(Bahia, Brazil – 1973)

“I’ll have nothing to do with it.” Luiza’s dark eyes flashed. “It’s irreligious.”

“Be quiet and sit down,” Luis Antonio said.

Duca would never dare to talk to Luiza like that. But Luis Antonio was her older brother – and as bossy, even bossier, than she was. Luis Antonio’s wife never challenged him.

Luca sighed. “It’s not really irreligious,” he said. “Actually, it’s very religious…”

“What do you mean?” Luiza’s voice, was sharp-edged as usual. She was still standing – despite her brother’s order – her hands on the back of the hard, wooden chair. Her husband and brother sat on similar chairs at the small table in the large clay-walled kitchen. The windows were open on to the neat farm yard, and beyond to Luis Antonio’s farmhouse a hundred yards away. Both families’ children could be heard playing down by the creek. The clay, wood-burning stove, its fire tamped down, stood cooling after the midday meal, but the sharp tangy smell of wood smoke still filled the room.

Duca sighed again. It was, after all, his idea. He groped for words.

“It’s no disrespect to Our Lady… People will come because of her, to honor her…”

The idea had been born – or at least nurtured into life – on the thirteen-hour, overnight bus ride back from Bom Jesus da Lapa. On the bus going, Duca – bored – had fitfully dozed. But on the way home his mind had been alive, excited, weaving a mere thread of thought into a broad, colorful mantle.

Gentle Maria do Carmo, Duca’s mother-in-law was stubborn in one thing only. Her faith. She wanted to go to Bom Jesus da Lapa, and she wanted to go to Bom Jesus da Lapa, and she wanted to go to Bom Jesus da Lapa.   Her persistence wore even Luiza down, so the two families scraped together bus fare.

The old lady couldn’t go alone, so Duca – the most expendable – was sent with her. An all-night bus ride there – eight boring hours at the shrine – with an extra half-hour each for two snacks and an over-priced meal – then the long bus ride home.

It was near the end of the eight hours. Dona Maria do Carmo was inside praying, and Duca –thoroughly worn out – had wandered around all the stands that sold food, pamphlets of popular poetry, and religious (and not-so-religious) souvenirs. He found a spot on a hard bench, sat down, looked up at the rock, and let his thoughts wander…

The shrine of Bom Jesus da Lapa is a natural cave cut into rock along the Rio São Francisco.  Discovered in the 1690s by a painter – an escaped slave – who converted the cave into a church, the shrine is known for its miraculous healings. Pilgrims flock there by the thousands from all over the Brazilian backlands – coming up the river in boats, over dirt roads and narrow highways in buses and open-back trucks.

He looked up at the large gray rock. Up the hill, at the back of their stony little farms – almost on the dividing line between Luiza’s land and Luis Antonio’s – there was a rock that same color – smaller, of course – with a little concave opening. Not really a cave, but many years ago Luiza’s grandfather had planted a wooden cross in the ground, and it still stood there. Even today, a few people went up there to pray – now and then, Duca would find a bouquet of plastic flowers, or some other small offering of hope or gratitude, lying at the foot of the cross.

By the time they boarded the homeward bus, the idea – well beyond the embryo stage – had been kicking at his mind’s womb, insisting on being born.

Luiza was sitting down now. She glanced at Luis Antonio and – although she didn’t say it, and she had said it many times before – her glance said “You see. He does have ideas,” as though to justify why she had married Duca in the first place. And he did. Hadn’t planting ginger been his idea, and the dwarf cashew trees. And experimenting with that new breed of pig, and running the water down in plastic pipes from the spring on the hill? Of course, Luiza and Luis Antonio were better at actually doing the ideas, but he’d been the one to think of them….

Her eyes returned to the center of the table. “So how much?” she asked. The question was for Luis Antonio, Duca knew, and not for him.

“Nine hundred contos.”

“Nine hundred!” Luiza was tighter than Luis Antonio. “Five hundred.” she countered.

Her brother shrugged. “We want a good one.”

She looked at him again, this time intensely. “Seven,” she said. She thought for a moment. “We’ll each have to sell a pig.” She started calculating, scratching out figures with a pencil on a scrap of paper.

“We won’t tell your mother.” Duca spoke tentatively.

Luiza looked up. “We won’t tell anybody. If more than three people know anything, the whole village knows.” She stood up – a signal that the time for action had arrived.

The next day, Luis Antonio took the bus to Salvador to go and hire an actor.

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