Orange Candy Slices and Other Secret Tales by Viola Canales

Author:Viola Canales
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arte Público Press
Published: 2001-12-31T05:00:00+00:00

The Café

The first time the young boy ventures down into the dark basement by himself, he tears up screaming, something about a white ghost and its taking residence there. His ninety-year-old grandfather is able to calm him down by taking the boy to the basement and pulling off the white sheet the boy thought was the ghost. There is no ghost there, just an old dusty metal contraption, which the grandfather identifies as “Santo Pepe.”

The boy examines the metal contraption carefully, moving some of its lids and knobs. He then turns to his grandfather and asks why the old machine, which looks like nothing more than an ancient coffee maker, is called Santo Pepe. The old man smiles and quietly explains that this is no ordinary coffee maker; it is Santo Pepe, a saint of sorts, who was once worshipped in the little stucco church of the town of Las Flores. When the boy asks why Santo Pepe is in the basement, the grandfather simply says that he won him in a bingo game.

It is a long, tangled story of sorts. Before Santo Pepe was in the basement, he stood between Saint Peter and Saint Paul in the white alcove at the altar of the church of Las Flores. There, the townspeople burned candles and prayed to it. But then all of this quickly changed when a stern old priest from the old world became the new priest of the church. Upon first catching sight of Santo Pepe, he cursed the pagan lot he had been assigned to, and then grabbed Santo Pepe, who at the time was wearing a brand new purple velvet robe of sorts, and dumped him unceremoniously in the garbage can outside. At mass that same day, the old priest scolded the townspeople, accusing them of being pagans, just like their Indian ancestors, for worshipping false gods like that metal contraption of a coffee maker he had discovered and tossed out that morning. As far as he was concerned, that contraption could not even brew a decent cup of coffee, much less perform the miracles he had been told about. If they did not want to wind up in hell, boiling in big vats of hot coffee, they better listen to him and stop being so backwards.

The townspeople quietly filtered out of the church with bowed heads. But once a safe distance from the stern and watchful eye of the old priest, they ran to the garbage can and retrieved Santo Pepe. That night in the town’s plaza, after they knew the old priest had gone to bed, the mayor presided over a bingo game with the entire town in attendance. There, the boy’s grandfather had yelled bingo and won the high privilege of taking Santo Pepe home. The grandfather built a little altar for Santo Pepe in his house, and for years the townspeople came there secretly to pay their respects with offerings of prayers, candles, and food. This continued until the grandfather lost his wife and left the little town.

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