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Flor walked with the dump kids and the good gringo as far as the zocalo. "I owe you!" the young American called to her, after she left them. "I owe you ninos, too," the hippie boy told the dump kids. "I'm going to get you a present for this," he told them.
"How are we supposed to keep him hidden?" Lupe asked her brother. "We can sneak him into Lost Children tonight--no problem--but we can't sneak him out in the morning."
"I'm working on the story that his Bleeding Christ tattoo is a miracle," Juan Diego told her. (This was definitely an idea that would appeal to a dump reader.)
"It is a miracle, kind of," el gringo bueno started to tell them. "I got the idea for this tattoo--"
Lupe wouldn't let the lost young man tell his story, not then. "Promise me something," she said to Juan Diego.
"Another promise--"
"Just promise me!" Lupe cried. "If I end up on Zaragoza Street, kill me--just kill me. Let me hear you say it."
"Jesus Mary Joseph!" Juan Diego said; he was trying to exclaim this the way Flor had done it.
The hippie had forgotten what he was saying; he struggled with a verse of "Streets of Laredo," as if he were writing the inspired lyrics for the first time.
"Get six jolly cowboys to carry my coffin,
Get six pretty maidens to bear up my pall.
Put bunches of roses all over my coffin,
Roses to deaden the clods as they fall."
"Say it!" Lupe yelled at the dump reader.
"Okay, I'll kill you. There, I said it," Juan Diego told her.
"Whoa! Man on wheels, little sister--nobody's killin' anyone, right?" the good gringo asked them. "We're all friends, right?"
The good gringo had mescal breath, which Lupe called "worm breath" because of the dead worm in the bottom of the mescal bottle. Rivera called mescal the poor man's tequila; the dump boss said you drank mescal and tequila the same way, with a lick of salt and a little lime juice. The good gringo smelled like lime juice and beer; the night the dump kids sneaked him into Lost Children, the young American's lips were crusty with salt, and there was more salt in the V-shaped patch of beard the boy had left unshaven beneath his lower lip. The ninos let the good gringo sleep in Lupe's bed; they had to help him undress, and he was already asleep--on his back, and snoring--before Lupe and Juan Diego could get themselves ready for bed.
Through his snores, the gutteral-sounding verse of "Streets of Laredo" seemed to emanate from el gringo bueno--like his smell.
"Oh, beat the drum slowly and play the fife lowly,
Play the dead march as you carry me along;
Take me to the valley, and lay the sod o'er me,
For I'm a young cowboy and I know I've done wrong."
Lupe wet a washcloth and wiped the salty crust off the hippie boy's lips and face. She meant to cover him with his shirt; she didn't want to see his Bleeding Jesus in the middle of the night. But when Lupe smelled the gringo's shirt, she said it smelled like mescal or beer puke, or like the dead worm--she just pulled the sheet up to the young American's chin and made some effort to tuck him in.
The hippie boy was tall and thin, and his long arms--with Christ's mangled wrists and hands imprinted on them--lay at his sides, outside the bedsheet. "What if he dies in the room with us?" Lupe asked Juan Diego. "What happens to your soul if you die in someone else's room in a foreign country? How can the gringo's soul get back home?"
"Jesus," Juan Diego said.
"Leave Jesus out of it. We're the ones who are responsible for him. What do we do if the hippie boy dies?" Lupe asked.
"Burn him at the basurero. Rivera will help us," Juan Diego said. He didn't really mean it--he was just trying to get Lupe to go to bed. "The good gringo's soul will escape with the smoke."
"Okay, we have a plan," Lupe said. When she got into Juan Diego's bed, she was wearing more clothes than she usually slept in. Lupe said she wanted to be "modestly dressed" with the hippie boy in their bedroom. She wanted Juan Diego to sleep on the side of the bed nearest the gringo; Lupe didn't want the sight of the Agonizing Christ to startle her in the night. "I hope you're working on the miracle story," she said to her brother, turning her back to him in the narrow bed. "Nobody's going to believe that tattoo is a milagro."
Juan Diego would be awake half the night, rehearsing how he would present the lost American's Bleeding Christ tattoo as an overnight miracle. Just before he finally fell sleep, Juan Diego realized that Lupe was still awake, too. "I would marry this hippie boy, if he smelled better and stopped singing that cowboy song," Lupe said.
"You're thirteen," Juan Diego reminded his little sister.
