BALTIMORE (Tribune News Service) — Alongside Baltimore City fire engines and inflatable rescue boats in a Locust Point garage rests a beloved mural, created to honor the victims of the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge.

The 11 massive canvases that made up the painting had sat in a patch of grass across from a Royal Farms convenience store in Hawkins Point, part of a sprawling homemade memorial to the six construction workers who perished when the bridge fell.

But after nearly two months outside in the elements along Fort Smallwood Road, it came time Tuesday for the mural to move indoors, allowing its Texas-based artist Roberto Marquez to step back from his role as guardian of the shrine, which evolved into a serene gathering place for those impacted by a far-reaching tragedy.

The mural’s fate isn’t clear. But already, at least one museum has shown interest: the Baltimore Museum of Industry, which has started assembling a collection focused on the history of the bridge. Marquez said he is open to a museum hosting the artwork, but no final decision has been made.

In the meantime, city and state officials helped Marquez find a storage location next door to the museum, an old Baltimore City Fire Department repair shop on Key Highway, with a wide-open garage large enough to fit the mural’s 7-foot-tall panels.

Much of the memorial will remain in place about 2 miles from the collapsed bridge, at the request of some victims’ families: the six tall crosses, adorned with photographs and mementos; the flags representing each of the four countries the victims hailed from — El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico — alongside a large American flag; perhaps even the bright red truck, painted to mimic the vehicles that the workers were sitting in when the bridge fell from beneath them.

The relocation of the mural, filled with the families’ handwritten messages of grief and loss, was a difficult moment for some of them, Marquez said. But it was time.

“I’m not with an organization. I’m not a millionaire. I decided to help them, but eventually it’s getting real difficult,” Marquez said.

Marquez recently witnessed the sudden removal of a similar memorial he created for workers in Ocala, Florida, after just a few days. While the owners of the land where the mural sits now have not asked for its removal, Marquez said he needs to leave Baltimore and move on to other projects. He was concerned that vandals could damage the memorial if left unattended, or that it could end up in the trash.

An official with Talen Energy, which owns the land the memorial stands on and the nearby Brandon Shores power plant, previously said the company “respects both its presence and meaning to the community.”

Marquez said he has installed replacement canvases where the mural once stood, allowing families to continue writing and painting messages if they wish. A new section has been added, too, honoring the victims of the high-speed crash on Interstate 695 last year that also killed six road workers, some of whom had Latino heritage as well. “Los Olvidados” reads a painting beside the six new crosses: “The Forgotten Ones.”

Over the past few months, Marquez has traveled back and forth between his hometown of Dallas and Baltimore numerous times to attend to family matters, including his father’s health problems and the birth of a grandchild. But when in Baltimore, he spent 12-hour days guarding the mural, and ensuring that arriving family members always had a person to talk to and a shoulder to cry on.

He travels with a single rolling bag stuffed with clothes, and stays at the home of Bernardo Vargas, a local roofer who helps him maintain the memorial. Vargas is part of a hodgepodge team of locals who keep the memorial site clean and welcoming, including Mary Babington, a nurse who travels there with jugs of water in between shifts at the hospital, to water the flowers planted in the soil.

After the collapse, Babington said she couldn’t help thinking about the six workers and the terror of their final moments — all because they signed up to do a job few others want to do.

“I probably passed these guys coming home from work one night,” she said. “And I didn’t even realize it.”

Babington said she hopes the site can remain a memorial, not least because it adds beauty to an area that is heavily industrialized, including a medical waste incinerator and other facilities.

The mural’s panels tell the story of the bridge disaster in bright, abstract imagery, evoking the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso.

It begins with a scene at America’s southern border, with soldiers violently arresting a traveling migrant. Steel bridge trusses emerge from the melee, and a red truck is visible in a sea of blue. The next panel features the large face of a weeping woman, cradling a human body in her hands. The face of Spanish artist Salvador Dalí represents the cargo ship that caused the disaster. And a final panel shows the survivor of the collapse being rescued, as hands reach up to him from beneath the waves.

Several staff members from the Museum of Industry have visited the mural, said spokesperson Claire Mullins, and were “very moved by seeing it in person.”

“While the museum would be honored to take the mural, and the artist has expressed interest in that option, our understanding is that at this moment no firm decision has been made,” Mullins wrote in an email. “Ultimately the BMI will defer to the wishes of the artist and the families about the future of the mural.”

The Museum of Industry also would be interested in accepting other items that were on display at the memorial honoring the victims, if they are donated by the families, Mullins said.

While Marquez supports finding the mural a permanent home in a museum, he expressed interest in keeping a memorial for victims’ families to visit standing long-term — maybe at the same location or elsewhere.

Anay Orduno, a friend of José Mynor López, who died on the bridge, said that in the disaster’s immediate aftermath, she visited the memorial site with many of his close family members nearly every day as they anxiously awaited news that López’s body had been recovered. He was the last to be found, six weeks after the collapse.

On Saturday evening, one day after a memorial service for López, they returned again. As night fell, Orduno and several of López’s family members shared their memories of him, some with beers in hand. She comforted López’s aunt, who took care of him as a child in Guatemala, and who he later brought to join him in the United States.

The site has given the families a place to grieve collectively, said Orduno, adding that she hopes it can remain a memorial.

“In our culture — in Spanish culture — we take care of people when we are all alive, and when we are not,” said Orduno, who lives in Rosedale.

Perhaps López, who friends called by the nickname Chepe, would have appreciated the gatherings. A father to four children, López loved to spend time with his family and friends, sharing carne asada and beers. He was incredibly fun, she said.

She’ll always remember him sitting in the hammock on her porch, beer in hand.

As preparations were underway for the mural to be relocated, many longtime visitors stopped by Saturday for a final look. Family members wrote their last messages on the canvas, as children played in the tall grass nearby.

Charles Mills and his family brought fresh watermelon and corn for the group. The Glen Burnie resident said he has come to the memorial many times, dropping off candles, flowers and snacks. He hopes it remains.

“They’ve adopted us into the family,” he said.

After the mural was placed in storage Tuesday, its panels resting against a wall in the garage, one final message was written in permanent marker. It was from Jorge Cuctiul, one of the workers who helped move it.

He wrote it in an indigenous language from Guatemala called Qʼeqchiʼ, in hopes that his countrymen might see it and understand.

“Greetings to those who are going to see these words,” his message said. “It is me, Jorge, and I am with our compatriots, who died on the 695 bridge.”

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