John Irving - Avenue of Mysteries

“Don’t,” Juan Diego said, but it was too late. Lupe pointed to the noseless face of the giant Virgin Mary, touching her little nose with the index finger of her other hand.

It took Father Alfonso and Father Octavio a few seconds to catch on: the Mary Monster was still without a nose; the incomprehensible child from the dump was indicating that her own small nose was intact; there’d been a fire at the basurero, an infernal burning of human and canine bodies.

“The Virgin Mary’s nose was in that hellish fire?” Father Alfonso asked Lupe; she vigorously nodded her head, as if she were trying to dislodge her teeth or make her eyes fall out.

“Merciful Mother of—” Father Octavio started to say.

The falling coffee can made a startling clatter. It’s not likely that Edward Bonshaw had intentionally dropped the coffee can, which he quickly retrieved. Señor Eduardo may have lost his grip; he might have realized that the news he was continuing to withhold from Father Alfonso and Father Octavio (namely, his vow-ending love for Flor) would soon come as a greater shock to those two old priests than the burning of an inanimate statue’s nose.

Because he’d seen the Mary Monster cast a most disapproving glance at his mother’s cleavage — because Juan Diego was aware of how animated the Virgin Mary could be, at least in the area of condemning looks and withering glares — Juan Diego would have questioned anyone’s supposition that the towering statue (or her lost nose) was inanimate. Hadn’t the Mary Monster’s nose made a spitting sound, and hadn’t a blue flame erupted from the funeral pyre? Hadn’t Juan Diego seen the Virgin Mary blink when the coffee can had struck her forehead?

And when Edward Bonshaw clumsily dropped and retrieved the coffee can, hadn’t the resounding clatter drawn a fiery flash of frightful loathing from the all-seeing eyes of the menacing Virgin Mary?

Juan Diego wasn’t a Mary worshiper, but he knew better than to treat the dirtied giantess with less than the utmost respect. “Lo siento, Mother,” Juan Diego quietly said to the big Virgin Mary, pointing to his forehead. “I didn’t mean to hit you with the can. I was just trying to reach you.”

“These ashes have a foreign smell — I would like to know what else was in that can,” Father Alfonso said.

“Dump stuff, I suppose, but here comes the dump boss — we should ask him,” Father Octavio said.

Speaking of Mary worshipers, Rivera strode down the center aisle toward the towering statue; it was as if the dump boss had his own business to attend to with the Mary Monster; Pepe’s mission, to go fetch el jefe from Guerrero, may have been merely coincidental. Yet it was clear that Pepe had interrupted Rivera in the middle of something—“a small project, the fine-tuning part,” was all the dump boss would say about it.

Rivera must have left Guerrero with some sense of urgency — who knows how Pepe might have announced the scattering to him? — because the dump boss was still wearing his woodworking apron.

The apron had many pockets and was as long as an unflattering, matronly-looking skirt. One pocket was for chisels, of varying sizes; another was for different patches of sandpaper, coarse and fine; a third pocket was for the glue tube and the rag Rivera used to wipe the residue of glue from the nozzle of the tube. There was no telling what was in the other pockets — the pockets were what Rivera said he liked about his woodworking apron. The old leather apron held many secrets — or so Juan Diego, as a child, had once believed.

“I don’t know what we’re waiting for — for you, maybe,” Juan Diego said to el jefe. “I think the giantess is unlikely to do anything,” the boy added, nodding to the Mary Monster.

The temple was filling up, though there was still time before the Mass, at the moment when Brother Pepe and Rivera arrived. Juan Diego would remember, later, that Lupe paid more attention to the dump boss than she usually did; as for el jefe, he was even warier around Lupe than he usually was.

Rivera had his left hand thrust deep inside a mystery pocket of his woodworking apron; with the fingertips of his right hand, the dump boss touched the film of ash on the Communion railing.

“The ashes smell a little funny — not an overpowering smell,” Father Alfonso said to el jefe.

“There’s something sticky in these ashes — a foreign substance,” Father Octavio said.

Rivera sniffed his fingertips, then wiped them on his leather apron.

“You’ve got a lot of stuff in your pockets, jefe,” Lupe said to the dump boss, but Juan Diego didn’t translate this; the dump reader was miffed that Rivera hadn’t responded to the giantess joke — namely, Juan Diego’s prediction that the Virgin Mary was unlikely to do anything.

“You should snuff the candles, Pepe,” the dump boss said; pointing to his beloved Virgin Mary, Rivera then spoke to the two old priests. “She’s highly flammable,” el jefe said.

“Flammable!” Father Alfonso cried.

Rivera recited the same litany of the coffee can’s contents that the dump kids had heard from Dr. Vargas — a scientific, strictly chemical analysis. “Paint, turpentine — or some kind of paint thinner. Gasoline, definitely,” Rivera told the two old priests. “And probably stuff for staining wood.”

“The Holy Mother won’t be stained, will she?” Father Octavio asked the dump boss.

“You better let me clean her up,” the dump boss said. “If I could have a little time alone with her — I mean before the first morning Mass tomorrow. The best would be after the evening Mass tonight. You don’t want to mix water with some of these foreign substances, ” Rivera said, as if he were an alchemist who couldn’t be refuted — not your usual dump boss, in any case.

Brother Pepe, on tiptoe, was at work extinguishing the candles with the long gold candle snuffer; naturally, the falling ashes had already snuffed out those candles nearest to the Virgin Mary.

“Does your hand hurt, jefe — where you cut yourself?” Lupe asked Rivera. He was a hard one to read, even for a mind reader.

Juan Diego would later speculate that Lupe may have read everything on Rivera’s mind — not only el jefe’s thoughts about his cutting himself, and how much he was bleeding. Lupe might have known all about whatever “small project” Pepe had interrupted Rivera in the middle of, including what Rivera had called “the fine-tuning part”—namely, what exactly the dump boss was working on when he slashed the thumb and index finger of his left hand. But Lupe never said what she knew, or if she knew, and Rivera — like the pockets of his woodworking apron — held many secrets.

“Lupe wants to know if your hand hurts, jefe — where you cut yourself,” Juan Diego said.

“I just need a couple of stitches,” Rivera said; he kept his left hand hidden in the pocket of the leather apron.

Brother Pepe had thought Rivera shouldn’t drive; they’d taken Pepe’s VW from the shack in Guerrero. Pepe wanted to drive the dump boss to Dr. Vargas right away for the stitches, but Rivera had wanted to see the results of the scattering first.

“The results !” Father Alfonso repeated, after Pepe’s account.

“The results amount to a species of vandalism,” Father Octavio said, looking at Juan Diego and Lupe when he spoke.

“I need to see Vargas, too — let’s go,” Lupe said to her brother. The dump kids weren’t even looking at the Mary Monster; they weren’t expecting much in the area of results from her. But Rivera looked up at the Virgin Mary’s noseless face — as if, her darkened visage notwithstanding, the dump boss expected to see a sign, something bordering on instructions.