John Irving - Avenue of Mysteries

“How?” Juan Diego asked the girl. It hurt his foot to turn his head to look at the less noticed of the two virgins.

“Like she’s still making up her mind about you,” Lupe said. “Guadalupe hasn’t decided about you,” the clairvoyant child told him.

“Get me out of here,” Juan Diego said to Brother Pepe. “Señor Eduardo, you have to help me,” the injured boy added, grasping the new missionary’s hand. “Rivera can carry me,” Juan Diego continued. “You just have to rescue Rivera first.”

“Esperanza, please, ” Brother Pepe said to the cleaning woman; he had reached out and caught her slender wrists. “We have to take Juan Diego to Dr. Vargas — we need Rivera, and his truck.”

“His truck !” the histrionic mother cried.

“You should pray,” Edward Bonshaw said to Esperanza; inexplicably, he knew how to say this in Spanish — he said it perfectly.

“Pray?” Esperanza asked him. “Who is he?” she suddenly asked Pepe, who was staring at his bleeding thumb; one of Esperanza’s bracelets had cut him.

“Our new teacher — the one we’ve all been waiting for,” Brother Pepe said, as if suddenly inspired. “Señor Eduardo is from Iowa, ” Pepe intoned. He made Iowa sound as if it were Rome.

“Iowa,” Esperanza repeated, in her enthralled way — her chest heaving. “Señor Eduardo,” she repeated, bowing to the Iowan with an awkward but cleavage-revealing curtsy. “Pray where ? Pray here ? Pray now ?” she asked the new missionary in the riotous, parrot-covered shirt.

“Sí,” Señor Eduardo told her; he was trying to look everywhere except at her breasts.

You have to hand it to this guy; he’s got a way about him, Brother Pepe was thinking.

Rivera had already lifted Juan Diego from the altar where the Virgin Mary imposingly stood. The boy had cried out in pain, albeit briefly — just enough to quiet the murmuring crowd.

“Look at him,” Lupe was telling her brother.

“Look at—” Juan Diego started to ask her.

“At him, at the gringo — the parrot man!” Lupe said. “ He’s the miracle man. Don’t you see? It’s him . He came for us — for you, anyway,” Lupe said.

“What do you mean: ‘He came for us’—what’s that supposed to mean?” Juan Diego asked his sister.

“For you, anyway,” Lupe said again, turning away; she was almost indifferent, as if she’d lost interest in what she was saying or she no longer believed in herself. “Now that I think of it, I guess the gringo isn’t my miracle — just yours,” the girl said, disheartened.

“The parrot man!” Juan Diego repeated, laughing; yet, as Rivera carried him, the boy could see that Lupe wasn’t smiling. Serious as ever, she appeared to be scanning the crowd, as if looking for who her miracle might be, and not finding him.

“You Catholics,” Juan Diego said, wincing as Rivera shouldered his way through the congested entranceway to the Jesuit temple; it was unclear to Brother Pepe and Edward Bonshaw if the boy had spoken to them. “You Catholics” could have meant the gawking crowd, including the shrill but unsuccessful praying of the dump kids’ mother — Esperanza always prayed out loud, like Lupe, and in Lupe’s language. And now, also like Lupe, Esperanza had stopped beseeching the Virgin Mary; it was the smaller, dark-skinned virgin who received the pretty cleaning woman’s earnest attention.

“Oh, you who were once disbelieved — you who were doubted, you who were asked to prove who you were,” Esperanza was praying to the child-size portrait of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

“You Catholics,” Juan Diego began again. Diablo saw the dump kids coming and began to wag his tail, but this time the injured boy had clutched a handful of parrots on the new missionary’s overlarge Hawaiian shirt. “You Catholics stole our virgin,” Juan Diego said to Edward Bonshaw. “Guadalupe was ours, and you took her — you used her, you made her merely an acolyte to your Virgin Mary.”

“An acolyte !” the Iowan repeated. “This boy speaks English remarkably well!” Edward said to Brother Pepe.

“Sí, remarkably, ” Pepe answered.

“But perhaps the pain has made him delirious,” the new missionary suggested. Brother Pepe didn’t think Juan Diego’s pain had anything to do with it; Pepe had heard the boy’s Guadalupe rant before.

“For a dump kid, he is milagroso, ” was how Brother Pepe put it— miraculous. “He reads better than our students, and remember — he’s self-taught.”

“Yes, I know — that’s amazing. Self-taught! ” Señor Eduardo cried.

“And God knows how and where he learned his English — not only in the basurero,” Pepe said. “The boy’s been hanging out with hippies and draft dodgers — an enterprising boy!”

“But everything ends up in the basurero,” Juan Diego managed to say, between waves of pain. “Even books in English.” He’d stopped looking for those two women mourners; Juan Diego thought his pain meant he wouldn’t see them, because he wasn’t dying.

“I’m not riding with caterpillar lip,” Lupe was saying. “I want to ride with the parrot man.”

“We want to ride in the pickup part, with Diablo,” Juan Diego told Rivera.

“Sí,” the dump boss said, sighing; he knew when he’d been rejected.

“Is the dog friendly?” Señor Eduardo asked Brother Pepe.

“I’ll follow you, in the VW,” Pepe replied. “If you are torn to pieces, I can be a witness — make recommendations to the higher-ups, on behalf of your eventual sainthood.”

“I was being serious,” said Edward Bonshaw.

“So was I, Edward — sorry, Eduardo —so was I,” Pepe replied.

Just as Rivera had settled the injured boy in Lupe’s lap, in the bed of the pickup, the two old priests arrived on the scene. Edward Bonshaw had braced himself against the truck’s spare tire — the children between him and Diablo, who viewed the new missionary with suspicion, a perpetual tear oozing from the dog’s lidless left eye.

“What is happening here, Pepe?” Father Octavio asked. “Did someone faint or have a heart attack?”

“It’s those dump kids,” Father Alfonso said, frowning. “One could smell that garbage truck from the Hereafter.”

“What is Esperanza praying for now ?” Father Octavio asked Pepe, because the cleaning woman’s keening voice could be heard from the Hereafter, too — or at least from as far away as the sidewalk in front of the Jesuit temple.

“Juan Diego was run over by Rivera’s truck,” Brother Pepe began. “The boy was brought here for a miracle, but our two virgins failed to deliver.”

“They’re on their way to Dr. Vargas, I presume,” Father Alfonso said, “but why is there a gringo with them?” The two priests were wrinkling their unusually sensitive and frequently condemning noses — not only at the garbage truck, but at the gringo with the Polynesian parrots on his tasteless tent of a shirt.

“Don’t tell me Rivera ran over a tourist, too,” Father Octavio said.

“That’s the man we’ve all been waiting for,” Brother Pepe told the priests, with an impish smile. “That is Edward Bonshaw, from Iowa — our new teacher.” It was on the tip of Pepe’s tongue to tell them that Señor Eduardo was un milagrero — a miracle monger — but Pepe restrained himself as best he could. Brother Pepe wanted Father Octavio and Father Alfonso to discover Edward Bonshaw for themselves. The way Pepe put it was calculated to provoke these two oh-so-conservative priests, but he was careful to mention the miracle subject in only the most offhand manner. “Señor Eduardo es bastante milagroso,” was how Pepe put it. “Señor Eduardo is somewhat miraculous.”