Reverend Vargas trudged through the field. In twenty minutes, he found the dirt road again and walked on it the rest of the way to town.
He stopped in the doorway of José Peloponeso’s cigarette shop, where José’s daughter was sitting on a white plastic chair with the Friday paper’s crossword and a mango Popsicle. She was thirty, with a dark complexion, broad shoulders, and deep, coal-black eyes.
“You see them flying lately?” asked Reverend Vargas, gesturing up toward the firmament. “They look different, like something else.”
Milena gnawed at the Popsicle as it began to melt.
“They’re just birds, Reverend,” she answered, with the crossword splayed across her lap, Popsicle in one hand, pencil in the other. She seemed annoyed.
“Something strange about it. I’ve kept my eye on them all day. Sometimes seems like the light bounces off them like a mirror. As if they’re flying closer to the sun than they are to us.”
Milena looked at him, confused and incredulous, then surprised.
“If they were flying close to the sun, they would’ve burned up.” She slurped at the Popsicle.
“You have Pepsi?”
Milena rose, leaving the paper on her chair. She went into the store and came back with a can. He began to speak again as she handed it to him.
“You believe there’s such things as nonhuman forces?” he continued, his gaze fixed on the sky, one hand cupping his forehead to shield his eyes from the light.
“You mean God?”
“No.”
This time Milena looked at him suspiciously, wearily, as if trying to decide whether he was putting her faith to the test. He went on:
“All the ones who disappeared these last few weeks came back traumatized. But none can say where they went, why they disappeared, never mind why they keep offing themselves once they’re back.”
“The police—”
“The police haven’t found a thing, not one clue,” the reverend interrupted. “Look”—he pointed—“it’s like they’re from another world. Flying without flapping their wings, they look like perfect triangles, silver-coated, as if they were made of titanium or tin.
Milena sat down again, focusing her attention on the crossword.
Reverend Vargas cracked open his Pepsi and turned to look across the street. A boy, maybe six years old, blew bubbles with a soapy wand in the shade of a nearby building. He looked up the street, down the street. A group of people gathered in front of the Bienestar Bank were talking about it too. One of them held the paper while the others read over his shoulder. They were arguing, as if they couldn’t come to a conclusion about what it meant. One man with a long goatee looked up at the sky. A couple who couldn’t have been more than twenty years old apiece looked over at the reverend, a flicker of hope in their eyes.
“I wish I could help,” he murmured, “but this is out of God’s hands.”
“Heron! Finally,” Milena shouted, scrawling in the last word. “You say something, Reverend?”
But he’d already walked out of the store, continuing down the main road.
On his way back, not far from home, he was walking along the scrub-brush-covered train tracks when he heard a noise that seemed to come from underground. He paused, looking up and down the tracks, but saw only one abandoned coal car. The sound was coming from behind it, a sharp, high-pitched yip, like a chirp. He approached the car, and amid the brush he spotted a brownish yellow cat, curled up into a tight ball of fur. As he bent down to pet it, he saw the deep wound carved into its right flank. Blood was pouring out. Placing two fingers behind its front leg, he felt for its heartbeat, which was slow and deep. It could barely breathe. On the ground next to it lay a bloody pocketknife, an empty bottle of whiskey, a pack of smokes. The reverend looked up and saw two drunks fleeing down the tracks. He yelled after them, but they didn’t stop. He felt as if he wanted to chase them, but didn’t. Instead, he scooped up the cat, cradling it against his chest as he carried it home.
By the time he arrived, the cat was gasping for air, meowing mournfully. A chill seemed to emanate from its skin. He quickly pushed open the door with his shoulder and set the animal down on his armchair. He filled a dish with water and set it down in front of the cat, but it wouldn’t lift its head. Heading back to the kitchen, he flipped on the TV, listening distractedly to the news for a moment before rushing to the bathroom for gauze and Merthiolate, then back to the living room. He crouched in front of the animal, soaking the gauze and dabbing it on the wound. The cat let out a muffled meow. He went back to the kitchen and stood watching the Channel Four news: another disappearance last week, back on Friday night, self-inflicted death Sunday morning.
Leaning both hands on the edge of the sink, he observed the world through the window. The sun had fallen in the sky and glowed reddish against the earth. He knew those birds weren’t birds. They weren’t of this world. They were something much more powerful, something not even his faith could explain. He watched as a car sped down the road, leaving a cloud of dust behind it, abandoning Texarkana. The cat’s labored meowing punctuated the overwhelming silence. He ran back to the living room and saw the awful hemorrhage that spread over the animal’s body. In his more than fifty years of existence, he’d seen men and women cross that dark threshold into emptiness, oblivion. A
