“No, Father O’Ginley. I saw Her. The boy was standing before me. His eyes were ablaze like the cloak of that Virgin of Guadalupe the Mexicans adore. And then behind him and to his right, a glowing halo just like Hers appeared. As he spoke I heard a choir of angels speaking in unison. And then I saw . . . I saw Her.”
“Who, my son, who?” the priest urged, leaning in over the table.
“You’re going to think I’m crazy, but I swear I saw the Virgin of Guadalupe standing there next to the boy.”
“Who is this boy, Dean? I must meet him!” Father O’Ginley exclaimed, springing to his feet.
“I’m not sure,” the Dean murmured, holding his head in his hands. “All I know is I’m so sorry for all the years I didn’t believe. I felt so alone, so lost, but now I know. How could I have doubted for so long?”
The priest reached across the table and patted him on the shoulder, consoling him: “It’s okay, Dean. You have witnessed a divine intervention. Very few souls are so blessed. I myself, a devout servant of the Lord, have never been so lucky.” He paused for a moment, standing over the vanquished dean as he straightened his robes. “Now, tell me who this boy is and where I can find him.”
“His name is Fulgencio Ramirez. I admitted him, so he’s probably on campus somewhere,” the dean mumbled as the priest rushed out the door in search of the affirmation that had always eluded him.
His black robes swept behind him as he hurried toward the campus. So enthralled was he by his pursuit that he failed to look both ways before he crossed the street. A bus careened unchecked through the green light and the driver never even saw what he hit until the holy man was airborne, his crushed body landing at the street corner, steps from the diner’s flashing neon beacon.
A crowd formed instantly around the fallen priest, Dean Bizzell crouched fearfully at his side, the students’ expressions frozen in panic and horror at the sight.
“Father O’Ginley is dying on the sidewalk,” a young woman cried frantically.
No one dared touch the fading cleric as a thick, red pool oozed around him.
Suddenly, the crowd parted as Fulgencio broke through. Without a thought, he turned the priest on his back and looked into his eyes. “It’s going to be all right, Father. We’ve called the ambulance,” Fulgencio whispered, holding Father O’Ginley’s chilly hand.
“Who are you, boy?” the priest gasped.
“I am Fulgencio Ramirez.”
“Ramirez.” The pastor’s eyes began to turn to glass, his spirit fading fast. “You’re just a boy,” he whispered. His heart weakening, he could not muster the strength to speak any further. “Where’s the Virgin?” He gasped for air. His eyelids fluttered as he strained to see what the dean had so vividly described. “Let me see,” he whispered hoarsely, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. “Let me see something, somewhere, a sign.”
Fulgencio shifted slightly to the side to make way for the paramedics. As he did so, the priest’s eyes locked on something in the background. Turning to follow his gaze, Fulgencio joined him in seeing white letters on green metal. On the corner, the street sign read, “Guadalupe.”
Father O’Ginley died with a smile curled on his pallid face.
As the ambulance carried the body away and the crowd scattered, Dean Bizzell solemnly shook Fulgencio’s hand.
“Thank you for comforting him in his final moments,” the dean said mournfully before departing with his head hung low.
When night fell, Buzzy and Fulgencio stood in front of the diner. Buzzy smoked a cigarette, blowing wisps of smoke into the autumn wind. Together, they stared at the dried blood on the sidewalk a few steps away. It had been a somber night at the diner, couples consoling each other over the tragic death they had witnessed. Nothing but the sound of gentle weeping and the clinging of forks could be heard since Buzzy had unplugged the jukebox as a sign of respect for the departed pastor.
“Everyone knew Father O’Ginley,” Buzzy muttered, “whether they liked him or not.” He threw his cigarette butt on the ground and smashed it under the heel of his boot. “I ain’t ever cared none for religion myself.”
“He asked me my name,” Fulgencio said.
“Reckon he wanted to know who he was lookin’ at as he crossed the Great Divide,” Buzzy pondered.
“He said I was just a boy.” Fulgencio scratched his chin as they both continued to stare at the bloodstain. “I wonder why he said that?”
“Well that’s simple,” Buzzy shot back. “He said that ’cuz he didn’t know ya.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, if he’d a known ya, he woulda known jis like everybody else who knows ya,” Buzzy drawled. “You’re no boy, Fulgencio Ramirez. You’re a man.”
Fulgencio Ramirez stared at the dried blood of the holy man whose lifeless hand he had held. He wondered if he’d provided any comfort to him in his hour of death. That night, as he kneeled before the images of the Sacred Heart and Carolina Mendelssohn, in the tiny storage room at the back of Buzzy’s Diner, he prayed for the priest’s safe passage into the otherworld.
As he slipped into sleep beneath the gentle caress of the whirring fan, he dreamt of the Virgen de Guadalupe. Not the colorful one that hung on Juan Diego’s vest in the Basilica in Mexico City, but the monochrome one protruding from the mud gray adobe wall of his grandfather’s hut. He dreamt he was dancing “el Jarabe Tapatío” with her on the street corner. They tapped their heels on the concrete, chipping away at the dried bloodstain beneath. They danced beneath the street sign named in her honor. They laughed at how funny it was that her name was emblazoned on this street so far from the mountains where she first appeared bearing roses in the snow. And they guffawed at how the gringos mispronounced her name as if it were just another American street name, oblivious to its original meaning.
“Gwadaloop!” they called it. “I’ll meet ya’ll on Gwadaloop! We’ll have a burger at Buzzy’s on Gwadaloop! Y’all hear ’bout that priest got hit by a bus over on Gwadaloop?”
Fulgencio and La Virgen wondered if the gringos would ever get it. Would they ever understand that words and their proper pronunciation had meaning? They figured no, but what the hell? Who cared as long as the two of them knew the truth?
La Virgen de Guadalupe and Fulgencio sipped from a bottle of rum Buzzy kept in the storage room, dancing beneath her street sign and the stars in the heavens above until the crack of dawn, when Fulgencio Ramirez woke up from his dream and served chorizo con huevo to the truck drivers just passing through, on Gwadaloop.
Seventeen