Avenue of Mysteries (9 page)

Edward Bonshaw was suspicious of most miracles; however, he was preternaturally interested in the miraculous. Yet Edward had not once questioned his Catholicism—nor even his great-grandfather’s unexplained conversion. Naturally, all the Bonshaws had learned to play mah-jongg.

“It seems there is often a contradiction that can’t be, or simply isn’t, explained in the lives of the most ardent believers,” Juan Diego had written in his India novel,
A Story Set in Motion by the Virgin Mary.
Though that novel was about a fictional missionary, perhaps Juan Diego had specific qualities of Edward Bonshaw in mind.

“Edward?” Brother Pepe asked again—only slightly less tentatively than before.
“Eduardo?”
Pepe then tried. (Pepe lacked confidence in his English; he wondered if he’d mispronounced “Edward” in some way.)

“Aha!”
young Edward Bonshaw cried; for no apparent reason, the scholastic then resorted to Latin. “Haud ullis labentia ventis!” he proclaimed to Pepe.

Brother Pepe’s Latin was beginner-level. Pepe thought he’d heard the word for
wind,
or possibly the plural; he assumed that Edward Bonshaw was showing off his superior education, which included his mastery of Latin, and that he was probably
not
making a joke about the chicken feathers blowing in the wind. In fact, young Bonshaw was reciting his family crest—a
Scottish
thing. The Bonshaws had an identifying plaid—a
tartan
thing. The Latin words on this family crest were what Edward recited to himself when he felt nervous or insecure.

Haud ullis labentia ventis meant “Yielding under no winds.”

My dear Lord, what have we here? Brother Pepe marveled; poor Pepe believed the content of the Latin was religious. Pepe had met those Jesuits who too fanatically patterned their behavior on the life of Saint Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order—the Society of Jesus. It was in Rome where Saint Ignatius had announced that he would sacrifice his life if he could prevent the sins of a single prostitute on a single
night. Brother Pepe had lived in Mexico City and Oaxaca all his life; Pepe knew just how crazy Saint Ignatius Loyola must have been to
ever
propose such a thing as sacrificing his life to prevent the sins of a single prostitute on a single night.

Even a pilgrimage can be a fool’s errand when undertaken by a fool, Brother Pepe reminded himself as he stepped forward on the feather-strewn tarmac to greet the young American missionary.

“Edward—Edward Bonshaw,” Pepe said to the scholastic.

“I liked the
Eduardo.
It’s new—I
love
it!” Edward Bonshaw said, startling Brother Pepe with a fierce embrace. Pepe was awfully pleased to be hugged; he liked how expressive the eager American was. And Edward (or Eduardo) immediately launched into an explanation of his Latin proclamation. Pepe was surprised to learn that “Yielding under no winds” was a Scottish dictum, not a religious one—not unless it was of
Protestant
origin, Brother Pepe speculated.

The young midwesterner was definitely a positive person and an outgoing personality—a joyful presence, Brother Pepe decided. But what will the
others
think of him? Pepe was wondering to himself. In Pepe’s opinion, the
others
were a joyless lot. He was thinking of Father Alfonso and Father Octavio, but also, perhaps especially, of Sister Gloria. Oh, how they will be unnerved by the
hugs
—not to mention the parrots-in-palm-trees theme of the hysterical Hawaiian shirt! Brother Pepe thought; he was happy about it.

Then Eduardo—as the Iowan preferred—wanted Pepe to see how his bags had been abused when he had passed through customs in Mexico City.

“Look what a mess they made of my things!” the excited American cried; he was opening his suitcases so that Pepe could see. It didn’t matter to the passionate new teacher that the passersby at the Oaxaca airport could see his strewn belongings.

In Mexico City, the examining customs officer must have torn through the colorfully dressed missionary’s bags with a vengeance—finding more of the same unsuitable and oversize clothes, Pepe observed.

“So understated—must be the new papal issue!” Brother Pepe had said to young Bonshaw, indicating (in a small, disheveled suitcase) more Hawaiian shirts.

“It’s all the rage in Iowa City,” Edward Bonshaw said; maybe this was a joke.

“A possible monkey wrench in the ointment for Father Alfonso,”
Pepe cautioned the scholastic. That didn’t sound right; he’d meant a possible
fly
in the ointment, of course—or perhaps he
should
have said, “Those shirts will look like monkey business to Father Alfonso.” Yet Edward Bonshaw had understood him.

“Father Alfonso is a little
conservative,
is he?” the young American asked.

“An underdescription,” Brother Pepe said.

“An understatement,” Edward Bonshaw corrected him.

“My English has rusted a small size,” Pepe admitted.

“I’ll spare you my Spanish, for the moment,” Edward said.

Pepe was shown how the customs officer had found the first whip, then the second. “Instruments of torture?” the officer had asked young Bonshaw—first in Spanish, then in English.

“Instruments of
devotion,
” Edward (or Eduardo) had answered. Brother Pepe was thinking, Oh, my merciful Lord—we have a poor soul who
flagellates
himself when what we wanted was an
English
teacher!

The second suitcase in upheaval was full of books. “More instruments of torture,” the customs officer had continued, in Spanish and English.

“Of
further
devotion,” Edward Bonshaw had corrected the officer. (At least the flagellant
reads,
Pepe was thinking.)

“The sisters at the orphanage—among them, a few of your fellow teachers—were quite taken with your photograph,” Brother Pepe told the scholastic, who was struggling to repack his violated bags.

“
Aha!
But I’ve lost a lot of weight since then,” the young missionary said.

“Apparently—you’ve not been ill, I hope,” Pepe ventured.

“Denial, denial—denial is
good,
” Edward Bonshaw explained. “I stopped smoking, I stopped drinking—I think the zero-alcohol factor has curtailed my appetite. I’m just not as
hungry
as I used to be,” the zealot said.

“Aha!”
Brother Pepe said. (Now he has me saying it! Pepe marveled to himself.) He’d never had any alcohol—not a drop. The “zero-alcohol factor” had not once
curtailed
Brother Pepe’s appetite.

“Clothes, whips, reading material,” the customs officer had summarized, in Spanish and English, to the young American.

“Just the bare essentials!” Edward Bonshaw had declared.

Merciful Lord, spare his soul! Pepe was thinking, as if the scholastic’s remaining days on this mortal earth were already numbered.

The customs officer in Mexico City had also questioned the American’s visa, which had a temporary delimitation.

“You’re intending to stay for
how
long?” the officer had asked.

“If everything goes well, three years,” the young Iowan had replied.

The prospects of the pioneer before him struck Brother Pepe as poor. Edward Bonshaw seemed an unlikely survivor of a mere six months of the missionary life. The Iowan would need more clothes—ones that fit him. He would run out of books to read, and the two whips wouldn’t suffice—not for the number of times the doomed zealot would feel inclined to flagellate himself.

“Brother Pepe, you drive a VW Beetle!” Edward Bonshaw exclaimed, as the two Jesuits made their way to the dusty red car in the parking lot.

“Just Pepe, please—the
Brother
part is not necessary,” Pepe said. He was wondering if all Americans made exclamations about the obvious, but he quite liked the young scholastic’s enthusiasm for everything.

Who else would those smart Jesuits have chosen to run their school, if not a man like Pepe, who both embodied and admired
enthusiasm
? Who else would the Jesuits have put in charge of Niños Perdidos? You don’t add an orphanage to a successful school, and call it “Lost Children,” without a good-hearted worrier like Brother Pepe to oversee everything.

But worriers, including the good-hearted ones, can be distracted drivers. Perhaps Pepe was thinking about the dump reader; maybe Pepe was imagining that he was bringing more books to Guerrero. For whatever reason, Pepe turned the wrong way when he left the airport—instead of turning toward Oaxaca, and back to town, he headed to the basurero. By the time Brother Pepe realized his mistake, he was already in Guerrero.

Pepe wasn’t all that familiar with the area. In looking for a safe place to turn around, he chose the dirt road to the dump. It was a wide road, and only those smelly trucks—moving slowly to or from the basurero—usually traveled there.

Naturally, once Pepe had stopped the little VW and managed to turn it around, the two Jesuits were enveloped in the black plumes of smoke from the dump; the mountains of smoldering garbage and trash towered above the road. Scavenging children could be seen; they scrambled up and down the reeking mounds. A driver had to be wary of the scavengers—both the ragamuffin children and the dump dogs. The smell, borne by the smoke, made the young American missionary gag.

“What is this place? A vision of Hades, with a matching odor! What
terrible rite of passage do these poor children undertake here?” the dramatic young Bonshaw asked.

How will we endure this lovable lunatic? Brother Pepe asked himself; that the zealot was well-meaning would not impress Oaxaca. But all Pepe said was: “It’s just the city dump. The smell comes from burning the dead dogs, among other things. Our mission has reached out to two children here—dos pepenadores, two scavengers.”

“Scavengers!” Edward Bonshaw cried.

“Los niños de la basura,” Pepe said softly, hoping to create some separation between the scavenging children and the scavenging dogs.

Just then, a begrimed boy of indeterminable age—definitely a dump kid; you could tell by his too-big boots—thrust a small, shivering dog in the passenger-side window of Brother Pepe’s VW Beetle.

“No, thank you,” Edward Bonshaw politely said—more to the foul-smelling little dog than to the dump kid, who bluntly stated that the starving creature was free. (Dump kids weren’t beggars.)

“You shouldn’t touch that dog!” Pepe shouted at the dump kid in Spanish. “You could be bitten!” Pepe told the urchin.

“I know about rabies!” the dirty kid cried; he withdrew the cringing dog from the window. “I know about the shots!” the little scavenger yelled at Brother Pepe.

“What a beautiful language!” Edward Bonshaw remarked.

Dearest Lord—the scholastic doesn’t understand Spanish at all! Pepe surmised. A film of ash had coated the windshield of the VW Beetle, and Pepe discovered that the wipers only served to smear the ashes—further obscuring his view of the road out of the basurero. It was because he had to get out of his car to clean the windshield with an old cloth that Brother Pepe told the new missionary about Juan Diego, the dump reader; perhaps Pepe should have said a little more about the boy’s younger sister—specifically, Lupe’s apparent mind-reading ability
and
the girl’s unintelligible speech. But, given the optimist and the enthusiast that he was, Brother Pepe tended to focus his attention on the positive and the uncomplicated.

The girl, Lupe, was somewhat disturbing, whereas the
boy
—well, Juan Diego was simply wonderful. There was nothing contradictory about a fourteen-year-old, born and raised in the basurero, who’d taught himself to read in two languages!

“Thank you, Jesus,” Edward Bonshaw said, when the two Jesuits were under way again—headed in the right direction, back to Oaxaca.

Thanks for
what
? Pepe was wondering, when the young American continued his oh-so-earnest prayer. “Thank you for my total immersion in where I am most needed,” the scholastic said.

“It’s just the city dump,” Brother Pepe said, again. “Dump kids are pretty well looked after. Trust me, Edward—you are not needed in the basurero.”

“Eduardo,” the young American corrected him.

“Sí, Eduardo,” was all Pepe managed to say. For years, he’d stood alone against Father Alfonso and Father Octavio; those priests were older and more theologically informed than Brother Pepe. Father Alfonso and Father Octavio could make Pepe feel as if he were a betrayer of the Catholic faith—as if he were a raving secular humanist, or worse. (Could there be anyone worse, from a Jesuitical perspective?) Father Alfonso and Father Octavio knew their Catholic dogma by rote; while the two priests talked circles around Brother Pepe, and they made Pepe feel inadequate in his belief, they were irreparably doctrinaire.

In Edward Bonshaw, perhaps Pepe had found a worthy opponent for those two old Jesuit priests—a crazy but daring combatant, one who might challenge the very nature of the mission at Niños Perdidos.

Had the young scholastic actually thanked the dear Lord for what he called his “total immersion” in the need to save two dump kids? Did the American really believe the dump kids were candidates for salvation?

“I’m sorry for not properly welcoming you, Señor Eduardo,” Brother Pepe now said. “Lo siento—bienvenido,” Pepe added admiringly.

“¡Gracias!” the zealot cried. Through the ash-bleared windshield, they could both discern a small obstacle in the rotary ahead; the traffic was veering away from something. “Road kill?” Edward Bonshaw asked.

A quarrelsome contingent of dogs and crows competed over the unseen dead; as the red VW Beetle came closer, Brother Pepe blew his horn. The crows took flight; the dogs scattered. All that remained in the road was a smear of blood. The road kill, if that’s what had spilled the blood, was gone.

“The dogs and the crows ate it,” Edward Bonshaw said. More exclamations about the obvious, Brother Pepe was thinking, but that was when Juan Diego spoke—instantly waking himself from his long sleep, his dream, which wasn’t strictly a dream. (It was more like dreams manipulated by memories, or the other way around; it was what he’d been missing since the beta-blockers had stolen his childhood and his all-important early adolescence.)