Coyote

by Colin Winnette

  I was too angry to speak, so I didn’t say anything. Only right before we drove away I put my mouth to the top of the cracked window and called the coward a coward, one last time.

  I TOLD HIM I DIDN’T need saving.

  The hell you didn’t.

  Nobody would hear me is all. I wasn’t in trouble. They were cowards anyway.

  That cop wasn’t a coward.

  Mick?

  No… the cop who… the real cop with a real gun who drove up and got out and would have really arrested you.

  I’d love it if he had. To see the look on his face when he found out what he’d done.

  We’re not going back to that studio.

  But –

  We’re not going back. I won’t drive you. If you try to walk there, I’ll call them and let them know you’re coming. They’ll be waiting to put you away. You can count on it.

  You’re not going to help me?

  Not with this.

  SO I SET THE house on fire. I’ll come clean. No use in hiding it. I told her Dad I was going out to sit on the porch and then I poured gasoline all over the far back corner of the house, by the kitchen. I thought it would catch quickly there, spread more easily. And seeing as it was the corner of the house farthest from the bedroom, I figured he wouldn’t die. He would realize what was happening just when the fire got too big to stop, but not so big that he couldn’t escape.

  I wish big fires moved slowly. Or I wish you could slow them down, see how they leap from one thing to the next. Instead, it swallowed up the slats on the side of the house and spilled onto the roof. It moved like dust across the kitchen floor. It moved relentlessly forward and up and out. I stood back. I watched it work its hardest to take everything.

  Eventually I heard him yelling. He yelled my name a few times. Then he came running out of the house, clutching a few of her toys in his arms, and the coffee can we keep our savings in.

  He stumbled at the porch and came tumbling onto the lawn. He’s an oaf, through and through.

  I helped him up and he saw that I wasn’t panicking and knew exactly what I’d done.

  We had it out there on the lawn. One of the biggest yet. I pulled a branch from the pile he made after mowing that morning and set to hitting him at his sides and face. He didn’t swing for a bit, just took the hits, blocking his sensitive parts – eyes, nose, cheeks, etc. – with his forearms. But then he got ahold of me. He set to work on me. I can’t say I didn’t deserve it. In his eyes, I had tried to kill him. Tried to erase everything we had together.

  He hit me in the stomach and I keeled over and he pushed me to the ground. Then he started slapping me. One cheek after the other. He put some grass, some dirt in my mouth. He rubbed it in my eyes and across my forehead, shaming me.

  All the while he was saying, What were you thinking? Why didn’t you say anything? What are you doing to me? What did I do? What did I ever do?

  Not long after that he got down on the grass beside me. I was full of humiliation. He was breathing heavily and I was crying. I turned and put my arms around him, but when he raised the opposite arm to take me up, I flinched. He brought it back down to the earth.

  THE FIRE MIGHT HAVE been the best thing I’ve ever done for him. Think of all he had to do now. All the work. He started making three trips to the hardware store a day. He piled lumber in the yard, wrapped up in a green tarp. He set to work for real. He gutted the burnt wood that ran the length of the kitchen wall. He had to undo almost everything so he could make it new. It was a tiny blessing. He worked harder than he ever had before.

  He was not at a point of forgiving me yet. We didn’t speak much. Our nights passed quietly. We were still. I still wasn’t sleeping, but after a week of repairing the kitchen, his eyes closed and did not reopen for nearly thirteen hours.

  THEN THEY FOUND a child. I cut into the kitchen and took the hammer straight from his hand. He flared up, red-eyed, storming, but I dragged him into the living room and pointed at the television. There sat a family: mother, father, and daughter. The daughter was in blue and white like the Virgin Mary. She sat atop her mother’s lap.

  He watched for a moment. His anger seemed to leave him like a flock of birds lifting.

  What am I doing here? he asked.

  They found a girl, I told him.

  He nodded, watched the TV.

  They’re finding girls, I said.

  He snatched back the hammer and flung it into the television screen and the screen cracked like a dumb, frozen lake. Not even a spark flew, though the screen did flicker. The sound cut out. Strange light seemed to ooze behind the glass for a moment, then it cut out too.

  You’ve got to stop it with this shit, he told me. We’re done with it.

  But we weren’t done with it. No one was. They were finding girls. There was more to be done. We had been right all along, not to give up hope. There was always a reason to hope, even if just a little. There was proof. Or there had been proof.

  He went back to whatever it was he had been doing. It didn’t matter anymore. I realized at that exact moment that I would kill him if he got in my way. This was a thought I must have had before, but without realizing it. Or without seeing it so clearly. But then I saw it clear.

  MAYBE IT WAS WHAT I’d seen, or maybe it was easier to make plans without the TV to distract me. Whatever it was, I was moved to action. I knew what needed to be done, just not exactly how I would go about it. I needed to get in touch with that family, meet that young girl. I needed to know what had happened to her, how she survived. I needed to know how they’d found her. I needed information from the sad show host. I didn’t need to go back on the show. Sure, they would have us back on after we’d found her, but that would be an afterthought. If going on the show once had no effect, how could I have thought going on again would fix anything? Where had my head been? Why was it that I could never see things as they are? Why is it that I am always distracted? How did I even survive one day to the next? How did he? We had so little an idea of what was going on around us. We could not do a simple thing like protect her. We could not keep her with us. Everything in our bodies, hearts, and minds had wanted us with her always, but we had let her get away. We’d let her be taken from us. We had no idea how to cherish anything worth cherishing. How to make it last. How to love it and keep it forever. We let the one thing that mattered slip away. And we had been keeping that up. We’d let her slip and keep slipping. But I was going to get her back.

  I FELT CLOSE TO Mick Something, that we were alike in many ways. I was a woman with a mission. A woman with clarity of vision. These were vigilante cop feelings. I was all the strength I’d ever seen in other people.

  I dialed 911 from a payphone down the street. I said I didn’t have an emergency, but I needed to talk to the police. They gave me a number to call, but I told them I didn’t have any money. Again, I told them it wasn’t an emergency. The line went dead. These are our city’s emergency services.

  I wandered the streets then, full of energy. I saw everything the city had to offer: a row of shops, a neighborhood, some more shops, one house with a bunch of cacti, dead leaves, bushes full of crows, a few creeks along the side of the road, a few overpasses, a hospital that looks like a haunted asylum, men of various ages on skateboards, children in carriages and on bikes, children in parking lots, children in yards, digging at ant beds and thumbing uncracked pecans from the dirt.

  There was no way of knowing which house belonged to the family who’d found their daughter. Or whose daughter was found. I didn’t even know that much. I knew nothing. After a full day, my energy was waning. I was hot. Thirsty. Call it manic. Call it what you will. The door was open, so I walked in. The bodies were there, so I called 911 again.

  I WAS NEVER A suspect, they told me, but I still answered hours of questions. I was in the police station, in a detective’s office, for nearly eight hours. I would be called upon again. Maybe to testify. It was hard to say. They would need me to stick around. They had no
information regarding my case. They did not know anyone by the name of Mick Something. There were no Micks in the entire department. That got a laugh from some men on the periphery.

  The whole thing was a wash. I was worse off than when I started.

  Someone had killed two men in their home. Whoever it was, the police told me, had considerable strength. I couldn’t have done it because I am weak. I am a small woman. Whoever did this was likely a man. Likely had a reason. Likely didn’t like these two men, who were recently married, had a lot of money, and kept to themselves mostly. Our town is not a great place to live for anyone, especially anyone who is particularly happy. Our town is filled with people who want to reach in and take your happiness from you. They want to stamp it out with their shitty heel.

  The police asked me about the bruises, and I told them I gave them to myself – which is partly true. No one thinks to say that to a police officer. People always blame the house. They say it was an accident. But if a cop is asking, he already knows it wasn’t an accident. They can just see it. They sense it. They can smell it on you. So I told him I did it to myself. I talked about the different ways I had done it: a grocery bag full of apples, dropping myself, open mouth first, onto the counter edge, running into the stairs, rolling myself down them. I said I was working out some feelings about my missing daughter. They asked how long she had been missing. I tried to tell them the whole story, all over again. Only this time, it felt different.

  They asked what she looked like. I couldn’t remember.

  They asked how old, and I said, about two and a half?

  They asked if she was my daughter by birth, or if she was adopted.

  Birth, I told them.

  When did you give birth, then?

  About… two and a half years ago, I told them.

  Her Dad showed up then.

  I was cold and he put his arms around me.

  He talked to the police for only a little while. They wanted to take him into a room without me, but I didn’t want him to go. It was not an easy day for me. I was not comfortable or safe. He had on two shirts and he put one on me, an orange flannel, so that he could sort of be with me and I could be a little warmer, but then he left me and went into an office with an officer.

  They talked for a while and then we left.

  He looked good. His neck and wrists were burned by the sun. His beard was trimmed, practically tame. His other shirt was a tight-fitting wife-beater, one that had only weeks ago hung from him like a dishrag on a line. His hands, his arms were steady. He watched the road, and every so often he took one hand off the wheel and rested his arm in his lap. He looked healthy. Like he might have when we met, if he hadn’t been so awful then.

  When we got home, we sat on the couch together, in front of the broken television.

  We didn’t say anything for a long time, and then her Dad said, Our hero, Mick Something, was nearly crushed by the ten tons of steel pouring from the back of the 18-wheeler as he pursued it along the coastal highway.

  Any other fool, I added, might have seen the spill as a tragic accident. But the moment Mick Something noticed how the steel had been stacked – loosely, its scarred edge pointing out from the back – he knew something foul was afoot.

  The steel came loose, as if it were born to do so, and came clattering toward our hero in his rusted-out jalopy.

  It looked like lights-out for Mick, he had nearly bitten the hard steel when a runaway truck ramp appeared at the left. He jerked the wheel, his tires spinning in the dirt and loose gravel, and he began to steadily climb the ramp.

  The steel covered the highway, screeching and clanging and screaming like a pack of wild birds. The 18-wheeler disappeared over the horizon.

  Mick slammed the brakes. Nothing. He reached for the emergency break, but the lever came off in his hand. The car sped toward the end of the ramp, where it plateaued only briefly before dropping back down, several hundred feet, to the rock bed below.

  It looked like curtains for Mick.

  He’d really outdone himself this time.

  The car was slowing down, but not fast enough.

  Mick launched.

  He sailed through the air, turning, the wheels spinning.

  His hair blew gracefully in the breeze.

  The steel clattered on behind him.

  He rose for only a few seconds before he began to fall.

  He fell and fell, for what felt like forever.

  WE SLEPT ON THE couch together that night, her Dad and I. Or, truthfully, he slept with his arms around me and I stared for hours at the broken television. I looked out the window too, but I could only see a reflection of myself.

  There is nothing worse than dark windows in a still house at night. Nothing worse than your own reflection where the rest of the world should be.

  I pinched his nose and after a few seconds he woke with a start. He pushed himself up and off the couch, swatting at his nostrils. He blew out a few times, as if bugs had made their way into the cavities.

  What happened? I asked.

  He looked around. He was still waking up, realizing where he was.

  Felt like I stopped breathing, he said.

  Oh?

  Did I? Did you hear me stop?

  I shook my head. I hadn’t noticed anything, just him leaping up and flailing, I told him.

  IN THE MORNING, WE had breakfast. I cooked like a champion. I cooked like a sane woman. A sane human being. I felt sane. I’d watched him sleep, and he looks as lovely as a duckling when he’s asleep. He still looks like him, I mean. He’s not any more handsome than he is during the daytime. But he looks soft and tender, looks like something you’d want to hold to your breast and whisper to. Not like a baby, but like a kitten. Not a human thing, really.

  He was this beautiful non-human thing, and I made him breakfast.

  I hadn’t done it for something like two years. Even when I was making breakfast before, I was thinking only of her. I can’t remember if I excluded him purposefully, or if the thought that I was doing so occurred to me later, occurred to me only recently, now that I’ve the time to wonder about that kind of thing.

  OTHER LETTERS TO MICK SOMETHING

  DEAR MR. MICK SOMETHING,

  Today we made a wet kind of thing out of flour and water and salt. When you touched it, it got hard. When you let your hand just sit there, it slid through your fingers. We made a mess and that was part of it. Everybody had a good time, even the ones who don’t always have a good time. I always have a good time because I’m a good student at school and I like to be.

  Thank you.

  DEAR MICK SOMETHING,

  Thank you for your talk today in school. I learned that we should be careful and watch out for our friends and for ourselves. Thank you for the talk and for telling us the Five Things to Always Be on the Lookout For. I will be on the Lookout For them. I promise.

  Sincerely.

  DEAR MICK SOMETHING,

  You won’t get away with it, because I’m onto you.

  WHILE HE REPAIRED THE house my hair went white and I became attractive to other men. One man came up to the back fence. I was wandering the border of our yard. We have no fences on either the left or right side of us, only one in the back, which separates our lawn from that which belongs to the State. The State’s lawn goes on for miles, and that is where the new man came from, some great distance away. We tried to make a child without saying anything. Right there on the lawn of the State. Today I can tell you we were not successful, but for months this was something I saw as more than possible, possibly inevitable. I was long without any real sense of what could happen next, so I imagined something might happen that would pull me out of all of this stillness. I dreaded it as much as I hoped for it.

  I was wandering a lot at the time, escaping the ongoing noise of her Dad’s repairs, so he thought little of it when I began to leave the house, almost daily, to retreat to the lawn of the State. Eventually, always, the other man came. We were without ceremony,
without words. It was as cold as any exchange could ever be, but still a perfect, clean encounter. There was a beginning, middle, and end. We departed without any unpleasant passings. Once, during the middle part, I whispered something to him. He put his finger to my lips and we continued on to the end. Another time, he said something like you are beautiful into my hair, just behind my ear. He was very quiet. They were hardly even words. In all honesty, it could have been the mud shifting beneath us. It was entirely perfect.

  HER DAD CHANGED THE house. He built the kitchen out, added a turn to its center. The house had too many angles now, and I kept bumping into things. He began to relax. He drank beers and slept during the day. I caught him on the porch one afternoon, gazing at a long green caterpillar on his finger. It moved slowly from the tip back to his hand when he turned it. He was even smiling underneath the nod he gave me. It was nearly sunset. It was an ideal scene. I could feel that the other man was somewhere out there, steadily approaching our back fence while her Dad just sat there watching an insect grapple for footing.

  We were in a new place. He was someone completely different. I walked past him and the caterpillar, on to the gate. The other man did not come, so I circled out there until the sun was completely gone. Her Dad yelled something to me, but I could not hear it. It was something about the wind. Something about a storm. He worries.

  WHAT WAS SHE LIKE?

  krrrrraaaackkkkkk

  What was our daughter like?

  boomhhhhh