“But it only took me like twenty minutes!”
The stout woman, who, as it turned out, was Galadriel, burst out laughing. “I told you, hon, it’s authentic folk art. We get together a couple times a year and make up a whole pile like this, then the galleries sell ’em a few at a time.”
Grandma killed the last of the too-sweet wine. “You can make ’em at home too,” she said, “but it’s more fun like this.”
She wasn’t wrong. There was a festive, almost giddy air that reminded Selena of making holiday cards in grade school, albeit with less glitter and more alcohol.
It didn’t occur to her to wonder what Father Aguirre might think about crucifixes as commercial art until the door to the café opened and he came in, all in black, Roman collar just visible over the box he was carrying.
“Contribution to the cause,” he said, grinning, and set down the box.
It was full of pieces of the strange, weblike wood that Selena had learned came from cholla. Galadriel let out a whoop of delight and descended on it. “Oh, this is thestuff!”
Selena, after finishing her own glass of wine, decided that she quite liked Galadriel. “Yes, that’s my real name,” the woman said, heaving a sigh. “My parents were the worst sort of hippies, and they all wantedto go back to the land. Turned out they weren’t all that good at it. But by the time they figured it out, I’d fallen in love with ... well ...” She made a sweeping gesture that took in the whole world of sand and sage and desert outside. “It gets in your blood, out here.”
“Yeah,” said Selena. “Yeah, it does.” She frowned, remembering something. “Didn’t you call in to the radio a while ago? About a weird energy?”
“Yep,” said Galadriel, as matter-of-fact as if she was discussing the weather. “I got a touch of the sight. There was something churning away northeast of here. Still is, though it’s settled down a bit.”
It occurred to Selena that here was someone who would take a god in the garden absolutely in stride. “Whatkindof energy?” she asked. “What does it mean?”
Galadriel shrugged. “Felt like a Santa Ana wind. Dry and hot and makes you itchy and jittery and short-tempered. Just hanging there, not really doing anything. That’s all I know.”
“But what causes that sort of thing?”
Galadriel gave her a considering look. “Desert’s full of spirits,” she said finally. “Pretty sure one got woke up. For all I know, some kids went drinking and pissed on the wrong rock and riled somebody up good.”
Someone like Snake-Eater? Could she be feeling him?She tried to think of how to ask, but the sentence would have started with “Okay, so my aunt was sleeping with a roadrunner god ...” and she couldn’t put the script together. She went back to making crosses.
Father Aguirre had settled into a corner, and after a few minutes, Selena couldn’t stand it anymore. “Does this bother you?” she asked him in an undertone. “People aren’t being very ... um ... respectful about crosses.” Her mother would have tried to throw the devil out of the whole building several times over by now.
The priest chuckled softly. “What do you think Jesus’s greatest miracle was?”
“Uh.” Selena hadn’t been expecting this question. She racked her brain, trying to remember Sunday schools past. “Raising someone from the dead?”
“Which was certainly very impressive.” Father Aguirre folded his hands on one knee. “There’s not a wrong answer, but for my money, it was the loaves and fishes. People were poor and hungry and He fed them, because He knew that it’s hard to listen to a sermon when your stomach is growling.” The priest made a small gesture that encompassed the busy room. “Perhaps this is a modern equivalent. People are poor, but the symbol of the cross, in a roundabout way, will feed them. And I do not believe in a God who would be more offended by jokes about crosses than by the system which has made them poor.”
Selena couldn’t help but contrast Father Aguirre’s God with her mother’s. She wasn’t ready to worship either of them, but she certainly knew which one she preferred.
By the time dusk came and everyone was gathering up their things, Selena had put nearly five hundred dollars’ worth of “authentic folk art” into Lupé’s care. It would have been a week’s salary at home, done in a few hours.Granted I can’t do that every week, but still. That’ll keep Copper in dog food for quite a while.
Selena tried to do math as she steered a somewhat inebriated Grandma Billy home, a task not made any easier by the fact that Grandma had begun singing the Marines’ fight song.If I can do that every quarter, and if the garden stuff sells as well as Grandma claims ...
“From the haaaalls of Montehhhzuuuuma . . . !”
Food’s a lot cheaper out here than it was in the city too, and potatoes and beans hardly cost anything, so if I save my money ...
“. . . to the shores of Tripoleeeee . . .”
Merv the peacock yelled a greeting from the roof as they reached Grandma Billy’s house.
“We will fight our country’s baaaattles ...”
“We’re here, Grandma.”
“In the land, on air, and—wait, what?”
“How much wine did you drink?”
