The Son, The Sudarium Trilogy - Book Two by Leonard Foglia, David Richards Page A

altars and buy a bunch of chamomile, blessed by the good fathers so the tea brewed from its flowers would ensure a year’s worth of health. On Good Friday, the Stations of the Cross were re-enacted in the streets of even the humblest parish. But the biggest event of all -the one that now played itself out in the blackness just outside the airplane window - was the silent procession.
    Starting at the Templo de la Cruz, just up the street from the house on Venustiano Carranza, it wound its way through town – a macabre ritual of collective penance that involved the entire community from children, dressed as angels with tinsel halos, to grandmothers veiled in black, carrying close to their ample breasts flickering candles of salvation. But it was the men who constituted the real show. They were dressed from head to toe in hooded robes, like members of the Inquisition. Only this being Mexico, the colors of the robes were bright and vibrant – the KKK on acid. The men went barefoot and attached to one ankle was a chain that clanked metallically, as it was dragged over the cobblestone streets. But the greatest burden was the wooden crucifix, hammered together out of mesquite, that each man carried on his shoulder. The wood, twisted and dried, spoke of the agony of death. There were hundreds of crosses, a forest’s worth, marched through the streets where the silence was broken only by the rhythmic beating of drums, the labored breathing of the men and the mocking clangor of the chains. Even those who stood on the sidelines remained quiet as they watched group after group plod forward, some staggering from heat, others from the sheer physical effort.
    Jimmy and Hannah found it morbid, the dark side of the religion they worshiped, and tried to shield their children from it. But that year, the year of his 14 th birthday, the young man had convinced the parish priest to let him participate. There was something about the anonymity of the procession that appealed to him, being part of a community and yet unrecognizable behind the pointed hood with the spectral holes so the eyes could see out. That afternoon, he was instructed to meet in the convent adjoining the Templo de la Cruz, where he would be given a purple robe and a cross heavy enough to test his adolescent strength. He was strangely excited by the prospect. As he slipped into the purple robe, he spotted his mother through the convent door. She was running up the street with a look he had never seen before on her face – one of pure panic, as if she had lost her bearings in a hostile landscape and no longer knew her way home.
    She caught sight of her son, just as the priest was lowering a wooden cross on to his shoulder.
    “No,” she screamed out. “Don’t do that!”
    Everyone froze in surprise. This being Good Friday, the procession, not to mention the preparations, was undertaken with a mournful solemnity. No one spoke or joked. It was a silent procession, after all. So the irruption of Hannah into the convent and her shrill cries provoked reactions of astonishment among the robed men. She ran toward her son and before the wooden cross touched his shoulder, wrestled it from the hands of priest. It fell to the floor with a dull thud.
    “You mustn’t do this. It is wrong,” she wailed.
    The priest, horrified at the intrusion, stepped back and his voice trembling with authority, sputtered, “Señora, this is a sacrilege. The young boy wishes to participate in Christ’s suffering. He must be allowed to experience…”
    “No,” Hannah cut him off. “He is too young. Far too young. My son is too young for this.” She was not sure how many times she repeated it. Although she knew that children as young as six participated in the rite, it was the only reason she could come up with. But somewhere deep in her entrails, a primal fear had galvanized her. She kicked the cross away from her son, as if it were alive and venomous. The priest recoiled in shock.
    “Senora,