Bless me Ultima Chapter 13
Gabriel accompanies his family to El Puerto and stays to take part in the Lunas’ harvest for the first time. Antonio has thoughts about the conflicting belief systems of the Catholic Church and the golden carp. He wishes there were a god that always forgave and never punished. Antonio asks Pedro why he and Antonio’s other uncles did not come to warn Ultima like Narciso did. Pedro admits that he was a coward, but he vows to stand by Ultima from now on. Antonio’s uncle, Mateo, reports that the surviving Trementina sisters have woven a cottonwood coffin for their dead sister because a witch cannot be buried in a pine, cedar, or piñon coffin. He describes the frightful ceremony for a Black Mass funeral. Antonio has a dream in which Mateo’s description of the ceremony is enacted, but when he looks inside the coffin, he finds Ultima. He awakes just in time to see the El Puerto priest refuse to give the dead woman the funeral mass and, therefore, burial in hallowed ground. The whole town witnesses their public shame. Tenorio will never again be able to sway the townspeople to join his vendetta for revenge.