Coyote

by Colin Winnette

  That kind of stillness didn’t come until after she vanished. Before, we were too anxious and new to each other, and you’re never still with a child around. Anybody knows that. But in some sense, afterwards, my wish came true. At least at night it did. We hardly move at night, except for when we’re fucking. We mostly lie there and just be awake. For hours. I don’t know how I could have ever wished for it, but I don’t wish for it to go away. I don’t wish for anything anymore, really. I just imagine her showing up again. I imagine her at the doorstep, over and over. But that image always gives way to the other places she could be. The other things that might be happening, or might have happened. I can’t stop myself. So I don’t wish for anything anymore.

  THE BOAR.

  He tied its feet together with twine from the garage. He brought out the poles we used to use for the volleyball net. They were some kind of solid metal held upright by concrete we’d poured into a couple of bald tires. He crossed them with another pole, left over from when he rebuilt the chain-link fence a few years back, and balanced it on two metal hooks sticking out of the vertical poles.

  He shaved it on the back porch, washed it in the tub. When I peed later, there were flecks of boar shit splattered on the floor, the mirror, the tank. He cut a lead with his knife and rammed the fence pole through one end of the boar and out the other. It wasn’t clean. It came out at an odd angle, leaving the boar’s head to dangle a bit below the rest of him. Its little leathery nub of a tongue stuck out from between two grimacing lips, as if it were daring her Dad to light the fire.

  He removed the head with a bread knife. The only saws we had were rusty and old, probably dull. He didn’t want to spoil the neck meat. The sound was like rain on a carpet. It lasted a good fifteen minutes before he’d cut clean through. He brought the head into the house, carrying it by its ears. He set it in a pot, covered the pot, and brought a starter log with him when he came back out.

  You’ll burn it, I said.

  He pulled a metal trashcan out from alongside the house, emptied the water inside onto the grass. Then he removed his shirt. He ran it along the inside of the can, trembling the corrugated metal with each swipe. He dropped the log into the dry can and followed it with a lit match. He stood over it until the flames took. They grew, and his beard and forehead began to shimmer orange and pink, like a sunset on silt.

  I was watching his relationship to the kill, his hands on the corpse, how much he cared for it. His movements were quick, unceremonious. I began to believe he hadn’t killed it. When he wasn’t watching the fire, adding logs to the fire, he was considering the animal skewered on the fence pole between the vertical volleyball net supports. His expression was a mix of hunger and disgust.

  Eventually the logs in the can turned to coal and ash and her Dad dumped the coals beneath the impaled boar. He turned it gingerly on the makeshift spit. He did so for hours, for the rest of the afternoon and into the night. He never flagged. He made batch after batch of coals in the can and turned the spit. I started to think he might have killed it, the way he tended to its turning.

  I’m no detective. I’m no jittery but steadfast Mick Something. But I watched his face. Other times his hands. They seemed to say different things. The hands were unskilled, uncareful, uneasy. The face had a kind of brilliant focus to it. He was determined. It looked like hard work, and like he was up to the challenge. This might have been exactly what he wanted me to feel. He might have been leading me, and I might have followed wherever he wanted me to go.

  WHAT WAS SHE LIKE?

  She did not like any music but her own. She unplugged radios.

  She only played with adult toys. She chose keys over a doll.

  She snored a little bit in her sleep. You couldn’t really hear it, but it was there.

  THE MEAT HAD NOTHING good about it. Tough and flavorless, for the most part, but occasionally you’d get a moist piece. That was even worse. Grisly, fatty sludge. It came apart in your mouth like a hot marshmallow. I couldn’t finish a plate, and he lost his temper.

  He showed it by eating four plates himself. He told me a story while he ate, so I couldn’t leave without interrupting him. Not without making a point of it.

  His great-grandfather had overseen the building of a small bridge over a nasty creek. Intense rapids, deep water. Lots of mules and oxen lost, several families too. Gold Rush era families whose men were setting out to set them up for good. Their eyes glittered. They were determined in a way it is impossible to imagine, because there is nothing like it anymore. Her Dad’s great-grandfather had both aided these men and taken a kind of advantage of them. He was an opportunist. He had a small crew from the town on the east side of the river, men who would soon be looking to get more easily past the creek themselves. It was an honest coming together. Every man needed something and each was willing to pull his own weight.

  It was at this point that I decided he had not killed the boar. If he had killed the boar, the story would have been about the strength of the one man who spearheaded the endeavor. The hero who had brought everyone together and executed the perfect plan to make himself and the nation richer. But instead he kept going on about working together, one man lending one thing to another and everybody profiting in some unique and personal way.

  These were a gutless man’s dreams. That’s not to say it was a cowardly vision. It was idealistic, something our truer selves might hope for. It was the kind of thing a man who has no real hopes for himself will put his whole stock in believing. Or maybe he was just talking to fill the silence.

  THEN THE SAD SHOW host, the last show host, did a week’s worth of shows about missing girls. They did not ask us back on. They had new families. A whole week’s worth of gutted men and women. People I knew better than they knew themselves at that point. They looked into the camera, one from each couple, and said some variation of, Please return our daughter.

  Bring back our angel to us. Bring back our light.

  Please give us back our daughter.

  If you have her, we need her. Please.

  Give us our baby back. Bring her home, please.

  It is not too late to undo what you’ve done.

  IT IS NOT TOO late to undo what you’ve done, I tell her Dad.

  He’s distraught. Won’t talk. In his arms, the limp corpse of a young dog.

  It has enormous paws. If it had happened a few years later, it might have survived. Might have done some damage to the car even. But, happen as it did, her Dad heard the thing rattling around in the wheelwell before he even realized there was something in the road.

  I haven’t seen him like this before, really. Not since she vanished. He hears me, but he doesn’t like what he’s hearing. He looks at me all full of rage then and I mentally prepare for a fight. You have to imagine the first few blows, really feel them, then picture your response. That way, when he lands them, it won’t be a shock. You just take it, then respond quickly and powerfully. This is what I’ve learned.

  But this time, we don’t fight. He sets the thing on the porch and goes into the garage. He comes out with a hammer and a single nail. He balances the nail on its head, covers its point with his palm, and brings the hammer down just at the top of his wrist. The nail only goes in a little. It barely pokes out the back of his hand. There isn’t much blood either. But I heard the wrist break. It was like dropping a bag of rocks. Pieces ground against other pieces, everything moving around. Dust rose and fell. He crumpled up and made some sounds and everything else went back into its place. I went inside and there was Jerry Summers. He looks older with each episode, as if each one takes something particular out of him. And how could it not? He feels everything we feel. He is a man of great capacity, but every person has their limits.

  WHAT WAS SHE LIKE?

  I DON’T FEEL SAFE anymore. I haven’t since she vanished. And it’s only gotten worse. You hear all kinds of sounds at night. I grew up in a place like this. Not far from here actually. Different woods, but woods are woods. As a
child, every sound becomes something worse than what it really is. Even if it’s something dangerous enough already, it becomes a nightmare in your mind. A tree at the screen becomes a claw. A paw in the grass becomes a bear. And a bear suddenly has an agenda. It knows where you are, and it’s coming for you.

  So you learn not to listen. You learn not to hear. You turn up the radio. You talk to yourself, late into the night.

  I CALLED IN FROM a payphone near the laundry, but no one answered. I left a message saying that we had been guests on the show, nearly a year ago, and we wanted to come back on. We hadn’t heard anything since we’d been on. Nothing had changed except we were more tired now than we’d ever been, thinner. We’d grown farther apart from one another. But the hurt hadn’t changed. I wanted to say it was worse, but the truth is that I can’t remember a time when I felt any better. There was before, but that’s not real anymore. After is all there is.

  I CALLED FOR WEEKS and no one answered. It was always a machine. There must have been some glitch on their end. So, I called. And called.

  I NEED TO GO by the television station, I told her Dad.

  Why?

  Because I need to talk to the booker. We need to go back on.

  I hadn’t wanted to tell him, but it was the only way. He had the car. I don’t ride public transportation. I find it depressing.

  I don’t think that’s such a good idea.

  Why not?

  Because I don’t think they’ll be able to help us.

  Why not? This is what they do! This is how it works, I said.

  Maybe, said her Dad. Those shows use people anyway, he said. Here.

  He fished a small rock out of his pocket.

  It’s limestone, he told me.

  And I said, so what?

  He rubbed it with his thumb like he was cleaning it.

  I don’t know, he said. I thought you might like it. It’s stupid. I’m sorry about the other night, he said.

  If you’re sorry you’ll drive me to the TV station.

  So he drove me.

  IT WAS THIS KIND of thing for years. He loses his temper. He’s an asshole, plain and simple. But he’s also naively sweet. He’s an idiot is what it is, for the most part. He’s this weak little idiot that I could love more than anything in the entire world.

  Then she arrived and I loved her that way instead. There was less for him because there had to be. It’s the odd thing about a child, you’ll sacrifice anything for them, even the person you once loved more than anything else in this world. A person you would have given your own life for, suddenly you’d strike them down to protect something that can’t even speak. That just rolls around and makes little sounds and touches your face and fingers and keys indiscriminately.

  But so he’d lose his temper and we’d get into it. Then he’d apologize and do something nice for me. Mostly these weren’t the right things. The limestone, for example. I can’t say what he intended with that. It’s a kind of trick. Here is something that looks and sounds like a gift, but that isn’t actually a gift. It was a system I learned to game. Reject the first gift and while he’s reeling, provide him a new opportunity for redemption.

  The tricky part is, I have to really forgive him after. If I don’t he knows he’s being played. I have to rid myself of anger, fear, resentment. I have to allow myself to love him again.

  It isn’t hard to do. It’s easier than not forgiving. Forgiveness is a strange thing. It accumulates. The more times you’ve forgiven a person, the more naturally it comes to you, for even the most egregious acts. It’s easier than staying mad after it’s started to bore you – which it always does eventually. So, knowing as I did that I wasn’t going to leave him – it just wasn’t going to happen, even if I entertained the notion practically daily – the sanest thing to do was to forgive him.

  HER DAD STAYED IN the car and smoked through a cracked window. He was nervous, which made me brave. There are few things that give me more pleasure these days than to display the fact that I am stronger than him.

  The studio is a few rectangular buildings arranged in a grid. They’re guarded by a single security man at the gate. When we were guests, we were escorted. It wasn’t a limousine, but one of those classy black cars that looks like a limo but humbler. The driver waved some things and said some things and we got in without a problem.

  The security guard stepped out of the booth when he saw me, and I looked back to her Dad sitting there in the car, but only for a second.

  Help you?

  I’d like to be a guest again, I said. I had to start somewhere. It wasn’t what I had planned on saying, but the words sped up and out of my mouth before I could stop them. That made me a little more nervous than I should have been, I think. Feeling suddenly like I was less in control than I thought I would be.

  You were a guest? he said.

  He reached into the booth and retrieved a clipboard. He looked it over, page after page.

  When exactly?

  Nearly a year ago, I said. I folded my arms at my chest. We weren’t going to be on that list. It was only a couple of sheets. There was no way it had everyone who’d ever been on the show on it. No way.

  What was your name again? he asked.

  It was about missing children, I said. We lost our daughter.

  Oh, he said. I’m sorry.

  He looked up. He brought the clipboard down to his side.

  I’m sorry, Ma’am.

  I nodded. I felt a little more confident then.

  You have to be in touch with the production assistant, he said. Laurette, I think. Laurette Conors.

  He put the clipboard back and checked another stack of papers.

  Yeah, he said, that’s her.

  I’ve been calling for weeks, I told him.

  I was feeling much better now.

  I’m sorry, Ma’am.

  I told him not to be sorry. I told him to let me in to talk to this Laurette Conors, or to the sad show host himself.

  He nodded and looked to the bushes at his side. He nodded at the bushes then, as if he were talking it over with them.

  I’m sorry, Ma’am, but I can’t do it.

  Can’t what? I said.

  Can’t let you in.

  He didn’t look up from the bushes.

  Are all the men in this world cowards? Is it all hiding and stealing? Is it all sadness and ignored phone calls? Mindless busy work, mindless staring and nodding at bushes? Smoking through a cracked window while your desperate wife pulls at her sweatshirt and faces an enormous man with a gun at his side?

  I’m not asking for heroes. I’m asking for people to take responsibility for themselves. I’m asking for at least some of us to have the courage to be up front about what they want, or what they need. When did we learn to hide like this? Who made us this kind of afraid?

  You shit, is what I said next. God damn you. If you won’t let me in, you’ll bring them out here. The moment they see my face, you’ll regret this. You’ll be fired. You’ll be shamed, humiliated. You’re a coward, I told him.

  He looked at me then like I was his own sick mother.

  He went into the booth, tore loose a paper towel, and placed it in my hand.

  I let it fall to the blacktop and brought my shoulders back triumphantly.

  A coward, I said again.

  Finally, I wiped my eyes and cheeks with the back of my right sleeve. I wiped the thin ring of my nostril.

  He wasn’t going to budge. I thought to turn back, to climb into the car beside her Dad and his unfinished cigarette and tell him, We’re coming back tomorrow.

  But I stamped the guard’s shoe instead. I stamped it hard, with my heel.

  I called him a fucker.

  He only seemed to get more sad, not angry. It was pathetic. I started to hate him right then and there.

  I’ll kick you too, I said. I’ll start kicking and won’t stop until you bring Lauren or whoever and we settle this right here and now.

  He limped into the b
ooth and called the police instead. A true blue coward. He probably has a daughter. She probably takes up his gun when he’s asleep, or when he’s in the bathroom, sitting there, flipping idly through whatever his ex-wife left in the magazine rack, and that daughter probably feels the weight of that gun, the cool metallic sting of it, and she probably tells herself over and over again how powerful her daddy is, how strong, while he applies a folded square of toilet paper to a soggy, stupid, dangling, worthless, dick.

  I THOUGHT YOU MIGHT come. I’m not going to lie. When the police car turned the corner, I imagined you in the passenger seat, insisting that it was all a huge mistake, that I was who I said I was, that I was a suffering woman who needed help, who needed to be cared for. Not a lunatic attacking security guards for no reason.

  But that didn’t happen.

  Her Dad put out his cigarette. He put his arms around me, led me back to the car, apologizing over and over as he did so.

  The security guard let us go. He said something to the cop who had approached me. Who had placed his hand atop his holstered gun. And after they spoke, both men just stood and watched and nodded as her Dad said, I’m sorry for that. She’s not well. We’re sorry.