It was so dark. Although he was curved into the small orange circle of light provided by a smoldering fire, everything he looked at appeared dull. He seemed to be having difficulty seeing light the same way he had this time yesterday. It was as if there was a gauzy curtain hung between his eyes and the fire, and two heavier curtains on either side of his vision, threatening to close. It was possible, he thought, that they had already closed a little more since he had left Bicho Raro. He did not know what he would do if he went blind out here in the wild scrub.
He knew the miracles were meant to teach the pilgrims something about themselves. Take Tony, for instance, and his newfound gigantism. Daniel figured Tony was someone famous. He didn’t recognize him personally, but he’d seen many celebrities come through Bicho Raro, and he’d gotten pretty good at noting the posturing and style that marked public figures. So Tony, suffering under the public eye as most celebrities do, had received a miracle that ensured he was under even more constant scrutiny. The miracle’s purpose was then clear: If Tony could learn to live as a giant, he would once again be able to live as a man.
This meant that Daniel’s narrowing vision was supposed to teach him something, but he didn’t know what it might be. He had thought that he knew himself pretty well, and yet meaning eluded him. Perhaps this darkness was meant to teach him trust, or humility, or despair. Nothing seemed obvious. Possibly an outsider might have been able to immediately identify the truth of it, just as the meaning of Tony’s darkness was obvious to Daniel. But there was no one else to observe Daniel, and he meant to keep it that way.
Daniel tried not to devote too much time to the most hopeless outcome, which was that Daniel might discover what the darkness truly meant, and still be unable to overcome it. He recalled a pilgrim from Utah whose miracle had left him with a bulbous red face and a helpless desire to gag whenever he tried to put food in his mouth. The man seemed to understand at once what this darkness stood for, because he became overwhelmed with grief and guilt. Daniel, of course, had been unable to speak to him because of the taboo, and the pilgrim had disappeared into the desert overnight. Later he was found dead, his face no longer red; the miracle had died with the pilgrim. The knowing had not helped him.
Perhaps Daniel was meant to learn how difficult miracles were.
No. He thought he knew that already.
“If there wasn’t a moon out tonight, there is one now,” Diablo Diablo said. “Coming up next we’ve got something to put a smile on that moon’s face.”
The radio had managed to snatch the signal of his cousins’ station, and though Daniel knew it would be as easy to die with the sound of Diablo Diablo playing as not, he preferred the company. It distracted him from the black at the corners of his vision, from the cold, and from the distinct feeling that he wasn’t alone. There was something out there in the night, something that had drawn near as soon as he’d broken the taboo. Although he knew that it must be a concrete form of his own darkness, it didn’t feel like an extension of himself. It felt like the concrete manifestation of the strangeness of this valley instead. Perhaps this was what was meant when they said that a Saint’s darkness was worse than an ordinary pilgrim’s. Perhaps that was the reason why he couldn’t find meaning in his miracle. Perhaps this was not healing darkness at all but rather the opposite: a hellish entity sent to caper around and gobble up a fallen saint.
He did not know if it was better or worse that the thing remained out of sight.
Daniel mouthed a prayer. “Mother—”
“Ladies and gentlemen of the San Luis Valley,” said Diablo Diablo, “we interrupt our normal broadcast for a live interview.”
Daniel’s prayer silenced in his mouth. His hand with its spider eyes walked to the knob and turned up the volume. Static hissed in the background.
Diablo Diablo continued, “This is our first interview, so excuse us, excuse us mightily, if we experience any technical difficulties. The first man to walk a road always has to clear a few rocks. Se?orita, would you tell all our listeners at home your name? For your privacy, just your first name. We don’t want anyone to stop you on the street and tell you your face is as pretty as your voice.”
Marisita said, “Marisita.”
It was obvious now that the hissing in the background was not static after all; it was the patter of rain falling around Marisita. “Welcome to our show, Marisita.”
“Marisita,” Daniel said out loud, with wonder. Then, understanding what this meant, with worry—“Joaquin.”
Diablo Diablo continued, “Let me catch our listeners up on the situation, because you will not be able to understand Marisita’s story unless you know about the Saint of Bicho Raro.”
Joaquin was not being entirely aspirational by suggesting they had an audience. Apart from Daniel, the station did actually have a few other listeners that night, including two long-distance truckers, a man in a farm truck two ranches over, an old woman with insomnia who was passing the time jarring cactus jelly while her four dogs watched her, and, by a twist of AM radio wave magic, a group of Swedish fishermen who had turned on the radio to listen to as they woke themselves up for their work of catching halibut.
“Imagine … you have a tormented mind,” Diablo Diablo said, his voice dramatic. “You barter with sadness or you fight with grief or you eat arrogance every morning with your coffee. There are saints in this valley who can heal you. You and every other pilgrim can canter to Bicho Raro to receive a miracle. A miracle, you say? A miracle. This miracle makes the darkness inside you visible in amazing and peculiar ways. Now that you see what has been haunting you, you overthrow it, and then you leave this place free and easy. Don’t believe me? Hey, hey, I don’t make the news, I just report it. There’s only one catch: The saints cannot help you tackle your darkness after you receive the miracle, or they will, ah, they will bring darkness on themselves, a worse darkness than any ordinary man’s. Or woman’s, golly.”
And now Daniel laughed out loud, helplessly, because he could hear the crack in Joaquin’s voice that meant Beatriz must have shot him a look. The familiarity of it both comforted and tormented him.
“Now, Marisita, who we have on the show tonight, was recently in the presence of a saint when darkness overtook him. That’s right, isn’t it, Marisita?”
“Yes,” Marisita said.
“And did you see what form his darkness took?”
Marisita said, “I’m sorry, I’m crying. May I have a minute?”
“Oh,” said Diablo Diablo, sounding a little cross and a lot like Joaquin. He pulled it back together. “While you have a cry, the rest of us can join you, including Elvis. Let’s have a listen to ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’?”
You can imagine the effect that this exchange had on Daniel, who was in love with Marisita. He had heard the tears in her voice and it made tears rise up in his throat as well. It was only because he knew that he had brought only so much water with him and could not spare it that he did not allow himself to weep with her.
The song drew to a baleful close, and Diablo Diablo’s voice cut in. “And we’re back. Wipe your eyes, everyone, it’ll be all right, and if it won’t, it’ll be a good story for someone else. Marisita, are you still there?”
“I am.”