Coyote Blue (23 page)

"Mr. F.," Sam called.

Minty looked up as he reached the car. "Yes?"

"Thanks for not going to the cops. I understand your position."

Minty nodded and got in the Lincoln.

Calliope came up beside Sam and stood with him watching Minty drive away. She said, "Grubb is all I have."

Sam reached out and took her hand, not knowing what to say, having failed at the only thing he was really good at, talking people into doing things they didn't want to do.

The young monk came out of the door behind them. "The Master is fixing your car," he said. He was stirring some green tea into an earthenware bowl with a bamboo whisk. "More tea?"

~* * *~

They stood together in the sun, watching the old man work. He fingered each bolt carefully before fitting a wrench to it, then removed the bolt so quickly that his hands blurred with the movement.

Sam said, "How long…"

"Don't talk to him when he works," Steve cautioned. "He will finish when he finishes. But don't talk to him. When you work, work. When you talk, talk."

"Do you get many customers? I mean, you are pretty far out here."

"Three," Steve said. He was wearing a straw hat to protect his shaved head.

"Three today?"

"No, just three."

"Then what do you do in the meantime?"

"We wait."

"That's all?"

Steve said, "Is that all the patriarch Daruma did at the wall for nine years?" There was no anger in his voice. "We wait."

"But how do you pay your rent, buy food?"

"There is no rent. The owner of King's Lake, Augustus Brine, brings us food. He is a fisherman."

"King's Lake is up the road, right? What is it, a resort?"

"A house of pleasure."

"A whorehouse that supports Buddhist monks?"

"How sweet," Calliope said.

"He's got it," Coyote said, pointing to the Master, who was holding up a rod of polished metal.

"A bent push rod," Steve said. The master carried the push rod into the shop. They all followed and watched as the old man tightened the rod into a vise. He picked up a hammer and stood over the vise, his free hand feeling the rod. Without warning the old man screamed and delivered a clanging blow to the push rod, then bowed and set the hammer on the bench.

"Fixed," Steve said, bowing.

"Is that how he lost his fingers?"

"To achieve enlightenment, one must give up the things of this world."

"Like piano lessons," Coyote said.

Chapter 28 – Hope Is Bulletproof,

Truth Just Hard to Hit

As Minty Fresh drove back to Las Vegas he thought about what Sam had said:
"You have a mother, don't you?"
And the question set Minty Fresh to thinking about a phone call from his mother that had changed his life.

"You're the only one left can do something, baby. The others are too far or too far gone. Please come home, baby, I need you." (Even when he had to duck to pass through her front door she still called him "baby.") That tone: he'd heard it in her voice before, when she was tugging at her husband to get him to stop strapping her youngest. But he hadn't gone back for her, had he? It was a call deep with duty and silent pride that brought him home. He went back for Nathan.

Nathan Fresh had never been home when any of his nine children were born. He was a sailor, and as far as he knew, when you came home from sea a new child would be waiting for you. The others grew an inch or two at a time, and the shoes that one was wearing when you left would be on the next one down when you got home. He loved his children, foreign creatures that they were, and trusted his wife to raise them – as long as they could line up, snap to, and pass inspection when he came home. And although he was gone most of the time, making the high seas safe for democracy, he was a presence in the house: photographs in crisp dress whites and blues stared down from the walls; commendations and medals; a letter once a week, read out loud at the supper table; and a thousand warnings of what Papa would do to a doomed misbehaver when he got home. To the Fresh children, Papa was only a little bit more real than Santa Claus, and only a bit more conspicuous.

On the ship, Chief Petty Officer Nathan Fresh was known only as the Chief: feared and respected, tough and fair, starched, razor creased, and polished, always in trim and intolerant of anyone who wasn't. The Chief: did you notice that he was black? only five foot five? barely 130 pounds? No, but did you see his eyes, like smiles, when he was showing the pictures of his kids – when he was telling tales of lobbing shells the size of refrigerators into the hills of Korea? Did you ever mention retirement to him? That's a frost, that's a chill.

Minty Fresh, the youngest of nine, the one born with golden eyes, knew the chill. "He's not mine," Papa said – said it only once. Minty stayed out of Papa's way when he could, wore dark glasses when he couldn't. At age ten he stood six feet tall and no amount of slouching would roll Papa's resentment off his back. His place in the family was a single line at the bottom of a letter – "Baby's fine too" – far enough from "Love, Momma" to deny the association. At night, by flashlight, he wrote his own letters: "My team is going to the state championships. I was voted all-conference. The press calls me M. F. Cool, because I wear tinted goggles when I play, and sunglasses during interviews. The colleges are calling already and sending recruiters to the games. You'd be proud. Momma swears you're wrong." In the bathroom he watched the letters go, in tiny pieces, around the bowl, down, and out to sea.

Minty Fresh left for the University of Nevada at Las Vegas the week after high school graduation, the same week that Nathan Fresh took his mandatory retirement from the navy and came home, to San Diego, for good. The coach at UNLV wanted Minty to lift weights all summer, beef up for the big boys. The coach gave Momma Fresh a new washer and dryer. Nathan Fresh put them out on the porch.

The day before the first game, when UNLV was going to unleash its secret weapon on the unsuspecting NCAA – a seven-foot center with a three-foot vertical leap who could bench-press four hundred pounds and shoot ninety percent from the free-throw line – M. F. Cool got the call. "I'm on my way, Momma," he said.

"My father needs me," he said to the coach.

"When we brought you up from nothing, gave you a full scholarship, put up with the goggles and the shades and the silly name? Gave your mother a washer and dryer? No. You won't miss the season opener. You're mine."

"How touching," Minty said. "No one has ever said that to me before." Perhaps, he thought later, stuffing the coach in that locker had been a mistake, but at the time a few hours in seclusion, among socks and jocks, seemed just what the coach needed to gain some perspective. He broke the key off in the padlock, tore the M. F. Cool label off the locker, and went home.

"He's been gone four days now," Momma said. "He drinks and gambles, hangs out at the pool hall 'til all hours. But he always came home before. Since he retired, he's changed. I don't know him."

"Neither do I."

"Bring him home, baby."

Minty took a cab to the waterfront and ducked in and out of a dozen bars and pool halls before he realized that Nathan would go anywhere but the waterfront. There were sailors there, reminders. After two days of searching he found Nathan, barely able to stand, shooting pool with a fat Mexican in a cantina outside of Tijuana.

"Chief, let's go. Momma's waiting."

"I ain't no chief. Go away. I got a game going."

Minty put his hand on his father's shoulder, cringing at the smell of tequila and vomit coming off him. "Papa, she's worried."

The fat Mexican moved around the table to where Minty stood and pushed him away with a cue stick. "My friend, this one goes nowhere until we get what he owes us." Two other Mexicans moved off their barstools. "Now you go." He poked Minty in the chest with the cue stick and Nathan Fresh wheeled on him and bellowed in finest chief petty officer form.

"Don't you touch my son, you fucking greaseball."

The Mexican's cue caught Nathan on the bridge of the nose and Nathan went down, limp. Minty palmed the Mexican's head and slammed his face into the pool table, then turned in time to catch each of the two coming off the bar with a fist in the throat. Another with a knife went airborne into a Corona mirror, which broke louder than his neck. Two more went down, one with a skull fractured by a billiard ball; one, his shoulder wrenched from its socket, went into shock. There were seven in all, broken or unconscious, before the cantina cleared and Minty, dripping blood from a cut on his arm, carried his father out.

Momma met them at the hospital and stood with Minty as Nathan came around. "What are you doing here, you yellow-eyed freak?" Minty walked out of the room. Momma followed.

"He don't mean it, baby. He really don't."

"I know, Momma."

"Where you going?"

"Back to Vegas."

"You call when he sobers up. He'll want to talk to you."

"Call me if you need me, Momma," he said. He kissed her on the forehead and walked out.

She called him every week, and he could tell by her whisper that Nathan was home, was fine. It made him fine too – not M. F. Cool, just M.F., the one who handled things. All that was missing was the feeling of being needed, essential, bound to duty.

Sam had said, "You have a mother, don't you?"

Minty steered the limo off the next exit, across the overpass, and back on the highway, headed back to King's Lake.

~* * *~

It had taken Steve, the Buddhist monk, only a half hour to put the car back together. When Sam tried to figure out a way to pay for the repairs, Steve said, "All misery comes from desire and connection to the material. Go." Sam said thanks.

Now he was driving the Z into Utah. Calliope was asleep on Coyote's lap. Coyote snored. Sam passed the time trying to figure out how long it would take to get to Sturgis, South Dakota, the location of the rally that the Guild was going to. About twenty hours, he thought, if the car held together. From time to time he looked over at Calliope and felt a twinge of jealousy toward Coyote. She looked like a child when she slept. He wanted to protect her, hold her. But it was that childlike quality that frightened him as well. Her ability to dismiss facts, deny the negative, to see things so clearly, but so clearly wrong. It was as if she refused to accept what any reasonable adult knew: the world was a dangerous, hostile place.

He brushed a strand of hair out of her face before looking back to the road. She murmured, and came awake with a yawn. "I was dreaming about sea turtles – that they were really dinosaur angels."

"And?"

"That's all. It was a dream."

Sam had been thinking about it too long, so there was anger in his voice when he asked her, "Why didn't you call me before you went after Lonnie?"

"I don't know."

"I was worried. If it weren't for Coyote, I would have never found you."

"Are you two related?" She seemed to be ignoring his anger. "You look a lot alike. He has the same eyes and skin."

"No, I just know him." Sam didn't want to explain, he wanted an answer. "Why didn't you call me?"

Calliope recoiled at his harshness. "I had to go get Grubb."

"I could have gone with you."

"Would you have? Is that what you wanted?"

"I'm here, aren't I? It would have been a hell of a lot easier if I didn't have to chase you across two states."

"And maybe you wouldn't have done it if it was a hell of a lot easier. Would you?"

The question, and her tone, threw him. He thought for a minute, looking at the road. "I don't know."

"I know," she said softly. "I don't know much, but I know about that. You're not the only man that ever wanted me or wanted to rescue me. They all do, Sam. Men are addicted to the wanting. You like the idea of having me, and the idea of rescuing me. That's what attracted you to me in the first place, remember."

"That's not true."

"It is true. That's why I had sex with you so soon."

"I don't get it." This was not at all how Sam had expected her to react. His brief moment of self-righteousness had degraded into self-doubt.

"I did it to see if you could get past the fantasy of wanting me and rescuing me, to the reality of me. Me, with a baby, and no education, and a lousy job. Me, with no idea what I'm going to do next. I can't stand the wanting coming at me all the time. I have to get past it, like I did with you, or ignore it."

"So you were testing me?" Sam said. "That's why you took off without telling me?"

"No, it wasn't a test. I liked you, but I have Grubb to take care of now. I can't afford to hope." She was starting to tear up. Sam felt as if he'd just been caught stomping a litter of kittens. She took Grubb's blanket from behind the seat and wiped her eyes.

"You okay?" Sam asked.

She nodded. "Sometimes I want to be touched and I pretend that I'm in love – and that someone loves me. I just take my moments and forget about hope. You were going to be a moment, Sam. But I started to have hope. If I'd called you and you had said no, then I would have lost my hope again."

"That's not how I am," Sam said.

"How are you, then?"

Sam drove in silence for a while, trying to think of something to say – the right thing to say. But that wasn't the answer either. He always knew the right thing to say to get what he wanted, or had until Coyote showed up. But now, he didn't know what he wanted. Calliope had declared wanting a mortal sin. Talking to a woman, to anyone, without having an agenda was completely foreign to him. Where was he supposed to speak from? What point of view? Who was he supposed to be?

He was afraid to look at her, felt heat rise in his face when he thought about her looking at him, waiting. Maybe the truth? Where do you go to find the truth? She had found it, let it go at him. She had laid her hope in his hands and she was waiting to see what he would do with it.

Finally he said, "I'm a full-blooded Crow Indian. I was raised on a reservation in Montana. When I was fifteen I killed a man and I ran away and I've spent my life pretending to be someone I'm not. I've never been married and I've never been in love and that's not something I know how to pretend. I'm not even sure why I'm here, except that you woke something up in me and it seemed to make sense to run after something instead of away for a change. If that's the horrible act of wanting, then so be it. And by the way, you are sitting on the lap of an ancient Indian god."

Now he looked at her. He was a little out of breath and his mind was racing, but he felt incredibly relieved. He felt like he needed a cigarette and a towel – and maybe a shower and breakfast.

Calliope looked from Sam to Coyote, and then to Sam again. Her eyes were wider each time she looked back. Coyote stopped his snoring and languidly opened one eye. "Hi," he said. He closed his eye and resumed snoring.