Page 29 of Snake-Eater
She left Grandma Billy shooting the breeze with Connor and went over to the post office. Postmistress Jenny was sorting envelopes and waved as she came in. “Hey, Selena. What’s up?”
“I ... err ...” Selena rubbed the back of her neck. Now that she came to talk about it with someone, it sounded mean-spirited. She took a deep breath. “Um, I don’t know how to ask this, but is Grandma Billy ... err ... okay?”
“Far as I know.” Jenny straightened up and came over to the counter. “Why? Something happen?”
“Well, no, not exactly.” She couldn’t bring herself to say that she’d seen a green man in her garden. “It’s just ... um ... she was talking a lot about seeing gods. Or spirits.”
“Oh, that.” Jenny shrugged. “Lots of people out here believe in spirits and whatnot. It’s religious, more or less. Folk Catholicism gets mixed up with bits of Native spirituality, along with stories somebody’sabuelatold them.”
Selena winced internally. “Ah ... I don’t think it was religious, exactly. She seemed to be saying she actually saw them.”
“Eh, she’s not the only one around here. Between heat mirages and legal weed, there are people who’ll swear that they met Jesus, Elvis, andlittle green men all hanging out together. I wouldn’t worry about it. Just smile and nod, that’s what I do.” Jenny paused, her eyes sharpening. “But that said, she’s nearly eighty. Your aunt used to keep an eye on her. I’d be obliged if you did the same.”
“Of course,” Selena said automatically.
She was halfway back to the store, and Grandma Billy was waving at her, before it occurred to her that she hadn’t said she wasn’t going to be staying.
The dinner at the church Saturday night, which had started to feel comfortable, was suddenly fraught again. Selena kept opening her mouth to ask if anyone else had seen the squash god, then closing it again. How did you even start that conversation?
Do I say, “By the way, Grandma Billy says there’s a strange god in my garden and I saw something and I don’t know what it was?” No, of course I don’t. They’d lock me up.
They hadn’t locked Grandma Billy up, but that probably didn’t signify. You would need something more than walls to hold Grandma Billy. Barbed wire and a moat, at the very least.
She realized that Father Aguirre had been talking to her, and jumped, startled. “Sorry!”
“It’s fine,” the priest said, even though she’d flung bits of soapsuds everywhere. He blotted one off his shirt with his palm. “I was just asking if you wanted to visit your aunt’s resting place tomorrow.”
Selena blinked a few times. She’d almost forgotten that he’d offered. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I’d ... really like that. Thank you.”
“No problem.” He smiled. “I’ll come by in the evening, once it starts to cool off.”
“Oh,” said Grandma Billy, as they prepared to leave with their arms full of leftovers. “You got any good cornmeal lying around, Father?”
“I expect I could put hands on some,” said the priest. “Why?”
“Selena’s got a god in her garden,” said Grandma, as if a god were of no more interest than a coyote or a raccoon. (Did they have raccoons in the desert? Selena hadn’t seen one.)
She cringed, expecting—well, she wasn’t surewhatshe was expecting. You certainly didn’t tell a Catholic priest that there was a god in your garden, that was for sure.
Her mother would have screamed about demons. She was pretty sure she could weather that, but she was half afraid that Father Aguirre would start trying to cast the devil out of Grandma Billy and she didn’t know if she could handle it.
“Oh, I see,” said Father Aguirre instead. “Well, then. Let me find some.”
Grandma winked at her. The priest climbed up onto a chair and dug around in the back of one of the kitchen cabinets, pulling down a white paper sack.
“It’s not that fresh,” he said apologetically. “I don’t bake much. But it’s the thought that counts, they tell me.”
He handed her the bag.
Selena stared at him. “You believe me?”
Father Aguirre smiled. “Tell me what this god looked like.”
“I ... well ...” Put on the spot, Selena found herself saying, “I don’t know what it was, but I thought I saw something green ...”
He listened to her halting description, said, “One moment,” and vanished deeper into the rectory. She caught a glimpse through the door of an office with papers strewn across the desk. Then he returned, holding a wooden carving in his hand.
“Is this like what you saw?”
