He sighed and sat back in his chair. “Sometimes? Maybe? I think it might be something like that, but there’s so much that Idon’tknow. If I grow ten thousand squash, do I make one really big spirit or a dozen smaller ones or none at all? Do spirits quicken the way that humans do? Was the spirit always there, and it only took the thousand ... things ... to give it form? If I introduced a new animal here, would it make a new spirit in time, or would it bring an old one from somewhere else? Could you kill a spirit by eradicating enough parts of it, and would it go to heaven if you did? Are there spirits of—of dodos and passenger pigeons wandering around the halls of heaven? And why do someplacesseem to have souls of their own? For that matter, what are we to make of spirits that beget children, as some of them do?”
He snapped a piece of bacon in half and stared at it glumly. “I don’t know. I’ve lived in the desert my entire life, except for my time in the seminary, and I’m no closer to understanding it than I was twenty years ago. Sometimes I think perhaps it was meant to be unknowable, and I cannot come to it except by faith.” He smiled ruefully. “Although the Jesuits who taught me would be quite put out, and probably tell me that I’m not trying hard enough. But I am not quite willing to experiment with lives that seem to be so much bigger than my own.”
Selena digested this. It was interesting, to be sure, but she wasn’t sure how much it had to do with her current situation.
Then again, if Snake-Eater was a spirit made of a thousand living beings ...
“Would that mean that abunchof roadrunners are mad at me?” she asked. This was an alarming thought. She wasn’t sure how you made amends to a pack of furious snake-eating birds.
“I hope not!” Father Aguirre let out a crack of not entirely amused laughter. “There are very few animals in the desert that I would like to tangle withless. Everyone gets very concerned about rattlesnakes and Gila monsters, but you can outrun those. Roadrunners are like ... small dragons.”
Selena had an image of hundreds of small, feathered dragons swarming the doors of Jackrabbit Hole House. It seemed laughable. Then she thought of the roadrunner that had come into the house and thought that maybe dragons would be preferable.
“I don’t think it’s likely, though,” the priest assured her. “No more than individual cells of your body might be mad at someone.”
Selena sighed. “My individual cells are never mad at anyone,” she said. “Mostly they’re just tired.”
“It’s a good thing that you’re more than the sum of your cells, then.”
“Am I?”
“Of course.” For a moment Father Aguirre was all priest, despite the lack of collar and the bacon grease on his fingertips. “You are a soul who has a body, never forget.”
“I don’t know if I believe that,” admitted Selena.
“That’s all right,” said Father Aguirre, smiling. “Fortunately, some things stay true whether we believe in them or not.”
Copper lifted her head a moment before the door banged open, and Grandma Billy came in. “Morning, all,” she said. “Morning, puppy dog. Is that bacon?”
“It is.”
Grandma hooked her ankle around a chair, pulled it out, sat down, and looked up expectantly.
Father Aguirre slid the plate over. “If you’d been awake an hour earlier, there would have been more.”
“I been awake for hours,” said Grandma cheerfully, taking the last three pieces and holding them like a hand of cards. “Went back home to feed the chickens and check on Am—Selena’s place. Everything’s fine.”
“You went back byyourself?” said Selena, half rising out of her chair. “What if there had been more of those fetch things?”
“I’d’ve put the rooster on ’em,” said Grandma, unruffled. “Fetches just look scary, they ain’t got any real power.” She took a bite of bacon.
“What if there had been something worse?”
Grandma’s lips thinned. “I may be old, but I ain’t dead yet. I ain’t gonna lie down and let Snake-Eater run over top of me.”
Selena recoiled, thinking,I’ve gone too far, now she’s mad, I didn’t mean to ...
“I’m sorry,” she said hurriedly. “I didn’t mean ... I mean, you can ... I just ... please don’t be mad!”
The old woman’s expression smoothed. “Oh, hon, don’t worry about it.” She leaned over and patted Selena’s arm. “I’m not mad atyou. But I’ve been living with Snake-Eater out in the desert for a long damn time, and that’s enough time to get a grudge going.”
“Assuming itishim,” said Father Aguirre.
“Well, yeah. Assuming. If it ain’t, I’ll make my apologies and take my lumps.”
Selena put her hand down to Copper’s head and rubbed the dog’s ears.
She knew already that she would have to go back to Jackrabbit Hole House. The knowledge had come to her in the night, perhaps, or maybe she’d always known it.
