Coyote Blues

by Karen F. Williams

  Riley lost herself in the wonder of them—and of Fiona, who invited her to sit and help feed them. Riley didn’t hesitate. She sat on the bank next to Fiona and took a turtle from her. It was the tiniest thing she’d ever seen. “Did you catch them here?”

  Fiona seemed almost insulted. “I’d never take an animal from the wild. That would be stealing…like kidnapping a person and forcing them to live in prison. These hatchlings are captive-born. My uncle got them from a friend who runs a breeding program. They’re black wood turtles from Central America. Rhinoclemmys funerea is their scientific name.”

  “Funerea? Sounds like funeral.”

  “Probably because their shells are black…like people dressed for one. Creepy, huh?” Fiona gave a crooked smile and looked over at Riley with those big blue eyes. “Guess their names.”

  Riley took a blueberry from the cup. “Hmm…something spooky, I’d think.” The turtle in Riley’s open palm stretched its black-and-yellow neck and chomped down on the berry between her fingers. “Let’s see. I’m gonna go with Dracula and—”

  “Morticia and Gomez.” Fiona grinned. “After the Addams Family.”

  “Ha! Those are cool names. I love the Addams Family.”

  “Yeah? Me, too.”

  From then on, they watched reruns when summer storms kept them indoors. Fiona lived just down the road in a year-round house much bigger than the seasonal cabins along the water, and she had access to her father’s woodworking shop. When he wasn’t preaching, Pastor Bell was a carpenter, and Fiona, his only child, had inherited his talent.

  “I always thought I wanted a son,” Pastor Bell said to Riley the first time he met her, “but having my little tomboy here is like having the best of a boy and the best of a girl rolled into one.” He put an arm around his daughter, squeezing her shoulder with pride and affection. What the pastor failed to realize was that pubescent tomboys, like caterpillars turning into butterflies, tended to metamorphize into adult-stage lesbians.

  Riley had more fun that first summer with Fiona than she’d ever had before. Fiona taught her how to cut animal shapes with a jigsaw and assemble whirligigs. Other times they made chimes from eccentric pieces of driftwood dragged in from the shore. Fiona drilled tiny holes, through which they threaded fishing line strung with colorful glass beads, shiny squares of hammered copper, even dangling pieces of shell or fossilized bone unearthed on their many hikes.

  At only fifteen, Fiona knew she wanted to be a furniture maker—an artisan, she called herself. With her father’s help she’d already built a white-birch headboard and matching night table for her room, and their rustic beauty enchanted Riley. Against the autumn-yellow walls and floral curtains Mrs. Bell had sewn, the white papery bark made the room feel like a sunny day in October, even on rainy days. When it poured outside, they spent their afternoons sprawled out on the bed, propped up on pillows against that woodsy headboard while they talked, listened to music, or watched reruns of The Addams Family. The turtles, who were rapidly growing, hung out with them, Morticia napping on Fiona’s stomach, while Gomez enjoyed stretching out on Riley’s chest.

  Fiona was an awesome painter, too. Her mind was always going, thinking of creative projects, and she got lots of ideas from library books on turtles and tortoises. She started copying the colorful geometric patterns of their carapaces and plastrons—the proper names for their top and bottom shells, Riley learned—and turned them into abstract designs that she painted on the surface of old stools. On Saturday mornings they’d ride their bikes down country roads, searching local yard and barn sales for items Fiona bought for a couple of bucks. And somehow, they managed to ride back, always laughing while they steered with one hand and held on to the leg of a stool. By the time Riley went home at the end of that first summer, they had a pile of them stashed in the Bells’ shed—high stools, footstools, old milking stools—and when Riley returned the following year, Fiona had refinished and painted every single one.

  “These are beyond amazing! I can’t believe you did all this while I was gone,” Riley said.

  “It’s my passion. Besides, it gave me something to do when I was lonely and missing you.”

  Riley’s heart skipped a beat because she herself had spent the year counting the days to seeing Fiona again. Riley, who was a year older and had her driver’s license now, helped transport Fiona’s creations to a farmers’ market in town. Over the Fourth of July weekend they sold all but the one she’d put aside for Riley. Fiona walked away with almost eight hundred dollars in her pocket and tried to force Riley to take half of it. But Riley refused. She might have needed more time with her father, definitely more affection from her mother, but she didn’t need money. The Dawsons had plenty of that. All Riley wanted was that stool, the black one with brilliant geometric bursts of white and yellow, modeled after the shell of an Indian star tortoise.

  “I so admire and envy you,” Riley said one evening while they were sitting on her dock, watching the sun set, as they often did. Riley sat with her hands in the pockets of her hoodie, entranced by the sight of Fiona whittling a small piece of wood. “It’s nice that you know what you want to be, that you’ll make a living doing something you love.”

  “Well, part of me would really like to work with turtles and become a herpetologist—that’s a zoologist who specializes in reptiles—but I suck in math and chemistry. I’m more of a creative type, you know? There’s just something about working with wood…the feel of it in my hands…the way it smells freshly cut. I love the grain. It’s like the fingerprints of a tree, always different. And I love the smell of it burning.”

  As the August nights grew chilly, Fiona would often stop whittling on the dock and lift her nose to the smell of smoke wafting from chimneys around the lake. One whiff and she could pretty much tell you what wood was burning in the fireplaces of those cabins.

  “What’s your favorite wood in a fireplace?” Riley asked.

  “I like it all…birch, ash, fir, maple…but the apple and cherrywood we get from pruning trees on the property is the best. I wish you could be here in the winter to smell it. It’s really fragrant, super sweet.”

  As far as Riley was concerned, nothing could be sweeter than Fiona Bell. More and more, Riley found herself having feelings. Forbidden feelings. Desires she would never express because…well, Fiona’s family was religious, and Riley would never do anything to jeopardize their friendship. But in her fantasies, she imagined Fiona putting aside her wood and whittling knife and scooting over to make out with her.

  “What are you thinking? Fiona asked.

  “Nothing.” Riley shrugged. “I just enjoy watching you whittle.”

  “Good, because I’m making you something—a keepsake to take back to the city.”

  “But I have the stool you gave me…and the chimes and the whirligigs we made last summer.”

  “And now you’ll have a spirit animal. I’m going to turn it into a keychain.” She put her nose in the air and shimmied her shoulders in a haughty, snooty gesture. “Now that you’re a big-shot high school senior with a driver’s license, you can put your car keys on it.”

  Riley laughed. “Okay. But how do you know what my spirit animal is?”

  “From being with you…watching you.” Fiona stopped whittling and gave a coy smile. “I like observing you, you know…aside from the fact that you’re so pretty.”

  “Me? Pretty?” Riley felt her cheeks flush. “No, I’m not. Not like you.”

  It wasn’t that Riley was self-deprecating, or that she thought of herself as unattractive. Judging from the number of boys she’d rejected, she knew she was cute enough. But unlike the striking contrast of Fiona’s features—those giant blue eyes, black hair, and fair skin—her own coloring was rather drab, she thought. A study in browns.

  Monochromatic is how Fiona described her. “It’s so interesting that your hair and eyes are the same shade of golden brown. I love how when the sun bleaches your hair blond, it brings out the yellow specks in y
our eyes. And now with a tan…wow, Riley…you know what? With your earthy tones, if you were standing in the woods looking at me right now, I wouldn’t see you. You’d be totally camouflaged. As invisible as a deer or a coyote.”

  Riley threw her head back and howled in response. “Ahrooooo!”

  “And since you howl so well, I think your animal spirit should be a coyote.”

  “Yip-yip-yip-ahrooooooo!” Riley wailed in loud agreement.

  This made Fiona laugh, as it always did when they communicated in animal languages. After two summers of imitating the voices of wildlife, they’d become quite good. Sometimes they’d hike to the waterfalls with lunch and a stolen beer—always from the Dawsons’ refrigerator, as there was no alcohol to be found at the Bells’. The born-again Christians kept a born-again kitchen with only leftover grape juice from Sunday communion.

  A shared bottle of Corona was enough to get them buzzed, and they’d sit there mimicking the sounds of animals that reverberated in the woods and echoed on the lake. Fiona could do a superb squirrel impression, an awesome crow, a quacking duck. But her wild-turkey calls were the best. She had them all down pat: the hen’s yelp, the male’s gobble, the cluck and purr, even the kee-kee of a lost young turkey.

  Riley’s repertoire wasn’t nearly as impressive, but she could howl and yip like the coyotes did in late summer, and living in Manhattan for so long, she’d learned to speak perfect pigeon.

  “I like when you coo for me,” Fiona said.

  “I’ll coo for you if you’ll gobble for me.” They sat facing each other, cross-legged on the two beach towels they’d put together. “Go on. Do your Tom-turkey call.”

  “I don’t know if I do such a good Tom. I think I do a better Jake.” Jakes were the immature males. Fiona took a slug of beer, then used her hands and mouth to make a kee-kee call.

  They waited quietly. One, two, three seconds, and Fiona’s call was answered by both a Tom and a hen responding to the call of a Jake who might have wandered too far from his parents. Fiona looked at Riley. They burst out laughing until they cried, covering their mouths so the turkeys wouldn’t hear them. No one before or since Fiona had ever made Riley laugh so hard. Feel so hard. Sharing the great outdoors with her inspired not only humor, but observations on nature and friendship, most of which Riley recorded in a journal. She usually left it home, but that day it was stuffed in her backpack, its brown leather cover embossed with her initials.

  Fiona reached for it and ran a fingertip across the letters. “R.E.D?”

  “My initials.”

  “Really? That’s so cool that they spell the word red. What’s the E stand for?”

  “I’m not telling.”

  “Oh, come on. Tell me.”

  “No. I hate it. And you’ll laugh.”

  “I promise not to.”

  Riley frowned and looked away. “Edith,” she mumbled.

  “What?”

  “Edith. It’s Edith, okay?”

  “For real? You don’t look—” Riley frowned as Fiona tightened her lips, fighting to keep a straight face. “You don’t look like…like a…” Fiona’s face puckered then, her body shaking until she couldn’t hold back and laughed hysterically.

  “Oh, you think that’s funny, huh? I’ll show you what’s funny.” Riley lunged, throwing herself on top of Fiona, and they began to wrestle. Riley was stronger, though, and it wasn’t long before she had Fiona’s wrists pinned above her head with one hand and was tickling her with the other.

  “Stop!” Fiona writhed beneath her, shrieking with laughter. “Riley, please. Stop! I can’t breathe.”

  “Say you’re sorry for laughing.”

  “I’m sorry,” Fiona squeaked.

  “Sorry for what?”

  “For laughing.”

  Riley stopped and let Fiona catch her breath. She lifted her weight off her then, shifting it to her elbows, and looked down at her. “You promised you wouldn’t laugh.”

  “Really, I’m sorry,” Fiona said, breathing hard beneath her. “It’s just that you don’t look like an…an Edith,” she managed to say without laughing this time. She smiled up at Riley, pushing back the shoulder-length, sun-bleached hair that hung down in her face. “Riley Edith Dawson…RED,” she mused. “It’s a great nickname for someone who’s always traipsing through the woods like Little Red Riding Hood. It fits you.” Fiona ran her fingers through Riley’s hair again. “And you fit me.” Her smile suddenly faded, replaced by something of more urgent importance—like a secret that can no longer keep itself.

  The riptide of Fiona’s ocean-blue eyes overwhelmed Riley, creating all sorts of sensations, and she fought a strong desire to kiss her.

  Apparently, the same desire struck Fiona, but she didn’t fight hers. Before Riley knew it, Fiona’s hands were leaving her hair, pulling Riley’s mouth to her own.

  That first kiss was a long one, sweet and tentative, slow and exploratory. And when it was over, neither of them said a word.

  It wasn’t until they were heading home, walking along the dirt path that led through the woods, that Riley got up the nerve to say something. “Are you okay with…with what happened?” She was afraid of Fiona’s answer, afraid that once the alcohol wore off, Fiona would regain her senses and say their kiss had been a mistake—a terrible sin. But she didn’t.

  Fiona shot her a shy glance. “I’m more than okay. How about you?”

  “I’m more than okay, too.”

  “Good.” Fiona let out a deep sigh. “I don’t like guys at all, Red. I mean, you know…I like guys, but not that way.”

  “Me neither. But I like you that way. I always have.” She reached for Fiona’s hand and slipped her fingers through Fiona’s. “I’ve been wanting to kiss you since last summer.”

  “I wish you had.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, like…really.”

  Hearing Fiona’s admission made Riley’s heart swell, and she suddenly felt weightless, as though she were floating on air, until the toe of her sneaker caught the tip of a rock, and she tripped forward.

  Fiona tightened her grip and kept her from face-planting. “Geez, Red! I think you’re falling for me. Literally.”

  “Ya think?” Riley grinned as she straightened her backpack and lifted a branch overhanging the path and let Fiona duck under it first.

  “Let’s go somewhere tomorrow,” Fiona suggested. “How about we take the canoe out, go on a picnic. Somewhere private.”

  Riley liked the implications of somewhere private. And she liked her new moniker, Red. Especially the way it sounded when Fiona said it. She couldn’t wait to kiss her again. “I’d like that.”

  They walked the rest of the way in blissful silence until they reached Fiona’s house and parted ways.

  The next day—the day the change came—they packed a cooler and paddled to a secluded spot at the end of the lake. No one ever went that far, except for old Mr. Mosley, who would row his boat into the lily pads to compete with the egrets and herons for fish. If he wasn’t out there fishing, he was either sleeping, eating, or passing around the collection plate in Pastor Bell’s church.

  They dragged the canoe ashore, and in a shaded spot beneath a canopy of trees, Fiona spread a blanket over a thick bed of soft, sun-warmed pine needles. Quietly nervous over the assumed intentions of this outing, Riley pretended to relax with lunch, making small talk and complimenting Fiona on the sandwiches she’d made for them. The promise of continuing that kiss from yesterday had them both acting awkward, and Riley could tell Fiona was just as nervous. She got up and grabbed a volleyball then, and Fiona chased her into the lake. In waist-high water they volleyed and splashed around for a while before tossing the ball into the canoe and enjoying a swim.

  Fiona was the first one out of the water and lying on the blanket when Riley came running up in her bikini. “Whew!” Riley took a soda from the cooler, popped open the can, and stood there, appraising Fiona. After a few sips she passed the can to her. “You all r
ight?” she asked, hoping Fiona hadn’t rethought their plans for more privacy.

  “Never better…” Fiona’s sexy little smirk, the unmistakable desire in her eyes, instantly aroused Riley.

  She flopped down beside her and stretched out on her back, trying to act nonchalant as she folded her hands behind her head and looked up at the pine trees. “Ah…that was a good swim.” Sunlight peeked through the evergreens, its light shifting and making the branches shimmer. Fiona didn’t say a word. But it was now or never. Labor Day was only a week away, and summer vacation would soon end. “I don’t want to go back to the city,” Riley lamented. “I hate living there…and I hate leaving you.”

  “I was a mess when you left last summer,” Fiona said. “I didn’t tell you when we talked on the phone, but…I cried for days. And I don’t want to cry now, Red, so let’s not think about it.” She turned on her side then, propping herself on an elbow and resting a hand on Riley’s tanned stomach. “I’d rather think about the house that I’m going to build for us one day.”

  Riley turned her head and smiled. “Will it be in the woods?”

  “Of course, it’ll be in the woods. I’m going to build us a gingerbread house.”

  “Yeah?” Riley smiled wider. “Out of candy? Won’t the wildlife eat us out of house and home?”

  “Not out of candy, silly. Out of wood. I’m a carpenter, remember? But it’ll look like candy. After the house is built, I’ll cut out all the candy and trimmings from cedar, and we’ll paint them to look like a real gingerbread house.”

  “Sounds perfect…and cozy…and kind of permanent.” Riley searched her eyes. “If we’re going to build a house and live together, then I guess you’re planning on falling in love with me and sticking around…like forever.”

  “I’m already in love with you, Red. I think I’ve always been.” Her eyes roamed Riley’s lean and muscular body, her fingers playfully stirring the water droplets that beaded on her stomach, before slowly trailing them down along the line of her bikini bottom. “And I don’t know what to do about it.”