He opened the refrigerator, took out a half-full jar of mayo and put it on the counter next to him, then grabbed the small carton of eggs he’d previously hardboiled for just such an emergency. Something seemed wrong, and for a brief flash of a second he thought they were experiencing an earthquake.
Then he realized it was the egg carton.
It was thrumming in his hands.
Immediately, he put the carton down, flipping open the top. The eggs inside were bobbing up and down like oversized jumping beans, a sight so crazy and inexplicable that he wasn’t sure at first how to react. Gooseflesh had broken out all over his body. He watched the bouncing eggs and was suddenly afraid that one of them would crack open and something would come out. It made no sense—the eggs had been boiled—but he closed the carton quickly, threw it in the trash and immediately sealed up the Hefty bag lining the trash can. Holding it at arm’s length and moving swiftly, he dumped the entire thing in the garbage can outside and closed the lid tightly. His heart was pounding, and he imagined the eggs continuing to bounce, eventually breaking out of the carton, tearing through the Hefty bag, jumping out of the garbage can.
By nighttime, they might be hopping toward his living quarters.
The thought was intolerable.
The dump was closed on Sunday, but Tax Stuart, who owned and operated the small landfill, was a friend and parishioner, and Father Ramos started to call him up to ask him to open it today as a favor, but he stopped dialing after the first three numbers and put the phone down. He would have to explain that it was an emergency, and Tax would ask him why, in order to make sure he was not dumping illegal chemicals or toxic waste, and Father Ramos…didn’t want to have to explain.
There was another site where people abandoned cars, where they left discarded appliances and threw old paint containers, an unofficial spot past Saguaro Hill, and he decided to take his trash there. In fact, he intended to leave the garbage can there as well. He knew it was wrong to use the desert as a dumping ground, and he would pray for forgiveness after he was done, but, he rationalized, it was farther away from town than the actual landfill, and the more distant the better. Maybe the eggs—
or what was inside them
—wouldn’t find their way back.
He took a deep breath.
After that…
He needed to go out to Cameron Holt’s ranch.
He needed to see it.
Father Ramos steeled himself. The idea had been in the back of his mind ever since that first night of prayer in the empty church—
“Hector”
—and he had resisted it until now, fearful of God’s wrath. But he was a man of the cloth, and if anyone had the responsibility to directly confront what had happened, to face what Holt was hiding in his smokehouse, it was him.
After checking to make sure the church was empty, Father Ramos put on his gardening gloves and carried the garbage can out to the station wagon. He didn’t want to lay it down in case the lid fell off, but he didn’t have to; when he put up the back seat, there was enough space in the rear well for the receptacle to stand upright. He deposited the garbage can at the dump behind Saguaro Hill, wedging it carefully between a rock and a rusted washing machine to make sure it would not easily fall over, then drove west, down the series of increasingly narrow dirt roads that led to Cameron Holt’s place. He slowed the car as he approached the ranch. A chain was pulled across the road in front of the cattle guard, and from the center of it hung a No Trespassing sign. Beyond the cattle guard lay a dead cow, its bloated form covered with gray slime that encased it like a shell.
He pulled to a stop, staring through the windshield at the cow, thinking, not for the first time, that God was punishing them for what they’d done. He understood why Holt had put the body in his smokehouse, knew the fear and panic the rancher had felt—they had all felt—but the priest wondered now if it might be better to provide a proper burial, to show respect and remorse.
Isn’t that what God would want?
He wasn’t sure, but thought that if he could just get into the smokehouse and look at it, he might be able to figure out the best course of action.
It was impossible to continue driving up the blocked road, and he tried to decide whether he should honk the horn and wait for someone to show up, or ignore the sign, get out of the car and walk to the ranch. The decision was made for him as Cameron Holt himself came striding down the dirt lane. Father Ramos got out of the car, wondering if the rancher had some sort of security setup, a camera or a motion-detector, that let him know when someone had arrived. “Mr. Holt—” he began.
“Go away!” the rancher ordered. “This is private property!”