The Coyotes of Carthage

by Steven Wright

  “How you doing, little man?” Andre refuses to call the kid by name. The boy is, at best, odd looking: widespread forehead, crooked teeth, small ears. “Shouldn’t you be at school?”

  “Say hello, Handsome,” Vera says, and the boy tilts his head and squints. Andre thinks the boy should be tested. He never speaks. But Vera doesn’t trust school psychologists. The school system, she likes to preach, has incentive to diagnose your child as broken.

  “Oh, ain’t that cute?” she says. “He’s shy around his big-shot uncle. Handsome, baby, why don’t you go take the roast out the oven? Mama will fix your plate in a minute.”

  She gives her son a kiss before he runs away. Andre doubts there’s a roast in the oven. In fact, he’s certain that Vera doesn’t know how to cook. She’s nearly fifty and wants people to think that she’s respectable, the perfect wife and mother. She’s ashamed that she’s spent most of her life in shelters; that, long before she met Hector, a court declared her unfit to care for her three daughters; that her criminal history includes prostitution, possession, petty theft, and extortion. Andre doesn’t care about her past—hell, he has a past—so he plays along. Sure, Vera, you’re a great mother. But some might question why your mute, funny-looking son is standing half-naked in a pigsty on a school day.

  “He’s getting so big” is the nice thing that Andre chooses to say.

  “Oh, and he’s smart. All the teachers say so. But that school he going to ain’t worth shit. And the principal, don’t get me started.” She rubs her palms together. “I used to be down there all the time. Volunteering. Nowadays, things have changed. I’m talking to a lawyer. The lawyer says we got a case. A great case. We might get paid. But how are you? How’s Cassie?”

  “We broke up.”

  “The engagement too?” She gasps. “Oh, Dre. Baby, I’m sorry. She was a good one. You still workin’ for that white lady?”

  “I work for a firm. I’m a senior associate. I’ll make junior partner next year.” He thinks, but does not say, Or so I hope.

  “But the same white lady?” she says. “When you gonna start your own business? Be like those folks on TV. The ones talkin’ politics. I watch the news. I think, ‘Dre could do that.’ Bet they get paid millions.”

  Andre dislikes many things about his brother’s wife, but right now, he dislikes her assumption that she understands the world in which he lives.

  “I should go check on him.” He rises, but she takes his hand.

  “One minute,” she says. “Actually, I’m glad you came.”

  He sits. He waits. He knows what’s next.

  Vera closes her eyes, and when she opens them, tears fall. “I was running errands, getting Hector’s meds; you know how I like to stay busy. Then I slipped on ice. I filed for disability, and you know the government, they don’t want to hand out that money.”

  Andre pays the rent on this Section 8 house, pays for her cell phone so she can reach him in case of an emergency, pays the van service that ferries her and Hector wherever they want to go. He hesitates to volunteer another dime, especially now, while his fate at the firm feels precarious. Yet, for all her faults, Vera provides excellent care for his brother. She asks questions of therapists, manages prescriptions, keeps the notebooks that log the information that the neurologists require. He knows all this because he checks her cell phone records, and calls the clinics from the road, and pays the medical bills online. To Andre, nothing else matters. Besides, who else could take such good care of Hector? Andre travels fifty weeks a year; their mother is a bipolar schizophrenic with whom neither brother has spoken in eight years and who lives, last they heard, on the West Coast. He says, “How much do you need?”

  “I wasn’t asking for money. I was letting you know our situation.”

  “Please, I want to help.”

  She thinks hard, smirking, eyes rolled back in her head, a child ready to present Santa her list.

  “Maybe twelve hundred. Fourteen hundred if you can spare it. Enough until my disability goes through. I’ll pay you back.” He agrees, would have given her far more. Vera kisses his hand and says, “I knew I could count on you. You always good to family.”

  He takes his hand away, heads toward Hector’s room, where his brother trembles in a wheelchair. The room is spotless. A laptop plays a colorized episode of The Three Stooges, and a jasmine aromatherapy candle sweetens the air. Andre lowers his eyes, regrets thinking that Vera doesn’t know how to keep a home.

  For a moment, Andre pauses inside the doorway, stunned, as though awaiting an invitation to pass. He doesn’t quite recognize his older brother, a man who, years ago, could outrun every Metro cop. For most of their lives, people confused the brothers: schoolteachers, police detectives, social workers, and neighbors. Hector’s a mere two years older; only their mother could tell them apart. Now look at Hector. No one will ever confuse them again.

  His last visit, two months ago, Hector hadn’t seemed this frail. In fact, his brother spoke—not good words, but close approximations of words that Andre mostly understood. But ALS has since stolen Hector’s speech, as well as the use of both legs and his neck, which refuses to support his head.

  Andre glances around the room packed with catheters and pill bottles, with moist towelettes and diapers. Andre feels like a schoolboy, wondering whether he needs permission to sit on the bed, which is perfectly made, sheet and blankets taut, the way inmates learn in prison. In the corner is a walker with medical tape around the handle. A local ALS charity loaned them the walker, which Hector can use until he no longer has a need, a time that Andre realizes has come.

  “Go ahead, have a seat.” Vera sneaks up behind him. “You’d like that, Hector, wouldn’t you?” She wipes the spittle from Hector’s mouth. “Andre, talk to him. He understands everything.”

  Andre feels shame as he wonders how the hell anyone could ever know.

  Hector is well groomed—shaven, hair combed—and thin. For most of his life, Andre has steeled himself for his brother’s death. It seemed inevitable that Andre would receive a midnight call, the news that Hector had perished by the hand of an angry mark, or the bullet of a rival, or the baton of an aggressive cop. But ALS. How the fuck could he have prepared for that?

  Andre takes Hector’s hand, which is soft and fleshy. He knows that Hector isn’t near death, that Hector has another couple years. But the doctors have warned that ALS is unpredictable, that Hector’s decline will break his heart. For Andre and Vera, the experts have also recommended therapists and support groups. Vera goes each week; Andre hasn’t gone once.

  * * *

  Somewhere forty thousand feet over Appalachia, a pudgy girl, no younger than six, though old enough to know better, races along the business-class aisle. The flight attendant has twice asked the girl’s parents to restrain the child, but her father naps, her mother reads. The girl disturbs each passenger, singing, laughing, but what can anyone do? The flight lasts about ninety minutes, and the plane, already behind schedule, has cruised across the halfway mark. So the attendant folds her arms, perhaps hoping they’ll hit a patch of rough air. The pudgy girl, wearing a tricorn hat, bumps Andre’s elbow, causes his scotch to spill onto the open pages of his dossier.

  The attendant brings a napkin. Yes, her eyes say, I pray that turbulence will bounce this brat against the hull. Now you and I have a secret. Andre gives a flirtatious nod—I hope your prayer comes true; I will cherish our secret forever—then returns to work.

  The firm’s briefing memo, now blotchy and wet, is succinct. South Carolina nears the end of a modern-day gold rush, and PISA, an international precious metals conglomerate, has discovered traces of gold in the mountains of Carthage. The gold sits deep below publicly owned land, one thousand acres of Appalachian rain forest that the county refuses to sell. Thus, PISA will sidestep the five-member county council and solicit the land directly from The People.

  In fairness, Andre can’t blame the county for refusing to sell. The county’s struggling econom
y depends upon fishing and hunting. Tourism is, by far, the largest source of revenue. Gold mining, the memo notes, puts all that at risk. To extract the gold, PISA won’t dispatch a wagon train of gray-bearded, pick-wielding prospectors. No. Mining in the twenty-first century is a nasty business, requires pumping millions of gallons of cyanide deep into the earth to leach gold from solid rock. The state has tentatively blessed the mining operation. So have the feds. Imagine how much PISA had to fork over to make that happen, quickly and with little fanfare.

  Andre predicts he’ll supervise a small team: a social media expert, a volunteer coordinator, a private investigator to conduct opposition research. He hasn’t led a team this small in years, not since Mercedes County, his first assignment as a team leader. He made his bones working that referendum. The client, an online retailer, hoped to build a shipping center in Mercedes, but county officials refused, an ill-conceived protest in the name of some righteous cause he can no longer remember. Was it the environment? Union jobs? Free trade? Municipal governments are full of big-principled fanatics with little practical experience. But Andre made Mercedes see reason, made them understand that if he lost this time, he’d be back the next year. Printing ballots, hiring poll workers, mailing registration cards. Each special election would cost the county a quarter mil. A quarter million dollars each year until he won. Mercedes buckled.

  An announcement from the cockpit: “Please take your seats. We’re approaching our destination.” To Andre’s surprise, the girl, her tricorn hat in hand, stops and stares overhead, slack-jawed, as though bearing witness to the voice of God. She climbs into her seat, fastens her belt. Now she’s ready to land.

  Thirty minutes later, the crew opens the concourse door, and the girl bursts through the gate. The clock stands at half past ten, and the airport has bedded down for the night. Merchants have shuttered their shops. A kiosk hums behind an accordion gate. A prune-faced janitor waters a fern, and a hickory scent taunts the travelers, as though to say: If you’d arrived only minutes earlier, you could’ve appreciated our fine restaurants, but please, instead, enjoy your choice of stale vending-machine snacks.

  The hickory reminds Andre that he hasn’t eaten, yet his belly is drowning in airline scotch. He’s not drunk—not by a long shot—though he welcomes the feeling of freedom that the liquor brings. He carries his pack over his shoulder, follows the sleepy crowd through the concourse, burdened by the feeling that he’s been here before. A heartbeat later, the memory comes to him. The tiled carpet, the drab walls. This place feels like a visitors’ lounge in juvie.

  He ducks inside the men’s room, settles before a mirror, surprised by the nervousness that beats like a second heart inside his chest. He needs to make a positive first impression. His team will be reporting back to Washington, their biased early dispatches supporting the caricature that, even for politics, this temperamental black asshole is reckless and unprofessional. But Andre knows he can win over his team. He’s a good-looking guy, never been accused of lacking charm. He changes into a fresh cotton shirt, rinses the taste of scotch from his mouth. If he were a religious man, he might say a prayer. But he’s not, so he stares at himself in the mirror, vows that he will not fail.

  Back in the concourse, a practiced assuredness in his step, he passes a checkpoint where a guard takes a nap. In the airport terminal, the overhead speaker plays bluegrass. A sailor in his dress uniform kisses a redheaded girl, which reminds Andre: Call home, let your fiancée know you’ve arrived in South Carolina. But Cassie isn’t his girl anymore, now, is she? Last he heard, she’d found a new beau, a player for the Redskins, an over-the-hill placekicker who hasn’t seen a second of playing time. But this new fella doesn’t know what Andre knows: that Cassie likes to change her mind.

  As the terminal empties, he takes the escalator to baggage claim. The fluorescent lights flicker. The air ducts rattle. The wall-mounted, backlit advertisements promote opportunities to earn online degrees, increased incomes, frequent-flyer miles, and eternal salvation. The pudgy girl, with boundless energy, circles square columns, arms outstretched, tricorn hat bouncing atop her head. She zips between passengers, then twirls beside a handsome young man, who flashes Andre a smile. The young man, in his early twenties, tightens his grip around a whiteboard, Toussaint Andre Ross written in marker.

  “Mr. Ross?” His hemp necklace and sun-bleached hair suggest California. “Mr. Toussaint Andre Ross?”

  “Please. Call me Andre.”

  The young man tucks the whiteboard beneath his arm. “Pleasure to meet you, sir. I’m Brendan. Your assistant.”

  Andre offers a polite smile, wonders whether the two have met before. Maybe. Human Resources prefers to hire the same kind of pretty boy, fine-featured college grads whom Madison Avenue might hire to sell toothpaste. And yet, isn’t this kid a little more beautiful than the rest? Side-swept bangs, flawless skin, the pink cheeks of a cherub. This kid could make a fortune running cons on the street.

  A horn, a siren, the carousel comes to life. Smaller airports have few advantages but among them are shorter waits for luggage. Brendan rents a baggage cart and awaits Andre’s instruction. Andre remembers his own early months at the firm, the eighteen-hour days, the pressure to impress the senior staff. He wishes he’d known he needn’t have worked so hard, that the firm ultimately sought employees with a flexible moral code, political mercenaries happy to manipulate entire communities to earn a buck. This kid looks awfully soft, in his heavy olive coat and thick corduroy pants, and Andre wonders whether this delicate boy possesses the inner toughness their vocation requires.

  “Welcome to Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport,” the overhead speaker blares. The girl in the tricorn hat races the length of the baggage claim, parroting, “Welcome to Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport.”

  Andre asks, “The rest of the team meeting us in Carthage?”

  “Excuse me?” his new assistant says.

  “The advance team. Have they already arrived?”

  His assistant blinks.

  “Please tell me it’s not just you.” Andre hears the defeat in his own voice. “It’s just you, isn’t it?”

  Andre pinches the bone between his eyes, understands what has happened. This lone intern is the best Mrs. Fitz can do. No one else at the firm will work with him. He’s toxic, his career imperiled, his reputation tarnished. He can’t blame his colleagues. In their shoes, he would have done the same. Political consultants in Washington come and go. A prize one day, poison the next.

  “And Brendan.” Andre stresses each syllable. “How many campaigns have you worked?”

  “Including this assignment? One.”

  He takes a good look at the kid, doubts he’ll last all thirteen weeks.

  The girl wearing the tricorn hat circles Andre and Brendan. She blows raspberries, a poor imitation of a sputtering plane. Andre spots his garment bag rolling along the conveyor belt, and as he approaches, arm extended, the girl races between him and the carousel, blocks his path. Andre snaps back off balance, watches his bag sail away.

  “Sir, I know I’m young,” Brendan says. “You should know I have a master’s in econometrics.”

  “No one’s questioning your academic qualifications.”

  “I’ve also been through the firm’s twelve-week analytic training.”

  “I’m sure you’re qualified, Brendan.”

  “You seem a little upset.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You sure?” Brendan studies his face. “’Cause you look pissed.”

  The girl with the tricorn hat circles yet again, zooming, and Andre wants to smack her. Or, at least, smack her parents. He clears his throat, hoping to catch their eye, but both mother and father are too busy reading their phones. He’s ready to approach, to say, Damn it, control your brat, when Brendan tugs his sleeve. As the girl makes yet another pass, Brendan inches his foot forward, just enough for the girl to take a tumble, crashing hard against the black-and-white tiles, her t
ricorn hat thrown through the air and landing yards away. The girl rises quickly, shamefaced and near tears, eyes shifting from Brendan to Andre and back to Brendan.

  “Brendan, did you tell me your last name?”

  The kid says, “Fitzpatrick.”

  “And Mrs. Fitzpatrick is—”

  “My nana.”

  Chapter Two

  Comfortable in his passenger seat, Andre counts another cross. The past mile, he’s spotted six, not including those that grace bumper stickers, cemeteries, or billboards predicting the apocalypse. He could’ve counted any roadside attraction—election signs, dead deer, strips of tread torn from tires—but instead, for reasons he can’t articulate, his mind has settled on the cross.

  Their Jeep hits a stretch of broken pavement, and for the first time, Andre wonders exactly to where he’s been exiled. The past hour, since leaving the airport, he’s passed through miles of old-growth forest, deep into tall pine trees broken by an occasional lonesome town. He knows little about South Carolina, and what he thinks he knows, he dislikes. He associates this state with slavery and segregation, with Sumter and secession, with firebombed churches and bus boycotts and the bodies of dead black babies. Fifty, sixty years ago, this very road must have terrified blacks traveling at night. A siren in the rearview mirror would portend a gruesome death. For all he knows, it still could.

  Andre’s not the least bit comforted by assurances that the South has changed. The New South, he’s been told, appreciates diversity. The New South elects black activists to Congress and sends the children of Indian immigrants to governors’ mansions. The New South, they say, has achieved Dr. King’s dream. And yet, as white teenagers in a faded pickup whiz past, horn honking, music blaring, Confederate flag cloaking the rear window, Andre suspects that the New South looks an awful lot like the Old.

  “You think the same person puts up all these crosses?” Brendan says. “Some guy who heard the voice of God and now drives around the state in his pickup with a bunch of two-by-fours. You know, like the guy who planted all those apple trees, you know, what’s-his-face? Johnny Appleseed? You think Johnny Appleseed was real? You think that was his real name?”