Avenue of Mysteries (31 page)

“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.

D
REAMS 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.