish, because Rivera was already feeling badly enough about the accident.) “And what the X-rays will show us are the
limitations
of what can be done for your foot. I’m speaking
medically,
Edward,” Vargas interrupted himself, looking not only at Edward Bonshaw but also at Brother Pepe. “As for
divine
assistance—well, I leave that to you Jesuits.”

“Eduardo,” Edward Bonshaw corrected Dr. Vargas. Señor Eduardo’s father, Graham (the dog-killer), had the middle name
Edward
; this was ample reason for Edward Bonshaw to prefer
Eduardo,
which Juan Diego had also taken a shine to.

Vargas delivered an impromptu outburst to Brother Pepe—this time in Spanish. “These dump kids live in Guerrero and their mother is
cleaning
the Templo de la Compañía de Jesús—how
Jesuitical
! And I suppose she’s cleaning Niños Perdidos, too?”

“Sí—the orphanage, too,” Pepe replied.

Juan Diego was on the verge of telling Vargas that Esperanza, his mother, wasn’t only a cleaning woman, but what else Esperanza did was
ambiguous
(at best), and the boy knew what a low opinion the young doctor had of ambiguity.

“Where is your mother now?” Dr. Vargas asked the boy. “She’s not cleaning at this moment, surely.”

“She’s in the temple, praying for me,” Juan Diego told him.

“Let’s do the X-rays—let’s move on,” Dr. Vargas duly said; it was apparent that he’d had to restrain himself from making a disparaging comment on the powers of prayer.

“Thank you, Vargas,” Brother Pepe said; he spoke with such uncharacteristic insincerity that everyone looked at him—even Edward Bonshaw, who’d met him only recently. “Thank you for making such an effort to spare us your constant atheism,” Pepe said, more to the point.

“I
am
sparing you, Pepe,” Vargas answered him.

“Surely your absence of belief is your own business, Dr. Vargas,” Edward Bonshaw said. “But perhaps now is not the best time for it—for the
boy’s
sake,” the new missionary added, making absence of belief his business.

“It’s okay, Señor Eduardo,” Juan Diego told the Iowan in his near-perfect English. “I’m not much of a believer, either—I’m not much more of a believer than Dr. Vargas.” But Juan Diego was more of a believer than he let on. He had his doubts about the Church—the local virgin politics, as he thought of them, included—yet the miracles intrigued him. He was open to miracles.

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

“For the
boy’s
sake,” Vargas said in his abrupt-sounding English, “perhaps now is a better time for reality than for
belief.
”

“Personally, I don’t know
what
to believe,” Lupe started in, heedless of who could (and couldn’t) understand her. “I
want
to believe in Guadalupe, but look how she lets herself be used—look how the Virgin Mary
manipulates
her! How can you trust Guadalupe when she lets the Mary Monster be the boss?”

“Guadalupe lets Mary walk all over her, Lupe,” Juan Diego said.

“Whoa! Stop! Don’t say
that
!” Edward Bonshaw told the boy. “You’re entirely too young to be
cynical.
” (When the subject was religious, the new missionary’s grasp of Spanish was better than you first thought.)

“Let’s do the X-rays,
Eduardo,
” Dr. Vargas said. “Let’s move on. These kids live in Guerrero and work in the dump, while their mother cleans for you. Is that not
cynical
?”

“Let’s move on, Vargas,” Brother Pepe said. “Let’s do the X-rays.”

“It’s a
nice
dump!” Lupe insisted. “Tell Vargas we
love
the dump, Juan Diego. Between Vargas and the parrot man, we’ll end up living in Lost Children!” Lupe screamed, but Juan Diego translated nothing; he was silent.

“Let’s do the X-rays,” the boy said. He just wanted to know about his foot.

“Vargas is thinking there’s no point in operating on your foot,” Lupe told him. “Vargas believes that, if the blood supply is compromised, he’ll have to
amputate
! He thinks you can’t live in Guerrero with only one foot,
or
with a limp! In all likelihood, Vargas believes, your foot will heal by itself in a right-angle position—permanently. You’ll walk again, but not for a couple of months. You’ll never walk without a limp—that’s what he’s thinking. Vargas is wondering why the parrot man is here and not our mother. Tell him I know his thoughts!” Lupe screamed at her brother.