Keep The Change...

"Dear Father
We dream, we dream
We dream
While we may, while we may..."
- Neil Diamond, Dear Father

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - Florencio Mendez dropped his accordion on the dinner table and walked over to grab the Bible from atop the kitchen's aging refrigerator. He was tired, beaten down by long hours of playing his instrument at a local nightclub known as The Blue Moon. Exhausted, he told himself as he tucked the Bible under his arm and then reached for the fridge's door handle. From inside, he plucked a bottle of beer.

Seconds later, he was sprawled on the old couch in the living room, lifting the beer to his mouth like he'd done thousands of times. Music was his moneymaker. He and his conjunto played all across the border region, and sometimes they took a quinceanera gig when the club business slowed. The Bible was his new addiction. Florencio read it every free moment, a revelation that had shocked his wife, Olivia, of twenty-some years. She'd known him as a hell-raising musician who drank alcohol like an Irish sailor, who smoked marijuana in his pickup and who strayed from his marriage vows at every opportunity.

Los Huercos Alegres, his band, were well-known in town. Florencio could draw a crowd, especially when they played at the cheap cantinas. It was there, Olivia had told their children, that her husband took his pay and a little extra for the show, the little extra being a waitress with time on her hands after closing.

"I am turning my life over to God," he had announced one day at dinner. "I bought this expensive Bible and so that I can now promise you." Olivia nodded, hoping again. His oldest son, Javier Luis, shrugged and lowered his eyes to the carne asada on his plate. The girl in the family, Elizabeth, was eleven, too young to analyze the news.

In the ensuing weeks, Florencio Mendez kept his band busy, but he also took his knees to the local Catholic Church he'd been to as a young man with his mother. She had passed almost 10 years earlier, back when Florencio's straying had been at its zenith, when he'd dared to bring women not his wife to his mother's house. "Eres un marijuano!" his mother had thrown out in anger one day, when Florencio had lit-up at her dinner table, there next to the woman of the moment, a young spitfire in a short halter top and tight blue jeans.

"Soy un artista!" Florencio had fired back, inhaling while pawing at his girlfriend's round ass. "Soy un musico!" His elderly mother had stared at him, but said nothing. Her anger was plain to see, however. Her scorn buried itself in the attitude she now reserved for him. Florencio had left her house in laughter that day, his arm and hands back there, dancing across the young girl's rump. With measured, disdainful gruntings, his mother had shut the door behind him noisily.

"I am preaching at a church in San Benito," he declared a few weeks later.

"What?" was his wife's only response.

"At a Christian church," he went on. "I know the pastor, and he has said I can preach to his congregation next Sunday."

"What - he is hoping you draw your usual dance crowd of cheaters and drug addicts?" Olivia asked, believing it.

"Anyone can come," he told her. "You, too..."

A year later, Florencio Mendez was arrested for stealing an elderly woman's car title and forging her signature to register it. He told police the woman had donated it to his church, for use in the ministry. He'd asked for donations during sermons and had even passed out envelopes addressed to himself. The money had come in steadily, with Florencio instructing Olivia not to mess with his mail. He had, he told her at one point, banked almost $90,000 - much more than he'd earned as a musician.

The story would shame her and her family when it hit the newspapers. That guy being handcuffed in the color photograph on the front page is not my husband, she told friends, not the father of my children. She hoped he'd be punished. A reporter for a television station had interviewed the old woman and the video not only shocked the community, but angered most residents. Florencio Mendez's name was dirt.

In his jail cell, he impressed prisoners with his deep knowledge of the Bible and some guards even went to him for certain passages to do with grief, honesty and courage. Florencio complied happily. He was and wasn't like the others in jail.

"Get some of the cash in my checking account and pay the bail," he said to Olivia one morning. "It's God's money and God wants me out, wants me out there preaching his word!"

"God wants you right where you are," Olivia told him, tersely...

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