The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise

by Dan Gemeinhart

  “No, like where are we actually?”

  The blanket blew out a sigh.

  “Florida, still. Tampa, I think.”

  “We’re still in Florida?!”

  “Yes. Good night.”

  I stood there looking down at the grumpy lump, chewing on my lip. I squinted out the windows and saw a gas station just up the road with a little diner attached.

  “I’m going out,” I announced.

  “Thank god.”

  “When I get back, we’re leaving.”

  “When you get back, the door’s gonna be locked.”

  I rolled my eyes. Like I didn’t know how to break into Yager.

  I grabbed our atlas and a wad of cash from our money box by the garden and slipped into my flip-flops. Ivan was curled up dozing on the dashboard and I gave him a quick head scratch on my way out the door.

  I wasn’t in the mood for sitting around and waiting, but there’s something about the smell of hamburgers and french fries that’ll make a soul feel a little more all right about settling for a bit. I made sure to grab a seat by the window so I could see Yager, then took a gander at the menu. The diner was small, but they knew what they were doing. They had all the right things on the menu and the food came out quick, hot and salty. I popped a salty fry in my mouth and considered my problem.

  As irritating as it was, Rodeo had a point; he probably was gonna have to sleep from time to time. I’d have to meet him halfway on that issue. But we had a lot of miles to cover and precious little time to cover them in, and there was no halfway on that one: Either we made it or we didn’t, and I was determined that we would.

  So I had a bit of a dilemma on my hands. Looking at the atlas didn’t help. It showed me where to go but not how in the heck to get there. I sat there, chewing and pondering and wishing I was old enough to drink coffee.

  Now, here are some things I don’t generally believe in: fate, astrology, angels, magic, or the mystical power of wishes. Sorry, I just don’t.

  So there ain’t no easy explanation for what happened next. But that’s all right, ’cause not everything in this world needs to be explained. We can just chalk it up to luck and call it good.

  Here’s what happened: I was sitting there, wondering how on god’s green earth I was gonna get us to Sampson Park before the bulldozers fired up, when I heard the following words from the booth behind me.

  “Tammy, you know I wanna get there. Of course I do. But I’m broke. I got no money for a bus ticket. How am I gonna get all the way across the country with no money?”

  I stopped mid-chew.

  In the diner window to my side, I could see the reflections of our two booths.

  In the booth behind me was a black fella wearing big, round black-framed glasses. He looked young-ish, not a teenager anymore, but not too far away from it, either. He was wearing a white tank top undershirt and an old-fashioned bowler hat on his head. All he had in front of him was a chocolate milkshake, and he was hunched over, whispering into his phone.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Uh-huh. Of course. You know that. I’ll figure something out. No, baby, don’t say that. I will. I promise. Well, I don’t know yet. I’ll catch a ride or something. No, no … Come on, don’t say that, I’ll—”

  But then his words cut off. He sighed and set his phone down.

  Tammy, whoever she was, had hung up on him.

  I swallowed the bite in my mouth, then nodded to myself. I picked up my plate and the atlas and slid out of my booth, then walked around and plopped down on the seat across from the milkshake dude.

  His eyebrows went up and his mouth dropped open.

  “Hello,” I said.

  He narrowed his eyes.

  “Um … hello?” he said. “Do I know you?”

  “Not yet,” I answered. “Where you headed?”

  The guy looked around. He was probably looking for a parent or something, unaware that my version of a parent was asleep on an old school bus.

  “Excuse me?”

  I took a bite of my burger and chewed, talking around it.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m being rude. It’s just that time is of the essence and I was trying to get straight down to business.” I set down my fork and held out my hand. “Coyote.”

  He looked at my hand, then back up at me.

  “Excuse me?” he said again.

  “My name is Coyote. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” I stretched my hand out an inch closer to him.

  “Oh. Your name is … Okay.” He still looked a little unsure, but he reached out and shook my hand. “My name’s Lester.”

  “Listen, I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation with Tammy.”

  “You know Tammy?” Lester asked.

  “Of course not. But I think I gotta handle on your situation. Where you headed?”

  Lester leaned back, sizing me up. He shot another look around the diner, then took a sip of his milkshake.

  “Boise,” he answered.

  “Boise, Idaho?” I asked.

  One corner of his mouth went up.

  “There another Boise I don’t know about?”

  I grinned at him.

  “Good point.”

  I shoved a few fries in my mouth and flipped the atlas open to the big map of the whole country at the beginning. My eyes darted from Florida to Boise to Washington State. I nodded. Then I looked Lester up and down. He had a nice face, friendly and open. There was a duffel bag sitting on the seat next to him. I didn’t see a rifle or shovel or human leg sticking out of it.

  I swallowed the fries and grimaced.

  “Man, those are salty,” I complained, looking around for a glass of water. Lester saw me looking and slid his milkshake across the table to me.

  And that sealed the deal, right there.

  Now, I tend to like folks with nice, friendly, open faces.

  And I tend to like folks who eat nothing but a milkshake for dinner. I think it really says something about their openness to life and their general philosophical outlook.

  But I definitely like folks who offer to share their milkshake with someone they just met.

  I took a strong sip of his shake and smiled.

  “So, tell me something, Lester,” I said, licking the milkshake off my lips. “You got a driver’s license?”

  CHAPTER

  TEN

  I roused a distinctly grouchy Rodeo and poked him into a bleary stumble down the bus steps and into the dusky light of the parking lot with plenty of repeated promises like “I got someone you gotta meet,” and “It’ll be worth it, I promise.”

  Lester was waiting with his duffel at his feet, and his face got increasingly doubtful with every step Rodeo took down into the waking world. I’d made Rodeo pull on jeans and a T-shirt, but saying he looked halfway presentable would be more than halfway generous.

  Rodeo was still Rodeo, though, and he wasn’t the type to be inhospitable.

  “Howdy,” he said with a nod at Lester.

  Lester gave him an up-and-down look.

  “Hi, there,” he replied.

  Rodeo rubbed at his face and then looked at me.

  “So?” he asked. “What’s up?”

  “I’m glad you asked,” I began. “This here’s Lester. We’re giving him a ride to Boise.”

  Rodeo said, “What?” at the same moment that Lester said, “Now, wait a minute,” and I held a hand up to each of them and said, “Easy, easy, easy, fellas.”

  I turned to Rodeo.

  “With two drivers we can get to that pork chop sandwich faster. And we got plenty of room, right?”

  Rodeo shrugged and nodded. He was generally pretty laid back about giving folks a ride when they needed one.

  “Exactly. Well, Lester here needs to get to Tammy and quick, and she just happens to be in Boise. He’s in a pickle, and we can help.”

  “Who’s Tammy?” Rodeo asked.

  I waved my hand impatiently at him.

  “You need to focus, Rodeo. Th
is is important.”

  “Okay,” Rodeo agreed with a dazed squint. Something else I’d learned through the years is that just-woke-up Rodeo is crabby and irritable, but woke-up-about-two-minutes-ago Rodeo gets pretty darn compliant. I was in the golden window of opportunity and I needed to close the deal.

  “So, we could use another driver and he needs a ride to Boise, which we just happen to be passing through.”

  “Hold up,” Lester cut in, “I never agreed to—”

  “Oh, I know,” I said, pivoting to Lester. “Now, you have both a desperate need to get to Tammy and a desperately empty wallet, am I right?”

  Lester sniffed and looked away, but nodded.

  “All right. I know this crusty heap of ugly don’t look like that prime of an option,” I said, “but it’s the only option you really got.”

  “Easy on Yager, now,” Rodeo protested. “She gets us where we need to get to.”

  “I wasn’t talking about Yager, Rodeo. I was talking about you.”

  “Ah” was all Rodeo said, and he scratched tiredly at his beard.

  Lester narrowed his eyes.

  “Who said I don’t have other options?”

  I rolled my eyes at him, then looked around. There was an old guy shuffling along, walking his dog on the sidewalk at the other side of the parking lot.

  “Hey!” I shouted at him.

  The man stopped and looked over at us.

  “Are you going to Boise?” I hollered.

  The guy looked left, then right, then back at us.

  “Me?” he asked.

  “Yeah! You going to Boise?”

  The man looked both ways again, then cocked his head at me.

  “No?” he answered.

  “That’s what I figured,” I called, and waved him goodbye. He shook his head and kept walking.

  I shrugged both palms at Lester and gave him an I-told-you-so look.

  “See? You got any other options for free rides to Boise?”

  Lester looked at me, eyes wide and mouth open. And then Lester did something wonderful.

  He laughed. A big, deep, from-down-in-his-belly laugh. He shook his head and he laughed and it was perfect, because Lester’s laugh was just like Rodeo’s eyes: It invited you right in and set you at ease.

  I realized I was smiling without ever planning on it, and a quick glance showed that Rodeo was smiling along, too.

  “You’re crazy,” Lester said, still shaking his head. He wagged a finger at me. “You. Are. Crazy.”

  “A little bit,” I agreed. “But all the best people are.” I looked over at Rodeo. “Go ahead. Ask him the questions.”

  Now, Lester is not the first person we ever offered a ride to. Far from it. We’d given all sorts of folks rides to all sorts of places over the years. Traveling from gas station to gas station like we did, we often ran across wayward souls who needed some help. And Rodeo is the helping sort; he just is. But he don’t let just anybody on board Yager with us. He always asks ’em the same three questions first, and they get a yes or a no based on their answers.

  For the record, I have no idea what the right or wrong answers are. But Rodeo seems to.

  Rodeo nodded and cleared his throat. He stepped closer to Lester.

  “All right. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Lester. I’m Rodeo. This here is our home, Yager. The worthless cat sleeping on the dashboard is Ivan. And that girl there who talks more than she should and knows less than she lets on is Coyote.” Rodeo lowered his chin and looked slow into Lester’s eyes. Lester looked back and I saw it happen, saw him fall into the kindness that he saw in Rodeo’s eyes, saw his whole body ease up a little. “Are you interested in traveling with us for a ways?”

  Lester smiled. He shook his head and laughed a little in his throat.

  “Well. Yeah. I guess I am, more or less.”

  “Good. We’d be happy to have you. After you answer our questions. Ready?”

  Lester shrugged and nodded.

  “Okay. What is your favorite book?”

  Lester answered without hesitation.

  “Their Eyes Were Watching God. Zora Neale Hurston.”

  Rodeo smiled. Good answer. It was one of Rodeo’s favorites. There was a tattered paperback of it on the bookshelf in the bus behind me.

  “Okay. And what, Lester, is your favorite place on this planet Earth?”

  Lester pursed his lips. His eyes wandered from Rodeo, drifted someplace far away. A look came over his face, a thoughtful kind of look. A private sort of smile played across his lips, but soft and small.

  “There’s a beach,” he said, and he sounded almost like he was talking to himself. “In Georgia. We used to go there, in the summers. When I was a kid. Meet my mama’s family. We’d play all day in the water. Me and my cousins, my brother and sister. We’d play right through the sunset. Splash in the dark. One year, there was fireworks. I don’t think I ever saw my mama smile the way she smiled when we were there at that beach every summer. Never heard her laugh like she did there. Like she was a kid again.”

  There was a beat of stillness. Lester’s eyes cleared, and came back to Rodeo.

  “There. That’s my favorite place.”

  Rodeo took a deep breath. Held it. Let it out slow through his nose. His voice, when he spoke, was a hoarse whisper.

  “Last question, Lester. What,” he said, “is your favorite sandwich?”

  Lester squinted at him. Then he answered, just as quick and sure as he’d answered the first question.

  “The pulled pork sandwich at Stamey’s Barbecue in Greensboro, North Carolina.”

  I smiled again. A pulled pork sandwich is a good answer to just about any question. I looked quick to Rodeo.

  Rodeo’s eyes were on me, his head to the side.

  I raised my eyebrows at him.

  Rodeo nodded once, then all at once a smile broke across his face. Rodeo was like that: When he made up his mind, his face knew as soon as his brain did. Sometimes a little before, to be honest.

  “Okay,” he said to Lester, “you just got yourself a ride.”

  Lester sighed and shook his head, but then stooped and picked up his duffel bag.

  Rodeo’s face darkened.

  “Hold up.” He eyed the duffel bag in Lester’s hand. “One last question: You got a snake in there?”

  “A snake?” Lester exclaimed.

  “We picked up a hitchhiker in Reno once who was carrying a big ol’ duffel like that,” I explained to Lester, “and … well, things got weird.”

  Lester shot me a look, then looked back at Rodeo.

  “No, man. I ain’t got no snake in my bag.”

  Rodeo smiled and yawned and then pushed open the bus door.

  “Welcome aboard, compadre. Make yourself at home, and help yourself to the tomatoes.”

  Lester shook his head again—I think he was seriously wondering what he was getting himself into, which was just one more sign that he was an insightful and perceptive sort of person—and then threw his duffel over his shoulder and stepped toward our bus.

  “What was that about a pork chop sandwich?” he asked me, but I just shook my head and waved him inside and said, “Long story, Lester. Welcome aboard.”

  And that is how Lester joined our homeward journey.

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  “So,” I said, taking a bite off an apple and then offering it to Lester, “what’s the story with Tammy?”

  Lester shook his head in a “no, thank you” to the apple. Me and him were sitting on the couch in the back. Ivan was purring in my lap. Rodeo was up at the wheel, muttering to himself. The Lester introduction had woken him up enough to get in a few more miles before handing the keys over.

  “Uh … long story,” Lester said in answer to my question.

  He was sitting pretty stiffly on the couch, his back straight, his eyes bouncing around our home, his arms around the duffel he held in his lap. He looked decidedly ill at ease, and I could see second thoughts pa
ssing like clouds over his face. Some of them looked to be darn near third or even fourth thoughts, so I figured I’d better put him at ease with some stimulating conversation and fresh fruit. Oh, and with a cat. Cats relax folks. That’s just the truth. So I scooped Ivan up out of my lap and handed him over to Lester.

  “Here. Could you hold him? My legs are going to sleep.”

  Lester gave Ivan a less-than-super-excited look, but slid the duffel off his lap and took him. He set him down on his legs and Ivan did some sniffing and turning but, seeing as how he’s the best cat in the world, he settled right on in and Lester gave him some pets and I could see right away that he started to relax a little.

  “We got time, Lester. What are we talking here? Girlfriend? Sister? Wife?”

  Lester looked me up and down, deciding on whether or not to answer me.

  “Come on,” I said. “We got to get to know each other. I introduced you to Rodeo. Now you introduce me to Tammy.” I held the apple out toward him again.

  Lester shrugged, took the apple and bit off a chunk, and handed it back to me and then said through his chewing, “Girlfriend, I guess. Maybe.”

  “Girlfriend you guess maybe? Huh. You guys sound close.”

  Lester gave me a glare.

  “It’s complicated,” he said.

  I took a crunchy bite and shook my head as I passed the apple.

  “Nah. Love is never as complicated as it seems.”

  Lester’s eyes twinkled.

  “And you know all about love?”

  I picked at a bit of apple skin between my teeth.

  “I know plenty.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact. You see those books over there on the bottom shelf?” I pointed with the apple at the bookshelf. “Those are all mine. I got even more in my room. I’ve read every single one of ’em, some of ’em twice. And see the top shelf? Those are Rodeo’s books. Grown-up books. I’ve read most of those, too. And every book ever written is about love, really, whether it knows it or not. So, yeah, I know a thing or two about love.”

  Lester blinked at me and pinched his lips together in one of those smug, know-it-all smirks that grown-ups have that can just about drive you crazy, but I forged onward.