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you practice, Miss Wild?”
    “I don’t . . . have any faith.”
    “Ah!” He looked down at his coffee, picked up a spoon, and began to stir in it. There was a long silence punctuated only by the rhythmic, metallic ring of the utensil against his cup. He appeared to be considering what I had told him, but I worried that he might be thinking that I should be committed to a mental facility. I knew my story about the possum hand sounded foolish, even irrational. Finally, the priest spoke: “Miss Wild, you are not just trying to find a way to witness a Penitente crucifixion, are you?”
    My mouth fell open. “Do they still do that?”
    “Have you ever seen the rituals of Los Penitentes during Holy Week?”
    “Well, only the public ones. I’m an outsider. I’m not Catholic. I only know enough Spanish to be dangerous. I’m looking at this from the point of view of a stranger in a strange land.”
    “Yes. Now you have gotten to the heart of it, have you not? You are an outsider. Your home is somewhere else, no?”
    “No. This is my home. Well, I mean, I was raised in Kansas, but my family is all gone. This is the only home I have.”
    “Just the same, you see, you can never truly understand this faith. You have not grown up eating and sleeping and breathing these traditions, attending these rituals.” He looked over my shoulder at the door, then leaned over the table toward me, speaking as if in confidence, of something privileged: “I do not think you will be allowed to observe any of the old rituals. Only a few moradas —you know what moradas are?”
    “Yes, the places where the brothers meet and worship or practice rituals or whatever . . .”
    “That’s not what I mean. The word morada comes from the Spanish word for ‘dwelling,’ which comes from the verb morar , which means ‘to live’ or ‘to dwell.’ It is the home for the spirit, the dwelling place for the soul while it remains on this earth. Los Penitentes consider their moradas to be holy places.”
    “I know the ones I’ve seen are usually off the beaten path. Not on a major road, some not even near a road, and never in an obvious place,” I said. “You really have to look for them to find them.”
    “There are only a few moradas left which carry on the old practices, and they have been forced to become more and more covert. It is vital to the spirit of the ceremonies that the penitent ones be anonymous. These rituals are for them and for their community; they are not some circus sideshow for ignorant Anglos converging on the villages, hoping to see a religious spectacle, perhaps even a crucifixion. The attendance of uninitiated onlookers has only added fuel to the sensationalism surrounding the rituals, and that draws more onlookers. It was never meant to be that way.” He shook his head in frustration and took a drink of coffee. He checked the door, then looked back at me. “You know that Los Penitentes were once excommunicated by the Church?”
    I nodded.
    “You will find a tentative peace today between the Church and Los Hermanos de la Luz—that is another name for them, the Brothers of the Light. In some of the larger towns, there might be a procession, a pale imitation of what it once was. The activities will be centered around the church, although a ceremony may be held by the brotherhood in the morada, especially the Tinieblas—the ceremony held in darkness on Good Friday. But it will be nothing like . . .” His voice trailed off. He knitted his brows, making a chevron of grooves across his forehead. He peered at me through squinted lids. “Do you know what made me finally agree to our interview?”
    “No. I wondered—I’ve been trying for months.”
    “It was one of the pieces you sent me—the one you wrote about that procession you happened to witness near the Chama. When I read it, I was very moved, almost as I would have been if I had been there myself. Where did you learn to write like that?”
    I thought a moment.