You first hear of Gabriel Perea and the Virgin while covering the latest fire at the Chevron refinery in El Paso. The blaze is under control, the water cannon hoses still shooting white arches into the scorched sky.
You've collected some decent shots, but you would still like to capture something unique even though you know most of it won't get used. The Herald needs only one all-inclusive shot of this fire, and you got that hours ago. The rest is out of love. You like to think there's a piece of W. Eugene Smith in you, an aperture in your soul always seeking the perfect image.
The two firemen leaning against one of the trucks is a good natural composition. Their plastic clothes are grease-smeared; their faces, with the hoods off, are pristine. Both men are Hispanic, but the soot all around them makes them seem pallid and angelic and strange. And both of them are smoking. It's really too good to ignore. You set up the shot without them knowing, without seeming to pay them much attention, and that's when you catch the snippet of their conversation.
"I'm telling you, cholo, the Virgin told Perea this explosion would happen. Mrs. Delgado knew all about it."
"She tells him everything. She's telling us all. The time is coming, I think."
Click. "What time is that?" you ask, capping the camera.
The two men stare at you a moment. You spoke in Spanish--part of the reason the paper hired you. Just by your inflection, though, they know you're not a native. You may understand all right, but you are an outsider.
The closest fireman smiles. His teeth are perfect, whiter than the white bar of the Chevron insignia beside him. Mexicans have good tooth genes, you think. His smile is his answer: He's not going to say more.
"All right, then. Who's Gabriel Perea?"
"Oh, he's a prophet. The prophet, man."
"A seer."
"He knows things. The Virgin tells him."
"The Virgin Mary?" Your disbelief is all too plain.
The first fireman nods and flicks away his cigarette butt, the gesture transforming into a cross--"Bless me, father...."
"Does he work for Chevron?"
The firemen look at each other and laugh. "You kidding, man? They'd never hire him, even if he made it across the Rio Bravo with a green card between his teeth."
Rio Bravo is what they call the Rio Grande. You turn and look, out past the refinery towers, past the scrub and sand and the Whataburger stand, out across the river banks to the brown speckled bluffs, the shapes that glitter and ripple like a mirage in the distance.
Juarez.
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