Cup of Earth

A short story
by Beth Thomas

From what I recall, my father was not much of a believer in unworldly things like God and spirits and souls of humans. He believed in regular things like oil changes and blue Ford tractors, livestock and manual labor. And he believed in soil, in the minerals and sustenance that made it good, which is how he came to believe in El Posito, the healing earth at Chimayo.

I hold my breath as I step into the Santuario, looking for my father.

The narthex is empty this Tuesday afternoon. No worshipers mill about in their Sunday best; no tourists take photos. I rush past the font of holy water, but then think better of it and return, dip my fingers. In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.

The pews are all but empty, holding only a few lost in prayer or genuflection. A cool, damp draft flows past the altar. Behind it stands the elaborate reredos, painted with symbols I never did quite understand. It is all as I remember it, though it has been almost two decades since I have made the sign of the cross here, since the last time I came here with my father.

The sacristy door is closed, so it feels off-limits, but I push it open and go in. Beyond is the Prayer Room, its mud walls covered with paintings of Jesus and the Holy Mother, hundreds of letters and prayers for miracles. Crutches and slings, even hearing aids and reading glasses are fixed to the walls in testament to miracles already past, testament to the healing powers of this modest place.

A round-shouldered, Mexican priest stands at the sacrarium, rinsing a small holy water font. The priest is old and drawn; his petite body swims in the robes.

“Excuse me, I’m looking for my father.”

The priest turns off the water and places the alabaster container on the counter. “Did you not find him in the nave?”

“No.”

“Or maybe by the altar?”

“No. I don’t think he’s here.”

“And did you expect to meet him here?”

The question that has needed an answer for the past twenty years.

“I hoped.”

“Then I’m sure you will find him,” the priest says, motioning toward the tiny door behind him. El Posito.

The room is empty and more cramped than I remember, holding only a small hole in the floor, with barely enough room to sit beside it. I sit next to the shallow pit and sink both of my hands deep into the soil. I close my eyes; I still do not see my father.

The priest leans through the doorway, sensing my uncertainty. “Perhaps if you sit for a while, he will find you.”

The door closes, then silence. It is the kind of silence that has things happening in it: windowpanes rattle, I breathe, a dog barks outside somewhere. I begin to whisper the litany of my childhood, like so many before me, in the language of another time, another place.

Pater noster, qui es in cślis, sanctificetur nomen tuum . . .

The soil looks red with the sun dappled in this way. In the fading pink light, with the dying sun’s lips on my salty, swollen eyelids, and the wind outside blowing the last of the dust from the nearby gravestones, I tip back my head, raise my full hands, and begin to eat.