John Irving - Avenue of Mysteries

Juan Diego had let his sister act out the religious war within her in this childish superhero battle. The saintly-looking Guadalupe figurine at first appeared overmatched; she held her hands in a prayerful position, above the small but discernible swell of her belly. Guadalupe didn’t have a fighter’s stance, whereas Coatlicue looked as poised to strike as one of her writhing snakes, and Coatlicue’s flaccid breasts were scary. (Even a starving infant would have been turned off by those rattlesnake-rattle nipples!)

Yet Lupe engaged the two action figures in a variety of emotionally charged activities: the fighting and fucking were equally intermixed, and there were moments of apparent tenderness between the two warriors — even kissing.

When Juan Diego observed Guadalupe and Coatlicue kissing, he asked Lupe if this represented a kind of truce between the fighters — a putting aside of their religious differences. After all, couldn’t kissing mean making up?

“They’re just taking a break,” was all Lupe said, recommencing the more violent, nonstop action between the two totems — more fighting and fucking — until Lupe was exhausted and fell asleep.

As far as Juan Diego could tell, looking at Guadalupe and Coatlicue in the loosening fingers of Lupe’s small hands, nothing had been settled between the two bitches. How could a violent mother-earth goddess coexist with one of those know-it-all, do-nothing virgins? Juan Diego was thinking. He didn’t know that, across the aisle of the darkened bus, Edward Bonshaw was watching him when he gently took the two religious figurines from his sleeping sister’s hands.

Someone on the bus had been farting — one of the dogs, maybe; the parrot man, perhaps; Paco and Beer Belly, definitely. (The two dwarf clowns drank a lot of beer.) Juan Diego had already opened the bus window beside him, just a crack. The gap was sufficient for him to slip the two superheroes through the opening. Somewhere, one everlasting night — on a winding road through the Sierra Madre — two formidable religious figures were left to fend for themselves in the unlit darkness.

What now — what next ? Juan Diego was thinking, when Señor Eduardo spoke to him from across the aisle.

“You are not alone, Juan Diego,” the Iowan said. “If you reject one belief and then another, still you aren’t alone — the universe isn’t a godless place.”

“What now — what next ?” Juan Diego asked him.

A dog with an inquiring look walked between them in the aisle of the circus bus; it was Pastora, the sheepdog — she wagged her tail, as if Juan Diego had spoken to her, and walked on.

Edward Bonshaw began babbling about the Temple of the Society of Jesus — he meant the one in Oaxaca. Señor Eduardo wanted Juan Diego to consider scattering Esperanza’s ashes at the feet of the giant Virgin Mary there.

“The Mary Monster—” Juan Diego started to say.

“Okay — maybe not all the ashes, and only at her feet !” the Iowan quickly said. “I know you and Lupe have issues with the Virgin Mary, but your mother adored her.”

“The Mary Monster killed our mother,” Juan Diego reminded Señor Eduardo.

“I think you’re interpreting an accident in a dogmatic fashion,” Edward Bonshaw cautioned him. “Perhaps Lupe is more open to revisiting the Virgin Mary — the Mary Monster, as you call her.”

Pastora, pacing, passed between them in the aisle again. The restless dog reminded Juan Diego of himself, and of the way Lupe had been behaving lately — uncharacteristically unsure of herself, perhaps, but also secretive.

“Lie down, Pastora,” Juan Diego said, but those border-collie types are furtive; the sheepdog continued to roam.

Juan Diego didn’t know what to believe; except for skywalking, everything was a hoax. He knew that Lupe was also confused — not that she would admit it. And what if Esperanza had been right to worship the Mary Monster? Clutching the coffee can between his thighs, Juan Diego knew that scattering his mother’s ashes — and all the rest — was not necessarily a rational decision, no matter where the ashes were deposited. Why wouldn’t their mother have wanted her ashes scattered at the feet of the enormous Virgin Mary in the Jesuit temple, where Esperanza had made a good name for herself? (If only as a cleaning woman.)

Edward Bonshaw and Juan Diego were asleep when the dawn broke — as the caravan of circus trucks and buses came into the valley between the Sierra Madre de Oaxaca and the Sierra Madre del Sur. The caravan was passing through Oaxaca when Lupe woke up her brother. “The parrot man is right — we should scatter the ashes all over the Mary Monster,” Lupe told Juan Diego.

“He said ‘only at her feet, ’ Lupe,” Juan Diego cautioned his little sister. Maybe Lupe had misread the Iowan’s thoughts — either when she was asleep or when Señor Eduardo was sleeping, or during some combination of the two.

“I say the ashes go all over the Mary Monster — make the bitch prove herself to us,” Lupe told her brother.

“Señor Eduardo said ‘maybe not all the ashes,’ Lupe,” Juan Diego warned her.

“I say all of them, all over her,” Lupe said. “Tell the bus driver to let us and the parrot man out at the temple.”

“Jesus Mary Joseph,” Juan Diego muttered. He saw that all the dogs were awake; they were pacing in the aisle with Pastora.

“Rivera should be there — he’s a Mary worshiper,” Lupe was saying, as if she were talking to herself. Juan Diego knew that, in the early morning, Rivera might be at the shack in Guerrero or sleeping in the cab of his truck; probably he would already have started the hellfires in the basurero. The dump kids would be getting to the Jesuit temple before the early-morning Mass; maybe Brother Pepe would have lit the candles, or he would still be lighting them. It was unlikely that anyone else would be around.

The bus driver had to make a detour; there was a dead dog blocking the narrow street. “I know where you can get a new dog — a jumper,” Lupe had said to Juan Diego. She hadn’t meant a dead dog. She’d meant a rooftop dog — one used to jumping, one who hadn’t fallen.

“A rooftop dog,” was all the driver said, about the dead dog in the street, but Juan Diego knew this was what Lupe had meant.

“You can’t train a rooftop dog to climb a stepladder, Lupe,” Juan Diego told his sister. “And Vargas said the rooftop dogs have rabies — they’re like perros del basurero. Dump dogs and rooftop dogs are rabid. Vargas said—”

“I have to talk to Vargas about something else. Forget the jumper,” Lupe said. “The stupid stepladder trick isn’t worth worrying about. The rooftop dog was just an idea — they jump, don’t they?” Lupe asked him.

“They die, they definitely bite —” Juan Diego started to say.

“The rooftop dogs don’t matter,” Lupe said impatiently. “The bigger question is lions. Do they get rabies? Vargas will know,” she said, her voice trailing off.

The bus had navigated the dead-dog detour; they were approaching the corner of Flores Magón and Valerio Trujano. They could see the Templo de la Compañía de Jesús.

“Vargas isn’t a lion doctor,” Juan Diego said to his little sister.

“You have the ashes, right?” was all Lupe said; she’d picked up Baby, the cowardly male dachshund, and had poked the dog’s nose into Señor Eduardo’s ear, waking him up. The cold-nose method brought the startled Iowan to his feet in the aisle of the bus, the dogs milling around him. Edward Bonshaw saw how tightly the coffee can was held in the cripple’s hands; he knew the boy meant business.