I put the heel of my boot on his hand until he changes his mind. I step back and kick him in the chin before he finds a robber-prayer that works. I pick up his pistol and stick it in my pants. The barrel is hot but not too hot for an Apache warrior.
Horse hoofs make a western movie sound on the 7-Eleven parking lot. A policeman dismounts like he’s got all the time in the world.
He asks, “Somebody call the police?” as he walks through the door and nudges the robber with his foot. Cops used to come after a telephone call, but now they only come after gunshots—when the worst has already happened so there isn’t any hurry.
He puts a hand on his pistol grip and looks at me, but Mo tells him I just saved the day.
“Wylie stopped a robbery,” Mo says. “He came in for corn chips.”
I show him the Doritos bag in case he has any doubts.
The cop looks at the corn chips but he sees the pistol in my pants. He thinks about a gunfight, but there’s a robber on the floor, and a white cowboy hat that is exactly his size.
The cop fastens his handcuffs on the robber before he puts the hat on his head. “I’ll need help to get him on my horse.” He looks a little like the Lone Ranger, even if the mask is wrong.
Tonto laughs when I call the policeman Kimosabe.
“You can have the Doritos for free,” Mo says. Persians clerks never give anything away unless you save their lives. “Soft drinks too.”
But there’s no refrigeration, and even an Apache can’t drink hot Dr Pepper.
“Anything you want,” Mo tells me. “Any time from seven a.m. to elven p.m. On the house.”
Tonto tells me on the house is not the Apache way. “Has to be taken, Coyote. Otherwise it’s charity.”
Charity. I push the cop aside. I grab three bags of Doritos and a bag of jerky with a bullet hole in it. I run out the door, as if I’m stealing. It is hard to live off the land with Persian clerks like Mo.
When I run my ghosts can’t follow. The policeman could follow if he wanted to, but he has other things on his mind. Sometimes the Sacred Alarm Clock sounds like a cop not coming after you.
• • •
There’s a smoke cloud coming out of one of the buildings in the center of town. It’s the biggest and the tallest and the most useless building of all. No one can get to the top without electricity, so people on the street just watch it burn.
A siren howls like the biggest coyote in the world, and a red fire truck races by me as if this is an emergency. When the firemen reach the building, they jump out of the truck and pretend they have a plan. Nobody cares about the building, so the men unbutton their firemen coats and drink warm bottles of beer while they lay their hoses on the street.
“In case it gets out of hand,” the boss fireman says loud so everyone will know he still has a job. The men look hot in their firefighter hats and suits. They have special masks like scuba divers wear so they can breathe under water, but the firemen don’t put these on because even they can’t stand that much heat.
The boss fireman is Indian. Choctaw, I think. They are usually friendly so I stand beside him and pretend to read signs in the smoke.
“I met a Choctaw once,” I tell him.
“No civilians allowed in this area,” he says. “Get back beyond the line.”
The line is invisible, like the medicine lines around states and reservations and Chickasaw casinos. It’s one of those dream things everybody thinks is real until the Sacred Alarm Clock wakes them up.
When I say, “You don’t have to pretend anymore,” he finally looks at me. He counts my bags of corn chips. He looks at the bullet hole through my jerky bag. There’s a cartoon Indian on the front of the bag, but I’m still not sure I picked the right one.
I ask him, “Is this buffalo jerky?”
He sees the gun in the front of my pants.
“The gun barrel is pretty cool now. Want to touch it?”
The firefighters aren’t interested in the fire anymore. They watch me wave my pistol in the air.
“It’s taken, not charity, like the chips.” I try to hand my pistol to the Choctaw fire-boss, but now he wants to stand on the opposite side of the truck—beyond the medicine line where civilians are supposed to go. I drop my chips and jerky, because it’s really hard to hold onto so many things at once, and when I try to catch them, the pistol fires.
A hot brass cartridge flies inside my shirt collar and burns me on the tattoo between my shoulder blades that I got by mistake a very long time ago. It feels good to watch the firemen run away—like Custer running from the Lakota at the Little Big Horn. I don’t mind the burn so much.
“It’s time to go,” I shout at the firemen’s backs. It’s always time to go when a shot has been fired, but I check my handless watch and pretend I’m keeping track.
• • •
Around the block where no guns have been fired, a half-dozen men stand in a circle with a girl in the center. It’s a big circle, because she hasn’t got a mask.
The men look sideways at the girl, pretending they barely notice her. Like she’s a ghost they shouldn’t watch too closely, but they have to look at least a little because she is so pretty. Not pretty in the church way, not pretty in a clean dress with ribbons in her hair way. This girl is pretty like the girls who dance around brass poles while men stuff paper money in their panties.
Her shirt is so tight the buttons pop open to show she’s not wearing anything underneath. Her dress is almost short enough to let you see where her legs meet at the very top. The men step away when she approaches them, just like they step away from Tonto and Geronimo and Chief Dan George, but I’m pretty sure she’s not a spirit. I’m having feelings about this girl. “Inappropriate feelings,” according to Bobby Tuesday, and you don’t get inappropriate feelings about ghosts—except maybe for ghost of Natalie Wood taking off her clothes in Gypsy.
The closer I get, the more inappropriate I feel. Her lips are pouted out like she’s sucking on a lemon drop that’s turned her spit too sour to swallow. Her bright red fingernails are too long to be real. Her eyes are so blue it’s a sure bet she doesn’t have one drop of Indian blood. They don’t quite move together, so it looks like she’s watching something nobody else can see—New Flu eyes.
The New Flu girl has a bundle in one arm, and a book in one hand, and she’s moving around the circle like a Victoria’s Secret model who isn’t tall enough but more than makes up for it by looking crazy.
This girl’s had lots of practice being crazy. I can tell by the way she listens to voices nobody else can hear, and the way she walks, like her RG1068 has worn off and she wants to make up for lost time before Bobby Tuesday writes her name on his yellow counselor pad.
Our eyes meet like lovers’ used to in the old time black-and-white movies. The bubble of men pops and splatters them in all directions. Two crazy people are way too many when the cops ride horses and the Sacred Alarm Clock is about to ring.
I move toward the girl slow and steady, like a warrior on a vision quest. Her blue eyes track together long enough to find my brown ones and they hold on long enough for me to say, “My name’s Wylie E. . . .”
“Coyote.” She finishes my name like nobody could except for one of my ghosts. “I’m Hannah.”
Her gums show a little when she smiles, but that doesn’t make me feel any less inappropriate. She hands me her book and plucks at the wrapping on the bundle as if she’s removing petals from a bouquet of roses.
“This here’s Darryl. He was immaculately conceived in the Travel Lodge Motel yesterday. Found him on the nightstand beside a twenty-dollar bill.”
Darryl looks like a Cabbage Patch Doll—but he’s probably a Chinese knockoff because his eyes don’t close when Hannah tips him back and forth.
Hannah runs her tongue over her lips and smiles again. “That book you’re holding is the Bible. It came from the motel too. It’s not stealing when you take a Bible.”
“How’d you know my war name?” Ton
to and Geronimo finally catch up, but they aren’t any help. They step away from Hannah like the circle of men I found her in.
“Signs and wonders,” Hannah says. It’s hard to tell who she’s talking to because her eyes are moving in different directions again. “Everything is foretold in the book of Road Runner.” She points her lemon drop lips at the Bible I’m still holding, but the only thing I can read are numbers.
“John, three-sixteen,” I tell her without looking. Televangelists say that all the time, so it must be important.
Geronimo crosses his arms and shakes his head. Chief Dan George locks his lips with an imaginary key. It’s time to practice my Indian ways, but white girls like Hannah want the air to be filled with words, so I tell her, “Usen is the Apache name for God.”
I’ve never been this close to such a pretty girl before.
A girl who’ll look me in the eyes.
A girl who’ll let me hold her Bible.
A girl who knows my war name.
“Wylie E. Coyote.” It sounds important when Hannah says it. She laughs, like I make her so happy she can’t help herself.
Hannah says, “Usen is God’s lookalike cousin.” She gives Darryl a kiss.
I kiss him in the same place, so it’s almost as if our lips are touching.
“Look!” Hannah tips Darryl back and forth and his eyes open and close just like they are supposed to. “It’s a miracle.”
Now Hannah kisses me for real. For the first time in my life, my lips are touching a real live girl who is not my Foster Mother. Her tongue sneaks into my mouth before I know what’s happening and I’m feeling more inappropriate than ever.
“So that’s what happens in a kiss.” I’m talking to Chief Dan George but Hannah thinks I’m talking to her.
She puts an arm around my waist and guides me down the street like I’m an Indian pony and she’s the best rider ever. A little nudge turns me. A cluck of her tongue speeds me up or slows me down. I know exactly what she wants and doing it makes me as happy as the first time I saw Geronimo’s ghost.
“There’s something we have to do.” Hannah’s hand has found my pistol. Her fingers explore the barrel. I hold my breath while she pokes a bright red acrylic nail in the place where the bullets come out.
“OK,” pops out of me like a belch that’s a complete surprise. I’d do the zipper trick with my mouth, but one hand is wrapped around Hannah’s waist and other hand is holding her Bible.
“St. Gregory’s isn’t very far.” Hannah points the pistol the direction she wants to go. I walk beside her pretending I have a choice.
Horse hoofs fall in behind us. I want to turn around, but I already know what’s there.
“A cop,” I tell Hannah. “Maybe the one from the 7-Eleven.” A picture of a policeman grows in my mind like it’s sprouted from magic seeds. Pretty soon the policeman is all I can see. He’s on a brown horse with a golden mane. He’s wearing a white hat. He’s thinking about the gun he saw in my pants earlier today—the one Hannah is holding now. He’s thinking he might have to shoot us later on.
The policeman’s image fills my mind so much there’s no room for anything else but Hannah and the scent of rosemary. The trouble smell is so strong it makes my eyes water.
Hannah quotes Bible verses full of thees and thous and double numbers, the way the white preachers talk. The horse sounds fall back a little to keep away from the New Flu viruses riding out on Hannah’s religious words.
For a second I understand perfectly that sanity and terror are exactly the same thing, and I haven’t felt so sane since I was twelve years old and knew my foster parents didn’t want an Indian son who couldn’t read.
“Miss.” Exactly like the cop’s voice in the 7-Eleven, only this time there’s no Persian clerk to calm him down.
Hannah says, “We’re here, Wylie, St. Gregory’s.” She ignores the cop who’s beside us now, with me between him and Hannah, because he knows which one of us is most dangerous.
He tips his white cowboy hat back on his head and pulls his doctor’s mask down so I can see the John Wayne smile on his lips.
Hannah keeps her eyes on St. Gregory’s steeple, which points toward the sky like a rocket ship getting ready to take off. She points the pistol at the sky, harmless for a little while but ready for action in a second.
“Miss.” The cop has his hand on his pistol. He’s blurry through the rosemary haze that makes it hard to breathe, but I can see the arteries in his forehead filling up below the brim of his white confiscated cowboy hat. Getting ready to kill somebody, like he always knew he might, wondering how his horse will react to gunshots.
The cop eases his pistol out of his holster like a five-year-old boy sneaking a cookie. I’d reach for my pistol but Hannah is already holding it and the only thing I have is the Bible from the Travel Lodge Motel.
Hannah steps away from me. She sets Baby Darryl on the pavement and holds my pistol in a double-handed grip. She points the pistol at St. Gregory’s steeple, but that doesn’t make the cop feel better. He has his weapon out, trying to take aim and control his nervous horse at the same time.
A Bible will stop a bullet. Everybody knows that—even a hardback Gideon Bible stolen from a Travel Lodge. But Usen doesn’t want Apaches to use holy words as a shield. For us they are a weapon.
I hurl the Bible like a Frisbee at the policeman’s face. I send an Apache war whoop along to curry Usen’s favor. But the book twists in the rosemary scented air and opens before it finds its target. It flutters in the horse’s face.
Good enough. The horse’s front legs are off the street, fighting with the word of God. The cop slides out of the saddle and bounces on the pavement, just as Hannah fires a shot.
I snatch up the policeman’s pistol, just in case the fall hasn’t knocked thoughts of killing Indians out of him.
Hannah fires again, and again, adjusting her stance with each shot. Altering her weight with little movements of her tongue against her upper lip.
Gunpowder smell fills the air now. No more rosemary. The policeman is content to lie beside the open Bible while the horse dances to the sound of Hannah’s bullets.
She goes down on one knee and mumbles a prayer, naming St. Gregory and God and his lookalike cousin, Usen, and then pulls the trigger one last time.
The bell in St. Gregory’s steeple rings, louder than it ever rang before.
“The Sacred Alarm Clock,” I tell the cop in case he hasn’t figured it out yet. “Now everyone can hear it.”
Hannah blows the smoke away from the pistol barrel. She places it beside Baby Darryl on the pavement in front of St. Gregory’s. She walks over to the Bible beside the policeman.
“It’s open to the Book of Jamaicans,” she tells me. “St. Gregg’s nuns will see to Darryl. That’s what it says.”
I climb on the policeman’s horse and extend a hand to Hannah. They both know about Apache warriors. Everybody does, now that the Sacred Alarm Clock has rung.
Before the trouble started there were lots of different bars in Oklahoma City—Indian bars, gay bars, hillbilly bars. Not anymore. Since the power grid went down, and the New Flu came to town, everybody gets drunk together. Lesbians like me stand next to rednecks in dark rooms lit by kerosene lamps and tell the barkeep, “Do it again.” Not exactly social drinking.
The good old boys trade jokes about bull dykes and farmer’s daughters. They bump into me and say, “Excuse me buddy.”
When I come out of the restroom somebody shouts, “Hey mister, you went in the wrong one.” Everybody laughs except for me and my girlfriend Mona.
“Don’t let it bother you,” she says. “Don’t start trouble Chris.”
But trouble is headed my way and there is nothing I can do about it. The loudest redneck in the bar walks over and spits tobacco juice on the floor. He slides his big drunk cowboy eyes up and down Mona’s body and tells her, “You’re the prettiest Injun girl I ever seen.”
When Mona doesn’t answer he spits on the
floor again, closer to my boots this time.
Mona says, “Ignore him, Chris. He’ll go away.”
I look at the tobacco juice on the floor and count to twenty. He’s still there when I look up, staring holes through Mona’s Wrangler Jeans—an ass man unless I miss my guess.
All night long he’s blamed his troubles on the niggers and the Injuns and the homo-lesbo abominations. Quoting the Bible over boilermakers, making it sound like a dirty book. Now he’s ready to overlook Mona’s race and sexual orientation, share his precious bodily fluids with her. Men like that never go away when you ignore them.
The cowboy puts a grease-stained hand over his crotch, gives himself a squeeze, and says, “Why not try a real man, sweetie.”
“Well, welcome to the monkey house.” I step between him and Mona. We don’t quite manage to lock eyes, because his don’t track together and I can’t figure out which one he’s using at the moment.
Sometime between the tobacco juice and the crotch squeeze the bar has gotten quiet. Back in the Wild West days a piano man would start playing and the bartender would shout, “Drinks on the house,” but that doesn’t happen.
The cowboy digs at his nose with his crotch-hand then points a finger right at me, like he’s got something important to say but it hasn’t come to him yet.
“’Bomination.”
His finger shakes a little, but it could be an effect of the lantern light.
“A-bomination.” He says it with a long A so it sounds explosive and radioactive. His breath blows over me with the next to last syllable. It smells like the kitchen in a German restaurant. I’m probably never going to feel good about cooked cabbage again.
“Let’s go, Chris.” Mona pulls at my shirt. She’s an abomination too, but she’s so good-looking cowboys like this one never notice.
“Pussy,” the cowboy tries to stand a little straighter. Tries to suck in his belly back across the western belt that probably has his name tooled into the back.
“Pussy,” is the nicest word he has for me. Much nicer than “A-bomination,” or “Bull dyke,” or a string of others I’ve heard before.
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