Without too much pondering over his first subject, Francisco began to carve the image of the pious Saint Francis of Assisi, for whom of course, he was named. His tío Pedro approved and offered guidance but sparingly, knowing that at best all he could do was educate his nephew on how to handle his tools and the wood, but not tell him what his bulto should look like, that is, what would be correct or incorrect about the representation of his image. For that, St. Francis himself could only guide Francisco’s hand since it wasn’t St. Francis the holy man whom Francisco was imagining, the one who had cared for the poor, the infirm and the hungry, the orphaned children and all the innocent creatures on earth, but St. Francis in his rightful eternal place in heaven, from which privileged place he was able to work miracles for the all-too-human beings left on earth.

Francisco’s first bulto was just three feet high, angular, much like himself, a thin, undernourished monk with hands stretched out before him. He was barefoot and although Francisco did not have the patience to carve out little details like individual toes or nostrils or pupils, he did take the time to shape each small round bead of the rosary hanging around the saint’s neck, repeating all the while the Our Father or the Hail Mary, depending on which prayer pertained to the bead he was carving.

When the figure was done (although one leg ended up uneven with the other and tío Pedro advised against Francisco trying to do anything about it, lest he end up with a truly cojo bulto), jaspe or gesso was manufactured out of gypsum to prepare the wood for painting.

Their paints, too, were manufactured by their own hands—gathered from earths and plants and carbons from charcoal or soot; their brushes were made from yucca fronds and chicken feathers tied together and from horsehair. In other words, nothing was store bought because everything that went into making a bulto must be prepared with the utmost reverence; and although they did not have the actual relics of the saints to mix with their paints like the Russian monks who produced Byzantine icons, they labored with the natural elements, sun, air, and earth and prayed all the while as they worked together in silence—like their Spanish ancestors had done for nearly three hundred years on that strange land they felt was So Far from God.

6

The Renewed Courtship of Loca’s Mom and Dad and How in ’49 Sofia Got Swept Off Her Feet by Domingo’s Clark Gable Mustache, Despite Her Familia’s Opinion of the Charlatan Actor

“Ay, comadre!” Sofi’s neighbor said one day when she stopped by to borrow Sofi’s portable Singer. “Can you believe it? My husband is finally taking me out to someplace besides a wedding in the familia!”