The Anything Box

Padre Manuel found one that looked like the ship. He touched the ship andthen the disk. He smiled at the creature and pushed the plates back togetherand returned them to the creature. He was a noticing thing too.
The space creature ran his fingers lightly down Padre Manuel's face andsmiled. Padre Manuel thought with immense gratification, "He likes me!"
The creature turned from Padre Manuel, lifted his face, his nose flaring,and waddled on short, heavy legs over to a greasewood bush and took a bite,his two long teeth flashing white in the sun. He chewed—leaves, stems andall—and swallowed. He squatted down and kind of sat without bending, andwaited.
Padre Manuel sat, too. Then the creature unswallowed. Just opened his mouthand out came the bite of greasewood, chewed up and wet. Well, he went fromtree to tree and bush to bush and tried the same thing and unswallowed everymouthful. He even tried a mouthful of Johnson grass, but nothing stayed down.
By this time, Padre Manuel had figured out that the poor creature must behungry. Often on these walks to the pasture, he would take an apple or somecrackers or something else to eat that he could have offered him, but it sohappened that this time he had nothing to offer. He was feeling sorry when thecreature shrugged himself so the knobs on his ribs waggled, and turned back tothe ship, scratching as though the knobs itched him. He crawled back into theship.
Padre Manuel went over cautiously, and almost got a look inside, but thecreature's face, teeth and all, pushed out of the hole right at him. PadreManuel backed away and the creature climbed out with a big box thing under hisarm. He scoonched himself all up together again and put the box down. Hemotioned Padre Manuel to come closer and pointed at one side of the box andsaid something that ended questiony. Padre Manuel looked at the box. There wasa hole in the top and some glittery stuff on the side of it just above a bigslot and the glittery stuff was broken. Only a few little pieces were hangingby reddish wire things.
"What is it for?" he asked, making his voice as questiony as he could.
The creature looked at him and slid his eyelids a couple of times, then hepicked up a branch of greasewood and pushed it in the top of the box. Then hewaggled one hand in the slot and stuck a few of his fingers in his mouth.Padre Manuel considered for a moment. It must be that the box was some kind of food-making thing that had broken. That was why the poor creature was actingso hungry. Que lбstima!
"I'll get you something to eat, my son," said Padre Manuel. "You waithere." And he hurried away, cutting across the corner of the alfalfa field inhis hurry, his cassock whispering through the purply blue flowers.
He was afraid someone might start asking questions and he wasn't one totalk much about what he was doing until it was done, but Sor Concepciуn andSor Esperanza had taken the old buckboard and driven over to Gastelum's to seeif Chenchita would like to take a job at the Dude Ranch during the vacationthat had just begun. She had graduated from the tiny school at the mission andsomething had to be found to occupy the time she was all too willing to devoteto the boys. Padre Manuel sighed and laid the note aside. God be thanked thatthis offer of a job had come just now. The Gastelums could use the money andChenchita would have a chance to see that there was something more in theworld than boys.
Padre Manuel raided the kitchen and filled a box with all kinds of thingsand went back out to the pasture.
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Well, the creature tried everything. Most of it he un-swallowed almost assoon as it went down. Padre Manuel thought they had it for sure when he triedthe pork roast, but just as they were heaving a sigh of relief, up it came—allthat beautiful roast, mustard and all. The creature must have been prettyupset, because he grabbed Padre Manuel and shook him, yelling something athim. Padre Manuel recoiled, but his hand went to the band of tight fingersthat circled his arm. He laid his hand upon the cool smoothness of thefingers.
"My child!" he rebuked. "My son!" He looked up into the blazing silverygray of the eyes above him. In the tight silence that followed, Padre Manuelrealized, with a pleasurable pang, that he had touched a creature from anotherworld.
The creature stepped back and looked at Padre Manuel. Then he picked up apinch of dirt and sprinkled it on his head and smiled.
Padre Manuel bowed gravely. Then he, too, smiled.
It was almost dark before Padre Manuel gave up going around the pasturewith the creature, trying to find something he could stomach. He was carefulto avoid the tree where the dove's nest was. Surely if the creature couldn'teat the egg from the kitchen, he wouldn't be able to eat a dove's egg. Hesighed and started home.
Gonzales' bull was stretching his neck through the barb-wire fence, tryingto reach the lush green alfalfa just beyond his tongue's reach. "You tellNacio to plant his own alfalfa," said Padre Manuel. "And don't break the fencedown again. To die of bloat is unpleasant and besides, there is a hungry thingin the pasture tonight."
He glanced back across the field. The trees hid the ship from here. Good.It was pleasant to have a little secret for a while. Then he began to worryabout the creature. This matter was too big to keep to himself too long. Itmight be very important to others. Maybe the sheriff should be told. Maybeeven the government. And the scientists. They would go mad over a ship and acreature from another world. There was Professor Whiting at the Dude Ranch.True, he was an archaeologist. He looked for Indian ruins and people longdead, but he would know names. He would know whom to tell and what to do. Butunless Padre Manuel found something that the creature could eat, it would be adead creature long before letters could go and come. But what was it to be?
The matter was in his prayers that night and after he turned out the light,he stood at the window and looked up at the stars. He knew nothing of themexcept that they were far, far, but perhaps one of those he could see was thecreature's home. He wondered what God's name was, in that world.
Next morning, as soon as Mass was over, Padre Manuel started out to thepasture again. He was carrying a bushel basket full of all lands of thingsthat might perhaps be eatable for the creature. There were two bars of soapand a sack of sugar. A length of mesquite wood and a half-dozen tortillas.There were four dried chili peppers and a bouquet of paper roses. There weretwo candles that regrettably had been left in the sun and were now flat dustycurlicues. There was a little bit of most anything Padre Manuel could thinkof, including half a can of Prince Albert and a pair of canvas gloves. A tincup rattled against a canteen of water on top of the load. Irrigation wasn'tdue in the pasture for three days yet and the ditch was dry.
Padre Manuel was just fastening the pasture gate when he heard a terriblebellering, and there was Gonzales' bull, the meanest one in the valley,running like a deer and bellering every time he hit the ground.
"The fence!" gasped Padre Manuel. "He broke in again!"
Behind the bull came the space creature, his short, stubby legs runninglike the wind. But the wildest, most astonishing thing was how the rest of himcame. His legs were running all the time, but the rest of him would shoot outlike a rattler striking, flashing silver lightning in the sun and then he'dhave to wait for his short legs to catch up.
Well, the bull and the creature went out of sight around the salt cedarsand there was one last beller and then lots of silence. Padre Manuel hurried
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as fast as he could, with the basket bumping him every step, and there, rightin front of the spaceship, was the bull, very dead, with its neck folded backand a big hole torn in its flank.