An Update from the Ranch-Sheveezers – Kellan Jansen

March 12, 2026

The tank burst on a night when rain hammered the metal roof like God pitching gravel. Bob Rance Sheeveezer—officially Eric Jackson—stepped outside with a flashlight as the yard began to tremble. The earth burped. Something sulfuric and ancient pushed upward. The tank ruptured in a long, low exhale, spilling a tide of septic water that shimmered with the porch light’s reflection.

He waded in ankle-deep: warm, viscous, familiar.
Behind him, his wife Candi opened the door a sliver. “Oh my God.”
“Maybe,” Bob (Eric) said. “It’s a sign.”

The rain didn’t stop. Bob waded deeper, arms raised like a preacher receiving a vision. The dark smelled like ammonia and manure. He breathed the dank air, deeply and freely, wanting it to fill him. This is revelation, he decided. I am being shown.

“Bob,” Candi said, “it’s shit.”

She’d written a book about systems that pretend to collapse but never do—a manifesto that earned her a speaking tour and a restraining order from a tiny publishing house in Austin. One character had a cursed, unpronounceable name and died in a chapter she “cut for clarity.” Bob believed her when she said it wasn’t about him. He believed everything.

The book had bought their house, a flat piece of West Texas nothingness. A dream come true for Bob, who’d never had luck with women, wealth, travel, work—or breath. And then suddenly he had her.

Inside, Candi poured whiskey and wrote: Break what refuses to break. She glanced out the window and saw her husband lift his face toward the storm, eyes closed, mouth open as if to receive communion. Somehow, he looked inspired.

By morning, the guy arrived with a vacuum mask and thermos. “Tank’s blown,” he said. “Y’all must’ve flushed something heavy. Folks don’t think their waste comes back, but it often does.”

Bob’s heart leapt.
Even the lowest parts of me return.
A confirmation.

The backhoe carved into the earth. Mud, waste, rainwater, roots—everything churned into one indistinguishable mass. A trench gulped open. Bob hovered at the edge like a pilgrim at a sacred site.
Candi watched from the porch, almost proud. Already drinking.

The yard guy finished at noon and left them with a bill and a warning about the water table. Bob stood at the filled trench, thinking about resurrection, return, the holy churn of the earth giving back everything he’d ever tried to flush away—everything that had moved through him.

He thought:
Even my waste rises again.
Even the lowest parts of me return.
Even God has noticed.

That night, he told Candi he’d been chosen. “After all these years…”
“For what?” she asked.
“I don’t know yet. But it’s coming.”

She looked at him the way you look at the weather or a donkey, something that could not be changed, but perhaps waited out. “Okay, Bob.”

“Eric,” he said.

“Sure.”