"I'll treasure it forever," he said, smiling. Stepping to one side so that she could go by him, he added, "Would you like to come in?"
It was roomier inside Max's house than it looked to be from the outside. Renovations had obviously been done, since the whole of the downstairs was laid out in an open layout broken only by the necessary support beams. The kitchen was off in one corner, separated from the rest of the room by an island counter. Another corner held a desk and some bookcases. The remainder of the room consisted of a comfortable living space of sprawling sofas and armchairs, low tables, Navajo carpets and display cabinets.
There was art everywhere— on the walls, as might be expected: posters, reproductions and a few originals, but there was even more three-dimensional work. The sculptures made Sophie's heartbeat quicken. Wherever she looked there were representations of the desert spirits she'd come to know so well, those strange creatures with their human features and torsos peeping out from their feathers and fur, or their thorny cacti cloaks. Sophie was utterly entranced by them, by how faithful they were to the spirits from her desert dream.
"It's funny," Max said, laying the painting she'd given him down on a nearby table. The two ocotillo cacti spirit statues that made up the centerpiece seemed to bend their long-branched forms toward the package, as though curious about what it held. "I was thinking about you just the other day."
"You were."
Max nodded. "I remembered why it was that you looked so familiar to me when we met at our your opening."
If her desert dream hadn't started up after that night, Sophie might have expected him to tell her now that he was one of its spirits and it was from seeing her in that otherworldly, realm that he knew her. But it couldn't be so. She hadn't followed Kokopelli's flute until after she'd met Max.
"I would have remembered it if we'd ever met," she said.
"I didn't say we'd actually met."
"Now you've got me all curious."
"Maybe we should leave it a mystery."
"Don't you dare," Sophie said. "You have to tell me now."
"I'd rather show you than tell you," Max said. "Just give me a moment."
He went up a set of stairs over by the kitchen area that Sophie hadn't noticed earlier. Once he was gone, she wandered about the large downstairs room to give the statues a closer look. The resemblances were uncanny. It wasn't so much that he'd captured the exact details of her dream's desert fauna as that his sculptures contained an overall sense of the same spirit; they captured the elemental, inherent truth rather than recognizable renderings. She was crouched beside a table, peering at a statue of a desert woodrat with human hands, when Max returned with a small painting in hand.
"This is where I first saw you," he said.
Sophie had to smile. She remembered the painting. Jilly had done it years ago: a portrait of Wendy, LaDonna and her, sitting on the back steps of a Yoors Street music club, Wendy and LaDonna scruffy as always, bookending Sophie in a pleated skirt and silk blouse, the three of them caught in the circle of light cast by a nearby streetlight. Jilly had called it TheThree Muses Pause to Reconsider Their Night.
"This was Peter's," Max said. "He loved this painting and kept it hanging in his office by his desk. The idea of the Muses having a girl's night out on the town appealed to the whimsical side of his nature. I'd forgotten all about it until I was up there the other day looking for some papers."
"I haven't thought of that painting in years," Sophie told him. "You know Jilly actually made us sit for it at night on those very steps— at least for her initial sketches, which were far more detailed than they had any need to be. I think she did them that way just to see how long we'd actually put up with sitting there."
"And how long did you sit?"
"I don't know. A few hours, I suppose. But it seemed like weeks. Is this your work?" she added, pointing to the statutes.
Max nodded.
"I just love them," she said. "You don't show in Newford, do you? I mean, I would have remembered these if I'd seen them before."
"I used to ship all my work back to the galleries in Arizona where I first started to sell. But I haven't done any sculpting for a few years now."
"Why not? They're so good."
Max shrugged. "Different priorities. It's funny how it works, how we define ourselves. I used to think of myself as a sculptor first— everything else came second. Then when the eighties arrived, I came out and thought of myself as gay first, and only then as a sculptor. Now I define myself as an AIDS activist before anything else. Most of my time these days is taken up in editing a newsletter that deals with alternative therapies for those with HIV."
Sophie thought of the book she'd seen lying on one of the tables when she was looking at the sculptures. Staying Healthy With HIV by David Baker and Richard Copeland.
"Your friend Peter," she said. "Did he die of AIDS?"
"Actually, you don't die of AIDS," Max said. "AIDS destroys your immune system and it's some other illness that kills you— something your body would have been able to deal with otherwise." He gave her a sad smile. "But no. Ironically, I was the one who tested positive for HIV. Peter had leukemia. It had been in remission for a couple of years but just before we went to the desert it came back and we had to go through it all again: the chemo treatments and the sleepless nights, the stomach cramps and awful rashes. I was sure that he'd pulled through once more, but then he died a week after we returned."
Max ran his finger along the sloped back of a statue of a horned owl whose human features seemed to echo Max's own, "I think Peter had a premonition that he was going to die, and that was why he was so insistent we visit the desert one more time. He had a spiritual awakening there after one of his bouts with the disease and afterwards, he always considered the desert as the homeground for everything he held most dear." Max smiled, remembering. "We met because of these statues. He would have moved there, except for his job. Instead, I moved here."
Sophie got a strange feeling as Max spoke of Peter's love for the desert.
"Remember we talked about dreams at the opening?" she said.
Max nodded. "Serial dreams— what a lovely conceit."
"What I was telling you wasn't something I made up. And ever since that night I've been dreaming of a desert— a desert filled up with these." Sophie included all of the statuary with a vague wave of her hand. "Except in my desert they aren't statues; they're real."
"Real."
"I know it sounds completely bizarre, but it's true. My dreams are true. I mean, they're not so much dreams as me visiting some other place."
Max gave her an odd look. "Whenever someone talked about what an imagination I must have to do such work, Peter would always insist that it was all based on reality— it was just a reality that most people couldn't see into."
"And are they?"
"I..." Max looked away from her to the statues. He lay his hand on the back of the owl-man again, fingers rediscovering the contours they had pulled from the clay. "I should show you Peter's office," he said when he finally looked up.
He led her up to the second floor which was laid out in a more traditional style, a hallway with doors leading off from it, two on one side, three on the other. Max opened the door at the head of the stairs and ushered her in ahead of him.
"I haven't been able to deal with any of this yet," he said. "What to keep... what not..."
A large desk stood by the window, covered with books, papers and a small computer, but Sophie didn't notice any of that at first. Her attention was caught and trapped by the rooms' other furnishings: the framed photographs of the desert and leather-skinned drums that hung on the walls; a cabinet holding kachina figures, a medicine flute, rattles, fetishes and other artifacts; the array of Max's sculptures that peered at her from every corner of the room. She turned slowly on the spot, taking it all in, until her gaze settled on the familiar face of one of the sculptures.
"Coyote," she said softly.
Max spoke
up from the doorway. "Careful. You know what they say about him."
Sophie shook her head.
"Don't attract his attention."
"Why?" Sophie asked, turning to look at Max. "Is he malevolent? Or dangerous?"
"By, all accounts, no. He just doesn't think things through before he takes action. But while he usually emerges intact from his misadventures, his companions aren't always quite so lucky. Spending time with Coyote is like opening your life to disorder."
Sophie smiled. "That sounds like Coyote, all right."
Her gaze went back to the cabinet and the medicine flute that lay on its second shelf between two kachinas. One was the Storyteller, her comical features the color of red clay; the other was Kokopelli. The medicine flute itself was similar to the one that Geordie had traded away, only much more beautifully crafted. But then everything in this room had a resonance of communion with more than the naked eye could see— a sense of the sacred.
"Did Peter play the flute?" she asked.
"The one in the cabinet?"
"Mmm."
"Only in the desert. It has next to no volume, but a haunting tone."
Sophie nodded. "I know."
"He'd play that flute and his drums and rattles. He'd go to sweats and drumming nights when we were down there. I used to tease him about trying to be an Indian, but he said that the Red Road was open to anyone who walked it with respect."
"The Red Road?"
"Native spiritual beliefs. I went with him sometimes, but I never really felt comfortable." He touched the nearest statue, an intricate depiction of a prickly pear spirit. "I love the desert, too, but I've never been much of a joiner."
"Did that disappoint Peter?"
Max shook his head. "Peter was one of the most open-minded, easygoing individuals you, could ever have met. He always accepted people for what they were."
"Sounds like Jilly. No wonder they got along."
"You mean because of the painting?"
Sophie nodded.
"Peter never met her. I bought it for him at one of her shows. He fell in love with it on the spot— much as I did with the painting you gave me today." An awkward smile touched his lips. "I had more money in those days."
"Please don't feel guilty about it," Sophie told him, "or you'll spoil the pleasure of my giving it to you."
"I'll try."
"So did Peter have desert dreams?" Sophie asked. "Like mine?"
"He never told me that he had serial dreams, but he did dream of the desert. What are yours like?"
"This could take a while."
"I've got the time."
So while Max sat in the chair at Peter's desk, Sophie walked about the room and told him, not only about the desert dream and Coyote, but about Mabon and Jeck and the whole strange life she had when she stepped into her dreams.
"There's something odd about Coyote referring to Nokomis," Max said when she was done.
"Why's that."
"Well, everything else in your desert relates to the South-west except for her. Nokomis and Grandmother Toad— those are terms that relate to our part of the world. They come from the lexicon of our own local tribes like the Kickaha."
"So what are you saying?"
Max shrugged, "Maybe Coyote was the woman who sent you looking for him in the first place."
"But why would he do that?"
"Who knows why Coyote does anything? Maybe he just took a liking to you and decided to meet you in a round-about way."
"So was he Kokopelli as well?" Sophie asked. "Because it's the flute-playing that got me there in the first place."
"I don't know."
But Sophie thought perhaps she did. She stood before the cabinet that held Peter's medicine flute. It was too much of a coincidence— Max's sculptures, Peter's interest in the desert. The feeling came to her that somehow she'd gotten caught up in unfinished business between the two, neither quite willing to let the other go, so they were haunting each other.
She turned to look at Max, but decided she needed one more night in her desert dream before she was ready to bring up that particular theory with him.
"It feels good being able to talk about this with someone," she said instead. "The only other person I've ever told it to is Jilly and frankly, she and Coyote are almost cut from the same cloth. The only difference is that Jilly's not quite as outrageous as he is, and she's not always talking about sex. Everything Coyote wants to talk about eventually relates to sex."
"And have you slept with him?"
Sophie smiled. "I guess there's a bit of Coyote in you, too."
"I think there's a bit of him in every one of us."
"Probably. But to answer your question: No, I haven't. I'll admit I've come close— he can be awfully persuasive— but I have the feeling that if I slept with him, I'd be in more trouble than I already am. I'd be trapped in those dreams forever and can't see that being worth one night's pleasure."
Max shook his head. "I hate it when people try to divorce sex from the other aspects of their life. It's too entwined with everything we are for us to be able to do that. It's like when some people find out that I have HIV. They expect me to disavow sex. They tell me that promiscuity got me into this position in the first place, so I should just stop thinking about it, writing about it, doing it. But if I did that, then I'd be giving-up. My sexuality is too much a part of who I am, as a person and as an artist, for me not to acknowledge its importance in my life. I may not be looking for a partner right now. I may not live to be forty. But I'll be damned if I'll live like a eunuch just because of the shitty hand I got dealt with this disease."
"So you think I should sleep with him,"
"I'm not saying that at all," Max replied. "I'm saying that sex is the life energy, and our sexuality is how we connect to it. Whether or not you sleep with Coyote or anyone else isn't going to trap you in this faerie otherworld, or even get you infected with some disease. It's why you have sex with whoever you've chosen as your partner. The desire has to include some spiritual connection. You have to care enough about the other person— and that naturally includes taking all the necessary precautions.
"How often or with how many people you have sex isn't the issue at all. It's not about monogamy versus promiscuity; it's about how much love enters the equation. If there's a positive energy between you and Coyote, if you really care about him and he cares for you, then the experience can only be positive— even if you never see each other again. If that energy and caring isn't there, then you shouldn't even be thinking about having sex with him in the first place."
12
So now I'm feeling cocky. I think I've got the whole thing figured out. Those first spirits told me the truth: This isn't my dreaming place. It's either Peter's or Max's, I don't know which yet. One of them hasn't let go of the other, and whichever one of the two it is, he's trying to hang on to the other one. Maybe the desert belongs to Max and he doesn't know it. Maybe it's his way of keeping Peter alive, and I just tumbled into the place through having met him that night at my opening. Or maybe it belongs to Peter; Peter wearing Kokopelli's guise in this desert, calling me up by mistake instead of Max. He probably got me because I'm such a strong dreamer, and when he saw his mistake, he just took off, leaving me to fend for myself. Or maybe he doesn't even know I'm here. But it's got to be one of the other, and talking to Kokopelli is going to tell me which.
"No more fooling around;" I tell Coyote. "I want to find Kokopelli."
"I'm doing my best," he says. "But that flute-player— he's not an easy fellow to track down."
We're sitting by another mesquite fire in another dry wash or maybe it's the same one where we first met. Every place starts to look the same around here after a while. It's a little past noon, the sun's high. Ground-doves fill the air with their mournful coo-ooh, coo-ooh sound, and a hawk hangs high above the saguaro— a smudge of shadow against the blue Coyote has coffee brewing on the fire and a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. He look
s almost human today, exempt for the coyote ears and the long stiff whiskers standing out from around his mouth. I keep expecting one of them to catch fire, but they never do.
"I'm serious, Coyote,"
"There's people put chicory in with their coffee, but it just doesn't taste the same to me," he says. "I'm not looking for a smooth taste when I make coffee. I want my spoon to stand up in the cup."
He looks at me with those mismatched eyes of his, pretending he's as guileless as a newborn babe, but while my father might have made some mistakes in his life, raising me o be stupid wasn't one of them.
"If you'd wanted to;" I say, "we could have found Kokopelli weeks ago."
The medicine flute is still playing, soft as a distant breeze. It's always playing when I'm here— never close by, but never so far away that I can't hear it anymore.
"You could take me to him right now... if you wanted to."
"The thing is," Coyote says, "nothing's as easy as we'd like it to be."
"Don't I know it," I mutter, but he's not even listening to me.
"And the real trouble comes from not knowing what we really want in the first place."
"I know what I want— to find Kokopelli, or whoever it is playing that flute."
"Did I ever tell you," Coyote says, "about the time Barking Dog was lying under a mesquite tree, just after a thunderstorm?"
"I don't want to hear another one of your stories."
13
But Coyote says:
Barking Dog looks up and the whole sky is filled with a rainbow. Now how can I get up there? he thinks. Those colors are just the paints I need for my arrows.
Then he sees Buzzard, and he cries: "Hey, Uncle! Can you take me up there so that I can get some arrow paint?"
"Sure, nephew. Climb up on my back."
Barking Dog does and Buzzard flies up and up until they reach the very edge of the sky.
"You wait here," Buzzard says, "while I get those paints for you."
So Barking Dog hangs there from the edge of the sky, and he's hanging there, but Buzzard doesn't come back. Barking Dog yells and he's making an awful racket, but he doesn't see anyone and finally he can't hang on any more and down he falls. It took Buzzard no time at all to get to the edge of the sky, but it takes Barking Dog two weeks to fall all the way back down— bang! Right into an old hollow tree and he lands so hard, he gets stuck and he can't get out.
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