by Mark Wheaton
“Will you pray with me before we go?” Luis asked Sebastian.
“Of course.”
Father and son prayed together before Luis went through his own evening prayers, utilizing a breviary he’d borrowed off Father Arturo. In the absence of God’s voice, the rigor of the Divine Office made him feel closer to his brother priests around the world and back through history in a way that was similar to being alongside God. It wasn’t the same, but he felt a part of a whole regardless.
Sebastian had brought Luis some clothes he’d picked out for him at a small mercantile across the street from the hospital. They consisted of a pair of black jeans, a western shirt, cowboy boots, and one of Father Arturo’s Roman collars. It was as unusual a getup as Luis had ever worn, made even more unusual by the fact that he’d lost two whole pants sizes over the course of his weeks in bed. He’d never been overweight per se, but now he looked downright sickly.
Seeing what Luis was reacting to in the mirror, Sebastian shrugged. “You’ll look better once you’ve got some real food in you,” he said.
What made Luis happiest was having the collar. He’d reached for it so many times over the past few days, only to find it absent, like a phantom limb. He needed it, another piece that made him whole, and he was glad Father Arturo had one that could be made to fit.
When he was ready, his father brought the rickety wheelchair and helped him into it. The hospital was already fairly busy, something Luis knew was common on any Friday payday. When they passed Vera at the downstairs nurses’ station, Sebastian grinned at her and nodded to the door.
“Coming to the party?”
Vera rolled her eyes and got back to work.
Once they were off hospital grounds, Luis was amazed to see how many people filled the streets. Father Arturo had been right. The town emptied out by day, sending its workers far afield. But now everyone was home, and the tiny restaurants, bars, and clubs were alive with lights and color. The roads themselves were filled, too, as young men in the flatbeds of slow-moving trucks called out to friends and whistled at girls as they cruised the blocks.
When they reached one club that Luis had thought earlier was boarded up and closed, there was now a line of middle-aged men outside.
“It’s a disco,” Sebastian explained. “You go in and you buy tickets to dance with girls.” As if suddenly realizing he was speaking to a priest, he quickly added, “It’s all quite innocent, though. Nothing sensual.”
Given the number of men lined up outside, Luis doubted this but didn’t comment. They passed another club, where someone Luis initially thought was an Elvis impersonator was singing. When he realized the song was by the Smiths but done in a Cumbia style, he saw that the crooner was emulating the English singer Morrissey.
“Have you heard of Morrissey?” Sebastian asked, nodding to the singer. “I heard someone say he was from Chile. Very popular here.”
“From England I think,” Luis replied.
“I knew you’d know him!” Sebastian declared. “I looked for his tapes but couldn’t find any.”
Luis tried to imagine his father listening to the Smiths or popular music in general and couldn’t. It was at moments like this that he was glad to have left the secular world behind.
Luis noticed that there were no streetlights, the town lit only by the glow from the surrounding homes and businesses. It cast everything in a strange blue, orange, and green light when not in shadow. This might have been intimidating to a man who couldn’t run from danger if the constantly changing food smells weren’t so inviting. Luis felt like a Pavlovian dog, a new scent appearing to make him salivate every few yards or so. The locals didn’t differentiate, either. There were as many people seated for food at the storefront restaurants as there were for people cooking on small grills right on the sidewalk.
What was also interesting to Luis was a sort of absence of social hierarchy. People wore their nicest clothes, but there were no showy standouts, folks who looked as if they had more money than anyone else. The neighborhood and the town itself would have appeared impoverished to the foreign eye, but the people would not. It reminded Luis of his neighborhood growing up.
When they reached San Elias Nieves, a number of people were already milling around outside, taking pulls off bottles of beer or smoking cigarettes. Boys flirted with girls without saying a word, and the girls flirted right back. It was so pastoral Luis thought he’d stepped into a Norman Rockwell version of a telenovela.
It suddenly occurred to Luis that there was one thing he hadn’t seen in the town.
“You know, I haven’t seen a single cop since I’ve been here,” Luis said.
“Oh, they’re around,” Sebastian said. “They don’t leave the barracks without a reason. When they do, it’s a long line of trucks, men in masks in the back, guns out like it’s a parade. You’ve never seen such a noise. Of course, it’s after the fact—picking up a dead body, towing a burned-out truck. They don’t have the power here.”
“When I was under, I heard gunfire.”
“Everyone around here has a gun. Sometimes it’s to scare the dogs away,” Sebastian said, nodding to one of the mutts on a nearby roof, barking at the passing pair. “When it’s trouble, you know it. The bullets sound less certain. Do you know what I mean?”
Luis did.
The crowd parted as Sebastian pushed Luis down the alley to the back of San Elias Nieves. Father Arturo, a plate of food in his hand, smiled as they approached.
“You made it!” he enthused, then waved a hand to the crowd. “Everyone, if you haven’t met him, this is Father Luis Chavez, visiting us from Los Angeles, and his father, Sebastian Chavez, the architect of our success!”
A cheer went up. Bottles of beer appeared almost magically in their hands. As one the crowd descended on Sebastian. Parents introduced their children who would be attending the school. Others came to shake his hand and compliment his carpentry work. Luis watched his father beam through all the attention, but he was never less than humble or gracious.
Over his lifetime Luis had felt many things about his father. He now added a new one to the list: pride.
“Come! Eat!” Father Arturo told Luis, shooing him out of the wheelchair. “Put that somewhere else tonight. If you need an arm to lean on, I’m here for you. But it’s time to get up.”
Luis knew the priest was right and stood. He steadied himself, found the right angle to keep his knees from buckling, and saluted Father Arturo with his beer.
“There you go!” Arturo said, clapping Luis on the back. “Now, a proper meal.”
For much of the next hour Luis ate shredded pork and rice and even drank bottles of Sol, a beer he hadn’t tasted since his youth. Father Arturo introduced him to the two other priests currently visiting San Elias Nieves, as well as a third, a Father Barriga, who had arrived from Zamora in anticipation of teaching at the school.
“You teach, do you not?” Father Barriga asked, his accent so thick Luis pretended to be hard of hearing in order to make the man enunciate more clearly.
“I do,” Luis concurred. “It adds a dimension to my faith. I can’t imagine living without it in my life now.”
“But it must also be so terrifying, no?” Father Barriga asked. “Los Angeles, all those gangs, that endless violence. How many students must you lose?”
Luis was a taken aback. No, no. Mexico is the place with all the violence and gangs, no? But then he thought about it, how there was a plague of violence across his city, resulting in the unsolved gun deaths of hundreds if not thousands of youths across the years. Like this priest, who’d become inured to the everyday slaughter in Mexico, Luis had come to feel the same way in Los Angeles.
“I try to be honest with my students,” Luis said. “This generation is so savvy, so skeptical of the institutions of their elders. A false note can end their relationship with the church even if you don’t mean it. I try to present the strengths of our faith without ignoring the weaknesses. But most of all, I want to
be an example of what I get from it.”
Father Barriga eyed Luis with curiosity for a moment, before breaking out in a grin and taking his arm.
“I’m glad to hear such wisdom from someone so young in the clergy,” Father Barriga said. “When I grew up, the sisters that ran my school were all about dogma and discipline and mortification. Then I look to a man like the pontiff, who slips away from the Vatican at night to comfort the homeless, the ill, the sinners, and sinned upon. That’s when I remember that we’re a church of love, not regulation. We’re to be a beacon for these boys and girls who look out their window and see nothing but blood and wasted lives.”
Father Barriga excused himself. Luis glanced up, not realizing that their conversation had led them into the unfinished school. Through the roof beams, Luis could see the stars. It took him a second to realize what was amiss. Then he reminded himself how much farther south he was. The constellation Dorado, out of sight in California, was in full view in Michoacán.
The stars, a reminder of heaven, always made him feel closer to God. He allowed himself to be carried along by this feeling. Though he still felt outside of God’s presence, the memory of star fields past filled him with joy.
He stayed there for a few minutes, staring up through his father’s unfinished roof, until the band returned from a short break to begin a new song. Preferring silence, Luis hobbled away from the school to the back door of the church. The jeans his father had brought him were feeling tight against the padded bandage on his left side, and he relished the idea of a moment or two alone in a pew.
He swung open the door and moved down a narrow hall, passing a small bathroom that seemed to double as a sacristy. The chalice and paten were on a shelf above the sink, a box of a thousand communion wafers in a cabinet above the toilet.
Necessity, the mother of invention.
As he stepped into the chapel, he found himself alongside the altar. He was immediately struck by how unadorned it was. The walls were as white on the inside as they were out, with a holy water font by the front door that seemed to have been whitewashed as well. The pews were old and functional. The pulpit from which Father Arturo preached was a music stand with a purple sash with a cross stitched onto it hanging over it. The altar was equally simple, with a pair of candles and a reliquary. On the wall alongside the altar was a poster of the Virgen de Guadalupe pressed in with thumb tacks.
There was a single confessional against the far wall that looked much older than anything else in the building. Luis decided it must’ve come from the earlier church at El Tule.
What was impossible to miss was how rich the place was with purpose even when empty. The ceilings were stained with the smoke of endless candles, the backs of pews discolored by the hands of the rising faithful from the front row to the back. The wood in front of the altar where the congregation knelt to take communion was worn away by so many knees. The aisle between the pews was laid with red carpet. Its middle was threadbare, though its edges looked new.
Luis was reminded of a story Father Whillans told him of celebrating a Mass in a church in a poorer neighborhood in the north of Paris. It had been built after World War II, when building supplies were hard to come by. So the locals constructed it using cinder blocks and purple cubes of glass. It was wholly functional, the opposite of, say, Notre Dame, a few miles to the south. But the strength and will of its congregants was felt the moment one stepped in, cast in the purple glow. Whillans had said that the experience changed his life.
You learn quickly the difference between a church built for its people and of its people, Whillans had said.
Luis felt as if he finally understood this notion. What must it be like to face a congregation like this one, where you didn’t only recognize faces and names but entire lives?
“Ah, I know that look.”
Luis turned as Father Arturo entered from the front of the building.
“Sorry, I was admiring—”
“I know what you were doing,” Arturo said. “How wonderful it would be to cast aside the cares of a big-city parish and come here to do the meaningful work, no?”
Luis scoffed, but Father Arturo smiled, as if knowing he’d hit the nail on the head.
“That’s what’s so good about trusting God, no?” Father Arturo continued. “He puts you where best you can serve. When I am envious of the great cathedrals of the Morelia diocese or in Mexico City, I will remember the look on your face and think that there are those who admire this, too.”
“I’m glad you brought that up,” Luis said. “I’ve been meaning to ask you something about this place. I, too, believe God sends me where best I might serve.” He indicated the injury to his torso. “The man who did this, who killed Bishop Osorio and Father Belbenoit in Los Angeles, I want to find him.”
“In Michoacán? Maybe this village itself.”
“Perhaps he’ll find me,” Luis said. “He meant to kill me. He’s someone who takes pride in finishing a job.”
Father Arturo had a strained look on his face. “You are perfectly safe here. I mean that. Perfectly safe.”
“I wasn’t saying this was a confrontation I was hoping to avoid,” Luis added. “But how is it that you can guarantee my safety?”
Father Arturo seemed to be considering his reply when the back door of the church opened and Father Ponce hurried over. He said something to Father Arturo, who blanched, then nodded back to Luis before following the other priest out of the chapel. Luis went after them.
“Padre!” The speaker was a twentysomething man in a crisp black Stetson and new clothes. He swept Father Arturo up into an embrace and nodded to the unfinished school. “This is incredible! A miracle! You’ve done so much! How long has this been your dream? Easily as long as I can remember.”
Luis glanced around the party. Everyone had gone silent and was watching the interaction. The Stetson-wearing man seemed to have brought an entourage with him of about a dozen similarly dressed young men. They looked more ready to take the nightclubs of Puerto Vallarta by storm than a church picnic.
“It is a miracle,” Father Arturo quietly agreed.
“And will be finished by the summer I heard,” Stetson said. “First students by the fall.”
“That’s the hope,” Father Arturo replied.
As Stetson turned, Luis noticed the pearl-handled automatics tucked into the back of the man’s waistband. He’d been around guns enough to know which parts became worn with use no matter how many times they’d been cleaned. These weapons were not for show. This man, whoever he was, was the local “authority,” legal or otherwise.
“And who’s this?” Stetson asked, nodding to Luis.
“The priest I told you about,” Father Arturo said. “Father Luis Chavez. From Los Angeles.”
“Ah, Father Chavez!” Stetson said, arms as wide for a stranger as they were for Father Arturo. “I am Victor Canales. I’ve looked into you. Did you really intercede on behalf of some thousand esclavos up there? Risking your life even?”
Victor was referring to the incident that had first put Luis and Michael Story together. Luis had gone undercover following the murder of a farmworker. This had only been six months after he’d been ordained.
“There were many who interceded,” Luis said.
“A humble priest!” Victor roared, playing it up for the crowd, who seemed to recognize this routine. “And you, with your incredible ability to not die at the hands of a hit man? It’s also you who we have to thank for bringing your father down with you to build this mighty school?”
Luis didn’t respond. Victor barely seemed to notice, as he had already turned to Sebastian. He put an arm around his shoulder and pointed to the school. “This is something, maestro. It’s beautiful! I need you out at my ranch. The house is falling apart. It could use a master’s touch.”
Father Arturo visibly tensed. This wasn’t a request.
“Of course, any of my work can wait until there’s a roof up there,” Victor added, pointing
to the stars. “But then a visit?”
Luis looked to his father. Sebastian appeared both annoyed and befuddled. He met his son’s gaze, then turned to Victor.
“A house?” Sebastian replied with mock surprise. “I’m sorry, I still have the echo of a million driven nails sounding in my head. I have seen this thing you call a house, el Jefe. You mean to call it a barn.”
Father Arturo gasped. He wasn’t the only one. Victor eyed Sebastian closely, obviously surprised at the older man’s remark. But then Sebastian grinned, and Victor burst out laughing.
“A barn! A granero? How dare you! I’ll have you know, I live in that barn! I take my girls into that barn!” Victor cried, scowling. “I live”—snort snort snort—“in that barn! Are you saying I’m a barnyard animal?”
Victor made more pig sounds, to the delight of the assembled children and the relief of their parents. Then Sebastian took Victor’s hands in his own and held them tightly, probably tighter than the chico malo had ever had his hands held. He tried to free them, but the master carpenter’s hands, Luis knew, were like a metal press.
“I would be honored to work on your house, el Jefe,” Sebastian intoned gravely. “Whatever you need done, I will do. Your support of San Elias Nieves and this school is the real milagro. Any small thing I can offer as thanks, and I will do it.”
Victor’s expression went from annoyed and amused to humbled and almost reverential. He nodded quickly and took off his hat. “You are the miracle, Señor Chavez,” Victor said, finally able to withdraw his hands. “Finish your work here—all of it—and then we’ll talk about my barn.”
“Thank you, el Jefe,” Sebastian said, bowing his head. “We will make you proud and keep you in our prayers.”
Victor nodded and looked around the newly solemn gathering. The gratitude of the congregants mirrored Sebastian’s, and Victor appeared moved. Luis suddenly realized the chess game Sebastian was playing here. Victor reached into his pocket. Instead of a gun, he withdrew two thick money clips and handed them to Father Arturo.
