The Coyotes of Carthage

by Steven Wright

  The waiting room is empty except for Dre and two middle-aged women who he guesses are twins, and who will soon lose their stepmother. The twins bicker; one clearly adores the dying woman, the other clearly doesn’t. Andre doesn’t mean to eavesdrop, but the sisters are having this disagreement, loudly, right here before him. He tries hard to demonstrate that he’s minding his own business: leafing through a hunting magazine, playing solitaire on his phone, studying the fake upside-down fish that bob in a hundred-gallon tank, but their disagreement grows more intense—now they’re shouting—and he starts to wonder whether he should intervene.

  He does, after all, have wisdom to share. For nearly a decade after his release, he didn’t speak to Hector, but seven years ago, one day, out of the blue, Hector called the firm, threatened to cause a scene at his fancy-ass office unless Andre agreed to meet. Andre assumed that Hector had a scheme, some petty hood bullshit Andre had long ago outgrown. Instead, when the two met at Union Station, sitting beside a mobile kiosk where Hector sold Swiss sunglasses, Big Brother announced that he was six months sober, that he’d found a woman whom he planned to marry, that his recovery demanded that he try to make amends for all the pain he caused. For the next half hour, Andre listened to Hector confess his sins. The time he threw salt in Andre’s eyes; the time he busted Andre’s nose. Each and every time he called their mother a bitch or a selfish ho. Yo, Dre. I know that bothered you, man. I mean, she was a selfish ho. But I shouldn’t have called her that in front of you. I apologize. Andre listened to each offense, trivial annoyances long forgotten, only to realize this asshole had no plan to seek forgiveness for the lone sin about which Andre cared.

  “Nigga, you made me take the fall for a crime you committed.” Andre could not govern his rage. “Don’t you owe me an apology for that?”

  “Well. If you feel I need to apologize for that, then I apologize.”

  “If? Motherfucker, did you say if?” Andre shouted. People were looking. “I spent two years inside for you.”

  “Two years. Please. That what you crying about? It was clearly the best thing for you. Told you it would be.” Hector spoke with a reasoned tone. “Look at you. Just look at you. Wearing a suit. Working downtown. I bet you make all kinds of money. Meet all kinds of girls.”

  Andre rose. “Don’t ever call me again.”

  “How am I wrong?” Hector grabbed his wrist. “Look at you and look at me.”

  “You expect me to thank you?”

  “Dre, what do you want from me?”

  “An apology, asshole. Isn’t that the entire fucking point?” A small, intense explosion detonated inside him, and he tried to push over the mobile kiosk, gave it everything he had, but the kiosk was heavy and sturdy, well balanced and well made. It wasn’t going anywhere. So Andre grabbed the most expensive pair of sunglasses, clutched the overpriced shades between his fists, trying to snap the frame in two, but the sunglasses, too, were sturdy and well made. Fucking Swiss know how to make a good pair of shades. Andre smashed the glasses against the ground, stomping on them with all his weight, bending the frames, scraping the lenses, the two-hundred-dollar price tag torn beneath his heel.

  “You feel better?” Hector said.

  “No.” Andre’s anger morphed into exhaustion, and he wept on the bench. “You didn’t even come see me inside.”

  “I didn’t think you’d accept my visit.”

  “You should’ve at least tried.”

  “Dre, making amends isn’t just about apologizing. It’s about making things right. I know I fucked up. I know you got a good life now that don’t include me. But there ain’t a day where I don’t think about you.”

  “I’m still mad at you.”

  “We don’t have to fix everything right now. Today’s just the first day. If it takes years for you and me to get right, shit, Dre, I got nothing but time.”

  In the waiting room, the twins are screaming—is this some hidden-camera show?—and Andre steps outside, finds a quiet space beside the waist-high chain-link fence that surrounds a filled-in swimming pool. Polls close in fifteen minutes, and he realizes he’s wasted his entire day. Mrs. Fitz would be ashamed. And his grief springs anew, as fresh and as raw as the day she died. Tonight will be his first professional election night without her. On nights he’d win, he’d call like a son phoning his parents, not to boast, not to solicit praise, but to receive a form of validation, as though to say, Look at what you taught me to do. On nights he’d lose, he’d find comfort in their conversations, asking what he might learn from failure, hearing in her voice that she was neither disappointed nor ashamed. This same woman would not simply abandon him. Of this he’s nearly convinced himself, at least enough to get through another day.

  He phones the armory, starts to ask for an hourly update, for Tyler he says, when an ambulance bolts into the parking lot, sirens wailing. Andre finds himself gawking, curious about what horror might be inside. An overdose. A heart attack. A hunting accident. In Carthage you never know. The paramedics, tall, lean black men, jump out, open the back doors to reveal no one inside. They slide out a gurney and disappear into the hospital.

  Maybe four minutes pass before the paramedics are back, slamming open the hospital doors. They are a tornado, a concentrated swirl of chaos, pushing hard and fast through the hospital doors, with Chalene flat on her back on the gurney. The paramedics are shouting. She’s shouting. Tyler Lee, holding her purse, is shouting. Baby, hold on. Chalene sweaty, pale, weak, and more swollen than before. Maybe she’s in labor, maybe not. What does he know? Only that she’s got an IV in her arm and she’s breathing hard, trying to fight off a level of pain to which Andre will never be able to relate.

  “Dre. Dre. There you are,” she says, frantic. “We didn’t finish our talk.”

  “They can’t perform her procedure here,” Tyler says. “We’re going to a better hospital.”

  “Wait. I got things I need to say to Dre.” She takes hold of Andre’s hand, panting. “I never thanked you.”

  “Baby, let’s do this later,” Tyler says.

  “We prayed for change in our lives. Then you came.” She takes a deep breath to bear another rush of pain. “It might mean nothing to you, and you might think we’re just a bunch of backwoods hicks, but these past thirteen weeks, you’ve changed our lives. You have shown us what is possible. You’ve—”

  She curls in pain, and Andre feels the urgency of the moment. He doesn’t need anyone to explain that Chalene and her child are both in danger. Every minute counts. Why is she bothering with him?

  “Come to the hospital with us, please. Please. I need you there,” she begs. “Get in your car. Go to Children’s Mercy. It’s thirty miles north on Highway 74. Big concrete eyesore, you can’t miss it.”

  “Ma’am,” the paramedic says, “we gotta go.”

  “Not until Dre promises.” She screams. Sobs. Grips his wrist with both hands. “Promise me! Please, Dre. Promise. Children’s Mercy Hospital. Thirty miles. North.”

  “I promise.”

  “Dre, be serious.”

  “I promise.” He kisses her forehead. “Ugly concrete building. Thirty miles north. I’ll be right behind you. I promise.”

  Tyler gives Andre a big bear hug as the paramedics load Chalene into the ambulance. Tyler jumps in as Chalene blows Andre a kiss, her eyeline unbroken until the ambulance doors shut. The ambulance flees the parking lot, siren blaring, makes the turn north before vanishing into the twilight.

  Andre checks his watch. The polls just closed. Maybe, if anyone’s in line, they’ll get to vote, but his campaign has come to an end. So he gets in his Jeep, turns over the engine, and, as he pulls out of the parking lot, turns south toward home.

  On public radio, the only station that will dedicate the entire night to local contests, a warm voice says, “Welcome to election night, South Carolina. Polls around the Palmetto State are now closed.”

  Andre doesn’t need public radio to know that the turnout in Carthage was good. Arou
nd six this evening, the polls saw a surge of after-work voters. Overall turnout didn’t reach 20 percent, but his instincts say he achieved the win. Best thing about modern elections is that they lack suspense. No hand counts. No human error. No ambiguous marking of ballots. Paula Carrothers had six machines at one polling place. She’ll download the data onto a thumb drive and instantly tally the results. Democracy, as easy as ordering pizza online.

  He drives past the armory, sees men and women and children celebrating in the parking lot. Word must have come straight from county hall, and he feels good, better than he’s felt in a long time, and considers stopping, maybe celebrating with the team, but what’s the point? Truth is, sixty seconds ago, the people of Carthage outlived their use.

  He turns the radio to jazz, one of those sixties-era ensembles improvising a pithy five beats to the measure, with a wild, talented percussionist beating the shit out of a drum. Andre taps his fingers against the wheel, mimicking the fast beat, as Carthage whips past, swaths of open land freckled by foreclosed homes and a trailer-park billboard that reads, IF YOU LIVED HERE, YOU’D BE HOME NOW. He doesn’t want to learn the details of the election results, doesn’t want to learn the turnout or margin of victory, because as soon as he learns, he’ll know whether Mr. DeVille will fire him. For now, Andre wants to chase this feeling of victory, wants, for the first time in a long time, to feel like a winner. Please. Just for a little while longer. I need to feel good.

  On the back road that heads home, he speeds past a pond on which the moon smiles. His cell rings in his pocket, and as he digs in his pants, the phone slips onto the heavy-duty rubber floor mat. He starts a blind search, eyes fixed on the road, one hand on the wheel, the other hand patting random patches of floor mat. Mr. DeVille? Vera? Probably Duke Boshears. His gut says this call is important, so he takes a gamble, drops his eyes for a moment to retrieve the glowing phone, raises his gaze in time to see a coyote crossing the road. Andre brakes hard, dropping his phone again, the Jeep screaming to a halt but not before smashing into the coyote, which takes a tumble down the dirt road. In the beam of the Jeep’s headlights, the coyote rises, stumbles, falls, rises, stumbles, falls, a spastic dance, repeated until the coyote collapses onto the road.

  Andre unbuckles his seat belt, rushes toward the coyote, which lies on the ground, face twitching, chest rising and falling, each breath shallower than the last. The coyote freezes in time, chest still, eyes open, long tongue dangling across thin white lips. Andre brushes the bloody, matted fur, and for a moment he feels as though he’s watching himself from afar, sees himself, small and vulnerable, a man beat down and alone, standing in the headlights of his rented Jeep, weeping, hands bloodied, pants caked in mud, and Andre feels nothing but pity for the man he sees.

  In the distance a locomotive blows its whistle, and he wonders where the train will go. He drags himself back inside the Jeep, starts the engine. Maybe he should drive until the sun comes up. Wherever he runs out of gas, that will be where he starts anew. Maybe he’ll end up someplace where he can meet someone and fall in love. Someplace special, someplace with palm trees, someplace where no one bothers to vote.

  Acknowledgments

  Oh my goodness, I wrote a novel and, oh my goodness, you just read it. Please bear with me. Just one more thing before you go. I need to thank some people.

  For their thoughtful review of earlier drafts, I’m grateful to Lorrie Moore, Lynda Barry, Ron Kuka, Judith Mitchell, and Brandi Wright. I feel duty-bound to express my gratitude to those who read other projects, novels, and parts of novels that didn’t make it across the finish line. That’s Laura Coates, Ravi Sinha, Isaac Means, and Liz. I love you, I miss you. I think of each of you every day.

  I received the warm encouragement and unflinching support of my colleagues: Chelsea Gill, Renagh O’Leary, Michele LaVigne, Margaret Raymond, Adam Stevenson, Jini Jasti, and Peggy Hacker, who has the power to make cake magically appear. This book would not have been possible without the friendship and support of Carrie Sperling, who never—ever—lost faith. I’m also grateful to my parents, Aunt Bert, Harvey Grossinger, Elly Williams, Molly Jacobs, Jesse Lee Kercheval, Bailey Flannigan, David Haynes, and the folks of Kimbilio, without whom characters like Dre would not exist.

  A special shout-out to the team at the Friedrich Agency: Lucy Carson, Kent Wolf, and Heather Carr. I’m grateful to Eric Reid at WME. Lastly, a special thanks to the wonderful and encouraging Zack Wagman, Dominique Lear, Laura Cherkas, Aja Pollock, and the whole team at Ecco. You’re all amazing.

  Okay. Thank you. Until next time.

  About the Author

  STEVEN WRIGHT is a clinical associate professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison Law School, where he codirects the Wisconsin Innocence Project. From 2007 to 2012 he served as a trial attorney in the Voting Section of the United States Department of Justice. He has written numerous essays about race, criminal justice, and election law for the New York Review of Books.

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  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  THE COYOTES OF CARTHAGE. Copyright © 2020 by Steven Wright. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  FIRST EDITION

  COVER DESIGN BY KAPO NG

  COVER PHOTOGRAPH © FOCUS NO.5/SHUTTERSTOCK

  * * *

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Wright, Steven, 1979-author.

  Title: The Coyotes of Carthage: a novel / Steven Wright.

  Description: New York: Ecco, [2020]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019019750| ISBN 9780062951663 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780062951687 (pbk.)

  Subjects: LCSH: Political fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3623.R5649 C69 2020 | DDC 813/.6—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019019750

  * * *

  Digital Edition APRIL 2020 ISBN: 978-0-06-295171-7

  Version 03122020

  Print ISBN: 978-0-06-295166-3

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  ; Steven Wright, The Coyotes of Carthage