“So what do I do?” she asked, when she could breathe again. She felt as if coughing had knocked something loose, in either her esophagus or her soul. “I have to do something! Will those things come back?”
“These won’t,” said Father Aguirre. “I’ll burn them in the morning. It’ll be quite a stink, but nobody’ll be using them again.”
“Snake-Eater’s a day creature, puts his head up under his wing at night.” Grandma nodded to Selena. “You’re pretty well safe from anything but scaring after dark. Assuming itishim, of course.” She considered. “Not much to be done tonight, in any event. I’ll think on it. There’s bound to be something.”
Selena chewed on her lower lip.Bound to be somethingdid not sound promising. But what could she do? She couldn’t very well demand that her friends come up with a way to scare off a rogue spirit that might or might not have been a friend of her aunt’s.
“We’ll work something out,” said Father Aguirre kindly. He squeezed her hand. “Worse things have come up out of the desert. It may be as simple as finding the ... person ... responsible and explaining that there’s been a misunderstanding.”
Misunderstandingwas a good word. Selena felt the heat of the liquor in her stomach. Misunderstanding. She could fix a misunderstanding.
“You mind putting us up for the night, Father? I don’t think I’m up for the walk back myself.”
“Certainly,” said Father Aguirre. He downed the rest of the contents of the mug. “Right this way, ladies. It’s not much, but it’ll do.”
Chapter 12
Selena woke to sunlight streaming through a window. It was coming from the wrong direction and she stared at the square of light lying across the bed, puzzled, until she figured out why.
I’m not at home. I’m at the church. Yes.
The events of last night hung in the back of her head, but she did not have to think about them just yet, so she didn’t.
She was in a whitewashed room with bare wood floors. There was a cross on the wall opposite her, beside the door. It was made of cholla ribs cut and fitted together.
A month ago, she would not have recognized what they were. She felt absurdly, transparently proud that she could look at the cross now and think,Of course, that is made from the cholla cactus,as if knowing this was no surprise at all.
Copper’s hind end was sticking out from under the bed. She was on her side, her belly pale against the wooden floor. She was snoring.
Selena sat up and the bed creaked under her. The snoring stopped.
After a moment, the dog emerged, making champing noises. She put her muzzle on Selena’s knee and looked pleased with herself.
“Good morning,” said Selena, rubbing the dog behind the ears. “If it’s still morning, which I don’t think it is. The sun’s too high.”
Copper sighed deeply and rolled over to have her belly petted, which meant that she began to slide slowly down Selena’s legs and eventually landed on the floor.
“You’re ridiculous.”
Selena got up. Her clothes were on a chair in the corner. Beyond the chair, the cross, and the bed, there was nothing in the room but a hook on the door with a much-faded robe on it.
She wasn’t sure if she was supposed to put on the robe—did it belong to Father Aguirre? Was it there for someone to use, or just hanging there out of the way? Would it look strange if she showed up wearing someone else’s robe?
She pulled on her clothes instead. They smelled like sweat and there was dust streaking the legs of her jeans.
Well, after the night I had, a little sweat and dust probably means I got off lightly ...
And then she could no longer put off thinking about it. The memories came crowding back, as if they had simply been waiting for her to get dressed. The fetches, and Snake-Eater, and her aunt. Grandma Billy with the shotgun. Walking through the dark pushing a wheelbarrow full of owl skins.
She couldn’t remember very much of that last. She knew it had happened, but the images seemed strangely small and far away, seen through the wrong end of the telescope. Grandma Billy and Copper had been with her.
The gap in her memory seemed very much like the gaps when her mother had died. She knew what she had been doing the entire time, she knew that things had gotten done, but when she tried to remember what it had been like, she had only fragments where she could see herself doing things.
Well.
Is there anything there that I need? Do I really need to remember it all vividly, step for step? Is it enough to know that it happened, and I got through it?
It seemed like it might be, at that.
