Coyote Blue (27 page)

There it was, $200,000.00 in big black numbers. It was all he needed to see. Arnie signed and pushed the paper back to the professor.

The professor closed his briefcase and got up. "Well, I'd like to get this back to the lab by tonight and start the work on it. I'll call you as soon as we know for sure." He picked up the bundle and headed for the door.

"You take care now. Thanks," Arnie said, holding the door for them.

"No, thank you, Mr. Houston."

"Cheerio," the Indian said as they climbed into the Blazer. "Oh yes, your mates said they'd like a Flipper video and a bit of brine shrimp to eat."

Arnie watched the Blazer pulling away. Boy, the old professor was sure giving Running Elk hell for something. Eggheads. He wondered for a minute why the Blazer had mud on the license plates when it was so clean everywhere else. Hell with it, it was time to celebrate. A buddy had given him the number of a little dolly who for two hundred dollars would come over in her cheerleader outfit. He'd been saving it for a special occasion and it looked like it was time to dig out that ol' number and see if she really could suck the furniture out of a room through the keyhole.

~* * *~

As soon as they were out of sight of Arnie's house, Sam took the Indiana Jones hat off and smacked Coyote with it. "What were you thinking? You almost blew it."

"The fish said he tricked someone to get that bundle."

"And what did we just do?"

"That's different. It was a Crow bundle."

"You wanted to blow it, didn't you? Why didn't you just hump his couch or something? Why didn't you just tell him the truth?"

"Well," Coyote said, "if your trick worked it would make a good story."

"I'll take that as as compliment." Sam was no longer angry. They had the bundle; now it was time to think about the next part of the plan. He believed what Pokey had told him about the power of the bundle, and all Pokey had ever asked of him was to be believed. He said, "Coyote, will you help me get Pokey out of the clinic?"

"Another trick?" Coyote asked.:

"Of sorts."

"I'll help, but I won't go to the Underworld with you."

Chapter 33 – Doors

Some of the color had returned to Pokey's face and someone had taken the braids out of his hair and brushed it. He opened his eyes when Sam entered the room.

"You got it?" Pokey said.

"It's in the car," Sam said. Coyote came in behind him.

Pokey grinned. "Old Man Coyote."

"Howdy," Coyote said. "How many times you died now, old man?"

"A bunch. It's plumb wearing me out," Pokey said. "The medicine man got tired of singing the death song and went home. I think he got scared." Pokey pulled a cassette out from under his covers and held it up. "I got it on tape for the next time."

Sam said, "Pokey, we have the arrow bundle. What do we do now?"

"Ask him," Pokey said, pointing to Coyote.

"I ain't going," Coyote said. "He has to go alone."

"Samson needs a medicine man to sing the bundle song."

"That's why we're here," Sam said.

"You want me? I didn't think you believed I had medicine, Samson."

"Things change, Pokey. I need you."

"Well then, get me out of here." Pokey started to sit up.

Sam pushed him back. "I don't think you should be walking."

"Samson, I done told you, I had my death vision. I don't die in no hospital, I get shot. Now help me get up." He struggled to a sitting position and Sam helped him turn so his feet hung off the bed. "You're right, I don't think I can walk."

Sam turned to Coyote. "You promised to help."

~* * *~

The clinic was officially closed for the day, but the skeleton staff of two nurses was still on. Adeline Eats sat in the waiting room with her six children, who were all green with flu, insisting that she wasn't going anywhere until they got treatment, even if she had to wait all night.

For the twentieth time, the nurse at the window was explaining that the doctor had gone home for the night, when she heard the hoof beats on the stairs. She dropped her clipboard and ran out of the office to see a black horse coming down the stairs, an old, half-naked man bouncing on its back. She ducked back into her office to avoid being trampled and looked up in time to see a man in a corduroy jacket running behind the horse out the front door.

The nurse ran out into the waiting room to the front door, which dangled in pieces on its hinges. She watched the horse stop beside a white Blazer and rear up. The old man, his gray hair streaming in the wind, let out a war whoop and fell into the arms of the man in corduroy. Then, as she watched, the horse started bubbling and changing until it was a man in black buckskins. The nurse stumbled back in shock. Someone tapped her on the shoulder and she jumped (a foot off the ground. She came down holding her chest. Adeline Eats said, "You got room for my kids now, or what?"

~* * *~

Riding in the Blazer, Pokey said, "Old Man Coyote, how do I send Samson to the Underworld?"

"Just open the bundle and sing the song. He will go."

Sam said, "What happens then? What do I do?"

"My medicine ends when you get there. You will see the one that weighs the souls. Don't be afraid of him. Just ask him if you can bring the girl back."

"That's it?"

"Don't worry about the monster. The Underworld is not what you think." Coyote rolled down the car window. "I have something that I want to do. I'll be there when you return." Coyote dove out the car window, changing instantly into a hawk and flying off into the night sky.

"Wait!" Sam said. "What monster?" He stopped the car.

Pokey giggled like a child. "A horse and a hawk in one night. Samson, do you know how lucky we are?"

Sam leaned forward and put his head against the wheel. "
Lucky
wasn't the world that came to mind, Pokey."

~* * *~

Pokey had called Harlan and the boys down from Hardin. While they prepared the sweat, Sam stood at the door of the Airstream trailer trying to make himself open it. For the first time in years he was aware of his childhood fear of the dead and unrevenged ghosts and he hesitated. Since Pokey had given him hope of bringing Calliope back, he hadn't really thought of her as dead. He wanted to see her before he went to the Underworld, but he was afraid.
Strange,
he thought,
after all these years of selling the fear of death, talking about it every day, now I'm afraid. She's not dead, not really.

He threw the door open and stepped into the trailer. Calliope's body was lying on the built-in cot by the door amid camping equipment and fishing rods. Coyote had covered her with a blanket, leaving her face exposed. She could have been sleeping.

Sam sat on the cot by her and brushed a strand of hair away from her face. She was cold. He looked away.

"I wanted you to know…" He didn't know what to say. There was no face to put on to meet this face. If she would just open her eyes. He swallowed hard. "I wanted you to know that I would do anything for you. That all this craziness was – will be – worth it if I can bring you back. I've been hiding out for my whole life, and I don't want to live that way anymore. Anyway, I wanted you to know that Grubb will be okay. My family will take care of him. I'll be with you, one way or another."

Sam leaned over and kissed her. "Soon," he said. He got up and walked out of the trailer.

Across the yard, the fire crackled and licked the sky, heating the rocks for the sweat. Pokey sat on a lawn chair, the arrow bundle in his lap, his eyes glistening orange in the firelight. Harlan was carrying rocks from the fire to the pit inside the sweat lodge. Sam stood by with Harry and Festus, watching. After the initial surprise that Sam was still alive, Harry and Festus simply fell into their normal roles of listening to their father argue with Pokey. Sam noticed that they had the lean, muscular frame of their father, the same square-set jaw. Harlan was a little thinner now, and his hair had gone gray, but otherwise, to Sam, he seemed the same.

"The boys and me have to go to work in the morning," Harlan said. "We can't stay late, Pokey. No drinking."

"I ain't going to drink," Pokey said.

Harlan dropped a hot rock into the pit and wiped sweat from his forehead. "I can't believe that doctor let you come home. Just yesterday he was puttin' your death on my hands for not moving you to the hospital in Billings."

"He's a pissant," Pokey said. "How's it coming?"

Harlan scraped another rock out of the fire and scooped it up with the pitchfork. "This ought to do it." He unbuckled his pants and began to get undressed. The others followed his lead, hanging their clothes on Pokey's chair.

Sam took the bundle from Pokey and put it in the sweat lodge, then helped the old man out of his hospital gown. Pokey crawled into the sweat lodge, where the others sat in a semicircle facing him.

"Before I drop the door, I got to open this here bundle. It's a real old one, so no one knows the right song. I'm going to have to make it up as I go along. Okay?"

Pokey held up the bundle and sang a prayer song, thanking the spirits for the gift of the sweat. He laid out a square of buckskin for the objects in the medicine bundle. "I don't know what's going to happen here, but Harlan, you and the boys got to pray that Samson has a safe journey. He's going on a kind of vision quest, but he ain't going to the Spirit World." Pokey looked at Sam. "You've seen her since you got here, right?"

"Yes," Sam said.

"And she's still in the trailer?"

"Yes."

"Who?" Harry asked.

"Never mind," Pokey said. They hadn't told Harlan and the boys about Calliope or Coyote. "Here we go." He threw a handful of sage onto the stones. When the smoke rose he held the bundle in it, then took off the cap. He began singing as he took each object from the bundle and set it on the buckskin. Sam closed his eyes and concentrated on going to the Underworld and what he had to do there.

"Heya, heya, heya, an arrow.

Heya, heya, heya, another arrow.

Heya, heya, heya, another arrow.

Heya, heya, heya, the last arrow.

Heya, heya, heya, an eagle skull.

Heya, heya, heya, some brown stuff."

"Some brown stuff?" Harlan said.

"Well, I don't know what it is," Pokey said. "It looks like brown stuff to me."

"Whatever it is, it's working," Festus said, pointing to Sam, who was shivering, even in the heat of the sweat lodge. His eyes were open but rolled back in his head, showing no pupils.

"I'm dropping the door," Pokey said. "Now pray for his return like you never prayed before."

Chapter 34 – Let Slip the Dogs of

Irony

The owl was still perched on the power pole.

Adeline Eats sat in her easy chair reading the Book of Job, trying to keep her dinner down. On the way back from the clinic the kids had elected to have pancakes for dinner and Adeline had eaten a mountainous stack and all the mistakes. Now the matriarchs of breakfast, Aunt Jemima and Mrs. Butterworth, were waging a bubbling battle in her stomach while her kids burned with fever and Job suffered boils.

Adeline admired Job for keeping his faith. All she had was a house full of sick kids, a husband with a peyote hangover, an owl out front, and a little difficulty reading small print through her sunglasses, and she was ready to pack it in to her reserved spot in Hell. Old Job was quite a guy, especially with God acting like such a prick. What was that about? When her sisters talked about the Bible it was all the Sermon on the Mount and the Song of Solomon, Proverbs and Psalms; never smitings and plagues. And her sisters had never mentioned that God was a racist. He sure hated those old Philistines. Adeline had a cousin in Philadelphia; she wore a little too much eye shadow, but that didn't seem a sin you should get smote and circumcised for…

Adeline's religious reverie was interrupted by a tidal surge of acid in her stomach. She put the Bible down and went to the kitchen for some Pepto-Bismol. She found the bottle and wrestled with the child-guard cap for five minutes before deciding to smite its head off with the cleaver Milo used for hacking deer joints. She was raising the cleaver when the doorbell rang like a call from the governor.

She waddled to the door and threw it open. An enormously fat white man in a powder-blue suit was standing on the steps, hat in hand, sample case at his side, grinning like a possum eating shit. He looked vaguely familiar.

"Pardon me, ma'am," he said. "I was looking for a Mrs. Adeline Eats, but I have obviously stumbled onto the home of a movie star."

Adeline remembered that she was still wearing sunglasses and her hair was piled up on her head. She lifted her glasses. "I'm Adeline Eats," she said. She peeked over his shoulder and shuddered. The owl was still on the pole.

"Of course you are. And I'm Lloyd Commerce, purveyor of the worlds finest vitamin supplement and herbal remedy: Miracle Medicine. May I come in?"

Adeline eyed him suspiciously. "Didn't you sell me a vacuum cleaner a long time ago?"

"You've got a heck of a memory, Mrs. Eats. I did have the privilege of bringing to people's lives that beam of brightness known as the Miracle. How's it working?"

"I don't know. I don't have any rugs."

"Very shrewd, Mrs. Eats. What better way to avoid dirty carpets than to avoid carpets altogether? The very reason that I have turned my efforts to a product that addresses the number one problem facing families today."

"What's that?"

Lloyd put his hat over his heart. "If you could just afford me a minute of your time, you will reap the benefit of years of research."

"Okay, come on in. But you got to be quiet. My kids are sick and my husband is resting." Adeline stepped out of the doorway and the salesman floated by her to the couch.

Adeline sat in her chair across from him. Her stomach gurgled and rolled. She stifled a belch. "Excuse me."

"Indigestion!" Lloyd exclaimed as if he had discovered the cure for cancer. "Fortune has smiled on you, Mrs. Eats. I have in my case the bee's knees of indigestion remedies." He pulled a brown bottle from his case and held it out reverentially. "Mrs. Eats, may I present Miracle Medicine."

Adeline fidgeted. "I don't know if I can afford it. I've been off work for a couple of days taking care of my kids."

"In that case, you can't afford to be without it. And with a house full of illness you can't afford to wait."

"Will this stuff cure the flu?"

"The flu? The flu?" Lloyd shook the bottle at Adeline. "The flu doesn't exist when you have Miracle Medicine. It makes them that's sick well, and them that's well better. This is no backward primitive remedy, ma'am, but the finest product that nature and modern science could come up with. Miracle Medicine cures croup, cramps, cankers, and the creeping crud."

"I don't know…," Adeline said.

"And how could you know until you try it? Why, Miracle Medicine will even raise your self-confidence, as well as doing away with excess mucus, the embarrassment of bad breath, intestinal gas, dandruff, the heartbreak of psoriasis, most mental illness, and the post-peyote dry heaves."

"I don't think so," Adeline said.

"You don't think so? Mrs. Eats, may I see your medicine cabinet?" Lloyd pulled a plastic garbage bag out of his sample case.

"I suppose so," Adeline said. "The bathrom is in there."

"Come with me," Lloyd said. He got up and led Adeline into the bathroom, where he threw open the medicine cabinet. He took a bottle of aspirin from the shelf and held it up. "What is this for, Mrs. Eats?"

"Headaches."

"Don't need it." Lloyd threw the aspirin in the garbage bag.

"Hey," Adeline said.

"Miracle Medicine makes headaches a thing of the past." He grabbed the tube of Preparation H and tossed it in the garbage bag. "Hemorrhoids are behind you, Mrs. Eats." Next went the cough medicine, the Band-Aids, some Neosporin ointment, and an old prescription for bladder infections.

"Hey, I need that stuff."

"Not anymore," Lloyd said. "Not with Miracle Medicine."

Adeline was starting to get angry. "Put that stuff back."

Lloyd lifted Adeline's sunglasses and looked her in the eye. "Mrs. Eats, you say you have a house full of sick kids. What exactly have you done to make them better?"

"I took them to the clinic but we couldn't get in. I've been praying."

Lloyd nodded knowingly. "Well you can say good-bye to prayer." He stormed back into the living room, picked up the Bible, and threw it in the garbage bag. "You don't need prayer when you have a medicine that reduces swelling, increases sex drive, and directly addresses the national debt."

"No," Adeline said, following him. "I don't want any."

He went to the crucifix on the wall, tore it off, and threw it in the bag. "Quiets coughs, promotes regularity, increases energy…"

"No!" Adeline said.

Lloyd took the 3-D picture of Jesus off the television and threw it in the bag.

"Calms nerves."

"No!"

"Cures acne."

"No!"

"Cures crabs, spiritual indecision, poison sumac, rabies, and -"

"No!"

"Gets rid of unwanted owls."

"How much is it?" Adeline said.

"Cash or check?" Lloyd said. He sat back down on the couch.

Adeline heard the bedroom door open. She turned and saw Milo coming into the living room, wearing sunglasses. He couldn't tolerate bright light for a day or two after a peyote ceremony. "What in the hell is going on out here?"

"I was just talking to this salesman," Adeline said.

"What salesman?"

Adeline turned around. The salesman, his sample case, and the garbage bag full of over-the-counter icons were gone. The brown bottle of Miracle Medicine sat on the table.

"Here honey, take some of this," she said. "You'll feel better."

She felt better already.

~* * *~

Sam felt as if he were passing out, then the vertigo of falling. The sounds around him faded; Pokey's voice became distant, then silent. He felt his stomach lurch, as if he had just gone into the big drop of a roller coaster, then an impact that flattened him on the ground. He looked up, expecting to see the others around him in the sweat lodge. The lodge, and everyone in it, was gone. There was nothing but blackness and the sound of his own breathing.

A thousand questions raced through his brain, but he realized that each one led to another and the best strategy was to maintain a state of automatic action and remember why he was here. He stood and squinted into the darkness. Two golden eyes were floating in front of him. He heard the sound of an animal breathing.

Suddenly a stone platform started to glow. On it stood a figure: a man's body with a dog's head, wearing an Egyptian kilt. Except for the golden eyes, he was black, so black he appeared to absorb light. He carried a golden staff tipped with the effigy of a falcon. Beside him on the platform was the source of the breathing sounds: a beast the size of a hippo, with the jaws of a crocodile on the body of a lion. It snorted and snapped at the air, flicking foam from its jaws. Behind them both stood a giant balance scale.

Despite all he had been through, Sam felt a wave of mind-blanking terror pass through him. He wanted to run, but couldn't move. With the light coming off the pedestal he could see human bones scattered around him. He realized that he was standing on his toes, every muscle in his body rigid.

The black dog man snapped his staff on the platform. "Okay, up on the scale," he said. Then he narrowed his gaze and stepped down from the platform. "Wait a minute, you're alive. Go away. We only do the dead. Out, out, out."

Of all the strange things Sam had seen in the last week, watching the dog mouth forming human speech was the strangest. It looked like the creature was trying to yak up a chicken bone. Suddenly the fear was gone. This was too goofy, like an Alpo commercial filmed in Hell.

"Are you the one I'm supposed to talk to about – about getting some help?"

"Look, I tried to warn you that my brother was going to cause you problems. I sent my agent to help you."

"Your brother?"

"Coyote is my brother. He didn't tell you?"

"No, he never mentioned a brother. He said I had to find the one that weighs the souls."

The dog man scoffed. "Well there's the scale. And here I am. Take a wild guess. Go ahead, Einstein, figure it out. I can't believe he didn't mention me." He sat down, hung his head and began scratching himself behind the ears. "He's an ingrate."

The monster growled and Sam jumped back.

"That's Ammut," the dog man said. "He wants to eat you."

Sam shuddered. "Maybe later. I'm here to ask a favor."

"You don't even know who I am, do you? That hurts. You think I don't have feelings?"

"I'm sorry," Sam said. "I'm a little preoccupied. I didn't mean to be rude." Preoccupied? Naked, in a supernatural world, talking to the dog-food god, trying to get back the woman he loved.
Excuse my manners
, he thought. "I'm Sam Hunter, and you are?"

"Anubis, son of Osiris. God of the Underworld." He scratched behind his ears harder and his leg began to bounce with pleasure.

"Osiris? You're Egyptian?"

"My people lived in the Nile Valley, yes."

"But you said that you were Coyote's brother."

"He didn't tell you that story either?" Anubis was irritated.

"No, sorry," Sam said. How could Calliope's life be in the hands of this neurotic canine? He decided to try to placate the god. "But I'd love to hear it."

Anubis pricked up his long ears. "It was long ago," he began. "And the god Osiris brought to the people of the Nile Valley the knowledge to plant grain, and he brought great floods to nourish the grains. With his queen, Isis, he ruled all of civilization, until his brother Set, the dark one, became jealous and killed Osiris, tearing his body into fourteen pieces and scattering them over the valley.

"But Osiris had consorted with Set's wife, Nephthys, and she gave birth to two dog-headed sons, Anubis and Aputet. When Set found the boys he put them into baskets and set them afloat in the Nile. Later, Isis found Anubis and adopted him. But Aputet floated out to sea and across the ocean to another land in the West."

Here the dog-headed god puffed himself up with pride. "Anubis was always the one bound to duty, the faithful. He found the pieces of our father and bound them together so that Osiris lived again. For that he was given the job of weighing human souls against truth, and taking people to the Underworld.

"And my brother," Anubis said, "grew up in a wild land, with the powers of a god and no sense of duty or justice. All he cares about is the stories people tell about him. And he never remembers his brother, who has saved him so many times. He never visits. You're sure Coyote never told you this?"