Page 30 of Snake-Eater
Selena’s mouth fell open. He was holding a statue, about a foot high, of a dancing figure with the same striped green skin as her visitor.
“Yes!” she said. Then, a moment later, “But ... not the same, actually. Mine was shorter and dressed differently, and looked less ... less ...” She tried to come up with the right word. The dancing figure looked powerful, not timid, and carried rattles in its hands. “Less everything,” she said finally.
“Not surprising,” Father Aguirre said. “This is a carving of the Squash Kachina, and what you saw wasn’t a kachina, just a little local spirit. Although, this is one of the ones they make for tourists, so even that may not be entirely accurate.”
Selena’s expression of profound bafflement clearly spoke to him. He coughed. “It’s not my place to explain how the kachinas and the Pueblo people fit together, and I doubt anyone would appreciate a Catholic priest sticking their nose in. But I can say that the Pueblo people were and are often very skilled observers. The kachina looks this way because that is how a spirit of squash would look, the same way that the hawk or owl kachinas look the way they do because that’s how their spirits would look.” He set the carving carefully down on the table. “So it’s no surprise your little spirit looks similar, but isless everything, as you say. Quartz Creek is very small, and all our gods are small too.”
Grandma sniffed haughtily, possibly considering defending the honor of the local gods, but apparently thought better of it.
“You believe this?” Selena said faintly. “About there being gods? I mean, other than ...?” She gestured vaguely in the direction of the church.
Father Aguirre smiled. “The first commandment is ‘Thou shalt have no other godsbefore Me,’” he said gently. “It doesn’t say that there aren’t any others, or that you shouldn’t be polite when you meet them. I’d probably try to talk you out of worshipping one, but ... well ... we all make our own peace with the desert. Call them spirits if it sits easier with you. And if you’re worried for your immortal soul, come talk to me.”
He saw them both out, patted Copper, and closed the rectory door behind them.
“Does ... doeshebelieve in them?” asked Selena. She felt as if she were treading very near the edge of a cliff.
“He’d better,” said Grandma Billy. “His mother was one. Nice woman, but I wouldn’t cross her for all the money in your city. Comeon, let’s get home. You ought to take the chicken and the potatoes, but I’ll take some of Lupé’s slaw for myself, if you don’t mind.”
After they’d walked home and Grandma had gone into Blue Horned Toad House, Selena found herself wandering around the house as if stray gods might be lurking in the corners.I don’t believe in that,she told herself.I don’t.
I just ... don’t believe a little less than yesterday. Everyone was so matter-of-fact about it.
She was almost relieved to find a scorpion in the bathroom sink. At least something else in the house was as confused as she was. She put a cup over it and slid a piece of paper underneath, then escorted it outside.
As she came back in and passed the fireplace, she saw the statue of Snake-Eater looking at her. “Now how did you get turned back around?” she asked it. Grandma Billy must have done it, though she was generally very polite about not touching other people’s things without asking. Selena turned it back, shook her head, and turned on the radio.
KQDZ, the Voice of the Desert, played a prerecorded weather forecast, then a zydeco cover of “Fly Like An Eagle.” DJ Raven came on and said, “Do you ever really think about linear time?”
“I try to avoid it,” Selena muttered.
“It’s like ... it’s like horses, okay?” the DJ continued. “Now, we all know that horses didn’t show up until the Spanish conquistadors came through, right? But once they were here, it was like the horse spirit, oldCaballo, hadalways been here. Like it was retroactive that way. How does that work?”
“Oh god,” Selena said, “not you too.” She reached for the knob.
“I’m just saying that linear time is a headfu—”
Click.
Selena rubbed her forehead. “I’m going to bed,” she told Copper.
Once in bed, though, she didn’t sleep. She lay under the blankets and gazed at the map on the wall. There were tiny notations on it in blue ink, presumably from Amelia. She could only read a few of them in the light from the bedside lamp. Many of them seemed to be draws:Dogtail Draw. Chuckwalla Draw. East Havoc Draw.Presumably adrawwas some kind of desert feature. There was also a place called Johnny’s Hole, which sounded vaguely obscene but presumably also involved geography.
Annnd I’m thinking about this because I don’t want to think about gods or spirits or why everyone seems so calm about them.
She was utterly incapable of dealing with the notion of gods. Probably everyone was having a collective hallucination—or Grandma Billy was sliding gently into dementia and everyone was humoring her. That Selena was actually thinking about getting up tomorrow and putting cornmeal out for a god was probably a sign that she was cracking up gently herself.
Is this whole town in a cult? Is it like when my mother joined that one church—the really weird one, where they thought Satanists were everywhere, and that people praying over meals were praying to Satan unless you heard them say “Jesus” at the beginning? Everybody’s going along?
They didn’t seem very cultlike. Jenny clearly didn’t believe in spirits. Father Aguirre believed in them but didn’t seem to see any conflict between that and being a Catholic priest. Grandma Billy didn’t seem like a good candidate for a cult, unless she was running it, and then it probably would be more about mojitos than squash.
For that matter, if I was going to hallucinate spirits, would it really be ofvegetables? There are so many other things that seem like they’d have spirits. Why squash, of all things?
Hell, if I was going to hallucinate vegetable gods, you’d at least think I’d pick a brassica. Then you could have a dozen different gods for the price of one.
She snorted at her own joke, then wondered if spirits of cabbage and cauliflower would be vengeful.
Selena sighed. There were other, more pressing concerns than gods. She ran the conversations of the day through her mind—had she said anything horrible? Was everyone offended, but too polite to say so?
