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"I better move the truck," the dump boss said. The kids had already noticed that the side-view mirror remained broken. Rivera claimed he would never repair it; he said he wanted to torture himself with the memory.
Like a good Catholic, Juan Diego thought, watching el jefe move the truck away from the sudden heat of the funeral pyre.
"Who's a good Catholic?" Lupe asked her brother.
"Stop reading my mind!" Juan Diego snapped at her.
"I can't help it," she told him. When Rivera was still in the truck, Lupe said: "Now's a good time to put the monster nose in the fire."
"I don't see the point of it," Juan Diego said, but he threw the Virgin Mary's broken nose into the conflagration.
"Here they come--right on time," Rivera said, joining the kids where they stood at some distance from the fire; it was very hot. They could see Brother Pepe's dusty red VW racing into the basurero.
Later, Juan Diego thought that the Jesuits tumbling out of the little VW Beetle resembled a clown act at the circus. Brother Pepe, the two outraged priests--Father Alfonso and Father Octavio--and, of course, the dumbstruck Edward Bonshaw.
The funeral pyre spoke for the dump kids, who said nothing, but Lupe decided that singing was okay. " 'Oh, beat the drum slowly and play the fife lowly,' " she sang. " 'Play the dead march as you carry me along--' "
"Esperanza wouldn't have wanted a fire--" Father Alfonso started to say, but the dump boss interrupted him.
"It was what her children wanted, Father--that's how it goes," Rivera said.
"It's what we do with what we love," Juan Diego said.
Lupe was smiling serenely; she was watching the ascending columns of smoke drifting far away, and the ever-hovering vultures.
" 'Take me to the valley, and lay the sod o'er me,' " Lupe sang. " 'For I'm a young cowboy and I know I've done wrong.' "
"These children are orphans now," Senor Eduardo was saying. "They are surely our responsibility, more than they ever were. Aren't they?"
Brother Pepe didn't immediately answer the Iowan, and the two old priests just looked at each other.
"What would Graham Greene say?" Juan Diego asked Edward Bonshaw.
"Graham Greene!" Father Alfonso exclaimed. "Don't tell me, Edward, that this boy has been reading Greene--"
"How unsuitable!" Father Octavio said.
"Greene is hardly age-appropriate--" Father Alfonso began, but Senor Eduardo wouldn't hear of it.
"Greene is a Catholic!" the Iowan cried.
"Not a good one, Edward," Father Octavio said.
"Is this what Greene means by one moment?" Juan Diego asked Senor Eduardo. "Is this the door opening to the future--Lupe's and mine?"
"This door opens to the circus," Lupe said. "That's what comes next--that's where we're going."
Juan Diego translated this, of course, before he asked Edward Bonshaw: "Is this our only moment? Is this the one door to the future? Is this what Greene meant? Is this how childhood ends?" The Iowan was thinking hard--as hard as he ever had, and Edward Bonshaw was a deeply thoughtful man.
"Yes, you're right! That's exactly right!" Lupe suddenly said to the Iowan; the little girl touched Senor Eduardo's hand.
"She says you're right--whatever you're thinking," Juan Diego said to Edward Bonshaw, who kept staring into the raging flames.
"He's thinking that the poor draft dodger's ashes will be returned to his homeland, and to his grieving mother, with the ashes of a prostitute," Lupe said. Juan Diego translated this, too.
Suddenly there was a harsh spitting sound from the funeral pyre, and a thin blue flame shot up among the vivid oranges and yellows, as if something chemical had caught fire, or perhaps a puddle of gasoline had ignited.
"Maybe it's the puppy--it was so wet," Rivera said, as they all stared at the intense blue flame.
