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The one-eyed angel nodded a perfunctory “Hola” to Amarante, folded its beat-up wings—whose feathers rattled obscenely like those of a zopilote—and, like someone catering to hemorrhoids, eased painfully down nearby with an audible “Whew.” After mopping its brow with a filthy handkerchief, the angel lit a cigarette by clicking together two nails on its left paw, inhaled deeply, and immediately had a long drawn-out coughing jag. When this had somewhat abated, and the coyote angel was only wheezing and gasping a little, Amarante dared to speak. “I see that rainbow is still there,” he murmured politely. “That’s one tough rainbow if you ask me.” The angel glowered at the rainbow for a second, then shifted its sullen, yellowy eye onto Amarante. “Listen, cousin,” it said wearily, “the way things are supposed to work out, one day the struggles of all you little screwed-up underdogs will forge a permanent rainbow that’ll encircle this entire earth, I should live so long.” “I still don’t understand exactly how come the rainbow,” Amarante said. “It’s like this, man,” the disgruntled coyote figure said, its lone jaundiced eye staring blankly at the sky. “You know how down in the Chamisaville Headstart at the end of a day those teachers paste a little gold or silver star on the forehead of any kid who did good that day—?” “I don’t,” Amarante said. “But I’ll take your word for it.” “Well, this rainbow is kind of like that.” After which the exhausted angel suffered yet another smoker’s hacking jag that lasted a full minute. When this fit had subsided, the ethereal being struggled wearily to its feet and snapped the butt into Joe’s beanfield. “Jesus Christ,” the angel whimpered, staring forlornly at the healthy bean plants. “Three hundred years, and just about all you old farts got to show for it is seven-tenths of an acre of frijoles. And I hadda draw the assignment. You people don’t deserve a gold star, let alone a rainbow. I’ll see you around—” Whereupon, with a grotesque rattle of its vulture wings and a little pained, snuffling grunt, the angel disappeared.

— The Milagro Beanfield War by John Nichols (New Mexico Trilogy, #1)

Now what is certain, is that some action upon Mr. Strange's part has caused a disturbance in the unnatural order of things.

— Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke, Simon Prebble

In the early days there had been no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny to decorate the sacrilege, piety, or greedy whimsy of Milagro’s various religious seasons. In their stead, the Abuelo, a shady and gnarled old man—more closely related in spirit to the bogeyman than to old Saint Nick—scrambled around in the winter or spring shadows, trying to lay his icy fingers on irreligious little kids who strayed from the straight and narrow. When he latched onto a victim, the hairy old Abuelo, who dressed in rags and occasionally smoked a cigar, made the kid kneel on the ground, whipped him heartily with a cat-o’-nine-tails, and then ordered the child to say his prayers. If the youngster didn’t know his prayers the Abuelo was liable to kick him around in the snow until his body became a white ball, or else he would burn off the tip of the kid’s frosty nose with his cigar. For dozens of decades the Abuelo had hung around at one festive time of year or another, beating up kids or shining flashlight beams into burros’ eyes until they went crazy, and in general causing a great deal of malicious mischief. But as the modern age intruded upon Milagro, bringing with it the Cinemascope and Technicolor versions of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and cutesy Day-Glo Halloween skeleton suits, the ferocious Abuelo began to fade from the sanitized scene like the image in an old tintype.

— The Milagro Beanfield War by John Nichols (New Mexico Trilogy, #1)

Billy Ray Gusdorf, known simply as Ray these days, was a lean, quiet man who, in a lean and quiet way, believed in God.

— The Milagro Beanfield War by John Nichols (New Mexico Trilogy, #1)