My Brother, Coyote

by James Buchanan

True ran. “Yóó íí jéé’!” Feet churning the sand, he ran. “Yóó íí jéé’!” Woofing breaths were behind him. A quick look over his shoulder; three loping shadows flowed behind him. He stumbled into a fence post. Panic froze the scream in his mouth. The heart fetish rattled hollow against his ribs. Up and over, the barbed wire tore at his jeans as True tumbled down into the wash. He clawed his way up the other side.

  Twin night-bright orbs flashed and darkened above him. “Hágo! Hágo!” Come here! Come here! Owl commanded. It ruffled; feathers trembling with his presence.

  True lunged over the rim. Coyote followed, making the narrow wash in one bound. Each faltering stride was echoed by three sets of paws. Scrub bush tore at his face, whipped its fingers across his skin. If he paused to ease the burning in his lungs “Yóó íí jéé’!” sounded at his back, driving him forward again. Herded towards the black strip of the highway by the yelping pack, True stumbled and went down. He scrambled on all fours, spitting sand and blood. Crawling on his belly, he reached the shoulder. Behind him the three shapes paced, stiff-legged. Headlights reflected off their eyes and they vanished into the black desert.

  A tribal police car whizzed past, not noticing the teenager trying to flag it down in the darkness. After senseless time, standing among the ghosts of the night, True caught the attention of a trucker. The big-rig hardly squealed to a stop before True was clambering onto the running boards and yanking the handle. The driver popped the door, pulling him up and into the cab. Spewing Dîné gibberish, True didn’t even know what he was saying. In the dim light, specks of blood were dried black on his jacket. Swallowing, palming the CB, the man read the terror in True’s face. He didn’t have to understand to know.

  ~~~~~

  A deputy, Grant County, shook his head as they hauled True's uncle’s body through the door. “Reckon the boy just finally got too big to beat.” The comment was meant for everyone and no one.

  True put his hand to the police car window, turning towards Seth. Fearful, pleading eyes looked up from beneath the blanket. Whimpers, barely audible, buzzed in the back of True’s ears. His pulse hammered hard against his chest.

  Seth’s heart hammered too, True knew it. Pulling open his camp shirt, just a little, True showed Seth that he held his turquoise bead heart fetish safe. The officer’s soft voice was full of concern. “Tick, go on home now.”

  “What will happen to him?”

  Silence for a time, then, “Don’t know. Seth’s seventeen. He shot his dad in the back. It’s up to the lawyers to decide what happens next.”

  ~~~~~

  True sat every day in the front row of the courtroom. Well, every day since he testified. Before that he wasn’t allowed to see his cousin. What was there to say? The people-who-talk-fast-and-help, the Federal Public Defender, offered what they could. The bare fact was Seth’s father had been shot in the back. Under Federal law that was not self defense. Seth would look over the bar separating the counsel table from the audience and find True’s eyes. Memories of his touch, his mouth on his own lingered on True’s skin. Hearts pounded in time with each other.

  A biliganna judge, a white man’s judge, pronounced the sentence. Four years in prison. Four years for killing a man who beat him. Four years for saving True. Lunging over the rail, True had screamed, “Doo haats’íid da!”… This is not right! Uncle Jim had to pull him back and out before the bailiff turned around. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t right.

  ~~~~~

  Tending sheep, walking the desert; True spent most of his time after the trial away from other people. He couldn’t stand the whispers about Seth, the rumors about what it meant that he’d killed his dad. Naagloshi, witches, they said when they took you in and taught you their magic, they asked who of your relatives should die. It had to be someone close. Anyone who lost a brother, sister, parent was subject to rumors. True didn’t want to hear those rumors about Seth.

  Months after, sitting lonely at the fire, he fed crumbs from his birthday cupcake into the flames. Only the rustle of the herd in the darkness kept him company. Old, hard, stale, his Uncle Jim had delivered it a week late. Now the pieces were like little pebbles in his pocket. Every year his mother bought two; bitter chocolate with icing that tasted mostly of lard. One for him and one for Seth, their special birthday treat from the supermarket in town. This year there was just one.

  Somewhere, lost in the night, Coyote spoke. “Yóó íí jéé’,” echoed forlorn, bouncing through the hills. His own sharp laugh answered. Yes cousin, I’m still running from that trailer. True’s hand snaked under his shirt, withdrawing the one thing that still held Seth to him. The stone heart was warm from his body. He held it in his palm, looking into the soul of the turquoise. Fire danced over its surface, twisting the shadows of obsidian veins. Sounds grew faint and then vanished into the night.

  Writhing, twisting with the flames, the fetish pulsed. Smoke covered him in its blanket. Fire, night and stars faded. True’s mind was drawn down into the heart of the stone. Screwing his eyes tight shut, he fought the feelings. Fear clawed up his back and bit into his bowels. Shrinking in on himself; True felt very small, like his entire body was being sucked down within his toes. Then he swelled, as big as a planet at first, and then he filled the solar system and finally he became as large as the universe. Everything collapsed. His soul fell into abysmal depths, immense, bottomless.

  When he landed, all was vague and strange, but he could feel people near. Opening his eyes, True could see them only within the reflections of the fire in the stone. Concealed in a long pass, very low, dark, and narrow were two men. They stood close, rubbing against each other.

  The ground seemed saturated with water. It soaked through the worn soles of True’s boots. He could hear it dripping somewhere far off. Echoes made it hard to tell from just where. Grey walls of concrete and metal rose on all sides. Scents of rust, standing water and heat flooded his nose. Cautiously he approached. Ducking under pipes, stepping over grates where water crashed below, True inched forward along the corridor. At the end was a hollow place in the wall.

  Two men pressed against each other in that little alcove. In the darkness they hid, talking together. The one with long, dirty blonde hair and green eyes hissed, “We’ll have to be careful not to be caught. We could get caught.”

  The other man leaned in, rust brown hair falling over amber eyes. “We won’t get caught.” Seth whispered back. His hand reached down and in between the blonde’s legs. Stroking the other man’s bulge through the charcoal canvas of his trousers, Seth’s teeth ran along the edge of his collar. Fumbling fingers worked buttons and zippers. Mouths met in deep, starved kisses. A dark hand on pale skin, a pale hand on dark skin, True’s lip trembled. Two cocks, two palms stroking. Seth’s hitching breath sent shivers down True’s spine.

  Prickling shocks slid through his own hips. Sinister shadows swirled at the edge of his vision. He wanted to feel that. He wanted to have Seth’s wonderful length in his hand. He wanted to experience the silken skin sliding beneath his fingers. Most of all he wanted Seth’s hand on him. He could smell their excitement; smell the sweat on their skin. The underside of True’s flesh crawled with the musk that their touching brought on.

  The man was thrusting into Seth’s palm, the head of his cock disappearing and emerging from within Seth’s tight fist. “God, you’re fucking good.” The blonde’s voice was deep with want. One pale finger slit the tip of a dark skinned head. Swirling moisture across the tip, pulling on the foreskin, the man made Seth growl out his hunger. The sound throbbed through True; bit into him. Both were moaning, breathing heavy. Pulling, twisting, caressing each others cocks, they drove each other’s bodies. Their tongues fought with bitter kisses.

  “Oh fuck, oh fuck,” the blonde chanted, erupting over Seth’s dark skin. His cousin dropped that red-brown mane against the others shoulder and shuddered. Another shudder and thick, white come bubbled between pale fingers.

  Seth’s feral laugh sounded in the shadow.
He held up a hand glistening with his partner’s juice. “Wanna lick it?”

  True’s body spasmed, jerked. The world fractured and spun away from him, then crashed with a wall of sound upon his shoulders. Stars spun above him, thrown there by Coyote’s blanket.

  True blinked and the world righted itself. He shivered. The fire had gone low.

  To be alone, in the night, without a fire was not good. He struggled to his feet, more wood was needed. As he stood, something slick slid down his thigh. Cold, damp jeans clung to his crotch. True realized he’d come all over himself.

  Every night after that, almost three years worth of nights, True’s hand would settle over the bead heart fetish. His fingers would snake between his legs, finding the memory of Seth’s lips. Always furtive, always over too quickly, his teeth would clench and he would ball himself in on his own body. Then he would drift into restless sleep, fingers stroking the edges of a dog-eared set of magazines.

  SECOND

  (naaki)

  The cutting blue of pre-dawn darkness surrounded True as he trudged the six miles to his worksite. He’d wrangled a ride as far as the turnout from his sister’s husband. Hands shoved in his blue jean pockets for warmth, breath sparking in the early summer chill… treks like this were as common as sheep on the Rez.

  Someone’s chidítsoh rumbled behind him. He stopped; waiting to see if he could catch another ride towards the dig where he worked. Blue-haloed lights were bouncing along the rutted road. Sound washed across the distance again, making him smile at a memory. Last year a biliganna girl, - one so pale with blond hair and ice blue eyes that she truly fit the word - had asked him what chidítsoh meant. There was no meaning. The Dîné had no word for car or truck or vehicle. They were called after the sound they made when you turned the key. Or at least the sound most of the clunkers on the Rez made when started.

  An old Dodge Power Wagon bounded into view. Faded, cobalt paint seeped to deep navy in spots. The odd mix of squares and curves of hood, headlights, grill and bumpers gave it the face of an angry, toothless, old man. Bailing wire held the hood in place. Overly large side view mirrors, cannibalized off an International, swayed on the extended struts. Out of the dust churned from a sliding stop came the traditional Navajo greeting, “Yá’át’ééh!” Seth’s amber eyes and canine grin flashed, “Need a ride bro?”

  True jumped the small cactuses lining the side of the track and scrambled, laughing, into the pickup. At one time it had been all 1950’s Dodge. She’d died and been resurrected more times than anyone could remember. Parts scavenged here and there combined with a judicious bit of jury rigging had created the golem she was now. A Chevy engine and a Ford transmission, it was unholy how Seth kept her moving all these years. He’d mumble and chant, swearing hard under his breath, as he fused parts never meant to be joined into a lurching semblance of a vehicle.

  The truck had belonged to Seth’s mother. Seth had been driving it on the Rez since he was thirteen and barely strong enough to put it in gear. Sister Agnes, their maternal great-aunt, had parked it at her place while he was gone. Anytime one of their uncles had tried to take the battery, she’d run them off. Scolding them like only an old Navajo matriarch could, “that belonged to Mary and now it belongs to Seth and y’all don’t got no right to it.”

  If Seth had had sisters, he would have had no right to the truck either.

  Ramming the clutch to the floor, Seth fought with the stick shift to put it in first. Cut into the floor boards; the gear lever had once serviced a Mack Truck. The Dodge had always been a standard, just column shift. With the way she was now, there was so much torque in first you could haul a flatbed trailer.

  True leaned against the door, trying to find a spot where the springs didn’t poke through the bench seat, and just looked at his cousin. A little older, stretched a little thin, but still Seth. Vaguely heart shaped, his face bore the traces of his Nakai, Mexican, heritage. His brown-red hair was thick like most Navajo, but the gold cast in his eyes always made other Dîné suspicious of him. Coyote had eyes like that. People said one must have scared Seth’s mother when he was still in her womb. No one could say how much beyond his hair and eyes Coyote had marked him. Otherwise Seth was all Navajo with warm skin and a bright, ready smile.

  “How did you know to look for me here?”

  With mischief in his tone, Seth replied, “Bro, I always know how to find you. Little Breath whispers it in my ear.” They played ‘avoid the ruts’ for a time before Seth spoke again. “I got to Sister Agnes’s last night. She said you’d got a job that kept you away, but were home for a wedding. Went over to your folks’ place first thing and they said you were already headed here. Some kind of job with UNM? Part of an archeological thing Sister Agnes says. She says she’s scared for you being out with the ghosts.”

  True waved off the danger. “Yeah, this is their third year out that I’ve worked it. They’re just looking for pots and stuff. No one found any burials or anything like that. We scrape for hours with little toothbrushes and picks and maybe you find a bead or a little piece of pottery.” Two fingers were held squished down before his face indicating just how small the artifacts were. “But, I’m learning all about our history, the kind that’s not put in the stories. Pretty cool.”

  “How’d you get involved in that?”

  “Just kickin’ around after graduation and got to talking to this biliganna guy in the coffee shop. Turns out he’s a professor of Native American Studies at the University and we got on to all the books I’d read on Greece and Rome and Pompeii. He starts telling me how there’s just as beautiful things to be discovered out here. So he invited me out to the dig, and I kinda helped around for a few days, and then he asked if I wanted to make it permanent through the summer.” True shifted again, butt searching for a more comfortable place, “He kept pushing for where I was going for college and I finally said I wasn’t. Last spring he comes back and asks if I want a summer job again and I said sure. Then he hits me with ‘well this year your first job is to fill out an application for college.’ So I sat on it a few days and then said okay and we filled it all out and sent it in.” Shaking his head, as though he still had trouble believing it, “State gave me a scholarship, bro.”

  “You’ll do good, Tick.” A soft punch to True’s arm came from the other side of the Dodge. “There’s nobody smarter than you.” The cab of the truck shrunk about a foot with those words. Without moving he was closer.

  More silence. It was the Navajo way. Only the biliganna world needed words to fill time. You only said what needed to be said. True realized he needed to say something. Looking down at his hands “Baa yanisin.” Navajo had nothing like the white man’s word for sorry. The closet you ever came was I am ashamed.

  “For what are you ashamed?”

  “It’s been three years. I should have come to see you. Not left you alone so long.” There was more to it, but no words to give it voice. “They should have understood. They shouldn’t have sent you away for it. I am ashamed for all of it.”

  “No bro, it was half way across the country, I didn’t expect you to come. How would you get there?” Seth shrugged. “And it wasn’t any worse than the three years before that. Did one of those shock programs; they say it’s like boot camp. They send us on these little walks, like, not even as far as we had to walk from grandma’s house to the bus stop during school. And all these city boys complaining ‘ah, my feet are sore.’ I got fed three times a day. Better shit than I ever got at home, and more of it ‘cause these guys saying ‘I can’t eat this shit.’ So it’s like, slide it here, bro ‘cause it’s so much better than powdered eggs. They let me sleep in ‘til, like, six. No chores. Taught me how to fix trucks and tractors and stuff; the real way, not like this.” He leaned over the steering wheel trying to plot the least bumpy route ahead. “If it wasn’t that, I would have just fucked something else up. I just never got caught at the stealing or the drinking before that. And I got off light ‘cause everyone knew what h
e did.”

  Full light was still an hour away. Buntings, blue-birds and jays called Dawn Boy from his bed. Ha’a’aah, the sun is coming, they sang. Cobalt streaks were just touching the sky when they pulled into the dig. It looked like everyone was still away. The students and professors often took a long weekend to pay attention to their life off the Rez. Since True didn’t have anyplace better to be and since he was one of the few “paid” workers, he held down the fort. People would start trickling back over the next few days. No cars around. The admin RV where the professor slept was dark and deserted. Good. There’d be time to be alone with Seth.

  Organized chaos confronted the pair as they slid out of the truck. Stacks and stacks of blue plastic buckets, the kind restaurants kept pickles in, held everything from pot shards to pickles. Tarps were strung between rises and actual poles, the sides weighted down with discarded water bottles filled with sand and tied through the grommets. When the sun was up they’d create pools of azure shade. Crates and boxes formed half walls.

  Off away from the main camp, lines of twine crisscrossed each other in a checkerboard pattern. Each corner was marked with a small scrap of turquoise plastic scavenged from shredded Wal-Mart bags. Knocked together sifting screens were piled off to one side. The largest was suspended from a tripod. Two students would shake the dirt from the good stuff when the dig was in full swing. Poles were marked off with blue lines for taking survey sights. Traditional survey poles washed out against the colors of the surrounding mesas.