Avenue of Mysteries - Page 63

"There are two bodies, and we'll keep half the ashes for ourselves," Juan Diego said.

"We'll take the ashes to Mexico City--we'll scatter them at the Basilica de Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe, at the feet of our Virgin," Lupe said. "We're not bringing their ashes anywhere near Bad Mary without a nose!" Lupe cried.

"That girl doesn't sound like anyone else," the forensic surgeon said, but Juan Diego didn't translate Lupe's craziness about scattering the good gringo's and Esperanza's ashes at the feet of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City.

Rivera, probably because there was a young girl present, insisted that Esperanza and el gringo bueno be put in separate body bags; Juan Diego and Rivera helped the forensic surgeon do that. During this funereal moment, Lupe looked at the other cadavers, both the dissected ones and the ones waiting for dissection--the corpses that didn't matter to her, in other words. Juan Diego could hear Diablo barking and howling from the back of Rivera's truck; the dog could tell that the air around the morgue was tainted. There was a cold-meat smell in the anfiteatro de diseccion.

"How could his mother not want to see his body first? How could any mom want the dear boy's ashes instead?" Lupe was saying. She wasn't expecting an answer--after all, she believed in burning.

Esperanza may not have wanted to be cremated, but the dump kids were doing it anyway. Considering her Catholic zeal (Esperanza had loved confession), she might not have chosen a funeral pyre at the dump, but if the deceased doesn't leave prior instructions (Esperanza didn't), the disposal of the dead is for the children to decide.

"The Catholics are crazy not to believe in cremation," Lupe was babbling. "There's no better place to burn things than at the dump--the black smoke rising as far as you can see, the vultures drifting across the landscape." Lupe had closed her eyes in the amphitheater of dissection, clutching the hideous Coatlicue earth goddess to her not-yet-noticeably-emerging breasts. "You have the nose, don't you?" Lupe asked her brother, opening her eyes.

"Yes, of course I have it," Juan Diego said; his pocket bulged.

"The nose goes in the fire, too--just to be sure," Lupe said.

"Sure of what?" Juan Diego asked. "Why burn the nose?"

"Just in case the imposter Mary has any power--just to be safe," Lupe said.

"La nariz?" Rivera asked; he had a body bag slung over each big shoulder. "What nose?"

"Say nothing about Mary's nose. Rivera is too superstitious. Let him figure it out. He'll see the noseless monster Virgin the next time he goes to Mass, or to confess his sins. I keep telling him, but he doesn't listen--his mustache is a sin," Lupe babbled. She saw that Rivera was listening to her closely; la nariz had gotten el jefe's attention--he was trying to figure out what the dump kids had been saying about a nose.

" 'Get six jolly cowboys to carry my coffin,' " Lupe started singing. " 'Get six pretty maidens to bear up my pall.' " It was the right moment for the cowboy dirge--Rivera was toting two bodies to his truck. " 'Put bunches of roses all over my coffin,' " Lupe kept singing. " 'Roses to deaden the clods as they fall.' "

"The girl is a marvel," the forensic surgeon said to the dump boss. "She could be a rock star."

"How could she be a rock star?" Rivera asked him. "No one but her brother can understand her!"

"Nobody knows what rock stars are singing. Who can understand the lyrics?" the surgeon asked.

"There's a reason the idiot autopsy guy spends his whole life with dead people," Lupe was babbling. But the rock-star business made Rivera forget about the nose. El jefe carried the body bags outside to the loading platform, and then put them gently on the flatbed of his truck, where Diablo immediately sniffed the bodies.

/> "Don't let Diablo roll on the bodies," Rivera told Juan Diego; the dump kids and Rivera knew how much the dog liked rolling on dead things. Juan Diego would ride to the basurero in the flatbed of the truck with Esperanza and el gringo bueno and, of course, Diablo.

Lupe rode in the cab of the truck with Rivera.

"The Jesuits will come here, you know," the forensic surgeon was saying to the dump boss. "They come to collect their flock--they'll be here for Esperanza."

"The children are in charge of their mother--tell the Jesuits that the dump kids are Esperanza's flock," Rivera told the autopsy guy.

"That little girl could be in the circus, you know," the forensic surgeon said, pointing to Lupe in the cab.

"Doing what?" Rivera asked him.

"People would pay just to hear her talk!" the autopsy guy said. "She wouldn't even have to sing."

It would haunt Juan Diego, later, how this surgeon with his rubber gloves, tainted with death and dissection, had brought the circus into the conversation at the Oaxaca morgue.

"Drive on!" Juan Diego cried to Rivera; the boy pounded on the truck's cab, and Rivera drove away from the loading platform. It was a cloudless day with a perfect bright-blue sky. "Don't roll on them--no rolling!" Juan Diego shouted at Diablo, but the dog just sat in the flatbed, watching the live boy, not even sniffing the bodies.

Soon the wind dried the tears on Juan Diego's face, but the wind did not permit him to hear what Lupe was saying inside the truck's cab to Rivera. Juan Diego could hear only his sister's prophesying voice, not her words; she was going on and on about something. Juan Diego thought she was babbling about Dirty White. Rivera had given the runt to a family in Guerrero, but the rodent-size dog kept returning to el jefe's shack--no doubt looking for Lupe.

Now Dirty White was missing; naturally, Lupe had harangued Rivera without mercy. She said she knew where Dirty White would go--she meant where the little dog would go to die. ("The puppy place," she'd called it.)

From the flatbed of the pickup, Juan Diego could hear only bits and pieces of what the dump boss was saying. "If you say so," el jefe would interject from time to time, or: "I couldn't have said it better myself, Lupe"--all the way to Guerrero, from where Juan Diego could see the isolated plumes of smoke; there were already a few fires burning in the not-too-distant dump.

Tags: John Irving Fiction
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