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  High Ball: My Brother, Coyote (ÁNAAÍ MA’II)

  Copyright © 2006 by James Buchanan

  All rights reserved. No part of this eBook may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address Torquere Press, PO Box 2545, Round Rock, TX 78656.

  ISBN: 1-933389-65-6

  Printed in the United States of America.

  Torquere Press electronic edition / April 2006

  Torquere Press eBooks are published by Torquere Press, PO Box 2545, Round Rock, TX 78685.

  www.torquerepress.com

  MY BROTHER, COYOTE

  (ÁNAAÍ MA’II)

  By

  James Buchanan

  FIRST

  (átsé)

  It was so dark, a thick darkness… like black wool. Pregnant, bruised clouds rolled across the sky, billowing into white thunderheads in the east. Lightening lit the western clouds inside with blue and yellow flashes. Snarled fingers of creosote and mesquite were shadow upon shadow clawing at the night. Rain drummed the roof of True Yazzie’s little truck. A hard, male rain… the kind that was all destruction not life.

  What was it, three-thirty, four-o-clock? Wonderful way to start a day.

  “Come on nizhóní chidítsoh.” My sweetheart truck. “Please baby, please. You love me, you know you love me.” As he cajoled, True cranked the key in the ignition of his aging Toyota.

  Navajo didn’t curse and rant when things went wrong. That would offend the spirit of the vehicle. Instead they wheedled, coaxed and promised new air filters or better gas… made the thing want to behave for them.

  He shouldn’t have tried to make the wash. It was bad enough going when it was dry: spill a beer can and the shallow gully became a rushing river. Black water already swirled about the running boards. Tonal clicks followed the futile electric screech. Headlights flickered, picking out debris churning in the brackish flow. True ran his fingers through black hair, longish on top but cropped close along the sides. What the hell was he doing out here? A little pick-up truck island stranded in the torrent. He banged his hand on the dash and set the pine tree air-freshener swinging. Why had he gone out? Making up for time lost on winter break. Rain or sleet or snow, True would have gone to Martha’s house.

  ~~~~~

  Martha had wanted a Hatqu’li, medicine man, someone to call to the Holy People. Not that he was much of a singer. With school he just didn’t have a whole lot of time to study other things. Besides, it was really an older man’s calling. Something you took up after the recklessness of youth had wound its way through your system. But True had never been particularly reckless. He could have his moments of idiocy like anyone. Some of the best singers were drunks or addicts. Navajo wanted their holy men a little more human than most other tribes would tolerate. A hand-trembler, whose fingers shook from D.T.s, might just know illness a bit better than one who had never suffered.

  Although his sand paintings still didn’t come out quite right, True already knew most of the chants of In-dah, the Ghost-Way. The prayers and forms and dry-paintings of the Big-Star-Way were driving him nuts trying to remember them all – he was going to end up insane from trying to learn a cure for insanity. Most Hatqu’li never mastered more than one chant-way; three to nine nights of ritual which had to be completed in just the right fashion. The ceremony must be done without error or the Ye’i, the Holy People, would not be compelled to respond.

  His sophomore year he’d run into Martha and Lupe at the “Welcome Back” picnic for the United Native American Organization. He knew Lupe through his freshman association with the UNAO at NMSU. Lupe had asked how his training with his Uncle Jim was coming and after that her Grandmother Martha wouldn’t let him be.

  True had tried to put her off. Boy had he tried. He had only gone the first time to persuade Martha to find someone else.

  It didn’t make a lot of sense. He was Dîné from up near Grants and they were Apache from Taos. But Martha had been insistent, in the way old women can be, that she needed a medicine man. He knew less of her peoples’ ceremonies than he knew about Catholic ritual. It didn’t matter to her. A white man’s doctor just wouldn’t do for Martha.

  Years ago, now, he’d sat in her dim, little living room for the first time. The smell of fry-bread wafted in from the kitchen. Velvet paintings of Christ and Elvis hung on cheap, dark paneling… the kind that pretended it was mahogany. A brindled dog, simply called Dog, lolled by the electric heater. Brackish coffee followed cookies followed a dinner of beans and rice and Chilaquiles. Dog would push his wet nose into True’s hip and he’d slip a little tortilla under the table. All the time she had talked. True had never heard someone talk so much. He’d eaten and she’d rambled on about her kids and grandkids and people from home. Sometime around the fifth mouthful he’d figured out what she needed.

  Once a month he got a free meal and she got someone willing to just listen. True was a good listener. Words weren’t meant to be wasted among the Dîné, they were too powerful. If a Navajo spoke it meant something needed to be said. Children learned to pay attention and not interrupt or press. When the speaker was done, she’d let you know.

  Apache seemed to have different rules. When he’d told his Uncle Jim about it, the older singer had nodded knowingly, “Sometimes it’s the thoughts kept inside that become the sickness. Especially for the old ones. Good thing to get it out. Good for you to let her.”

  True visited Martha so the sickness wouldn’t be held inside… so she could have hózhó, harmony, in her life.

  Yesterday the storm had hit just before dinner; wind screaming and rain pounding. Hail had peppered the trailer. Lighting had lit the sky with the boom of thunder following close on its heels.

  Resigning himself to spending the night, True had curled up in an old blanket and called it fate, but he’d woken on Martha’s lumpy couch having tossed and turned most of the night.

  It was the dream again.

  Running. Running hard. Air burning True’s lungs as his bare feet pounded the dried caleche clay. On his left, Coyote ran. On his right, Coyote ran. Behind him Coyote ran. Their fur rippled in the wind as they tore across the desert, egging him on, nipping his heels until finally he fell. And there was no end to the falling.

  Waking up covered in sweat, in a strange house, hadn’t helped. His mind kept running over the dream, his dissertation and the work he still needed to do. The chair of his examining committee was a slave driver and an arrogant one to boot. It seemed like graduate students were there to do his job so that he could be out schmoozing with the fat cat donors over at Santa Teresa. After teaching the man’s freshmen classes and grading the sophomore’s term papers and picking up his dry cleaning, there wasn’t much time left for getting any of True’s own work done. And with the stipend the university gave him, hardly any money was left to buy gas or food or pay rent. Hell, he’d had to apply to the power company for a hardship on his electric bill.

  This was his last year. He needed to get his dissertation finished. Every time he thought he was close, the Chair threw another roadblock in front of him. There was so much work to do today. It couldn’t be put off any longer. If things weren’t completed now, just perfect, he’d never get out from under that man.

  Even with that pressure, what he should have done when he saw it was still pouring was stay the day. He could have killed time watching insipid local programming while Martha talked. Instead he defied the elements and lost.

  The blackness of deep morning wound about him. An evil time to be out… a time with no light, dawn was still hours away. ‘Stupid, stupid, stupid’ his own voice chanted in his ears. He should have stayed at Martha’s, bu
t no, it was a family habit just to do stupid things. True dropped his head on the steering wheel and picked at the worn seat cover trying to figure out his next move. The cover’s Indian blanket design of grey and black stripes woven in nylon pulled him in.

  An old blanket striped brown on black had covered his brother's shaking form. Seth curled in the back seat of the police car, purple shadows of bruises mottling his cheek and chin. More, new and old, would be hidden under his clothes.

  Seth wasn’t really his brother, but his mother’s cousin’s son. Cousin-brothers, that’s how their world defined them. Only an hour separated them in time. Their mothers held hands as Old Woman Vasquez helped bring two boys screaming into the world. Strength and pain slipped back and forth between the women binding their children forever. Ánaaí Seth, atsilí True, big brother, little brother, in the old ways they would have all shared the same roof because they were tied to each other through their mother’s blood.

  As True stood by the police car, a low voice came from behind him, “Tick, wanna talk to me about tonight?”

  Everyone called him Tick back then. It had started as a joke when they were very young. Someone had asked for True and his mother snapped that they should find Seth because True would be stuck to him like a tick on a sheep. At first the name had bothered him. After a while it just was another name.

  He turned his attention to the officer, directing his gaze somewhere below the man’s right knee. Direct eye contact was too personal to share with this man.

  “They say you were here.” The officer was a cousin, his father’s sister’s husband’s cousin, not so close as Seth.

  “Yeah.”

  ~~~~~

  True had crawled through the small window into a dank trailer that reeked of motor oil, dogs and mildew. A dingy, narrow mobile home squatted on a plot of desert east of town. Nothing much, but Seth and his Dad called it home. Rank weeds punched through gaps in the skirting. When the wind was up you could feel it thrum under the floor. Seth had sat cross-legged on the mattress, a handful of glossy magazines clutched tightly. Such a prize they had found, kicking around the dumpsters behind one of the bars, dirty magazines. It was as good as candy at Christmas for two teenage boys.

  A peek through the half opened door confirmed Martín DelOro, Seth’s old man, was home. They crowded next to each other watching him sprawled in grimy, grey dungarees on the couch. Seth’s dad was half Mexican; the old ways didn’t mean shit to him. Drunk in the front room, Seth’s dad was not one you wanted to be around when he was muy borracho. There wasn’t a time that it hadn’t been so, not that either boy could remember.

  Seth closed the door quietly and put his back against the bedstead. Lying on the bed, feet propped against the far wall, True fingered one of the magazines. Pressed so close to Seth, True could smell the wind and sand in his hair.

  Seth’s room was hardly more than a closet. Still, he had more privacy than True could even imagine. All of his brothers and sisters slept in the same room. So he came to Seth’s house. It was worth the risk of catching his uncle in a bad mood just to be alone for awhile. Martín’s drinking habits were why they always came and went through the window in Seth’s room.

  Voice low so as not to wake the sleeping man, “What’d ya think Tick?” Somewhere from his dad’s mom’s side Seth had inherited golden brown eyes. They flicked furtively over the shiny, black covers with their teasing pictures. Neither had really looked when they found the magazines. There wasn’t time. Just long enough to guess what they had, then grab them from the dumpster and run.

  Now, as they flipped through the slick pages, hands damp with excitement, a whole new world exploded before them.

  “Whoa crap.” True’s hiss was barely audible. Blonde hair, tan lines and not a whole lot of clothes on those pages. They were all guys, doing things to other guys. Lips touching, hands exploring, mouths and tongues caressing very private places; True had never imagined such things. Then he noticed a blonde on his back with legs in the air and a dark-haired fellow putting himself, well, in there, and suddenly True knew.

  He knew why he always wanted to be with Seth. He knew why he got angry and hot inside when Seth flirted with the girls at school. He knew why he dreaded Squaw Dances, with the giggling girls prodded by their mothers to pick good-looking boys like him and like Seth… having to give up his precious nickels and dimes so the girls would leave them alone. Dark desire crawled in the pit of his stomach. Glancing up he met Seth’s gaze. Seth’s amber eyes were hard and hungry. True’s eyes held the same hunger. Both saw. Both dropped their stares. But where their eyes landed was the magazines that told them what they wanted from each other.

  Neither could believe what the other’s face said. To commit and say such things was not how they’d been raised. “So that’s what they do to each other?” the words were whispered; giving form to the thought.

  “Yeah, I guess,” Seth coughed. “You think it hurts?”

  “Stick your finger up there and find out,” True teased. Seth’s boot caught him on the thigh, pushed, trying to shove True off the edge of the bed. True punched him back, hitting his hip. Laughs came out as snorts.

  Two men were almost kissing in a full page spread. Holding it up for Seth’s inspection, “What do you think they’re saying?”

  Crooning, leaning in, “Oh baby, oh baby,” Seth mimicked the soaps on T.V. True pushed his cousin’s face away. Seth grabbed his hand and True tried to yank it back. He kicked and missed.

  “Come on, bro, you can do better than that.” Seth taunted him. Holding his wrist, holding his ankle, the older boy wrested him down, pinned him. Both were laughing and True looked in Seth’s eyes… really looked again. You never stared like that, it just wasn’t done. Hunger, need, everything he felt was echoed back.

  His free hand found Seth’s chest, up underneath his shirt. Cold fire burned under his palm, Seth’s pulse drumming in time with his own. True could feel it, knew he could touch Seth this way, be with him always this way, never have to lose him this way. True’s gut tightened, spun, and he felt nauseous. A sharp, searing blow smashed the inside of his head. His ears rang with a terrible, high-pitched whine. Large, glowing, a black light burned before his eyes.

  Then it was gone and he was with Seth. Peace, no wanting, no pain, just gentle longing and bliss.

  Seth leaned in, his rust brown hair brushing True’s cheek. With Seth’s weight heavy on his body, True pulled Seth hard against his mouth. His first real kiss was with Seth. It was moaning and tongues and not breathing at all. Everything had gone hard and throbbing; hormones rampaging between them.

  That’s when Martín had lurched through the door.

  “Que es? Putos! Mariposas!” The boys scrambled; trying to find the farthest point from each other. There was nowhere to go. The room was barely the length of the twin sized bed. “Soy feliz que su madre murió así que ella no tuvo que ver!” The man’s fist crashed into the wall. Another blow caught the small of True’s back. Then Martín went for his belt. A thick, wicked piece of leather he used on the horses and sheep.

  ~~~~~

  Still lost in the memory, True answered the officer’s question. “Got out through the window. He was wailing on Seth something awful.”

  ~~~~~

  Darting about the tiny room, they ducked under the belt and the blows. Then a fist slammed into True’s head. Knocked back on the bed, he went for escape. Half way through the window, broad hands caught True’s waist, dragging him back. He turned and bit into his uncle’s arm, tearing out a chunk of skin. Seth jumped Martín, kicking his sides and pounding his head. His old man threw him off, across the room and into the closet. Clothes and camp gear rained down to covered him.

  Amber eyes rolled back into Seth’s skull. Dislodged from its corner, the 30.06 rifle dropped across his knees. Seth slumped limp as blow after blow rained down. The old man straddled his son, pounding his face. True screamed. The rifle came up. The barrel roared. And then True was on his butt on t
he ground outside.

  A turquoise bead heart fetish was clutched in True’s hand. A cold, blue stone shot through with black veins rested in his palm. Seth’s fetish, he never let it away from him. True squeezed the stone tight between his fingers, tasting Seth’s soul inside. Dark, burning pain wound through his chest. Aching desire whispered to keep the thing close to him. Shoving it against his pulse, True hid the fetish heart from the world, keeping it safe.

  The night was deep and cold. The horror inside that sinister, constricted trailer seeped into the air outside. Then True felt something slither across his body. Fear breaking in his heart, he slid his gaze to the east. Three pairs of pitch eyes worked frost under his skin. A lanky, rust colored shadow gained its feet. Staggering forward, its black tongue lolled against dripping lips. Wicked teeth flashed in the dark. Mirror eyes caught the moon. “Yóó íí jéé’!” Coyote’s laughing bark sang in his head, the other beasts picking up the howling cadence. Run away! They screamed to the night.