The Coyote Way, page 14
part #3 of Vanished Series
“I heard he’s got something planned for the market, something big,” Mick says, and I wait quietly, in case he knows more than he’s letting on, but his mouth is shut.
“You got any idea what it might be?” I ask.
“What the fuck do I care what these Injuns do? If you’re worried about it, stay away from the market.”
We walk the rest of the way in silence, but Mick gives me a fist bump when he turns off at the stairs for his first class on the second floor. Mick is weird like that. He talks like he’s pissed off, then he’s friendly like nothing happened. I’ve been trying to get a feel for what the rest of the school thinks of the guy, but all I’ve found out is that nobody talks about him. Same as me. I sort of came one day, everyone checked me out, then everyone moved on the way they’ve been moving all year. Everyone except for Kai, that is. Kai looks for me in the halls. I’ve seen it. She sort of cranes her neck around to look for me every day when she comes out of first period near my locker. She’s the only one outside of Mick who really acknowledges that I exist here, but two is better than none.
The classes are fine. The classes are classes. Pretty easy, actually. I think Owen went a little crazy with his Professor Bennet’s Education Emporium routine. From what I gather, I’m at least a grade, maybe two, ahead of the rest of the kids my age. I don’t let it show. I try not to let anything about where I come from show. Not any cash, not any smarts, and definitely not the bell. I’ve got one shot here to make myself what I want to be, which is a kid who maybe could call this place home. Mick would say no chance, but I think Mick is kind of a loser.
The Crownrock booth has been moved outside into the back parking lot and roughly disassembled. It lies in five different pieces that will eventually join together to make a decent- sized, three-walled enclosure with a stage in the middle. The stage is for the dance crew. Crownrock has a dance crew that does your standard popular music routines but also traditional Navajo stuff. Sometimes a mix of the two. The three walls also exhibit student art, which is for sale. The art is OK. A few things are pretty good. But they tell me they sell out every year.
I fall in with the crew holding up the top part of one wall while another two guys take apart the bottom with power drills so we can get to the bare crossbar. A few people nod at me, sort of. At least they shuffle to make room for me. That’s a victory, I guess. I find myself looking at people’s mouths, trying to see what Ben saw on the street with the coyote and the bead, or what Owen saw with the guy in the morgue. It’s tough, though. Everybody in high school chews gum all the time. And as for acting weird, well, hell. Take your pick. There’s this guy in my history class who talks to himself all the time. Another kid in English lit blurts out cuss words at strange times, and nobody acts like it’s weird at all.
I get pretty into the woodworking part. Pap would be proud. I picked up a good base from him, so I actually know a bit about this stuff. I break open the existing joint without cracking things then pull out the crossbar with the help of two or three other kids. We set it on a bunch of flat cardboard that we spread out so we don’t get paint all over the parking lot, then get to painting. The other kids still don’t talk to me, but I get the feeling that they’re more comfortable every day talking around me. It sounds pathetic, but it’s true. I think it helps just being here. I get to dippin’ and slidin’.
I think I lose track of time a bit, because the next thing I know I’m done with the base coat and it’s time to put in the designs, which are the type of traditional Navajo connected triangles that you see all over New Mexico, painted in the colors of Crownrock High, which I only just learned are the blue and red I’ve been getting all over my clothes for a week. Could be worse, I suppose. The Sargaso kids have to deal with adobe pink. That’s rough.
I’m about to go search for the right buckets when two of them plunk down right next to me, and then Kai plunks down too. She’s wearing paint-streaked jean shorts and an old art smock, which is really just a ratty men’s dress shirt about ten sizes too big that she wears backward. She’s got flecks of paint in her jet-black hair and a few little drops on her thighs. She sits cross-legged, leans back on her palms, and watches me for a second.
I think I must be staring, because eventually she looks down at her smock and then says, “What? I think it’s a pretty good look for me.”
“It works.”
“What’s your deal, Grant?” she asks. She’s not smiling at me, not exactly, but her words sound like she’s smiling. I think it’s something the Navajo can do.
“My deal?”
“You’ve been here, what, a week? And instead of checking out the football team or the lacrosse club or just bugging out with the other white kids, you’ve been here every day, painting a market booth for stuff you have nothing to do with.”
I shrug. “I dunno. Maybe because I want to have something to do with it. Plus, I’m not really the football or lacrosse type.”
She nods. She’s chewing gum too. I hope. Yeah, I know. It’s just gum.
“Kind of hard to play in black jeans,” she says.
“They ain’t so black anymore.” Two days ago I dumped a blot of white primer on my jeans. It won’t scrub out. They’re sort of motley now.
“Aren’t.” I correct myself, awkwardly late.
“Yeah, well then maybe you ain’t gonna mind getting a little blue and red here and there,” she says, and she pops open both cans, stirring each up with one side of the same stick. She hands me a washed brush. “Stick between the lines.”
We paint in silence for a while. Or maybe I should say she paints in silence. I test about a million lines of dialogue in my head, and I’m about ready to sweat with how much I’m trying to stay between the lines when she says, “Since you basically painted the whole thing, are you gonna go to market to see it in action?”
To be honest, I’d been so focused on the setup and hopefully seeing Kai, exactly the way that’s happening right now, that I haven’t given much thought to actually going to the market or not.
“’Cause if you were,” she says, turning back to the design, “there’s this big party some of the alumni kids throw at Marcy Park—”
“Of course he’s gonna go,” says a voice from behind me. It’s deadly even, and I know exactly who it is without looking. My shoulders want to sag, but I don’t let them. “That’s who the market’s for,” he says. “Bilagaana like him, right? Look at me when I’m talking to you.”
I set down my brush carefully on a corner of cardboard and stand up. I turn around, and Hos is about a foot from me, his entourage of ogres with him. He’s shorter than me, but not by much, and the way he’s looking at me is like I’m about an inch tall anyway. He’s wearing another cutoff T-shirt and loose jeans with boots. His shoulders sport a bunch of tattoos that look Navajo that I never noticed before. He’s probably no more than two years older than me, but it looks like he and I are on opposite sides of the spectrum of life.
“Right, kid?”
I’m stunned. I think adrenaline has wiped my brain. I have no idea what he’s talking about. “What?” I ask.
“The market, fucknuts. That’s where your kind peruses our kind. Right? Like a zoo, sort of, except we dance for you and hold out pots and beads for you?”
“I dunno, man,” I stammer. “I ain’t never been to the market before.” The other kids have stopped working, once again, and are gathering around the fringes. Hos is on a roll.
“Let me tell you, then. It basically goes like this.” He takes the stick Kai stirred the paint with and wipes it on his hands. “A bunch of Indians from all around the country paint themselves up like this and hope white people notice them and give them money.” He slams my chest with his open palm and leaves a blue-and-red palm print. I back up a pace but keep my feet. “And white people like you look for great deals on authentic Indian shit for their condos and then hope that the actual Indians will just go back to wherever they came from once the big show is over.”
“Leave him alone, Hosteen,” Kai says. She’s still sitting down, facing forward, but all that hidden shine that she had is gone once again. “It’s not his fault.”
Hos looks at her and shakes his head. “I know that, Sister.” He crouches down until his face is right behind her head, but she still won’t look at him. “It’s our fault. For not doing something about it. For letting them walk all over us. But all that’s about to end. And it’s not too late for you to join us. There’s still time to make your clan proud.”
He stands again and turns to me. He looks at his print on my shirt and smirks. “Looks better than it did before.” He moves the paint stick closer to me. “Maybe we oughta mark you up a little more, huh?” His two ogre bodyguards move to the other side of me, and now Kai is looking up at me. She looks scared. And that’s the first time in this whole fracas that I start to get scared. Hos takes another step and raises the stick to swipe it across my face, but then I hear a beating of wings. Big wings. It sounds like somebody is shaking out a sheet. And I know what’s coming, so I duck. Chaco lets out a single explosive call, and all I see is a shadow with inch-long talons swipe at Hos from behind. I can actually hear one talon strike home on his forearm. It makes a zip sound as it cuts him from his elbow all the way up to his hand, then Chaco is away again.
I stand up and find Hos staring at his bleeding forearm. I can already see that it’ll scab but won’t scar. Chaco held back, but the paint stick is basically gone. Just a nub of it remains in his hand. Some of the kids start yelling, not sure what they just saw. They’re pointing at the roof of the gym, where Chaco perches with the stick in his grasp. Even at this distance he looks big. Kai stands and shields her eyes to get a better view of him, then she starts to laugh. She points at Hos’s big buddies. There’s a clear line of bird shit running over both of them, shoulders and heads and all. It’s as if I dipped my brush in a bucket of the stuff and flung it at ’em in a big arc. All three of them start fuming. They want to be mad at me, but they can’t. I didn’t do anything.
“Stupid fucking bird,” Hos mutters. “Must have thought the stick was food or some shit.”
“Maybe,” I say.
He looks at me with fire in his eyes. “Maybe? The fuck does that mean, maybe?”
I shrug. “It means maybe.”
He looks at me sidelong for a cold ten seconds or so then turns to Kai. “Get up. Time to go. This booth is as done as it’s gonna get.”
I can see that Kai doesn’t want to leave, but she gets up anyway and shoulders her bag. She looks at me briefly, and her eyes say sorry. She shoulders past Hos and his crew, and they close ranks behind her. I can’t see her, but I can hear her walking away.
Hos takes one last look at Chaco, who takes this moment to let out three opportune caws. Hos looks to be weighing something carefully in his mind, then he shakes his head.
“See you at the big dance, bilagaana. Make sure you’re there.” Then he winks at me.
He walks off, his bleeding arm seemingly forgotten. The rest of his crew don’t even spare me a glance as they follow him. Once they’re gone, all of my adrenaline dumps, and I’m instantly exhausted. I feel like I’m gonna fall asleep onto the fresh paint, but I finish the design. When the crew leader, a big senior gal, says that’s a wrap and that we’ll reassemble everything in Santa Fe, I clap along with everyone else then grab my backpack and go. Nobody seems to notice except for Chaco. He flies right above me.
“You all right there, boss?” he asks me, the first words he’s spoken to me all day.
“Yeah,” I say. “Thanks for helping me out back there.”
“No prob. You know, I think you’re right, man. That one is trouble. He may be wrapped up in all this. Maybe our coyote.”
“And all I did was piss him off.”
Suddenly I feel like an idiot. Maybe Mick was right when he said I was crazy to help out with the market crew. Nobody seemed to give a damn if I was there or not. Even Kai thought it was weird. What was the point of all that? What was I trying to do? Be an Indian? Did I think some paint and a few nails would turn me Navajo?
“It was all a waste of time, man,” I say.
“You never know,” Chaco replies. I can hear him coming in low. “Heads up,” he says.
He backpedals above me and drops something from his claws. I snatch it out of the air and slow to a stop. It’s the paint stick, half red, half blue. I can see little imprints where Kai’s fingers smudged the paint. I can’t stop staring at it. The paint is so bright it almost sparkles in the sun, and her fingerprints are cleanly pressed, like whorled ice crystals. Even the jagged end where it broke looks beautiful, like the splinters could tell a story. It feels heavy.
“What’s that look like to you?” Chaco asks.
“A paint stick.” But already I know it’s not. It’s more.
“See, to me that looks like a certain broken stirring stick we’ve been on the hunt for.”
He’s right. The story of my arrival at Crownrock is wrapped up in this stick. It might have been the coyote’s once, before I came, but I took it back. Kai helped, and Chaco helped. Even Hos helped in his own way. I grin to think that our coyote himself might have handed me one of his warning signs.
Either way, that’s two down, four to go.
Chapter 20
The Walker
It’s almost three in the morning, the night before the market, and I’m walking the soft streets of Santa Fe. They literally look soft. They’re so old in places that the stones and bricks dip and crest like frozen ripples in a pond. A lot of Navajo kind of roll their eyes at Santa Fe. Part of it is because white people love it so much. Part of it is because for a while in the 1900s it was a place where the Navajo could actually live and work. Now it’s a place where rich people eat and shop. I don’t know a single Navajo who could afford a place in this city, so I get where they’re coming from. But don’t blame the city. It’s old as hell. Since I died, I’ve gotten a lot of perspective. Forget what happened in the 1900s, try the 1500s. Or the 900s. People were here then too. You don’t have that much history without also getting a little magic. You can feel it here, in the old streets, the old churches, the old hills dotted with old graves. This city is an old rock in the desert. It’s been hot and cold and hot again, and it doesn’t seem to care what anybody thinks. I like it. So sue me.
Usually Santa Fe is a pretty quiet city too, despite all the tourists, but not tonight. Not even at 3:00 a.m., and it certainly won’t be tomorrow. Whatever creeping unease taints the rez has spread here. I know the coyote has been here too. His breath seems to hang dead in the night air. Distrust is everywhere, even between the volunteers and cops that sit at the intersections. These guys should be shootin’ the shit, sneaking off to get arepas and maybe even a beer if they aren’t in uniform. Every year the NNPD sends a couple lucky bastards to represent here. I was chosen one year when Chief Yokana felt particularly sorry for me about everything around Ana. It’s a cakewalk. A paid vacation. But not today. Today everybody is yelling at everybody. Micromanaging things like cordons and cones that nobody really needs. Waving cars off and getting pissy whenever the booth people ask for something.
I’m trying to mark these things more than just in passing. I’m trying to look for patterns, maybe find a way to track the coyote, to be where he wants to be before he brings down the house, because I think he’s gonna bring down the house. We’ve got a way to catch him now, if we can beat the clock, thanks to the sand painters, and thanks to Caroline, but we’ve got to act fast.
You should have seen her by the campfire. She was unreal in the night light of the Arroyo. I couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing. Caroline, right there where Joey and I used to raise hell. Caroline, walking into the very place the NNPD tells even the Navajo to steer clear of if they can help it. I never thought I’d live to see the day an Arroyo campfire would play off the warmth of her eyes. Turns out I didn’t live to see it. But what I got was the next best thing. At one point, I swear she looked for me. I was there, listening, next to the smoker (which, at the rate that guy rips cigs, I bet I’ll be seeing again pretty soon), but her eyes passed right through me just as sure as my hands pass right through booth after booth after booth under the heavy moonlight.
I feel the telltale pressure drop of a Chaco arrival, like an itch in my ear. There’s the pop, and then I feel the wind of his wings and the heavy weight of him as he settles on my shoulders. I relax without knowing I was ever tense. Sometimes when your fingers pass through too many things, it starts to key you up, I guess. The solid weight of Chaco feels good. Like a fat file folder of finished work. Not that I’d ever tell the ungrateful bastard.
“We got two,” he says.
“No kidding?”
“Yeah, the stirring stick. It came from the school. It came around because of Grant.”
I smile. That kid surprises at every turn. Here I was thinking maybe he’d give up and join a metal band. Instead he insists on enrolling at a Navajo high school and, for better or for worse, seems like he’s hacking it. That can’t be easy. They picked on me in high school because I was small, but even a small Navajo is still a Navajo. In the circles I ran with in high school the social scene went from the popular-jock-badass Navajo kids at the top to the skinny white boys like Grant at the bottom. What he’s doing takes guts.
“I also think maybe he’s right about the market,” Chaco says. “Something big is gonna happen here, tomorrow night during the dances, most likely. Keep an eye on a kid everybody calls Hos.” Chaco settles into the crook of my neck and gets small. He hasn’t done that in years.
“That’s a lead, Chaco. Why do you sound like you ate some bad Chinese?”
“I didn’t believe him. I should have, but I didn’t.”
“Don’t start moping now, right when we gotta get to work.” I kind of gloat. I can’t help it. Usually it’s me whining and crying imaginary tears at one of my pity parties. I never get to sit at the other end of the table. He says nothing, only gets smaller.
