Coyote Blue (24 page)

Calliope bent over and kissed Sam's cheek. "I think that went well, don't you?"

Sam laughed and grabbed her knee. "Look, we've still got twenty hours on the road and I'm going to need you to drive. So get some sleep, okay? I don't trust him at the wheel." Sam nodded toward Coyote.

"But he's a god," Calliope said.

" 'As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods;/They kill us for their sport.' "

"What an icky thing to say."

"Sorry. Shakespeare wrote it. I can't get it out of my mind this week. It's like an old song that gets stuck."

"That happened to me once with 'Rocky Raccoon.' "

"Right," Sam said. "It's exactly like that."

Chapter 29 – Shifting

Sam drove through the day and into the night and finally stopped at a truck stop outside of Salt Lake City. Calliope and Coyote had been awake for the last few hours, but neither had spoken very much. Calliope seemed embarrassed about talking to the trickster, now that she knew he was a god, and Coyote just stared out the window, either lost in his own thoughts or (Sam thought this more likely) absorbed in some new scheme to throw people's lives into chaos. From time to time someone would break the silence by saying, "Pretty rock" – a statement which covered the complete observational spectrum for Utah's landscape – then they would lapse into silence for a half hour or so.

Sam led them into the truck stop and they all took stools at a carousel counter among truckers and a couple of grungy hitchhikers who were hoping to cadge a ride. A barrel-shaped woman in an orange polyester uniform approached and poured them coffee without asking if they wanted it. Her name tag read,
Arlene
. "You want something to eat. honey?" she asked Calliope with an accent warm with Southern hospitality. Sam wondered about this: no matter where you go, truck-stop waitresses have a Southern accent.

"Do you have oatmeal?" Calliope asked.

"How 'bout a little brown sugar on that?" Arlene asked. She looked over rhinestone-framed reading glasses.

Calliope smiled. "That would be nice."

"How 'bout you, darlin'?" she said to Coyote.

"Drinks. Umbrellas and swords."

"Now you know better'n that – come into Mormon country and order drinks." She shamed him with a wave of her finger.

Coyote turned to Sam. "Mormon country?"

"They settled in this area. They believe that Jesus visited the Indian people after he rose from the dead."

"Oh him. I remember him. Hairy face, made a big deal about dying and coming back to life – one time. Ha. He was funny. He tried to teach me how to walk on water. I can do it pretty good in the wintertime."

Arlene giggled girlishly. "I don't think you need any more to drink, hon. How 'bout some ham and eggs?"

Sam said, "That'll be fine, two of those, over easy."

Sam watched Arlene move around the counter, flirting with some of the truckers like a saloon girl, clucking over others like a mother hen. She snuck a cinnamon roll to a scruffy teenage hitchhiker with no money and asked after him like an older sister, then moved across the counter and found the kid a ride with a gruff cowboy trucker. One minute she was swearing like a sailor, the next she was blushing like a virgin, and all the customers who sat at her counter got what they needed. Sam realized that he was watching a shape-shifter: a kind and giving creature. Perhaps he was meant to notice. Perhaps that was what
he
needed. She was good. Maybe he was too.

He turned to Calliope and caught her in the middle of losing a bite of oatmeal down her chin. "We can do this," he said. "We'll get him back."

"I know," she said.

"You do?"

She nodded, wiping oatmeal off her chin with a napkin.

"That's the scary thing about hope," she said. "If you let it go too long it turns into faith." She scooped another bite of cereal.

Sam smiled. He wished that he shared her confidence. "Did you ever go to South Dakota with Lonnie? Will we be able to find them?"

"I went to the big summer rally, not this time of year. They don't camp with the other bikers. They rent land from a farmer in the hills. All the Guild chapters stay together there."

"Could you find it again?"

"I think so. But there's only one dirt road leading in there. How will we get Grubb out?"

"Well, I guess just walking in and asking for him isn't going to work."

"They usually have guns. They get drunk and play shooting games."

Coyote said, "Wait for them to go to sleep, then sneak in and count coup."

"They don't really sleep," Calliope said. "They do crank and drink all weekend."

"Then we will have to trick them."

"I was afraid you'd say that," Sam said. He spun on his stool and looked out the windows of the truck stop to the gas pumps, where a black stretch Lincoln was just pulling away.

~* * *~

Sam woke up in the passenger seat. The Z was parked sideways on the side of the road, the headlights trained over a pasture. The driver's seat was empty. Coyote, who was curled up in the tiny space behind the seat, growled and popped his head out between the seat. "What's going on?"

"I don't know." Sam looked around for Calliope. It was raining out. "Maybe she stopped to take a leak."

"There she is." Coyote pointed to a spot by the barbed-wire fence where Calliope was standing by a young calf, working furiously on something at the fence. A mother cow stood by watching.

"The calf's tail is stuck on the barbed wire," Coyote said.

Sam opened the car door and stepped out into the rain just as Calliope finished untangling the calf, which scampered to its mother.

"It's okay," she called. "I got him." She waved for him to get back into the car. She ran to the car and got in.

"Sorry, I had to stop. He looked so sad."

"It's okay. Pasture pals, right?" Sam said.

She grinned as she started the car. "I thought we could use the karma balance."

Sam looked for a road sign. "Where are we?"

"Almost there. We have to get going. There's been a car behind us for a while. I got way ahead of it, but I felt like it was following us."

She pulled onto the road, ramming through the gears like a grand prix driver. Sam was peeking at the speedometer when he saw a colored light blow by in the corner of his eye. "What was that?"

"The only stoplight in Sturgis," Calliope said. "I'm sorry, guys, it sort of snuck up on me. The Z goes better than it stops."

"We're here already?" Sam said. "But it's still dark out."

"It's a few more miles to the farm," Calliope said. "Sam, if a cop saw me go through that light can you take the wheel? My license is suspended."

Sam checked his watch, amazed at their progress. "You must have averaged ninety the whole way."

"I had to go to jail the last time they caught me. Three months. They taught me to do nails for vocational training."

"You did three months for a traffic violation?"

"There were a few of them," Calliope said. "It wasn't bad; I got a degree. I'm a certified nail technician now. In jail it was mostly LOVE/HATE nails, but I was good at it. I would have had a career except the polish fumes give me a headache."

Coyote pulled Grubb's blanket out of the hole in the back window and looked through. "It's clear. There's a car behind us but it's not a cop."

The sleeping town was only a block long – a stoplight with accessories. Calliope drove them through town and turned south on a county road that wound into the Black Hills. "It's a couple of minutes up this road to the turnoff, then about a mile in on a dirt road."

Sam said, "Turn off the lights when you make the turn. We'll drive halfway in and walk the rest of the way."

Calliope made the turn onto a single-lane dirt road that led through a thick stand of lodgepole pines. The road was deeply rutted, the ruts filled with water. The Z bucked and bottomed out in several places.

"Keep it moving steady," Sam said. "Don't hit the gas or the wheels will dig into the mud. Christ, it's dark."

"It's the trees," Calliope said. "There's a clearing ahead where they camp."

Sam was trying to peer into the darkness. To his right he thought he saw something. "Stop." Calliope let the Z roll to a stop. "Okay," Sam said. "Hit the parking lights, just for a second." Calliope clicked the parking lights on and off.

"That's what I thought," Sam said. "There's a cattle gate back there to the right. Back the Z in there so we can turn it around."

"Giving up?" Coyote said.

"If we have to get out of here fast I don't want to have to back down this road." He got out of the car and directed Calliope as she backed the Z in and turned it off. "We walk from here."

They got out of the car and started down the road, stepping between the puddles. The air was damp and cold, and smelled faintly of wood smoke and pine. When the moonlight broke through the trees they could see their breath.

Calliope said, "Wait." She turned and ran back to the car, then returned in a moment with Grubb's blanket in hand. "He'll want his wubby." Sam smiled in spite of himself, knowing the girl couldn't see his face in the dark.
Never face heavily armed bikers without your wubby.

Coyote and Cottontail

It's an old story. Coyote and his friend Cottontail were hiding on a wooded hill above a camp, watching some girls dance around the fire.

Coyote said, "I'd sure like to get close to some of them."

"You won't get near them," Cottontail said. "They know who you are."

"Maybe not, little one. Maybe not," Coyote said. "I'll go down there in disguise."

"They won't let any man get close to them," Cottontail said.

"I won't be a man," Coyote said. "Here, hold this." Coyote took off his penis and handed it to Cottontail. "Now, when I come back into the woods I will call to you and you can bring me my penis." Then Coyote changed into an old woman and went down to the camp.

He danced with the girls and pinched them and slapped their bottoms. "Oh, Grandmother," the girls said, "you are wicked. You must be that old trickster Coyote."

"I'm just an old woman," Coyote said. "Here, feel under my dress."

One of the girls felt under Coyote's dress and said, "She is just an old woman."

Coyote pointed to two of the prettiest girls. "Let's dance in the trees," he said. He danced with the girls into the woods and tickled them and made them roll around with him laughing. He touched them under their dresses until they said, "Oh, Grandmother, you are wicked."

"Cottontail, come here!" Coyote called. But there was no answer. "Wait here for your old grandmother to return," Coyote told the girls. He ran all over the woods calling for Cottontail, but could not find him. He went over that hill to the next one and still no Cottontail. He was excited and wanted very much to have sex with the girls, but alas, he could not find his penis.

Finally the sun started coming up and the girls called, "Old Grandmother, we can't wait for you any longer. We have to go home."

Coyote stalked the hills cursing. "That Cottontail, I will kill him for stealing my penis."

As he walked he passed three other girls coming out of the woods. They were giggling and one of them was saying, "He was so little, but he had such a big thing I thought I would split."

Coyote ran in the direction the girls had come from and found Cottontail sitting under a tree having a smoke "I'll kill you, you little thief," Coyote cried.

"But Coyote, I pleasured the three many times and four times I made each of them cry out."

Coyote was too tired from tickling and dancing all night to stay mad. "Really, four times each?"

"Yep," Cottontail said, handing Coyote his member.

"I feel like I was there," Coyote said. "You got a smoke?"

"Sure," said Cottontail. "Are you going to need your penis tonight?" Coyote laughed and smoked with Cottontail while his little friend told the story of his long night of pleasuring.