The Purple Robe by David Dean

Author:David Dean [Dean, David]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Tumblar House
Published: 2014-09-29T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

In the days following Father Pablo’s inadvertent blessing of the pilgrimages, he saw Progreso swell and transform beneath the relentless onslaught of believers. It seemed that no aspect of normal life was to be exempt. Traffic remained in gridlock almost continuously, despite the exhausted efforts of Captain Barrera’s beleaguered officers, and only the kindly Northers of the season prevented the town from lying beneath a blanket of smog that might have rivaled México City’s own. The din and grind of automobiles, along with the impatient sounding of their horns, quickly became a sad fact of life in the town.

No café or restaurant was without its line of hungry pilgrims from dawn to long after dusk had fallen on the tired port. Within the first days of the excitement, the open air market and its more sanitized competitor, the super Mercado, had been stripped of their goods by the famished hordes. Responding to the mayor’s pleas, the governor himself prevented a serious food shortage by exerting his influence with the warehouses of Mérida.

However inconvenienced by these conditions, the natives nonetheless recognized and seized the opportunities they offered. Parking became a cottage industry—courtyards transformed into valet parking lots, while young children seized any curbside parking spots that became miraculously available, blockading them with trash cans or whatever obstacles that could be devised. Inevitably, a frustrated driver willing to pay the day’s going rate would be located amongst the hundreds of automobiles crawling by, a deal would be struck and the beckoning curb once again revealed like a shimmering oasis. It was exhausting but lucrative work.

Hundreds of home kitchens sprang into action as well, becoming cocinas economicas, and creating bag lunches by the overpriced dozens to be hawked from verandas. Mothers, grandmothers, and daughters, worked side by side, or in shifts, as the demand might dictate and their larders allow.

As Progreso’s few hotels were quickly overwhelmed, households rushed in to fill the gap by renting hammock space in any spare rooms, sheds, or garages they possessed. Even roofs and verandas were surrendered, at agreed upon prices, to the shelterless faithful, and the sound of hooks being hammered into walls could be heard in every neighborhood.

As to those wanderers who sought a night’s free respite on the beach, they found no solace there. Captain Barrera chose this time to enforce a dusty, seldom-used ordinance forbidding sleeping on the beach, and his men made twice-nightly sweeps to corral the miscreants and send them into the arms of Progreso’s new class of entrepreneurs. Like the mayor’s actions, his own were seen as beneficial to the common good and roundly applauded.

Father Pablo’s bewilderment at Progreso’s transformation was only compounded by his own—it appeared that in a single instant he had been elevated from clerical clown to ecclesiastical celebrity. Wherever he went in the streets of the town, he was greeted by native and stranger alike with warm familiarity, and if he tarried, he was soon jostled and swarmed by enthusiastic well-wishers. No one, it seemed, with

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