The homeless types had straggled their aimless way out of the temple; Father Octavio was returning to the unhappy gathering at the main attraction. Father Alfonso and Brother Pepe exchanged glances, but they quickly looked away from each other. Vargas had not been paying much attention to the Virgin Mary, not this time — all the doctor’s efforts were directed to the two old priests. And Alejandra was in her own world, whatever world that was: an unmarried young woman with a solitary-minded young doctor. (That world, whatever you call it — if there’s a name for it.)
No one was asking the giant virgin for anything — not anymore — and only one of the attendees at the sprinkling, the one who hadn’t said a word, was watching the Virgin Mary. Rivera was watching her very closely; he’d been watching her, and only her, from the start.
“Look at her,” the dump boss told all of them. “Don’t you see? You have to come closer — her face is so far away. Her head is so high — up there.” They could all see where el jefe was pointing, but they had to come closer to see the Virgin Mary’s eyes. The statue was very tall.
The first of the Mary Monster’s tears fell on the back of Edward Bonshaw’s hand; her tears fell from such a height, they made quite an impact, quite a splash.
“Don’t you see?” the dump boss asked them again. “She’s crying. See her eyes? See her tears?”
Pepe had come close enough; he was staring straight up, at the Virgin Mary’s crooked nose, when a giant teardrop hit him like a hailstone, landing smack between his eyes. More of the Mary Monster’s tears were striking the uplifted palms of the parrot man’s hands. Flor refused to reach out her hand for falling tears, but she stood near enough to Señor Eduardo to feel the tears hitting him, and Flor could see the broken-nosed virgin’s tear-streaked face.
Vargas and Alejandra had a different kind of curiosity concerning the giant virgin’s falling tears. Alejandra tentatively held out her hand — she sniffed a teardrop in the palm of her hand before wiping her hand on her hip. Vargas, of course, went so far as to taste the tears; he was also straining to see far above the Mary Monster — Vargas wanted to be sure the roof wasn’t leaking.
“It’s not raining outside, Vargas,” Pepe told him.
“Just checking,” was all Vargas said.
“When people die, Vargas — I mean the people you will always remember, the ones who changed your life — they never really go away,” Pepe told the young doctor.
“I know that, Pepe — I live with ghosts, too,” Vargas answered him.
The two old priests were the last to approach the towering virgin; this sprinkling had been irregular enough — those few things that had mattered to Lupe, reduced to ashes — and now there was more disruption, the oversize tears from the not-so-inanimate Mary. Father Alfonso touched a tear that Juan Diego held out to him — a glistening, crystal-bright teardrop in the cupped palm of the dump reader’s small hand. “Yes, I see,” Father Alfonso said, as solemnly as possible.
“I don’t think a pipe has burst — there are no pipes in the ceiling, are there?” Vargas not-so-innocently asked the two old priests.
“No pipes — that’s correct, Vargas,” Father Octavio curtly said.
“It’s a miracle, isn’t it?” Edward Bonshaw, his face streaked with his own tears, asked Father Alfonso. “Un milagro — isn’t that what you call it?” the Iowan asked Father Octavio.
“No, no — not the milagro word, please,” Father Alfonso said to the parrot man.
“It’s much too soon to mention that word — these things take time. This is, as yet, an uninvestigated event — or a series of events, some might say,” Father Octavio intoned, as if he were talking to himself or rehearsing his preliminary report to the bishop.
“To begin with, the bishop must be told—” Father Alfonso speculated, before Father Octavio cut him off.
“Yes, yes — of course — but the bishop is just the beginning. There is a process,” Father Octavio stated. “It could take years.”
“We follow a procedure, in these cases—” Father Alfonso started to say, but he stopped; he was looking at Lupe’s hot-chocolate cup. Juan Diego was holding the empty cup in his small hands. “If you’re done with the sprinkling, Juan Diego, I would like to have that cup — for the records,” Father Alfonso said.
It took two hundred years for the Church to declare that Our Lady of Guadalupe was Mary, Juan Diego was thinking. (In 1754, Pope Benedict XIV declared Guadalupe patron of what was then called New Spain.) But Juan Diego wasn’t the one who said it. The parrot man was the one who said it, at the moment Juan Diego handed Lupe’s cup to Father Alfonso.
“Are you talking about two hundred years?” Edward Bonshaw asked the two old priests. “Are you pulling a Pope Benedict the Fourteenth on us? It was two hundred years after the fact when Benedict declared that your Virgin of Guadalupe was Mary. Is that the kind of process you have in mind?” Señor Eduardo asked Father Octavio. “Are you following a procedure, as you put it, that will take two hundred years?” the Iowan asked Father Alfonso.
“That way, all of us who saw the Virgin Mary cry will be dead, right?” Juan Diego asked the two old priests. “No witnesses, right?” the boy asked them. (Now Juan Diego knew that Dolores hadn’t been kidding; now he knew he would have the balls for other stuff.)
“I thought we believed in miracles,” Brother Pepe said to Father Alfonso and Father Octavio.
“Not this miracle, Pepe,” Vargas said. “It’s the same old Church-of-rules business, isn’t it?” Vargas asked the two old priests. “Your Church isn’t about the miracles — it’s about your rules, isn’t it?”
“I know what I saw,” Rivera told the two old priests. “You didn’t do anything—she did,” the dump boss said to them. Rivera was pointing up there, at the Mary Monster’s face, wet with tears. “I don’t come here for you — I come for her,” el jefe said.
“It’s not your various virgins who are full of shit,” Flor said to Father Alfonso. “It’s you and your rules — your rules for the rest of us,” Flor told Father Octavio. “They won’t help us,” Flor said to Señor Eduardo. “They won’t help us because you disappoint them, and because they disapprove of me,” she told the Iowan.
“I think the big girl has stopped crying — I think she’s out of tears,” Dr. Vargas observed.
“You could help us, if you wanted to,” Juan Diego told the two old priests.
“I told you the kid had balls, didn’t I?” Flor asked Señor Eduardo.
“Yes, I believe the tears have stopped,” Father Alfonso said; he sounded relieved.
“I see no new tears,” Father Octavio joined in; he sounded hopeful.
“These three,” Brother Pepe said suddenly, his arms surprisingly encompassing the two unlikely lovers and the crippled boy — it was as if Pepe were herding them together. “You can, you could, resolve the plight of these three — I’ve looked into what has to be done, and how you can do it. You could resolve this,” Brother Pepe told the two old priests. “Quid pro quo — am I saying it correctly?” Pepe asked the Iowan. Pepe knew that Edward Bonshaw was proud of his Latin.
“Quid pro quo,” the parrot man repeated. “Something given or received for something else,” Señor Eduardo said to Father Alfonso. “A deal, in other words,” was the way Edward Bonshaw put it to Father Octavio.