Avenue of Mysteries

"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 Ninos 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 ninos 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.

"Si, 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 ta

lked 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 Ninos Perdidos.