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Colón house. Sixty seconds. Go. Davey ran, his head still blurry from waking only three minutes earlier, and wondered why every year his dad did the same thing. No Easter basket. No good morning, just run, Davey. Faster. I can’t believe you let those little wetback mo-ha-dohs outrun you. We OWN them. And Davey waited on the horn and felt his bladder bulging beneath his belt, taunting him, forcing him to thrust his hand into his pocket and pinch the tip of his wiener, and the pain kept him from peeing for now, but he looked over his shoulder anyway and considered going back to his dad, who was still going on about the golden fuckin egg, to ask if he could go potty real quick. But he knew better.
    So he crossed his legs and rocked back and forth and wondered when they were going to blow the stupid horn. Don’t think of pee or the golden fuckin egg. Something to make the dumb horn blow—little boy blue, come blow your horn—and back and forth, pinching his wiener and looking around and loosening his belt a notch to let his bladder expand a little so he’d be able to run. Blow your horn, dang you. Dad can take the money, I want the prize. A brand-new mountain bike this year. I’ll ride all over the place. Learn how to jump ramps like the big kids and maybe race professionally when I grow up like those guys in
BMX Magazine,
especially if it’s a cool bike like a Mongoose or a Diamondback or—
    The horn blew and the kids ran frantically, stampeding, defying gravity by scooping up eggs as they went, bent over and never running upright, and as Davey watched the kids get farther away from him, the eggs disappeared, the ground turning green again as if a plague of locusts were attacking a field of wheat, like they told him about in Sunday school to illustrate God’s wrath.
    GODDAMMIT, BOY. Get your ASS in there and GET THAT EGG.
    Davey let go of his wiener and broke into a run—ignoring the pain in his bladder—and heard another parent calling his dad an asshole and why don’t you just leave the poor kid alone, you jerk. He lowered his head and ran straight toward the middle of the group, where the kids were still bunched together and running for the trees. He passed children with bigsmiles on their faces, happy with the three or four eggs they’d managed to get their hands on. A few of them had been tripped or knocked over and sat on the ground looking as if they weren’t sure whether or not they should cry or keep going, there were still so many eggs.
    By the time he got to the trees, they were full of kids who weren’t afraid of climbing, and smaller ones looked up the trunks at the brave kids and lowered their heads and kept going toward the pond, the cutoff point for the hunt, scattering, looking in bushes, under rocks, sometimes pushing the smallest kids over and stealing their eggs, and the parents shouted words of encouragement that sounded like a crackling roar as the trees broke the sound apart while Davey ran past several eggs mashed into the grass by the mob of children now spread all over the park, searching for the better-hidden eggs or giving up and walking back toward their parents or the playground, but he pushed on, knowing the golden egg wouldn’t be out in plain view, heading toward a row of bushes that lined the bank of the stream spilling out of the pond, where a small girl crouched beneath a bush and then emerged with a glittering egg in her hand.
    He stopped running and looked at the girl. She looked back at him, clutching the golden fuckin egg in her fist. He took a step toward her. None of the others had noticed her. None of them saw the two children staring each other down, sizing each other up. Give me the egg. He took another step toward her.
    No. It’s mine. It’s my egg cause I found it.
    He took another step and saw the girl’s body tense up as if she were about to break into a run. Give it. Gimme the golden fuckin egg. Please. I need it.
    The girl smiled at him. He started to smile