Terrell had been startled into striking me. Once in a while, the Mom-thing noticed things like that.
You play too rough, she’d say. And look at me.
Ursa Major clambered up the ink-black sky, casting cold light on the alkaline desert floor. I had walked a long way, far enough that the stains of city light had faded to sulfurous blooms on the horizon at my back. Ahead, the faint ribbon of a jackrabbit trail, packed to a just slightly paler shade than the loose sand surrounding it, wavered into a tumble of boulders that spilled down from the mesa there.
I crouched on my heels, beside a gnarl of juniper, clenching its dry roots into cracks of one great stone. The shadow of the bush fell over me, covering me with the dark.
High on the mesa, coyotes sang. The wild, high, half-hysterical crying sound. Sound carries strangely in the desert, so they might in fact have been miles away, and there might have been no more than a pair of them, though it sounded like a chorus of a dozen or more.
I watched for rabbits; there were none. Time passed, while overhead the stars kept turning, with that faint, scarcely audible music, as when you rub your spit-wet finger around the rim of a crystal glass.
The coyotes had stopped their concert long before. But now one came cautiously along the jackrabbit trail, out of the boulders, all covered with those clinging knots of juniper. Skulking, pausing often to hump up his back and turn his muzzle over his shoulder. Then with his ears rotating forward, pricked, he advanced again, with a spring in his step and a sharpening attention on the surface of the trail, though there was nothing to stalk that I could see, no rabbits, not a lizard, mouse or squirrel.
Maybe the coyote could see me in my hood of shadow. Maybe he could smell the blood, pumping the long circuit from my heart.
I stood up, clear of the shadow, making myself large. The coyote balked, cringing backward on folding knees, ears flat back to the fur of the head. His eyes pale globes of yellow, under the weak starlight.
Tonight I hadn’t brought the rifle. The coyote and I remained in a frozen balance. Eventually I took a few slow backward steps; the coyote stayed right where he was.
I turned away and walked, not quickly, feeling a pale spot on my spine, though I knew very well a lone coyote would not attack a full-grown person, unless rabid, and this one showed no sign of that. Even that possibility was nothing to me.
Behind me, just possibly, a dry whisper of paws on the sand. When I looked back the coyote was still motionless.
Again. Next time I looked, the coyote’s distance from the boulder might have changed a little. He was still.
Next time I looked I’d walked a mile or more and was near enough to the trailer park to pick out individual points of light from the blur. The coyote came loping after me now, but at a considerable distance on my back-trail.
I went on slowly, toward the artificial lights, thinking of how the first wild dogs must have come into camps, for whatever reason, to enslave themselves to men. When I reached the tear in the chain-link fence, the coyote was nowhere to be seen.
(0)
(0)
(0)
The open wound of emptiness …
Careless, I’d scraped my forearm going through the fence; blood beaded and absently I licked it clean as I climbed the wooden steps of my deck. The thick salt taste at the back of my throat. I wasn’t hungry, thirsty, sleepy. There were still hours of night yet to pass.
I sprayed antiseptic on my arm; the sting of it barely seemed to reach me. Somehow the wireless phone was in my hand. For a second time I dialed the New York number.
“Hello …”
(0)
“Hello?”
Oh, I could certainly picture her then; I didn’t need to watch the tape. On her knees with her head flung back, heavy breasts lifting through the cloth, crooked fingers clutching the sparkling dust-filled air.
“Mae,” Laurel’s voice burrowed in my ear. “Mae?”
I never gave her the penny, I thought.
You play too rough, she’d say. And look at me.
Ursa Major clambered up the ink-black sky, casting cold light on the alkaline desert floor. I had walked a long way, far enough that the stains of city light had faded to sulfurous blooms on the horizon at my back. Ahead, the faint ribbon of a jackrabbit trail, packed to a just slightly paler shade than the loose sand surrounding it, wavered into a tumble of boulders that spilled down from the mesa there.
I crouched on my heels, beside a gnarl of juniper, clenching its dry roots into cracks of one great stone. The shadow of the bush fell over me, covering me with the dark.
High on the mesa, coyotes sang. The wild, high, half-hysterical crying sound. Sound carries strangely in the desert, so they might in fact have been miles away, and there might have been no more than a pair of them, though it sounded like a chorus of a dozen or more.
I watched for rabbits; there were none. Time passed, while overhead the stars kept turning, with that faint, scarcely audible music, as when you rub your spit-wet finger around the rim of a crystal glass.
The coyotes had stopped their concert long before. But now one came cautiously along the jackrabbit trail, out of the boulders, all covered with those clinging knots of juniper. Skulking, pausing often to hump up his back and turn his muzzle over his shoulder. Then with his ears rotating forward, pricked, he advanced again, with a spring in his step and a sharpening attention on the surface of the trail, though there was nothing to stalk that I could see, no rabbits, not a lizard, mouse or squirrel.
Maybe the coyote could see me in my hood of shadow. Maybe he could smell the blood, pumping the long circuit from my heart.
I stood up, clear of the shadow, making myself large. The coyote balked, cringing backward on folding knees, ears flat back to the fur of the head. His eyes pale globes of yellow, under the weak starlight.
Tonight I hadn’t brought the rifle. The coyote and I remained in a frozen balance. Eventually I took a few slow backward steps; the coyote stayed right where he was.
I turned away and walked, not quickly, feeling a pale spot on my spine, though I knew very well a lone coyote would not attack a full-grown person, unless rabid, and this one showed no sign of that. Even that possibility was nothing to me.
Behind me, just possibly, a dry whisper of paws on the sand. When I looked back the coyote was still motionless.
Again. Next time I looked, the coyote’s distance from the boulder might have changed a little. He was still.
Next time I looked I’d walked a mile or more and was near enough to the trailer park to pick out individual points of light from the blur. The coyote came loping after me now, but at a considerable distance on my back-trail.
I went on slowly, toward the artificial lights, thinking of how the first wild dogs must have come into camps, for whatever reason, to enslave themselves to men. When I reached the tear in the chain-link fence, the coyote was nowhere to be seen.
(0)
(0)
(0)
The open wound of emptiness …
Careless, I’d scraped my forearm going through the fence; blood beaded and absently I licked it clean as I climbed the wooden steps of my deck. The thick salt taste at the back of my throat. I wasn’t hungry, thirsty, sleepy. There were still hours of night yet to pass.
I sprayed antiseptic on my arm; the sting of it barely seemed to reach me. Somehow the wireless phone was in my hand. For a second time I dialed the New York number.
“Hello …”
(0)
“Hello?”
Oh, I could certainly picture her then; I didn’t need to watch the tape. On her knees with her head flung back, heavy breasts lifting through the cloth, crooked fingers clutching the sparkling dust-filled air.
“Mae,” Laurel’s voice burrowed in my ear. “Mae?”
I never gave her the penny, I thought.
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