Coyote lost and found, p.1
Coyote Lost and Found, page 1
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TO ALL THE READERS, YOUNG AND OLD, WHO HAVE ASKED ME AT SCHOOL VISITS AND BOOK SIGNINGS AND IN EMAILS OVER THE PAST THREE YEARS, “WILL YOU PLEASE WRITE ANOTHER COYOTE STORY?” HERE YOU GO. THIS ONE’S FOR YOU. I HOPE YOU LIKE IT.
CHAPTER
ONE
Sometimes stories start with a bang, and sometimes stories start with a whisper, and sometimes stories start with a robbery or a car chase or a fistfight or someone being born or someone dying. Sometimes stories start with a kitten. I mean, the funny thing about stories is that they don’t really start or stop at all … It’s just the telling that starts or stops.
And this story, it could start when me and my dad finally settled down for a bit and got off the road and into a house; or it could begin when I started real school for the first time in five years; or, heck, it could start six years before that, when something terrible happened that tore a hole in the universe (or at least felt like it did). But, nah. I think this story starts with me on a bus, finding a box.
Now, the bus wasn’t moving at the time. And, no, the box wasn’t a buried memory box. That’s a whole different story. In this particular case, the bus was parked next to a house in Oregon that I happened to be living in. And the box held something almost as precious as memories.
So, there you go. Once upon a time, I was hanging out alone on an old bus and I was bored.
The bus was named Yager. It could be some folks don’t see the need to name a bus. Then again some folks haven’t had the chance to get to know a bus as well as I have.
Heck, me and my dad (who I’ll mostly just call Rodeo since that’s what he likes to be called) had lived on that old bus for five years after that hole got torn in the universe. We’d taken out all the seats except for the first couple of rows and bolted in a couch and some shelves and a big chair we called the Throne, and I even had a room in the back with a bed and a curtain for a door and everything. Yager was weird and Yager was funky and Yager got looks everywhere we went, but Yager was home.
Even though I was the one who’d really wanted to settle down and stop living on Yager in the first place, once we finally stopped rambling and had an actual house that didn’t have wheels, it turns out I still wanted to hang out on that bus a lot of the time. So I’d run an extension cord out to it and strung pretty white Christmas lights all up inside it, and it was kind of my home away from home (except it was parked right next to my home, so it wasn’t really all that away).
On the particular March Sunday when this story started, I was laying there on the couch in the bus, half reading a book. My cat, Ivan, was laying warm on my chest, purring when I scratched behind his ears.
I shook my head and let the book drop to the ground beside me and tsked my tongue.
“It’s no good, bud,” I said. Ivan opened his eyes and looked into mine. Ivan is perfect in nearly every way, but one of his best perfections is how good of a listener he is. “This book is perfectly fine. But there are way too many flat-out amazing books in the world to waste time reading a perfectly fine one. Right?”
Ivan yawned in agreement.
I sighed and looked around. It woulda been a great day to have a friend over. If, you know, I had any friends. Not counting cats. But I didn’t. Not counting cats.
I saw Rodeo’s bookshelf a little ways away. So I scooted Ivan down off me and ambled over to take a look.
I knelt down, squinting at the titles, hoping something would grab me. The Little Prince was pretty great, but I’d read that plenty already. Same with The Old Man and the Sea and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Ivan sidled up beside me, rubbing on my hip, tail held high. I eyed a tattered paperback book of poetry by Kahlil Gibran. I’d read some of it and dug it enough, but I wasn’t sure I was in the mood for poetry just right then.
I went to grab it anyway, but as I did, Ivan rubbed hard on my elbow with his chin and my hand went crooked, and instead of grabbing the book, I knocked it back. It fell with a muffled thump into the darkness between the shelf and the wall of the bus.
“Crud,” I said, leaning forward and turning sideways to reach blindly with one hand behind the shelf. Ivan came in close to my face, purring. “Stay out of this, cat,” I said, grunting.
My fingers brushed against what I was pretty sure was the spine of the book, and I stuck my tongue out and stretched farther and grabbed.
But my fingers didn’t close around a book; it was something else. It had corners and edges, but it was bigger and heavier than a paperback book. I gripped it harder and pulled it up just before it slipped from my fingers with a solid thud. I sat back on my knees and slid the thing toward me, into the light.
It was a box that looked like a briefcase without a handle. Made of dark wood, with tarnished metal at the corners. Just small enough to fit in that hidden space behind the shelf, but big enough that Ivan could’ve curled up inside it if it was open. Which, I’m sure, is one hundred percent what he would’ve tried to do.
I sat there for a second, looking at that box. It had a … a feeling to it. It felt secret. It felt hidden. It felt important. It felt, to be honest, like a once upon a time.
And there was this fact: Yager was not that big. And it had been my home for five years. I’d lived and breathed and slept and woke and eaten and laughed and cried in the cozy space between those four walls. And I’d never seen that box before. So, it was secret. It was hidden.
And it sure as heck wasn’t my secret. Which meant it had to be Rodeo’s. And Rodeo is a lot of things, but secret-keeper ain’t really one of ’em. He was the type to brag about how productive a trip to the bathroom had been. What kind of secret would a fella like that keep, from a girl like me?
Ivan rubbed his chin against the corner of the box, the way cats do.
“Shoo,” I said, but my heart wasn’t in it.
I spun that box around and found two latches, snapped shut.
I swallowed. Opening up those latches was surely a step there’d be no coming back from. Funny, how life does that sometimes. Gives you a little warning. Whispers a little promise.
“What do you think, Ivan?” I asked in a hushed voice.
“Mrawr,” Ivan said. He’s not a big talker.
“Okay,” I said. I bit my lip. “If you say so.”
I snapped open one of the latches. Ivan’s ears perked at the click. Holding my breath, I undid the second one.
The box sat there, one big unanswered question.
All that was left was to lift the lid.
I took hold of the dusty wood with both hands.
And I raised it up.
The soft yellow glow of the Christmas lights filtered down into the box.
The box was mostly full.
And what it was mostly full of was gritty gray dust.
I frowned, for just a second. It took me a second, to realize.
It wasn’t dust in the secret box.
It was ash.
“What in—” I started to whisper. But then it hit me. And I knew. I just knew.
Goose bumps sprang up on my arms.
A lump grew, dull and sharp at the same time, in my throat.
I blinked, then again, against the sudden heat in my eyes.
“Oh,” I whispered. “Hi, Mom.”
CHAPTER
TWO
I sat at our dingy little kitchen table and I stared at that box.
Closed and latched again, of course.
Because looking at what was in that box made me feel all sorts of weird and sad and confused and, quite frankly, nauseous. Not nauseous because of what it was, but because of how it made me feel. An emotional nausea, I guess.
Finding that box made me look at everything a whole new kind of different.
Even the table it was sitting on.
It was a flimsy, beat-up, wobbly thing with spindly metal legs and a chipped plastic top. Rodeo and me had picked it up at a thrift store, which was where we generally bought just about everything except underwear. Now, though, it was holding a box that was holding ashes that I was ninety-nine and three quarters percent sure had previously been my mother. And it made me remember another table. From another house. In another town, and another state. Another life, really.
A table that I’d shared with Rodeo, sure, but also my mom. Before she was ashes. A table that I’d shared with my big sister. A table I’d shared with my little sister. All back in that big Before.
It was wooden, and soft golden brown. Big sturdy legs. Room enough for us all, and some friends. It was scratched and scuffed, stained with paint and crayons and markers and clumsy kid hands, the center of family meals and holiday crafts and game nights. It was perfect.
And then there’d been
And then instead of it being me and Dad and Mom and my sisters at the table, it was just me and Dad and three ghosts. And it was just too sad. Too sad for me, but definitely too sad for my dad.
And so we sold the table and the house that it sat in, and we bought a bus and we left all of that behind. We even took new names when we left that life behind. So instead of being devastated Ella and heartbroken Dad, we’d been just Coyote and Rodeo, carefree travelers. Grins as wide as the world we wandered through. Nothing but the open road in front of us. And we couldn’t see the sadness in the rearview mirror because we didn’t let ourselves look back.
The funny thing about sadness, though, is that you can’t really run away from it. Not forever.
And another funny thing about sadness is that once you stop running from it, it gets a lot less scary.
But, anyway. That box and what was in it brought up a lot for me. Clearly.
So I sat there at the crummy table as the world started to get dark out the window, waiting for my dad to get home. Because, boy, we sure had some talking to do.
Rodeo was out on one of his walkabouts. A walkabout, for anyone who’s wondering, is really just a walk. I don’t get why he calls them “walkabouts” and not just “walks,” but there’s plenty I don’t get about my dear father and what he happens to call a stroll is the least of ’em.
I heard his voice, outside, finally. Talking and laughing. I looked out and saw him in the street, chatting away with our across-the-street neighbor Candace.
I frowned. She was holding what she called a dog on a bright pink leash. Its name was Fig and it was a long-haired Chihuahua and I’d been informed by Candace herself that Fig was an angel but I personally thought that Fig was, well, something other than that.
I don’t dig small dogs. I don’t dig Candace all that much, truth be told.
I mean, she’s kinda cool, technically. She’s some sort of super-smart tech coder or something and she’s got this sides-shaved-and-the-rest-dyed-purple haircut that’s kinda awesome (or, possibly, just trying too hard) and she’s like, nice or whatever. But she sure spent a lot of time with Rodeo.
Judging by the leash and by how far Fig’s tongue was hanging out of her mouth, it seemed that Candace and Fig had gone along with Rodeo on his walkabout. My frown deepened.
Finally Rodeo made some last laughing joke and gave Candace a fist bump, and then he wandered whistling up our front walk and into the house. Honestly. What kind of grown man gives a grown woman a fist bump?
Our life had changed dramatically in the past year, but Rodeo had not. Which was mostly for the best. He still had his long, unkempt beard. Still had his straggly long hair, sometimes tied back, sometimes not. Still had his worn and shabby clothes hanging loose on his lanky body. Still had his easy smile, and his loud laugh, and his magic eyes that just somehow invited you in and told you to sit for a while.
“Where you at, honeycakes?” he called out cheerfully as the door closed behind him.
“Kitchen,” I answered, suddenly nervous. I had a sudden urge to slide the box into my lap before Rodeo saw it, sneak it back out to Yager, and return it to its secret hiding spot. I hate ruining a good mood.
But me—and the box—stayed put.
“You know that kid around the block who’s been trying to learn to ride his bike? AJ?” Rodeo asked from the hallway, his voice coming closer. “Well, you won’t believe what I just saw.” He rounded the corner, eyes shining with delight. “We’re walking past his house, not paying attention at all, when out of—”
Rodeo stopped. In every sense of the word. He stopped talking. Stopped walking. Stopped smiling, slowly. Stopped breathing, I think. ’Cause he saw me, sitting there, and more importantly, he saw what was sitting on the table in front of me.
The moment that he saw it, I knew I’d been right about what was inside.
I didn’t know what to say. So I didn’t say anything.
Rodeo breathed in through his nose, breath whiffling through his mustache hairs. Then out. He didn’t look at me. His eyes were locked on that box.
“Ah,” he said. Chewed on his lips for a second. Then, “Ah,” he said again.
I swallowed, loud.
He nodded. To himself, I think.
Then he stepped forward, slow, like he was wading through water. And he pulled out the other chair with a little scrape. And he sat down, like a balloon losing all its air. His eyes never left the box.
He slid one hand across the table, toward the box. But then stopped and pulled it back.
Finally, his eyes came up to mine. They were already getting a little red, and a little extra-wet. I thought maybe mine were, too.
“You found it,” he said, his voice scratchy.
“Yeah.”
His eyes dropped back to the box.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
I pursed my lips. “Sorry you hid it from me, or sorry I found it?”
“Well, shoot,” he said. “Both, I guess.”
“You … you had it all along?”
He nodded.
“But … why? I mean … why didn’t you … why was she…”
Rodeo closed his eyes and scratched at his beard. He still had a hard time when he thought about what had happened to us. What had happened to them. Talking about it. Saying their names.
He was better than he had been. Way better. He’d been seeing a counselor and everything, and she was great, and he’d come a long way. But he still had a hard time.
“It’s … it’s what she wanted. We, uh…” He sighed, heavy, shook his head. “We’d talked about it, and she wanted—she wanted to be, uh…” He gestured at the box with the back of his hand. “That.”
“But … there was a funeral,” I said.
I didn’t hardly remember a thing about those weeks after the accident. I was only seven, after all. And the universe had just had a hole torn in itself, after all. I remember lots of crying. Me crying, and everyone else crying. Dad being a mess, just a disaster, just crying and even screaming sometimes, all a mess. Lots of people hugging me and rubbing my back and trying to get me to eat. And I remembered a funeral, or something. A stuffy room. More crying. Some talking that I didn’t listen to. I threw up, I think.
“Sure,” Rodeo said. “There was a service.”
“With coffins,” I said, and my voice broke. “I saw them.” An image, blurry, sickening. One of the coffins was small. Small enough for my little sister.
“Yeah,” Rodeo said. “Two coffins, little bird.”
“Just two?”
My dad nodded. And he rubbed at his eyes with a knuckle.
“Just two.”
“My sisters,” I whispered.
“Mm-hmm.” He cleared his throat, then again. “I, uh, didn’t know. What to do, I mean. With, uh. Didn’t know what they woulda wanted, so they were … uh … well, they were, you know, buried. But I knew what, uh.” He breathed. “I knew what your mom wanted. So.”
I think I mentioned that my dad had a hard time talking about it.
“It’s weird,” I said. “That … that you had this all along. Hiding it. That you … brought it with us, all that way, all that time we were on the road, but that you never told me?” I don’t know why I asked it like a question. I guess it was one, kind of.
“Yeah.” Rodeo exhaled the word, like a surrender. “I s’pose. But, lord, Coyote, I … I just couldn’t let her go, you know? But, also, I couldn’t…” He trailed off. Looked away, lost. “I couldn’t. So”—he gestured again at the box—“yeah.”
We sat there in silence for a while, us two. Well, us three, kind of. Which was weird.
“So,” I said. “Are we supposed to, like, bury her, or something? Or put her in one of those vase things?”
Rodeo sighed. “Nah. She didn’t want to be locked up like that.”
Feeling surprisingly generous, I didn’t bother pointing out that for six years he’d kept her locked in a box, hidden behind a bookshelf.
“She wanted to be scattered. You know, set free.”
“Where?”
“She had a special place in mind.”
“Did she tell you where she wanted to be … scattered?”
