Rafo’s devotion to Santa María

Rafo’s devotion to Santa María is neither a simple creed nor a habit of unquestioning obedience. He treats Mary as a dependable companion with whom he can make promises, seek help, and settle a debt; that intimate faith shapes how he interprets danger, victory, and even the small permissions of daily life. During the journey with Mike Milo, prayer becomes both a private explanation for their escape and a way of recognizing the sacred in a remote chapel.

A Personal and Practical Faith

Rafo distinguishes his relationship with Mary from any settled certainty about religion. He admits to himself that his religious feeling comes and goes, yet insists on believing in Mary. His faith rests on a pattern of exchange: when he makes a deal with her, he keeps his side and trusts that she will keep hers. He understands her promises in direct, practical terms, especially when danger is near. This makes devotion less an abstract account of doctrine than a personal relationship tested against what happens to him.

Mary’s reliability also gives Rafo a point of comparison with his family. He likes her more than his own mother, a preference that conveys how much trust and closeness he locates in the sacred figure. His response to Mary’s son is different. The thought of the nails associated with the son’s suffering troubles him, and he cannot imagine choosing to endure such pain for anyone. The contrast does not resolve his doubts about religious belief; instead, it shows the limits of what he can accept and the particular, personal terms on which his attachment to Mary depends.

God remains more difficult for Rafo to approach. He decides that he believes in God even if he cannot be sure that belief is true, because denying it would force him to think about God more than he wants to. Mary, by contrast, is understandable to him: her actions and even her punishments feel legible. After he steals a guava from a blind woman, he takes a slap from Mary as a rebuke and does not steal from a blind woman again. The incident gives his faith a moral dimension, but one conveyed through an immediate consequence rather than a formal religious rule.

Prayer, Risk, and Gratitude

Rafo carries this personal faith into physical confrontations. Before every fight, he crosses himself and says one or more Ave Marias, depending on how much time he has. Looking back on his earlier fight with Mike in the city, he thinks his failure to say even one prayer left him at a disadvantage and helps explain why Mike prevailed. Prayer therefore becomes part of Rafo’s preparation: he reads the outcome of a fight through both bodily action and the presence or absence of ritual.

The bus-driver fight gives him a different account of success. While Mike takes over driving as dawn approaches, Rafo cannot sleep. He reconsiders how they defeated the larger driver, resisting the idea that Mike deserves all the credit for the plan or the fight. This is not merely boastfulness: Rafo has his own explanation for why events turned in their favor. During the struggle he had crossed himself several times and completed two Ave Marias, beginning a third before Mike signaled him to take the wheel. He keeps that explanation to himself, treating it as a private understanding between Mary and him rather than something to disclose to Mike.

The prayers also explain why Rafo regards the outcome as a debt. He thinks that Santa María has proved herself again and intends to tell Mike, when they part in Texas in a few days, that Mike owes Mary as well. His thought holds gratitude and guardedness together: he believes the escape was helped by a power Mike may not recognize, while also protecting the secret of his own contribution. As Mike drives, Rafo wonders whether he understands how much he owes Mary and stays alert to the possibility that Mike is asleep or dizzy. Devotion does not make Rafo passive; it accompanies his watchfulness and his sense of responsibility for the immediate situation.

Ritual in Ordinary Life

Rafo’s relationship with Mary extends beyond emergencies. When he has enough food, and especially when a meal is unusually good, he sometimes leaves a little for her to taste. He also sometimes goes to church at her behest, including on Easter, his saint’s day, or San Miguel’s day. These acts give devotion a domestic and calendrical shape: it appears in the sharing of food and in occasional observance, as well as in the urgent prayers said before a fight.

His experience of confession complicates rather than strengthens his connection to organized religious practice. He went only a few times and eventually stopped; on one later occasion, persuaded that confession could bring him into contact with God, he had an unwelcome encounter and did not return. The episode marks a boundary in his religious life. He does not reject God altogether, but neither does he continue an institutional practice that has failed to offer the contact he was told it would provide. His lasting confidence remains with Santa María, whose interventions he believes he can recognize and whose relationship with him feels reciprocal.

The Shrine and Its Meaning

That attachment takes physical form when Rafo and Mike approach a small white structure in a deserted place. It first appears to be a tiny adobe building of mud and wattle; inside, the apparent mystery resolves into a chapel. The room has no windows and contains only a large candle, homemade tallow candles, and icons of Mary, including a crude image of an Indian-faced Virgin. Part of the painted dress has flaked away, and the metal around the image is scorched by candle flames. Its modest, worn features make this a specific place of devotion rather than a grand or formal sanctuary.

Rafo identifies the building as a shrine and objects when Mike suggests they sleep there. Mike gently reminds him to speak respectfully and suggests that Mary will not mind if they remove their shoes. Rafo considers the suggestion, then begins to take off his shoes before stopping himself. He crosses himself at the icon and asks Mary’s forgiveness; only then does he remove the other shoe. The small sequence matters: Mike’s suggestion makes the shrine seem hospitable, but Rafo does not treat that permission as his to assume. He first addresses Mary directly, performing the ritual that makes the ordinary act acceptable within a sacred place.

The scene gathers the different strands of Rafo’s faith without resolving his uncertainties. He can accept a practical accommodation, wonder at Mike’s apparent understanding of Santa María, and still observe the boundary himself through a gesture of reverence. Across the journey, prayer has helped him interpret a fight, express gratitude, and remain attentive to danger; at the shrine, it also governs how he enters and behaves in a place devoted to Mary. His faith is therefore less a settled doctrine than a repeated relationship—private, transactional, and marked by acts through which Rafo acknowledges the power he believes has stayed with him.