Page 64 of Avenue of Mysteries


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Overhearing, inexactly, Lupe's not-a-conversation with Rivera reminded Juan Diego of studying literature with Edward Bonshaw in one of the soundproof reading rooms in the library of Ninos Perdidos. What Senor Eduardo meant by studying literature was a reading-aloud process: the Iowan would begin by reading what he called a "grown-up novel" to Juan Diego; in this way, they could determine together whether or not the book was age-appropriate for the boy. Naturally, there would be differences of opinion between them regarding the aforementioned appropriateness or lack thereof.

"What if I'm really liking it? What if I know that, if I were allowed to read this book, I would never stop reading it?" Juan Diego asked.

"That's not the same as whether or not the book is suitable," Edward Bonshaw would answer the fourteen-year-old. Or Senor Eduardo would pause in his reading aloud, tipping off Juan Diego that the missionary was attempting to skip over some sexual content.

"You're censoring a sex scene," the boy would say.

"I'm not sure this is appropriate," the Iowan would reply.

The two of them had settled on Graham Greene; matters of faith and doubt were clearly at the forefront of Edward Bonshaw's mind, if not the sole motivation for his whipping himself, and Juan Diego liked Greene's sexual subjects, though the author tended to render the sex offstage or in an understated manner.

The way the studying worked was that Edward Bonshaw would begin a Greene novel by reading it aloud to Juan Diego; then Juan Diego would read the rest of the novel to himself; last, the grown man and the boy would discuss the story. In the discussion part, Senor Eduardo was very keen about citing specific passages and asking Juan Diego what Graham Greene had meant.

One sentence in The Power and the Glory had prompted a lengthy and ongoing discussion regarding its meaning. The student and the teacher had contrasting ideas about the sentence, which was: "There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in."

"What do you make of that, Juan Diego?" Edward Bonshaw had asked the boy. "Is Greene saying that our future begins in childhood, and we should pay attention to--"

"Well, of course the future begins in childhood--where else would it begin?" Juan Diego asked the Iowan. "But I think it's bullshit to say there is one moment when the door to the future opens. Why can't there be many moments? And is Greene saying there's only one door? He says the door, like there's only one."

"Graham Greene isn't bullshit, Juan Diego!" Senor Eduardo had cried; the zealot was clutching something small in one hand.

"I know about your mah-jongg tile--you don't have to show it to me again," Juan Diego told the scholastic. "I know, I know--you fell, the little piece of ivory and bamboo cut your face. You bled, Beatrice licked you--that's how your dog died, shot and killed. I know, I know! But did that one moment make you want to be a priest? Did the door to no sex for the rest of your life open only because Beatrice got shot? There must have been other moments in your childhood; you could have opened other doors. You still could open a different door, right? That mah-jongg tile didn't have to be your childhood and your future!"

Resignation: that was what Juan Diego had seen on Edward Bonshaw's face. The missionary seemed resigned to his fate: celibacy, self-flagellation, the priesthood--all this was caused by a fall with a mah-jongg tile in his little hand? A life of beating himself and sexual denial because his beloved dog was cruelly shot and killed?

It was also resignation that Juan Diego saw on Rivera's face now, as el jefe backed up the truck to the shack they had shared as a family in Guerrero. Juan Diego knew what it was like to have a not-a-conversation with Lupe--just to listen to her, whether you understood her or not.

Lupe always knew more than you did; Lupe, though incomprehensible much of the time, knew stuff no one else knew. Lupe was a child, but she argued like a grown-up. She said things even she didn't understand; she said the words "just came" to her, often before she had any awareness of their meaning.

Burn el gringo bueno with Mother; burn the Virgin Mary's nose with them. Just do it. Scatter their ashes in Mexico City. Just do it.

And there had been the zealous Edward Bonshaw spouting Graham Greene (another Catholic, clearly tortured by faith and doubt), claiming there was only one moment when the door--a single fucking door!--opened and let the fucking future in.

"Jesus Christ," Juan Diego was muttering when he climbed out of the flatbed of Rivera's truck. (Neither Lupe nor the dump boss thought the boy was praying.)

"Just a minute," Lupe told them. She walked purposefully away from them, disappearing behind the shack the dump kids had once called home. She has to take a leak, Juan Diego was thinking.

"No, I don't have to take a leak!" Lupe called. "I'm looking for Dirty White!"

"Is she peeing, or do you need more water pistols?" Rivera asked. Juan Diego shrugged. "We should start burning the bodies--before the Jesuits get to the basurero," el jefe said.

Lupe came back carrying a dead dog--it was a puppy, and Lupe was crying. "I always find them in the same place, or nearly the same place," she was blubbering. The dead puppy was Dirty White.

"We're going to burn Dirty White with your mother and the hippie?" Rivera asked.

"If you burned me, I would want to be burned with a puppy!" Lupe cried. Juan Diego thought this was worth translating, and he did. Rivera paid no attention to the dead puppy; el jefe had hated Dirty White. The dump boss was doubtless relieved that the disagreeable runt wasn't rabid, and hadn't bitten Lupe.

"I'm sorry the dog adoption didn't work," Rivera said to Lupe when the little girl had reseated herself in the cab of el jefe's truck, the dead puppy lying stiffly in her lap.

/> When Juan Diego was once more with Diablo and the body bags in the flatbed of the pickup, Rivera drove to the basurero; once there, he backed up the truck to the fire that burned brightest among the smoldering piles.

Rivera was rushing a little when he took the two body bags out of the flatbed and doused them with gasoline.

"Dirty White looks soaking wet," Juan Diego said to Lupe.

"He is," she said, laying the puppy on the ground beside the body bags. Rivera respectfully poured some gasoline on the dead dog.

The dump kids turned away from the fire when el jefe threw the body bags on the coals, into the low flames; suddenly the flames shot higher. When the fire was a towering conflagration, but Lupe's back was still turned to the blaze, Rivera tossed the little puppy into the inferno.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com
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