Cherokee Bat and the Goat Guys

by Francesca Lia Block

  “Well, Cherokee Bat,” Coyote said, “here is your fur. Use it well. The fur and the feathers were gifts that the animals gave you without death, untainted. But think of the animals that have died for their hides, and for their beauty and power. Think of them, too, when you sew for your friends.”

  Cherokee gathered the fur in bags and thanked Coyote. She wanted to leave right away without even asking him how to go about making the haunches. There was a mute, remote look on his face as if he were trying to remember something.

  When Cherokee got home, she thought of Coyote’s expression and blinked to send the image away. It frightened her. She washed the fur, pulling out nettles and leaves, watching the dark water swirl down the drain. The next day she dried the fur in the sun. But she did not know what to do next.

  For nights she lay awake, trying to decide how to make haunches. She dreamed of goats dancing in misty forest glades, rising on their hind legs as they danced, wreathed with flowers, baring their teeth, drunk on flower pollen, staggering, leaping. She dreamed of girls too—pale and naked, being chased by the goats. The girls tried to cover their nakedness but the heavy, hairy goat heads swung toward them, teeth chewing flowers, eyes menacing, the forest closing in around, leaves chiming like bells.

  Cherokee woke up clutching the sheets around her body. The room smelled of goat, and she got up to open the windows. As she leaned out into the night, filling herself with the fragrance of the canyon, she thought of Raphael’s heavy dreadlocks, the cords of hair like fur. She had spent hours winding beads and feathers into his hair and her own. Now she loosened her braids.

  She knew, suddenly, how she would make the pants.

  Cherokee braided and braided strands of fur together. Then she attached the braids to a pair of Raphael’s old jeans. She put extra fur along the hips so the pants really looked like shaggy goat legs. She made a tail with the rest of the fur. When she was finished, Cherokee brought the haunches to Raphael’s house and left them at the door in a box covered with leaves and flowers.

  That night he called her: “I’m coming over,” and hung up.

  She went to the mirror, took off her T-shirt and looked at her naked body. Too thin, she thought, too pale. She wished she were dark like the skins of certain cherries and had bigger breasts. Quickly she dressed again, brushed her hair and touched some of Weetzie’s gardenia perfume to the place at her throat where she could feel her heart.

  When Raphael came to the door, Cherokee saw him through the peephole at first—silhouetted against the night with his long, ropy hair, his chest bare under his denim jacket, his fur legs.

  Cherokee opened the door and he walked in heavily, strutting, not floating. The tail swung behind him as he went straight to Cherokee’s room and turned off the light. She hesitated at the door.

  “They look good,” she said.

  Raphael stared at her. “Things are different now.” His voice was hoarse. “Come here.”

  His teeth and eyes flashed, reflecting the light from the hallway. He was like a forest creature who didn’t belong inside.

  Cherokee tried to breathe. She wanted to go to him and stroke his head. She wanted to paint red and silver flowers on his chest and then curl up beside him in her tepee the way she used to do. But he was right. Things were different now.

  Then, without even realizing it, she was standing next to him. They were still almost the same height. She could smell him—cocoa, a light basketball sweat. She could see his lips.

  All their lives, Cherokee and Raphael had given each other little kisses, but this kiss was like a wind from the desert, a wind that knocks over candles so that flowers catch fire, a wind, or like a sunset in the desert casting sphinx shadows on the sand, a sunset, or like a shivering in the spine of the earth. They collapsed, their hands sliding down each other’s arms. Then they were reeling over and over among the feathers and dried flowers that covered Cherokee’s floor. She remembered how they had rolled down hills together, tangling and untangling, the smell of crushed grass and coconut sun lotion and barbecue smoke all mixed up in their heads. Then, when she had rolled against him, she hardly felt it—they were like one body. Now each touch stung and sparkled. He grasped her hair in his hand and kissed her neck, then pressed his face between her breasts as if he were trying to get inside to her heart.

  “White Dawn,” he whispered. “Cherokee White Dawn.”

  Suddenly she couldn’t swallow—the air thick around her like waves of dark dreadlocks—and she pushed him away.

  Raphael put his hands on his stomach. He glared at her. “What are you doing?”

  Cherokee ran out of the room, out of the house, to the garden shed where Witch Baby was practicing her drums. Cherokee leaned her head against the wall, feeling the pounding go through her body.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Witch Baby asked when she had finished playing.

  “Can I stay here tonight?”

  “Why? Is Raphael being a wild thing?”

  “I just don’t feel like being in the house,” Cherokee said.

  “Sure!” said Witch Baby, “I bet it’s because of Raphael. I just hope you use birth control like Weetzie told us.”

  Cherokee frowned and started to turn away.

  “I guess you can stay if you want,” Witch Baby said.

  Cherokee curled up next to Witch Baby but she didn’t sleep all night. She lay awake with the moon pouring over her through the shed window, bleaching her skin even whiter. Sometimes she thought she heard Witch Baby’s hoarse voice singing her a mysterious lullaby, but she wasn’t sure.

  After that, Cherokee was afraid to see Raphael, but he called her a few days later and said there would be a rehearsal at his house the next day. It was the first time he had suggested that they play music since Zombo’s Coffin.

  Raphael wore the fur pants. He didn’t say much to Cherokee but he sang and played better than ever. When they were done, he said, “I booked a gig for us.”

  “Where at?” Angel Juan asked, peering over the top of his sunglasses.

  “I thought you didn’t want to play,” Witch Baby said.

  “It’s at The Vamp. We’d be opening for The Devil Dogs.”

  “Sounds kind of creepy!” Cherokee said, but she was glad that Raphael wanted to play again.

  “The owner. Lulu, heard our tape. She is really into us.” Raphael stomped over to the mirror, puffed out his chest and modeled the fur pants. “The Goal Guys are ready for anything now.”

  Lulu was tall and black-cherry skinned with waves of dark hair and large breasts. She moved gracefully in her short red dress.

  “How do you like the club?” Lulu asked Raphael, brushing his arm with her fingertips.

  The Vamp was dark with black skull candles burning and stuffed animal heads on the walls. Cherokee shivered.

  “It’s a great setup. Thanks, a lot,” he said, looking at Lulu’s lips as if he were in a trance.

  Lulu smiled. “I think you’ll be just great here, honey,” she said. “Let me know if you need anything.”

  She walked away, shifting her hips precisely from side to side. Raphael watched her go.

  “Raphael!” Cherokee said. A stuffed deer head had its glass eyes fixed on her.

  “Let’s do a sound check,” Raphael said to his cigarette.

  Maybe it was the fact that they had been rehearsing or that after the first show it just got easier, or maybe it was the goat pants. Or maybe, Cherokee thought, it was the anger Raphael felt toward her after the night in her bedroom—the power of that. Whatever the reason, Raphael was not the frightened boy who had left the Rockin’ Coffin stage before the first song was over.

  He strutted, he staggered, he jerked, he swirled his dreadlocks and his tail. He bared his teeth. He touched his bare chest. His sweat flew into the audience.

  The audience howled, panted and crowded nearer to the stage, their faces bony as the wax skull candles they held above their heads. The flame shadows danced across Raphael’s face.
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  With the heat pressing toward them and Raphael’s bittersweet voice and reeling body moving them. Angel Juan, Witch Baby and Cherokee began to play better than they had ever played before. Cherokee felt as if the band were becoming one lashing, shimmery creature that the room full of people in leather wanted to devour. Someone reached up and pulled at her skirt, and she whirled away from the edge of the stage. The room was spinning but even as she felt hunted, trapped, about to be devoured by the crowd at the foot of the stage, she also felt free, flickering above them, able to hypnotize, powerful. The power of the trapped animal who is, for that moment, perfect, the hunter’s only thought and desire.

  When the set was over, the band slipped backstage away from the shrieks and the bones and the burning. Raphael turned to Cherokee, drenched and feverish. She was afraid he would turn away again but instead he took her face in his hands and kissed her cheeks.

  “Thank you, Cherokee White Dawn,” he murmured.

  Then they were running, holding hands and running out of the club. They ran through the streets of Hollywood but Cherokee hardly noticed the fallen stars, the neon cocktail glasses. They could have been anywhere—a forest, a desert—running in the moon-shadow of the sphinx, a jungle where the night was green. They could have been goats, horses, wildcats. They could have been dreaming or running through someone else’s dream.

  They ran to Raphael’s house. Cherokee felt a metallic pinch between her eyes, something hot and wet on her upper lip. She touched her nose and looked at her fingers. “I’m bleeding.”

  Raphael helped her lie down on his bed. He brought her a wet cloth and pressed it against her nose. “Keep your head back.”

  “I get too excited, I guess.”

  As he cradled her head in one hand, he began kissing her throat, the insides of her elbows and wrists for a long time. Then he kissed her forehead and temples. “Is it better?”

  She moved the cloth away and sat up. It was dark in the room but the animals, pyramids, eyes and lotus flowers glimmered on the moonlit wall. Cherokee and Raphael were both sweaty and tangled. She could smell his chocolate, her vanilla-gardenia, and something else that was both mingling together.

  “Coyote told me about Indian women who fell in love with men because of their flute playing and got nosebleeds when they heard the music because they were so excited,” Cherokee said.

  “Does it work with a guitar?”

  “It works when I look at you.”

  He touched her face. “You’re okay now, I think. … I miss you, Cherokee. I want to wake up with you in the morning the way we used to. But different. It’s different now.”

  It was different. It was light-filled red waves breaking on a beach again and again—a salt-stung fullness. It was being the waves and riding the waves. The bed lifted, the house and the lawn and the roses and the street and the night, one ocean rocking them, tossing them, an ocean of liquid coral roses.

  Afterward, Cherokee was washed ashore with her head on his chest. She could hear the echo of herself inside of him.

  Dear Everybody,

  The Goat Guys played at a club called The Vamp and we jammed, I wish you could have seen us, I made Raphael these cool fur pants so he really looks like a Goat Guy, It’s getting warm and I’m having a little trouble concentrating on school. But don’t worry. We’re all doing our work and we only play in clubs on weekends mostly. Thanks for your letter.

  Love,

  Cherokee Goat-Bat

  Horns

  Cherokee noticed that the air was beginning to change, becoming powder-sugary with pollen as if invisible butterfly wings and flower petals were brushing against her skin. It was getting warmer. The light was different now—dappled greenish-gold and watery. After school. The Goat Guys would run, bicycle and roller-skate home to play basketball or, when Angel Juan got back from the restaurant wearing his white busboy shirt that smelled of soup and bread and tobacco, they would all ride to the beach in his red truck and surf or play volleyball on the sand until sunset. At night they rehearsed. It was hard for them to think about homework or studying when they were getting so many calls to play in clubs. Everyone wanted to see the wild goat singer, the winged witch drummer, the dark, graceful angel bass player and the spinning blonde tambourine dancer.

  After rehearsals, or on weekends after the shows, Cherokee and Raphael stayed together in his bed or her tepee. She hardly slept. There was a constant tossing and tangling of their bodies, a constant burning heat. She remembered how she had slept before—a caterpillar in a cocoon, muffled and peaceful. Now she woke up fragile and shaky like some new butterfly whose wings are still translucent green, easy to tear and awaiting their color. All day she smelled Raphael on her skin. Her eyes were stinging and glazed and her head fell heavy. A slow ache spread through her hips and thighs.

  “Cherokee and Raphael are doing it!” Witch Baby sang.

  Cherokee tried to ignore her.

  “Aren’t you? Aren’t you doing it?”

  “Shut up, Witch.”

  “You are! I hear you guys. And you look all tired all the time.”

  “Stop it, Witch. You shouldn’t talk. Why would you want to move out into the shed? I bet I know what you and Angel Juan do out there.”

  Witch Baby was quiet. She gnawed her fingernails and pulled at a snarl-ball in her hair. Right away, Cherokee wished she hadn’t said anything. She realized that Witch Baby wouldn’t tease her if Witch and Angel Juan were doing the same thing.

  Witch Baby bared her teeth at Cherokee. “I’m writing to Weetzie and telling!” she said as she roller-skated away.

  Cherokee watched Angel Juan and Witch Baby more closely after that. She saw how Angel Juan tousled Witch Baby’s hair and picked her up sometimes. But he did it like an older brother. When Witch Baby looked at Angel Juan, her tilty eyes turned the color of amethysts and got so big that her pointed face seemed smaller than ever.

  One day, while The Coat Guys were rehearsing, Raphael went over and touched Cherokee’s hair. It was only a light touch but it was so charged that tiny electric sparks seemed to flare up. Witch Baby stopped drumming. Angel Juan’s eyes were hidden behind his sunglasses. Witch Baby looked at him. Then she got up and ran out of the room.

  Cherokee followed her into the garden. “What is it, Witch?” she asked.

  Witch Baby didn’t answer.

  “I see how he looks at you when you wear your wings and play drums for him. I think he’s just afraid of his feelings.”

  Witch Baby shrugged and chewed her fingernails.

  “Tell me about Angel Juan.”

  Witch Baby didn’t say anything about Angel Juan out loud, but Cherokee could tell what she was thinking.

  He is a dangerous flamenco shadow dancer and a tiny boy playing music in the gutter. His soul sounds like my drums and looks like doves. He is fireworks. He is the black-haired angel playing his bass on the top of the tree, on the top of the cake. I want him to see the flowers in my eyes and hear the songs in my hands.

  After a show at The Vamp, some girls followed Raphael backstage. They wanted to stroke his fur pants, they told him, giggling. One kept flicking out her tongue like a snake. They wore black bras and black leather miniskirts.

  Cherokee stood with her arms crossed on her chest, watching them. Then she noticed that Angel Juan was standing in the same position with a frown on his face that matched her own. He turned and stalked out of the club, and Witch Baby came and stood beside Cherokee.

  “All the girls pay attention to Raphael but Angel Juan is a slinkster-cool bass player and beautiful, too,” Cherokee said.

  “Ever since you made Raphael those goat pants, he’s been acting like the only person in the band,” Witch Baby said. Then she added, “You never made anything for Angel Juan.”

  Cherokee wished the girls would leave Raphael alone, take their hands off his hips and their breasts away from his face. But she thought he was happier lately than he had ever been and he would hold her in the tepee that night
and sing songs he had made up about her until the images of the girls drifted out of her head and she fell into a sleep of running animals and breaking lily-filled waves. But what about Witch Baby? She would be curled up in the shed under the bass drum, alone. She would dream of Angel Juan’s obsidian hair and deer face, reach for him and find a hollow drum. What about Angel Juan? Cherokee thought. He would be waiting outside for them by his red truck with a frown on his face. He would drive home with swerves and startling stops. He would not look at any of them, especially Witch Baby. He was the only Goat Guy Cherokee had not made a present for.

  What should I do for Angel Juan? Cherokee wondered. I will ask Coyote.

  Cherokee, Witch Baby and Raphael went out to meet Angel Juan at his truck.

  “We were hot tonight,” said Raphael.

  Angel Juan turned to him. “What makes you think you are such a star all of a sudden, man?”

  “I said we. I can’t help it if the girls like me,” Raphael said, tossing his dreadlocks back over his bare shoulders.

  “They might like me too if I shook my hips at them like some stripper chick.”

  “Maybe they would.” Raphael grinned and swiveled his hips in the goat pants. “Why don’t you, man? Too freaked out?”

  That was when Angel Juan made a fist and hit Raphael in the stomach under his ribs. Raphael staggered backward, staring at Angel Juan as if he weren’t quite sure what had just happened.

  Cherokee put her arms around Raphael. I will have to go back to Coyote, she thought.

  Cherokee asked Coyote if she could go running with him around the lake. It was a morning of green mist, and needles of sun were coming through the pines. Cherokee had to run at her very fastest pace to keep up with Coyote’s long legs. She glanced over at his profile—the proud nose, the flat dreamy eye-lids, the trail of blue-black hair.

  “Coyote …” Cherokee panted,

  “We are running, Cherokee Bat,” Coyote said, “Keep running. Think of making your legs long. Think of deer and wind.”