Bicho Raro was a place of strange miracles.
When the Mercury scuffed into the compound, dust bloomed and died around the bumper as it lurched to a stop. The egg-colored station wagon sat among an odd collection of cabins and tents and barns and houses and sagging barns circled close to one another, dead cars run adrift in barbed wire, and rusting appliances sinking into the banks of the feeble water share. Most of it faded into invisibility in the night. A sole porch light shone from one of the houses; shadows darted and fluttered around it, looking like moths or birds. They were not moths or birds.
Before the Sorias, Bicho Raro had been barely anything at all, just the elbow end of a massive cattle ranch that had more in the way of fields and less in the way of cattle. This was before the Sorias had left Mexico, before the Revolution, back when they’d been called Los Santos de Abejones. When they’d been Los Santos de Abejones, hundreds of pilgrims had come to them for blessings and healings, camping outside tiny Abejones for miles, right up into the mountains. Merchants had sold prayer cards and charms on the road to those who waited. Legends had crept out of the town, carried on horseback and tucked in people’s satchels and written into ballads played in bars late at night. Amazing transformations and terrifying deeds—it did not seem to matter if the stories were good or bad. As long as they were interesting, they drew a crowd. The impassioned crowd had christened babies after Los Santos and had raised armies in their name. The Mexican government at the time hadn’t thought much of this, and they’d told the Sorias they could either stop performing miracles or start praying for one to save them. The Sorias had turned to the Church for support, but the Catholic Church at the time hadn’t thought much of the dark miracles and had also told them they could either stop performing miracles or start praying for one to save them.
But the Sorias were born to be saints.
They’d marched out of Mexico under the cover of darkness and had kept walking until they’d found another mountain-edged place quiet enough to let miracles be heard.
That was the story of Bicho Raro.
“This is it, kid,” Tony said, and climbed out of the Mercury with some of his usual swagger restored. There is a certain confidence to coming to the end of a two-thousand-mile road trip, however uncertain the next beginning might be.
Pete remained behind the wheel, his window rolled down. He was reticent for two reasons. For starters, his experience in Oklahoma had told him that places like this were often populated by unleashed dogs, and although he was not properly afraid of dogs, he had been bitten by one as a younger child and had since preferred to avoid situations where large mammals ran directly at him. And also, he saw now that Bicho Raro was not a proper town, as he’d thought it would be. There would be no motor inn where he could stay the night, and no easily accessible telephone with which to contact his aunt.
“You’re gonna have to get out of that car eventually,” Tony told him. “I thought this was where you were headed. Both going to the same place, you said! Believe me, my aunt told me to keep walking until I found a Mercury, you said! You callin’ me a liar, sir? This is the place!”
That was when the dogs burst out.
Sometimes, when dogs emerge at farms, people come out afterward with reassuring statements about how the dogs’ barks are worse than their bites, how they look savage but are kittens at heart. Wouldn’t hurt a fly. Members of the family, really. Visitors are comforted by the knowledge, then, that these dogs are kept mostly for their alarm purposes, and to frighten away large predators.
No one would say that about the dogs at Bicho Raro. There were six of them, and although they were littermates, they were six different colors and sizes and shapes, all of them ugly. There were meant to be twelve of them, but these six were so bad-tempered that in the womb, they’d eaten the other six. They were so bad-tempered that when they’d been born, their mother had lost patience with them and abandoned them under a parade float in Farmington. There, a tenderhearted long-haul trucker had scooped them into a box to raise them to weaning age. They were so bad-tempered that he took up drinking before leaving them in a ditch near Pagosa Springs. A pack of coyotes tried to eat them there, but the puppies learned how to walk and then run and turned on the coyotes, chasing them nearly all the way to Bicho Raro.
That was when Antonia Soria, Beatriz’s mother, had found them and taken them home. They were still bad-tempered, but so was she, and they loved her.
Tony stood his ground for a hot minute. Pete rolled up his window. Antonia Soria’s six dogs snarled and circled, their hackles up and their teeth bared. They hadn’t killed a man yet, but the yet was displayed prominently in their expressions.
This was how Tony came to be on the roof of the Mercury when the lights of Bicho Raro began to flicker on. Now that the lights were coming on, it was obvious that there were owls everywhere. There were horned owls and elf owls, long-eared owls and short-eared owls. Barn owls with their ghostly ladies’ faces, and screech owls with their shaggy frowns. Dark-eyed barred owls and spotted owls. Stygian owls with eyes that turned red in lights at night—these owls weren’t originally from Colorado, but like the Soria family, they had come from Oaxaca to Bicho Raro and decided to stay.
The dogs were trying to get on the hood of the car to reach Tony; Pete activated the windshield wiper spray to repel them.
“You’re a real war hero,” Tony snarled. One of the dogs ate his left shoe.
“I could just drive us out of here,” Pete said. “You could hold on.”
“Boy, don’t even think about turning that key.”
“Are you sure this is it?” Pete asked.
“Damn pelicans,” Tony said. The promise of a miracle was rolling off him thick now, and the owls were swirling down low over the top of the Mercury. From Tony’s vantage point on the roof, he could see a row of small elf owls sitting on the roof of one of the metal-sided garages. They had big eyes and long legs, and although they were not laughing at him, it was close enough for Tony’s skin to crawl.
From the safety of the driver’s seat, Pete looked for signs of human life. He found himself looking at someone who was looking back.
A girl stood watching him from the porch of a small cabin. She wore a beautiful wedding dress and a very sad face. Her dark hair was pulled back into a smooth bun at the base of her neck. Her dress was wet, and so was her skin. This was because, despite the porch roof, it was raining on her. Rain originated from nowhere and spattered on her hair and face and shoulders and clothing, then ran off the stairs and formed a fast-running rivulet into the brush. Every part of her dress was covered with monarch butterflies, their orange-and-black stained-glass wings likewise soaked. They clung to her, unable to do anything but slowly move their wings or climb across the fabric. Butterflies are fragile fliers and cannot fly in the rain, or even in the dew. Too much water makes their wings too heavy to fly.
This was Marisita Lopez, one of the pilgrims. It had stormed around her ever since she had experienced her first miracle, and now rain constantly poured on her head and out of her eyes. It was not as beatific as one might imagine to live under continuous precipitation in a desert. The ground, instead of enjoying the sudden influx of moisture, was ill-prepared to accept it. The water pooled and ran away, striking down seedlings in its path. Floods, not flowers, followed in Marisita’s wake.
Here was a thing she wanted: to taste vanilla without crying. Here was a thing she feared: that the prettiest thing about her was her exterior.
Pete didn’t know it to look at her, but she had been preparing to make a terrible decision directly before they’d arrived. Now she could not act until the night had quieted again.
Rolling down his window, he called, “Can you help us?”
But Marisita, absorbed in her own dark night, withdrew into the building behind her.
He called again, “Is there anyone out there?”
There were. There were aunts and uncles and grandmothers and cousins and babies, but none of them wanted to welcome the pilgrims. It was not that they wanted to refuse these newcomers a miracle; it was simply that every bed was already full. Bicho Raro was brimming with pilgrims who couldn’t move on. And since the Sorias could not offer a room, there was only the miracle to attend to. Daniel would handle it, and the rest of them wouldn’t have to leave their warm homes or risk any contact with the pilgrims.
At that moment, however, Daniel was creeping back to the Shrine while Beatriz and Joaquin remained in the truck with the radio, trying to time their own return in such a way that it would not raise questions.
Because of this, Tony and Pete might have spent quite a long time on top of and inside the Mercury, if not for the fortuitous arrival of another vehicle.
The rescuers were Judith, Beatriz’s older sister, and Judith’s new husband, Eduardo Costa, coming down from Colorado Springs. Eduardo was driving his brand-new Chevy stepside pickup truck. The general agreement was that Eduardo loved the truck more than Judith, but at least he took good care of both. The two of them—three, if you counted Judith—had not been anticipated in Bicho Raro until the next day but had decided to take advantage of the cool temperatures to make the drive after sundown.
Judith used to be the most beautiful woman in Bicho Raro, but then she’d moved, and now she was the most beautiful woman in Colorado Springs. She was so beautiful that people would stop her on the street and thank her. She had gone to school to learn how to make her blue-black hair do whatever she wanted it to do, and now she made other women’s hair do what she wanted it to do in a small hairdresser shop where she worked with several other women. Her lips were the same rosebud as her younger sister Beatriz’s, only Judith painted hers a bloody red that set off her flawless brown skin and gleaming dark hair. She had been wearing artificial eyelashes in the womb and when they had fallen off in the birth canal, she had lost no time in replacing them. Where Beatriz took after their father, Francisco, Judith was more like volatile Antonia.
Here was a thing she wanted: to have two gold teeth where no one could see them but she would know they were there. Here was a thing she feared: having to fill out forms before medical appointments of any kind.
Eduardo was the most handsome of the Costas, which was saying a lot, but he was not so handsome that people would stop him on the street to thank him. The Costas were cowboys and bred quarter horses for the rodeo. The Costas and their horses were all fast and charming, and could turn on a dime faster than you could say ¿Qué onda? They were also very good at what they did, and neither the Costas nor their horses would ever kick a child. Eduardo wore clothing even fancier than his wife’s—bright red cowboy shirts to match her lips and tight black pants to match her hair and blocky fleece-collared leather coats to emphasize her shapeliness.
Here was a thing he wanted: for singers to pause in their singing to laugh during a verse. Here was a thing he feared: cats lying on his face and smothering him while he slept.
Judith and Eduardo took stock of the scene as they pulled into the compound. The enormous wood-covered Mercury, the Italian American perched on top of it, the square silhouette of Pete inside, the slobber of dogs drawing picturesque arcs across the diorama.
“Ed, do you recognize that car?” Judith asked.
Eduardo removed his cigarette to say, “It’s last year’s Mercury Colony Park in sunburst yellow.”
Judith said, “I meant, do you recognize the man on top of it?”
“Then you should have said, ‘Do you recognize the man on top of it?’”
“Do you recognize the man on top of it?”
Eduardo framed Tony DiRisio with his headlights as he approached—Tony shielded his eyes—and peered closely. “No, but I like that suit.”
One of the dogs had just gotten ahold of the left sleeve of the aforementioned white suit, and Tony, accepting discretion as the better part of valor, allowed the dog to have the entire coat rather than his left arm.
“It’s just like Mama to leave them out here,” Judith said angrily.
“I bet she’s making one of those flowers.”
“Don’t talk about her,” Judith said, even though she had been about to say the same thing herself.
The Chevy nosed up beside the Mercury. It was just high enough that Eduardo Costa and Tony DiRisio were now eye to eye. Eduardo honked his horn to startle one of the dogs off the hood of the Mercury. Then he removed the cigarette from his lips and gave it to Tony.
“Hola, traveler,” Eduardo said.
Judith patted her hair and leaned into the conversation. “Are you here for a miracle?”
Tony sucked the cigarette, then flicked it at one of the dogs. “Lady, it would be a miracle to get off the roof of my car.”
Eduardo leaned out of his window and called into the Mercury, “Are you here for a miracle, mi hijo?”
Pete started. “I’m here about a truck.”
“He’s here about a truck,” Eduardo told his wife.
“Papa should shoot these dogs,” Judith replied.
“Bullets are too afraid to hit them,” Eduardo observed.
He took his time lighting another cigarette and smoking it as they all watched him. Then he kissed his wife, stroked his mustache, opened the door of the truck, and jumped lightly out, his sharp cowboy boots raising dust as he landed. Antonia’s dogs turned to him. An owl hooted. A creature howled from inside one of the distant cabins. The moon smiled cunningly. Then Eduardo hurled down his cigarette butt and began to run. Man and dogs flew across the yard into the dark.
The Costas are known for their bravery, and for their smoking.
In the quiet left behind, Judith climbed from the truck. She was very nervous, but she did not show it as she walked over to the Mercury with a sway that matched her beauty. “Let’s get you men a place to sleep and we can see about— Beatriz! What are you doing lurking over there?”
Beatriz was not lurking. She was standing motionless and observant in the deepest of the shadows beside her mother’s house, so silent that even Antonia’s dogs had not known she was there. She had been waiting for her opportunity to climb back into her bedroom, but Judith, with the uncanny intuition that sisters sometimes have, had seen her there.
“There are no beds,” Beatriz told Judith. “None of the pilgrims have left since you did.”
“No beds! Impossible!” Judith had not been back to Bicho Raro in months.
“It’s true,” said a voice from within the long stucco building. This was one of the pilgrims. They were always eavesdropping, as the forbidden lives of the Sorias were very interesting to them. They had been listening to the exchange outside just as much as the other Sorias had been, and now this voice floated out of the building in a way that seemed ghostly to Pete and Tony. It added, “The floor is available, though.”
“Don’t talk to me!” Judith snapped to the unseen pilgrim. Although this statement seemed unfriendly to Pete and Tony, her exhortation was actually colored by fear. All of the Sorias treated the pilgrims with caution, but Judith was more than cautious—she was frightened of them. This was one of the reasons Judith had moved away as soon as she’d gotten married and had not returned before now. She could not take the tension of living alongside them all day and all night long.
Beatriz said, “Michael’s building a lodge, but it’s not done.”
“A lodge?” Judith was nearly overcome imagining an entire lodge full of pilgrims. “We are not a hotel. Fine, fine! These men can have the miracle and go on their way or sleep on the floor! Which of you wants to be first? The father or son?”
“Lady, just how old do I look?” Tony asked. “I only met this kid today.”
“I’m just here about work, ma’am,” Pete said quickly. He had been listening to this conversation with growing certainty that Tony had come here for a very different reason than him. He felt he needed to distance himself from it in case it was illegal.
“Work?” echoed Judith, with considerable confusion. “No miracle?”
“Not for me, ma’am.”
This captured Beatriz’s notice. People who came to Bicho Raro in the dark of night were always either a member of the Soria family or in search of a miracle. Here was this stranger, however, and he was neither. She interjected, “You aren’t a pilgrim?”
“No more than any of us are, I suppose.”
This exchange was when Pete and Beatriz first truly noticed each other. They used this moment of observation in two different but related ways.
Beatriz observed Pete with his arm crooked on the edge of the Mercury’s open window and wondered what it would be like to press her thumb gently into the skin at the inside of his elbow. She could see this crook of his arm from where she stood, and it seemed as if it would be a soft and pleasant thing to do. Beatriz had never had this impulse before and was somewhat surprised by it. She was equally surprised by how the feeling, once noticed, did not go away, but instead extended to the other elbow as well. Because she was Beatriz, she made a note to consider this impulse more acutely later, to determine where it might have come from. She did not consider this sensation to be a suggestion for future action, however.
Pete, for his part, observed Beatriz in the half shadow with her still, unblinking, eerie manner, her expression looking no warmer than those of the dark-eyed barn owls sitting on the roof above her. Although they had exchanged only a handful of words, Pete felt the most dangerous jolt to his heart so far, surpassing even what he had felt when he had fallen in love with the desert only hours before. He did not know the reason for this surge of intense curiosity, only that the scale of it felt deadly. It seemed that he should not repeat it if at all possible. He pressed his hand to his chest and vowed to keep his distance from Beatriz while he worked here.
“I’ll wait in the car,” he said hastily, and rolled the window back up.
“In my car?” Tony demanded.
There was no time for further discussion, as the sound of Antonia’s dogs echoed back through Bicho Raro. Eduardo Costa had done a fine job leading them away, but he had run out of breath at a collapsed cattle barn near the highway and had climbed it to preserve his life. The dogs had left him marooned on the ruined spine of the building and were now returning to make a meal of Tony’s other shoe.
“We should go before the dogs get to us,” Judith said. She looked to Beatriz, but Beatriz had already vanished—she could not be persuaded to talk to strangers if there was anyone else who would do it instead, and she most certainly did not like to be volunteered to perform the miracle. (Also, unknown to Judith, she wanted to study the feeling she had had about Pete more closely and worried that another feeling might come along and make it more complicated to analyze.)
“Beatriz,” Judith hissed. Then, to Tony, “Hurry up, follow me.”
The sound of the dogs lent Tony speed. He limped after her on his one shod foot, one sock foot. “Where are we going?”
“Where do you think?” Judith replied angrily. “To get you your miracle!”