Avenue of Mysteries

"It's a nice dump!" Lupe insisted. "Tell Vargas we love the dump, Juan Diego. Between Vargas and the parrot man, we'll end up living in Lost Children!" Lupe screamed, but Juan Diego translated nothing; he was silent.

"Let's do the X-rays," the boy said. He just wanted to know about his foot.

"Vargas is thinking there's no point in operating on your foot," Lupe told him. "Vargas believes that, if the blood supply is compromised, he'll have to amputate! He thinks you can't live in Guerrero with only one foot, or with a limp! In all likelihood, Vargas believes, your foot will heal by itself in a right-angle position--permanently. You'll walk again, but not for a couple of months. You'll never walk without a limp--that's what he's thinking. Vargas is wondering why the parrot man is here and not our mother. Tell him I know his thoughts!" Lupe screamed at her brother.

Juan Diego began: "I'll tell you what she says you're thinking." He told Vargas what Lupe had said, pausing dramatically to explain everything in English to Edward Bonshaw.

Vargas spoke to Brother Pepe as if the two men were alone: "Your dump kid is bilingual and his sister is a mind reader. They could do better for themselves in the circus, Pepe. They don't have to live in Guerrero and work in the basurero."

"Circus?" Edward Bonshaw said. "Did he say circus, Pepe? They're children! They're not animals! Surely Lost Children will care for them? A crippled boy! A girl who can't speak!"

"Lupe speaks a lot! She says too much," Juan Diego said.

"They're not animals!" Senor Eduardo repeated; perhaps it was the animals word (even in English) that made Lupe look more closely at the parrot man.

Uh-oh, Brother Pepe was thinking. God help us if the crazy girl reads his mind!

"The circus takes care of its kids, usually," Dr. Vargas said in English to the Iowan, giving a passing look at the guilt-stricken Rivera. "These kids could be a sideshow--"

"A sideshow!" Senor Eduardo cried, wringing his hands; maybe the way he was wringing his hands gave Lupe a vision of Edward Bonshaw as a seven-year-old boy. The girl began to cry.

"Oh, no!" Lupe blubbered; she covered her eyes with both hands.

"More mind reading?" Vargas asked, with seeming indifference.

"Is the girl really a mind reader, Pepe?" Edward asked.

Oh, I hope not now, Pepe was thinking, but all he said was: "The boy has taught himself to read in two languages. We can help the boy--think about him, Edward. We can't help the girl," Pepe added softly in English, though Lupe wouldn't have heard him if he'd said it en espanol. The girl was screaming again.

"Oh, no! They shot his dog! His father and his uncle--they killed the parrot man's poor dog!" Lupe wailed in her husky falsetto. Juan Diego knew how much his sister loved dogs; she either couldn't or wouldn't say more--she was sobbing inconsolably.

"What is it now?" the Iowan

asked Juan Diego.

"You had a dog?" the boy asked Senor Eduardo.

Edward Bonshaw fell to his knees. "Merciful Mary, Mother of Christ--thank you for bringing me where I belong!" the new missionary cried.

"I guess he did have a dog," Dr. Vargas said in Spanish to Juan Diego.

"The dog died--someone shot it," the boy told Vargas, as quietly as possible. The way Lupe was weeping, and with the Iowan's exclamatory praise of the Virgin Mary, it's unlikely that anyone heard this brief doctor-patient exchange--or what followed between them.

"Do you know someone in the circus?" Juan Diego asked Dr. Vargas.

"I know the person you should know, when the time comes," Vargas told the boy. "We'll need to get your mother involved--" Here Vargas saw Juan Diego instinctively shut his eyes. "Or Pepe, perhaps--we'll need Pepe's approval, in lieu of your mom's being sympathetic to the idea."

"El hombre papagayo--" Juan Diego started to say.

"I'm not the best choice for a constructive conversation with the parrot man," Dr. Vargas interrupted his patient.

"His dog! They shot his dog! Poor Beatrice!" Lupe was blubbering.

Notwithstanding the strained and unintelligible way Lupe spoke, Edward Bonshaw could make out the Beatrice word.

"Clairvoyance is a gift from God, Pepe," Edward said to his colleague. "Is the girl truly prescient? You said that word."

"Forget about the girl, Senor Eduardo," Brother Pepe quietly said--again, in English. "Think about the boy--we can save him, or help him to save himself. The boy is salvageable."