“Trouble?” the zealot repeated, in his eager way. Someone in the crowd had uttered the perro word, and Edward Bonshaw — hurrying after the waddling Brother Pepe — got a glimpse of the terrifying Diablo. “What about the dog?” Edward asked Brother Pepe.
“El perro ensangrentado,” Pepe repeated. “The bloodstained dog.”
“Well, I can see that!” Edward Bonshaw said, somewhat peevishly.
The Jesuit temple was thronged with stupefied onlookers. “Un milagro!” one of the gawkers shouted.
Edward Bonshaw’s Spanish was more selective than just plain bad; he knew the milagro word — it sparked in him an abiding interest.
“A miracle?” Edward asked Pepe, who was pushing his way toward the altar. “What miracle?”
“I don’t know — I just got here!” Brother Pepe panted. We wanted an English teacher and we have un milagrero, poor Pepe was thinking—“a miracle monger.”
It was Rivera who’d been audibly praying for a miracle, and the crowd of idiots — or some idiots in the crowd — had doubtless overheard him. Now the miracle word was on everyone’s lips.
El jefe had carefully placed Juan Diego before the altar, but the boy was screaming nonetheless. (In his dreams, Juan Diego downplayed the pain.) Rivera kept crossing himself and genuflecting to the overbearing statue of the Virgin Mary, all the while looking over his shoulder for the appearance of the dump kids’ mother; it was unclear if Rivera was praying for Juan Diego to be cured as much as the dump boss was hoping for a miracle to save himself from Esperanza’s wrath — namely, her blaming Rivera (as she surely would) for the accident.
“The screaming isn’t good,” Edward Bonshaw was muttering. He’d not yet seen the boy, but the sound of a child screaming in pain lacked miracle potential.
“A case of hopeful wishing,” Brother Pepe gasped; he knew his words weren’t quite right. He asked Lupe what had happened, but Pepe couldn’t understand what the crazed child said.
“What language is she speaking?” Edward eagerly asked. “It sounds a little like Latin.”
“It’s gibberish, though she seems very intelligent — even prescient,” Brother Pepe whispered in the newcomer’s ear. “No one can understand her — just the boy.” The screaming was unbearable.
That was when Edward Bonshaw saw Juan Diego, prostrate and bleeding before the towering Virgin Mary. “Merciful Mother! Save the poor child!” the Iowan cried, silencing the murmuring mob but not the screaming boy.
Juan Diego hadn’t noticed the other people in the temple, except for what appeared to be two mourners; they knelt in the foremost pew. Two women, all in black — they wore veils, their heads completely covered. Strangely, it comforted the crying child to see the two women mourners. When Juan Diego saw them, his pain abated.
This was not exactly a miracle, but the sudden reduction of his pain made Juan Diego wonder if the two women were mourning him—if he were the one who’d died, or if he was going to die. When the boy looked for them again, he saw that the silent mourners had not moved; the two women in black, their heads bowed, were as motionless as statues.
Pain or no pain, it was no surprise to Juan Diego that the Virgin Mary hadn’t healed his foot; the boy wasn’t holding his breath for an ensuing miracle from Our Lady of Guadalupe, either.
“The lazy virgins aren’t working today, or they don’t want to help you,” Lupe told her brother. “Who’s the funny-looking gringo? What’s he want?”
“What did she say?” Edward Bonshaw asked the injured boy.
“The Virgin Mary is a fraud,” the boy replied; instantly, he felt his pain returning.
“A fraud—not our Mary!” Edward Bonshaw exclaimed.
“This is the dump kid I was telling you about, un niño de la basura,” Brother Pepe was trying to explain. “He’s a smart one—”
“Who are you? What do you want?” Juan Diego asked the gringo in the funny-looking Hawaiian shirt.
“He’s our new teacher, Juan Diego — be nice,” Brother Pepe warned the boy. “He’s one of us, Mr. Edward Bon—”
“Eduardo,” the Iowan insisted, interrupting Pepe.
“Father Eduardo? Brother Eduardo?” Juan Diego asked.
“Señor Eduardo,” Lupe suddenly said. Even the Iowan had understood her.
“Actually, just Eduardo is okay,” Edward modestly said.
“Señor Eduardo,” Juan Diego repeated; for no known reason, the injured dump reader liked the sound of this. The boy looked for the two women mourners in the foremost pew, not finding them. How they could have just disappeared struck Juan Diego as unlikely as the fluctuations in his pain; it had briefly relented but was now (once again) relentless. As for those two women, well — maybe those two were always just appearing, or disappearing. Who knows what just appears, or disappears, to a boy in this much pain?
“Why is the Virgin Mary a fraud?” Edward Bonshaw asked the boy, who lay unmoving at the Holy Mother’s feet.
“Don’t ask — not now. There isn’t time,” Brother Pepe started to say, but Lupe was already babbling unintelligibly — pointing first to Mother Mary, then to the smaller, dark-skinned virgin, who was often unnoticed in her more modest shrine.
“Is that Our Lady of Guadalupe?” the new missionary asked. From where they were, at the Mary Monster altar, the Guadalupe portrait was small and off to one side of the temple — almost out of sight, purposely tucked away.
“¡Sí!” Lupe cried, stamping her foot; she suddenly spat on the floor, almost perfectly between the two virgins.
“Another probable fraud,” Juan Diego said, to explain his sister’s spontaneous spitting. “But Guadalupe isn’t entirely bad; she’s just a little corrupted.”
“Is the girl—” Edward Bonshaw started to say, but Brother Pepe put a cautionary hand on the Iowan’s shoulder.
“Don’t say it,” Pepe warned the young American.
“No, she’s not,” Juan Diego answered. The unspoken retarded word hovered there in the temple, as if one of the miraculous virgins had communicated it. (Naturally, Lupe had read the new missionary’s mind; she knew what he’d been thinking.)
“The boy’s foot isn’t right — it’s flattened, and it’s pointing the wrong way,” Edward said to Brother Pepe. “Shouldn’t he see a doctor?”
“¡Sí!” Juan Diego cried. “Take me to Dr. Vargas. Only the boss man was hoping for a miracle.”
“The boss man?” Señor Eduardo asked, as if this were a religious reference to the Almighty.
“Not that boss man,” Brother Pepe said.
“What boss man?” the Iowan asked.
“El jefe,” Juan Diego said, pointing to the anxious, guilt-stricken Rivera.
“Aha! The boy’s father?” Edward asked Pepe.
“No, probably not — he’s the dump boss,” Brother Pepe said.
“He was driving the truck! He’s too lazy to get his side-view mirror fixed! And look at his stupid mustache! No woman who isn’t a prostitute will ever want him with that hairy caterpillar on his lip!” Lupe raved.
“Goodness — she has her own language, doesn’t she?” Edward Bonshaw asked Brother Pepe.
“This is Rivera. He was driving the truck that backed over me, but he’s like a father to us—better than a father. He doesn’t leave,” Juan Diego told the new missionary. “And he never beats us.”
“Aha,” Edward said, with uncharacteristic caution. “And your mother? Where is—”