Juan Diego hadn't been talking about the role of the Church; he hadn't even been thinking about it--not yet. But, of course, Juan Diego would have a role for the Church in One Chance to Leave Lithuania. Both the teacher and his former student surely knew that. "You know as well as I do, Clark, what role the Church plays in the case of unwanted children," Juan Diego replied. "In the case of what causes unwanted children to be born, in the first place--" He stopped; he saw that Clark had closed his eyes. Juan Diego closed his eyes, too.
The impasse presented by their religious differences was a familiar standoff, a depressing dead end. When, in the past, Clark had used the we word, he'd never meant "you and I"; when Clark said "we," he meant the Church--especially when Clark was trying to sound progressive or tolerant. "We shouldn't be so insistent on issues like abortion or the use of contraceptive methods, or gay marriage. The teachings of the Church"--and here Clark always hesitated--"are clear." Clark would then continue: "But it isn't necessary to talk about these issues all the time, or to sound so combative."
Oh, sure--Clark could sound progressive, when he wanted to; he wasn't the absolutist about these issues that John Paul II was!
And Juan Diego, over the years, had also been insincere; he'd pulled his punches. He'd teased Clark with that old Chesterton quote too many times: "It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it." (Clark, naturally, had laughed this off.)
Juan Diego regretted that he'd wasted dear Brother Pepe's favorite prayer in more than one of his arguments with Clark. Of course Clark was incapable of recognizing himself in that prayer from Saint Teresa of Avila, the one Pepe had faithfully repeated among his daily prayers: "From silly devotions and sour-faced saints, good Lord, deliver us."
But why was Juan Diego reliving his correspondence with Brother Pepe, as if Pepe had written only yesterday? Years ago, he'd written that Father Alfonso and Father Octavio had died in their sleep within days of each other. Pepe expressed his dismay to Juan Diego, regarding how the two old priests had "slipped away"; they'd always been so dogmatic, so punitively opinionated--how had those two dared to die without a final fuss?
And Rivera's departure from this life also pissed Pepe off. El jefe hadn't been himself since the old dump had moved in 1981; there was a new dump now. Those first ten families from the colony in Guerrero were long gone.
What really undid Rivera was the no-burning policy instituted after the creation of the new dump. How could they have put an end to the fires? What kind of dump didn't burn things?
Pepe had pressed el jefe to tell him more. The end of the hellfires in the basurero hadn't bothered Brother Pepe, but it was Juan Diego's paternity that he wanted to know more about.
That woman worker in the old basurero had told Pepe that the dump boss was "not exactly" the dump reader's father; Juan Diego himself had always believed that el jefe was "probably not" his dad.
But Lupe had said: "Rivera knows something--he's just not saying."
Rivera had told the dump kids that Juan Diego's "most likely" father had died of a broken heart.
"A heart attack, right?" Juan Diego had asked el jefe--because that's what Esperanza had told her children, and everyone else.
"If that's what you call a heart that's permanently
broken," was all Rivera had ever said to the kids.
But Brother Pepe had finally persuaded Rivera to tell him more.
Yes, the dump boss was pretty sure he was Juan Diego's biological father; Esperanza had been sleeping with no one else at the time--or so she said. But she'd later told Rivera he was too stupid to have fathered a genius like the dump reader. "Even if you are his father, he should never know it," Esperanza had said to el jefe. "If Juan Diego knows you're his father, it will undermine his self-confidence," she'd said. (This no doubt undermined what little self-confidence the dump boss ever had.)
Rivera told Pepe not to tell Juan Diego--not until the dump boss was dead. Who knew if el jefe's heart had killed him?
No one ever knew where Rivera actually lived; he died in the cab of his truck--it had always been his favorite place to sleep, and after Diablo died, Rivera missed his dog and rarely slept anywhere else.
Like Father Alfonso and Father Octavio, el jefe had also "slipped away," but not before he'd made his confession to Brother Pepe.
Rivera's death, including his confession, was a big part of Brother Pepe's correspondence that Juan Diego would relive--constantly.
How had Brother Pepe managed to live the epilogue to his own life so cheerfully? Juan Diego was wondering.
At the Encantador, no more roosters crowed in the darkness; Juan Diego slept through the night, unmindful of the karaoke music from the beach club. No woman slept (or had vanished) beside him, but he woke up one morning to discover what looked like a title--in his handwriting--on the notepad on his night table.
The Last Things, he'd written on the pad. That had been the night he'd dreamed about Pepe's last orphanage. Brother Pepe started volunteering at Hijos de la Luna ("Children of the Moon") sometime after 2001; Pepe's letters had been so positive--everything seemed to energize him, and he was then in his late seventies.
The orphanage was in Guadalupe Victoria ("Guadalupe the Victorious"). Hijos de la Luna was for children of prostitutes. Brother Pepe said the prostitutes were welcome to visit their kids. At Lost Children, Juan Diego remembered, the nuns kept the birth mothers away; this was one of the reasons that Esperanza, the dump kids' birth mother, had never been welcomed by the nuns.
At Children of the Moon, the orphans called Pepe "Papa"; Pepe said this was "not a big deal." According to Pepe, the other men who volunteered at the orphanage were also called "Papa."
"Our dear Edward wouldn't have approved of the motorcycles parked in the classroom," Brother Pepe had written, "but people steal the motorcycles if you park them on the street." (Senor Eduardo said a motorcycle was a "death-in-progress.")
Dr. Vargas would surely have disapproved of the dogs in the orphanage--Hijos de la Luna allowed dogs: the kids liked them.
There was a large trampoline in the courtyard of Children of the Moon--dogs were not allowed on the trampoline, Pepe had written--and a big pomegranate tree. The upper branches of the tree were festooned with rag dolls and other toys--things the children had thrown upward, into the receptive branches. The girls' and boys' sleeping quarters were in separate buildings, but their clothes were shared--the orphans' clothes were communal property.
"I'm not driving a VW Beetle anymore," Pepe had written. "I don't want to kill anyone. I've got a little motorcycle, and I never drive it fast enough to kill anyone I might hit."