The footprints circled around the lake, leading toward an outcropping of piñon and ponderosa pine trees, joined by another set of tracks Calliope might have thought belonged to a dog except these were narrower, perpendicular to the girl’s, as if she were following …
“Coyote,” Chance said. “Why would she run after a coyote? She could get killed.” He hollered, “Eunjoo?”
A few feet ahead, dappling the footprints like cherry syrup on a snowcone, new drops of blood. Calliope’s throat tightened. She ran, heedless of her former cramping. The cold air stung her face as she pounded into the small bosque screaming Eunjoo’s name.
Mara’s story of Lizard singing in Coyote’s stomach flickered in Calliope’s mind. An image of Eunjoo curled inside the animal like the twins inside of Calliope.
There she was. Cradled beneath a looming ponderosa pine Eunjoo hunched on hands and feet, her back arched high in the air like an animal on edge, face-to-face with the coyote, its tawny fur bristling, ears pointed, frozen in place.
Calliope sprang forward, but Chance held her back, signaling her to hush.
The déjà vu unnerved her. This had been the scene she’d come upon in the gas station parking lot, Eunjoo facing a coyote in what almost appeared as a confrontation for dominance. The first time, in the parking lot, the girl had cowered, terrified. This time though, she poised ready to pounce. Was she the one trying to intimidate the coyote? Calliope sucked in a gasp at how wild Eunjoo appeared, how menacing.
The girl turned sharply. Her eyes no longer soft coal but bright stones of citrine yellow. Highlighter yellow. Animal yellow.
TWENTY-ONE
WHAT COYOTE SAID
Calliope stepped back, unsure what she was seeing. Chance aimed at the coyote, but Calliope reached out, steered the rifle away; she’d been afraid to shoot Amy by accident, when she’d aimed for the rapist beside the truck. Chance was a hunter. He wouldn’t miss. Still something told her the gun wasn’t the answer.
“Chica? Are you hurt?”
Eunjoo didn’t respond. The coyote and the girl continued staring at each other, unflinchingly, and Chance whispered, “We have to act, before she is hurt.”
As if the coyote understood, it whipped its body in the opposite direction and sprinted away. Before Calliope could reach for her, Eunjoo raised herself onto her feet and was chasing after.
Calliope treaded heavy in the snow but Chance caught Eunjoo where the tree line met a wooden fence marking the edge of Tía’s property, a mile from the house. The coyote was nowhere. Had it jumped the fence? Calliope wasn’t even sure coyotes could leap that high.
Her breathing strained, her muscles aching, Calliope came upon Chance grasping a flailing and wild Eunjoo. This was not a mere child’s tantrum. The girl’s eyes still bright and glassy as citrine, she flung herself and clawed at Chance, scratching his arms and yowling, her usual bird’s voice low and guttural. This wasn’t rabies.
Warily, Calliope kneeled beside them and wrapped her arms around the girl, murmuring and hushing in soothing tones. “I’m here, chica. You’re safe now. I’ve got you.”
Eunjoo’s thumb was bleeding, but not profusely. Calliope pulled the bandage from her pocket, wrapped it back around; although it wasn’t sanitary, it was something. She would clean it as soon as they returned to the house.
Eunjoo grew rigid, her body stiff in Calliope’s arms. Her yellow eyes fluttered back, as if in seizure, then her body relaxed again, eyes closed.
“Chica?” Calliope screamed. Don’t-be-dead don’t-be-dead. She pressed her ear to the girl’s chest and breathed relief at the steady thumping. Why did this child keep nearly dying on her?
What strange god would have left her to Calliope’s care?
Where was the girl’s own mother?
Calliope thought of Phoenix. She hoped whoever was taking care of him was doing a better job than she was with Eunjoo.
“She’s passed out,” she told Chance.
“I’ll carry her.” He lifted her easily from Calliope, and together they walked back the way they’d come.
Mara and Buick were waiting in the cabin, anxiously, as Chance carried Eunjoo’s limp body inside and laid her on the couch in front of the fireplace.
“She’s not …” Mara asked, without finishing her sentence.
“Passed out,” Chance said.
A conversation about possible hypothermia ensued, Chance assuring them she only needed rest. Calliope ignored everyone and warmed the girl with water heated over the fire, rewrapping her bandage properly this time with supplies from the medicine cabinet.
Mara explained that she and Buick had stayed behind in case the girl returned. Calliope nodded absently, disinterested in their whereabouts or any other conversation. She bundled Eunjoo in blankets and watched the girl sleep fitfully.
* * * *
The sun was setting again. It felt like perpetual sunset since everything had fallen apart, crossing that bridge. Chance brought a plate with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and goldfish crackers to the armchair where Calliope was curled, watching Eunjoo intently. Calliope shook her head, her hunger having turned into nausea and indigestion that made the thought of eating unbearable. “You have to eat, mujer. You can watch her and eat at the same time.”
“Is it just me or are the days shorter?” She nodded toward the vaulted windows in Tía’s living room, glass, ceiling to floor, overlooking the backyard and the desert hills beyond, swathed in the purplish haze of dusk.
“It’s not just you.” He pressed the plate toward her. “Come on, I made it special for you.”
Though she wanted to cover herself with a blanket and fall into a sleep as deep as Eunjoo’s, deeper maybe, Chance’s smile was contagious. “Yeah, what’s so special about it?”
“Extra peanut butter. It’s magic.”
She half smiled, rolling her eyes dramatically, and accepted the sandwich. The smell of the peanut butter washed away her nausea. Hunger overtook her, and she bit into the sandwich as if it were the first food she’d ever eaten, ate greedily, swallowing it down more quickly than she should have, the roof of her mouth sticky, her throat thick. “Water.”
“I’ve got you covered there, mujer.” From his flannel pocket, he pulled a juice box, handed it to her, and sat on the armrest as she slurped the entire contents of the box within seconds. He laughed. “Feel better?”
She nodded, picking at the goldfish piled on the plate. From his pocket, he pulled the figurine he’d been whittling. She asked, “What else you got in there?”
“My whole life, mujer. I carry it with me.”
“You sound like my husband.”
“He Indian?”
“No, New Mexican. From Española.” She wanted to ask Chance about his wife. His daughter, in the dancehall of the dead. But she couldn’t form the words.
He handed her the figurine, and she sucked in her breath when she realized what it was.
“How’d you know about the coyote? You made this before Eunjoo got lost …”
“Had a funny feeling Coyote needed to show himself.”
“Would you have killed it?”
He shrugged, sighed. “Sometimes sacrifice is necessary. The Zuni don’t kill anything, not even birds, without asking permission. I would never kill anything lightly, not even that trickster Coyote.”
She handed him back the wooden coyote. “I’ve wondered if you were a trickster.”
He gestured for her to keep the figurine. “I made it for you.”
“Why?” Though it was an animal, Calliope couldn’t help thinking it was similar to a Zuni doll carved from cottonwood roots and used to teach children about ko’ko spirits or as fertility charms for women. It could rightly be called a fetish.
“To show you I’m not a trickster.”
“That doesn’t make sense, Chance. I just told
you that.”
He shrugged again, smile lines creasing his face. “Want another sandwich?”
She shook her head.
“The girl will be fine, mujer. She just needs to process whatever Coyote told her.”
Calliope sighed, stifling frustration, remembering her resolution to trust Chance.
“We still need to get to the rez. I’m planning how, so we should talk about it.”
She nodded but said nothing.
When Chance took Calliope’s plate to the kitchen, she touched Eunjoo’s forehead. It was scalding. Calliope stood quickly, removed the blanket. The girl stirred then sat up. “Chica. You’re awake.” Calliope hugged the girl, whose body emanated almost as much heat as the fireplace. She motioned her to sit on the opposite side of the couch, away from the cast iron.
The others came from the kitchen, Mara with a mug of water she handed to Eunjoo, who sipped it gingerly. “Holy hell, girl, you scared us,” Mara said. “Why’d you go coyote hunting all by yourself? You got a death wish?”
Eunjoo’s eyes had returned to their former brushed granite, inky and human. Deep purple bags swelled beneath both eyes, and her skin was sallow. But her face had resumed the relaxed and curious demeanor Calliope had become so fond of—that had disappeared for those terrifying minutes in the snow when the girl was wild.
“Tell us what happened, little bird. Why’d you follow Coyote?” Chance asked, his tone more Socratic than confused. “He need to tell you a story?”
Eunjoo nodded. “But the story wasn’t for me.”
“Oh no? Who for then, little bird?”
Eunjoo pointed to Calliope. “Phoenix’s mama.”
Calliope’s gut lurched. She nearly asked, You talked to Phoenix? as if that were possible. Her son was not a coyote. She remembered a bit of apocrypha about American physicist Richard Feynman, who’d worked on the bomb. He was called to his wife Arline’s deathbed and hitchhiked from Los Alamos. It was 1945, weeks away from Hiroshima. The nurse recorded the time of death: 9:21 p.m. After mourning and making arrangements, leaving the room and returning, Feynman looked to the clock on the wall. 9:21. The hands frozen. Had the universe taken notice of his loss? Had time stopped for his grief? Could he believe for even a moment that his love had turned the world peculiar, that his wife had returned, a ghost he didn’t believe in, come to haunt him from the skepticism of his science-hardened heart? Could he imbue this coincidence with deeper meaning?
He couldn’t and he wouldn’t. Instead, he remembered the clock had been fragile, that he’d fixed it several times. The nurse must have unsettled the inner workings when she’d picked it up. No miracle. Just an accidental jostle. An ordinary event. Eunjoo had followed a coyote into the cold. She’d become delirious with exertion. Those were the conclusions the evidence supported. No mysterious happening.
“Chica, you can tell me a story, that’s fine,” Calliope said. “But I don’t necessarily believe the animal you followed wanted me to hear it. What you did was dangerous. I don’t ever want you running outside by yourself again. That coyote was a wild animal. It could have killed you.”
Her bird’s voice guileless, she said, “Coyote told me you would say that.”
“Oh, really?” Calliope raised her eyebrows, half amused. She sighed. The child had gotten lost on her watch. She owed it to her to listen. “Fine. Tell me Coyote’s story.”
Eunjoo’s eyes, still black but flaked with citrine—she began in her birdlike rasp, yet clear and strong, as if she’d rehearsed this story many times before:
“In the days of the Ancients at the edge of Thunder Ridge where the gods of prey lived, there also lived the demon Suuke.
“The gods had made a village for themselves and tried to live and hunt in peace with their families, but whenever the children went hunting among the men or wandered to the outskirts of the village, the demon Suuke crushed and gobbled them up.
“The gods of prey asked who would kill the Suuke, for they needed a plan. Below the ridge in the gulch at the arroyo’s mouth, Coyote made his furtive home, scattered with animal bones, a feast of sinew and gristle leftover from the village. He heard their pleas and dropped the bone he was gnawing.
“Next morning, he set to work digging a hollow in the ridge where Suuke lived, then rolled a heavy stone into it, then another, smaller stone. He gathered leg bones of antelope and placed those beside the stones. Finally, he brought a bowl of yellow medicine-water and sat on the large stone with the bones, breaking them with the smaller stone, pretending to bathe his lips in the medicine.
“The Suuke must have heard the pounding for he emerged from his cave and saw Coyote and asked what he was doing. Coyote replied that he was making himself a faster runner by breaking his bones and repairing them with the yellow medicine. Is it possible? the Suuke asked. Will you show me? Coyote set the antelope bone near his leg and pretended he’d crushed his bone, screaming in pain, then bathed it in yellow medicine.
“After he’d done this with both hind legs and both front paws, he arose and ran around the Suuke as fast as he could, kicking a fury of dust around the demon. Coyote said, See. I’m faster than any deer or antelope.
“The Suuke, eager to try, sat on the large stone as Coyote had. He picked up the smaller stone, held it high above his head, then brought it down with so much force it crushed his thigh to splinters. Screaming in pain, he applied the yellow medicine.
“When nothing happened, he asked, When will the pain stop? Coyote told him he had to crush all four bones, his legs and arms, before the medicine-water would work. So the Suuke proceeded to splinter his own bones.
“Once he had crushed both legs and one arm, he asked, How will I crush the last? I cannot lift the stone with my broken arm. Coyote offered to help him, and the Suuke laid his last arm across the stone.
“So ended the Suuke, but this is not the end of my story.
“Coyote returned to the gods of prey and told them what he’d done, but they did not receive him as the hero he thought they would. That foul-smelling beast, they said, will always make a Coyote of himself.
“Still, they allowed him to go hunting with them the next day, grateful at least their children were not snatched and eaten by the Suuke on their way.
“All day, Coyote tried and failed to catch a single antelope or deer, and all day the gods of prey laughed at him. Determined to show how capable he was, Coyote said he would go off on his own to hunt and would impress them with his catch.
“The gods of prey indicated much game could be caught along Wolf Canyon, if Coyote stayed to the east when the road forked, but it would go bad for him if he went west.
“When he came to the fork, Coyote could not remember which trail they’d said.
“And he trotted toward the west.
“He came upon a steep cliff and began to climb. No sooner had he reached the middle than chimney swallows began to swarm his head and peck at his eyes. He swerved and bobbed to dodge the swallows, lost his footing, and tumbled down the cliff until he struck a great pile of rocks below and was shattered to pieces.
“When the gods of prey finally found him, the only bone not broken was his head.
“They picked up a large stone and brought it down with as much force as they could muster.
“Now, whenever a coyote finds meat in a rock deadfall he is sure to stick his nose in and get his head mashed for his pains.
“So shortens my story.”
As if the whole thing had been a rehearsed production, Chance briefly chanted a song in Zuni, then said, “You told that very well, little bird.”
Eunjoo resumed sipping her mug of water.
Calliope looked at the pair of them like they were coconspirators. “Chance, did you teach her that story?”
“No, I did not. Did I, little bird?”
Eunjoo shook her head. “Coyote told me, in the snow
.”
“Coyotes don’t talk. At least not language humans understand.”
“I understood.”
Calliope sighed. “Fine. What does it mean?”
“That’s what you’re supposed to figure out.”
“Of course.” She reached down, felt Eunjoo’s head. The girl was cool, damp. The fever had broken. “Well, I’m too tired to figure anything out after being scared out of my mind that you were lost or bleeding to death or worse and then watching you fever-dream unconscious all evening. Let’s get you something to eat, and then bed. You’re sticking with me, chica. No more wandering out after wild animals. We have to get us both to a doctor, you for that infected bite, me for these raucous babies.”
“The rez,” Chance said.
“I saw a doctor,” Mara said. “At the hospital in Silver City.”
“You said there was no one,” Calliope said, eyeing Mara suspiciously.
“No one except a doctor.”
“That would’ve been useful information earlier, when I might’ve been in labor.” Calliope couldn’t keep the frustration from her voice.
“She’s not in Silver City anymore or I would’ve said something. She went back to her pueblo.”
“She Indian?” Chance asked.
Mara nodded.
“Buick, you see any other Indians on your way here? Through Gallup or anywhere?”
“Nah. As I said, I didn’t see nobody.”
Chance murmured inaudibly then said, “We should still get to the rez.”
“I’m too tired to argue this tonight, Chance,” Calliope said.
“Didn’t you listen to my story?” Eunjoo asked, her cheeks bright pink.
Trinity Sight Page 17
