Avenue of Mysteries

THERE IS OFTEN TOO much dialogue in disjointed dreams, and things happen violently and without warning. The doctors' offices in Cruz Roja, the Red Cross hospital in Oaxaca, were confusingly close to the emergency entrance--either a bad idea or by design, or both. A girl who'd been bitten by one of Oaxaca's rooftop dogs was brought to the orthopedic office of Dr. Vargas instead of the ER; though her hands and forearms had been mangled while she was trying to protect her face, the girl did not present any obvious orthopedic problems. Dr. Vargas was an orthopedist--though he did treat circus people (mainly child performers), dump kids, and the orphans at Lost Children, not just for orthopedics.

Vargas was irked that the dog-bite victim had been brought to him. "You're going to be fine," he kept telling the crying girl. "She should be in the ER--not with me," Vargas repeatedly said to the girl's hysterical mother. Everyone in the waiting room was upset to see the mauled girl--including Edward Bonshaw, who had only recently arrived in town.

"What is a rooftop dog?" Senor Eduardo asked Brother Pepe. "Not a breed of dog, I trust!" They were following Dr. Vargas to the examining room. Juan Diego was being wheeled on a gurney.

Lupe babbled something, which her injured brother was disinclined to translate. Lupe said some of the rooftop dogs were spirits--actual ghosts of dogs who'd been willfully tortured and killed. The ghost dogs haunted the rooftops of the city, attacking innocent people--because the dogs (in their innocence) had been attacked, and they were seeking revenge. The dogs lived on rooftops because they could fly; because they were ghost dogs, no one could harm them--not anymore.

"That's a long answer!" Edward Bonshaw confided to Juan Diego. "What did she say?"

"You're right, not a breed," was all Juan Diego told the new missionary.

"They're mostly mongrels. There are many stray dogs in Oaxaca; some are feral. They just hang out on the rooftops--no one knows how the dogs get there," Brother Pepe explained.

"They don't fly," Juan Diego added, but Lupe went on babbling. They were now in the examining room with Dr. Vargas.

"And what has happened to you?" Dr. Vargas asked the incomprehensible girl. "Just calm down and tell me slowly, so I can understand you."

"I'm the patient--she's just my sister," Juan Diego said to the young doctor. Maybe Vargas hadn't noticed the gurney.

Brother Pepe had already explained to Dr. Vargas that he'd examined these dump kids before, but Vargas saw too many patients--he had trouble keeping the kids straight. And Juan Diego's pain had quieted down; for the moment, he'd stopped screaming.

Dr. Vargas was young and handsome; an aura of intemperate nobility, which can occasionally come from success, emanated from him. He was used to being right. Vargas was easily perturbed by the incompetence of others, though the impressive young man was too quickly inclined to judge people he was meeting for the first time. Everyone knew that Dr. Vargas was the foremost orthopedic surgeon in Oaxaca; crippled children were his specialty--and who didn't care about crippled children? Yet Vargas rubbed everyone the wrong way. Children resented him because Vargas couldn't remember them; adults thought he was arrogant.

"So you're the patient," Dr. Vargas said to Juan Diego. "Tell me about yourself. Not the dump-kid part. I can smell you; I know about the basurero. I mean your foot--just tell me about that part."

"The part about my foot is a dump-kid part," Juan Diego told the doctor. "A truck in Guerrero backed over my foot, with a load of copper from the basurero--a heavy load."

Sometimes Lupe spoke in lists; this was one of those times. "One: this doctor is a sad jerk," the all-seeing girl began. "Two: he is ashamed to be alive. Three: he thinks he should have died. Four: he's going to say you need X-rays, but he's just stalling--he already knows he can't fix your foot."

"That sounds a little like Zapoteco or Mixteco, but it isn't," Dr. Vargas declared; he wasn't asking Juan Diego what his sister had said, but (like everyone else) Juan Diego was not fond of the young doctor, and he decided to tell him everything Lupe had proclaimed. "She said all that?" Vargas asked.

"She's usually right about the past," Juan Diego told him. "She doesn't do the future as accurately."

"You do need X-rays; I probably can't fix your foot, but I have to see the X-rays before I know what to tell you," Dr. Vargas said to Juan Diego. "Did you bring our Jesuit friend for divine assistance?" the doctor asked the boy, nodding to Brother Pepe. (In Oaxaca, everyone knew Pepe; almost as many people had heard of Dr. Vargas.)

"My mom is a cleaning woman for the Jesuits," Juan Diego told Vargas. The boy then nodded to Rivera. "But he's the one who looks af

ter us. El jefe--" the boy started to say, but Rivera interrupted him.

"I was driving the truck," the dump boss said guiltily.

Lupe launched into her routine about the broken side-view mirror, but Juan Diego didn't bother to translate. Besides, Lupe had already moved on; there was more detail concerning why Dr. Vargas was such a sad jerk.

"Vargas got drunk; he overslept. He missed his plane--a family trip. The stupid plane crashed. His parents were onboard--his sister, too, with her husband and their two children. All gone!" Lupe cried. "While Vargas was sleeping it off," she added.

"Such a strained voice," Vargas said to Juan Diego. "I should have a look at her throat. Maybe her vocal cords."

Juan Diego told Dr. Vargas he was sorry about the plane crash that had killed the young doctor's entire family.

"She told you that?" Vargas asked the boy.

Lupe wouldn't stop babbling: Vargas had inherited his parents' house, and all their things. His parents had been "very religious"; it had long been a source of family friction that Vargas was "not religious." Now the young doctor was "less religious," Lupe said.

"How can he be 'less religious' than he used to be when he was 'not religious' to begin with, Lupe?" Juan Diego asked his sister, but the girl just shrugged. She knew certain things; messages came to her, usually without any explanations.

"I'm just telling you what I know," Lupe was always saying. "Don't ask me what it means."

"Wait, wait, wait!" Edward Bonshaw interjected, in English. "Who was 'not religious' and has become 'less religious'? I know about this syndrome," Edward said to Juan Diego.