Francisco el Penitente was not always Francisco el Penitente. As a boy at Our Lady of Sorrows School and to his pals in the playground, he was Frank. To his six older brothers and to his father he was el Franky. To his Mexican godmother, la doña Felicia, however, he was Panchito and, sometimes, Paquito and as he grew up, her Paco. But to his buddies in ’Nam he was Chico.

He didn’t like Chico—which back home meant a roasted corn.

Or just a hard kernel.

He didn’t like Chico no more than the Navajo who was also in his platoon went for the nickname “Chief,” or the Puerto Rican from Rio Pierdas, just shy of finishing his Ph.D. when he was drafted, liked to be called “Little Chico.” Francisco el Penitente (who was not a penitente then) was a lanky six feet in height compared to Little Chico’s five feet eight inches, and to the white and black soldiers all “Spanish boys” were “Chico.”

It was much later, at the age of thirty-three, that Franky joined his uncle’s morada up north, over ten years after he undertook his uncle’s vocation of santero for himself. Thus he sealed his fate to play a role in the religious belief system of his people and his land as both santero and penitente and from there on became Francisco el Penitente.

There were many signs throughout Francisco el Penitente’s life that indicated such a destiny for him, but they were never so blatant that anyone like doña Felicia, his father, or his tío Pedro would have readily detected them.

Signs that pointed to a special fate came to him rather like his third-grade teacher Sister Prudence used to say, “Remember, children, God writes straight with crooked lines!” For example, Francisco was the seventh son but not of a man who was the seventh son of his family; instead, it was his uncle Pedro who was the seventh son. Francisco’s own father, in fact, had been the first son, and as such, had only known a life of family obligation rather than spiritual aspiration.

His tío Pedro, a seventh son as was just said, inherited his father’s gift for making santos at a very early age. Francisco was not sure if his grandfather had also been a seventh son because his grandfather did not live to see his youngest grandchildren and his own children were not as intent upon knowing such ancestral details as Francisco, who was in search of a divine sign to reveal to him his role on earth. Thus, the crooked line of God passed the seventh son’s gift to a seventh son although not in direct lineage, and for the time being Francisco had to settle for that.