Dangerous Angels (12 page)

Coyote stood in the dim shack. Cherokee noticed that his hair was even shinier with perspiration. She had never seen him sweat before. He frowned at the pile of fur.

“Well, Cherokee Bat,” Coyote said, “here is your fur.
Use it well. The fur and the feathers were gifts that the animals gave you without death, untainted. But think of the animals that have died for their hides, and for their beauty and power. Think of them, too, when you sew for your friends.”

Cherokee gathered the fur in bags and thanked Coyote. She wanted to leave right away without even asking him how to go about making the haunches. There was a mute, remote look on his face as if he were trying to remember something.

When Cherokee got home, she thought of Coyote’s expression and blinked to send the image away. It frightened her. She washed the fur, pulling out nettles and leaves, watching the dark water swirl down the drain. The next day she dried the fur in the sun. But she did not know what to do next.

For nights she lay awake, trying to decide how to make haunches. She dreamed of goats dancing in misty forest glades, rising on their hind legs as they danced, wreathed with flowers, baring their teeth, drunk on flower pollen, staggering, leaping. She dreamed of girls too—pale and naked, being chased by the goats. The girls tried to cover their nakedness but the heavy, hairy goat heads swung toward them, teeth chewing flowers, eyes menacing, the forest closing in around, leaves chiming like bells.

Cherokee woke up clutching the sheets around her body. The room smelled of goat, and she got up to open the windows. As she leaned out into the night, filling
herself with the fragrance of the canyon, she thought of Raphael’s heavy dreadlocks, the cords of hair like fur. She had spent hours winding beads and feathers into his hair and her own. Now she loosened her braids.

She knew, suddenly, how she would make the pants.

Cherokee braided and braided strands of fur together. Then she attached the braids to a pair of Raphael’s old jeans. She put extra fur along the hips so the pants really looked like shaggy goat legs. She made a tail with the rest of the fur. When she was finished, Cherokee brought the haunches to Raphael’s house and left them at the door in a box covered with leaves and flowers.

That night he called her: “I’m coming over,” and hung up.

She went to the mirror, took off her T-shirt and looked at her naked body. Too thin, she thought, too pale. She wished she were dark like the skins of certain cherries and had bigger breasts. Quickly she dressed again, brushed her hair and touched some of Weetzie’s gardenia perfume to the place at her throat where she could feel her heart.

When Raphael came to the door, Cherokee saw him through the peephole at first—silhouetted against the night with his long, ropy hair, his chest bare under his denim jacket, his fur legs.

Cherokee opened the door and he walked in heavily, strutting, not floating. The tail swung behind him as he went straight to Cherokee’s room and turned off the light. She hesitated at the door.

“They look good,” she said.

Raphael stared at her. “Things are different now.” His voice was hoarse. “Come here.”

His teeth and eyes flashed, reflecting the light from the hallway. He was like a forest creature who didn’t belong inside.

Cherokee tried to breathe. She wanted to go to him and stroke his head. She wanted to paint red and silver flowers on his chest and then curl up beside him in her tepee the way she used to do. But he was right. Things were different now.

Then, without even realizing it, she was standing next to him. They were still almost the same height. She could smell him—cocoa, a light basketball sweat. She could see his lips.

All their lives, Cherokee and Raphael had given each other little kisses, but this kiss was like a wind from the desert, a wind that knocks over candles so that flowers catch fire, a wind, or like a sunset in the desert casting sphinx shadows on the sand, a sunset, or like a shivering in the spine of the earth. They collapsed, their hands sliding down each other’s arms. Then they were reeling over and over among the feathers and dried flowers that covered Cherokee’s floor. She remembered how they had rolled down hills together, tangling and untangling, the smell of crushed grass and coconut sun lotion and barbecue smoke all mixed up in their heads. Then, when she had rolled against him, she hardly felt it—they were like
one body. Now each touch stung and sparkled. He grasped her hair in his hand and kissed her neck, then pressed his face between her breasts as if he were trying to get inside to her heart.

“White Dawn,” he whispered. “Cherokee White Dawn.”

Suddenly she couldn’t swallow—the air thick around her like waves of dark dreadlocks—and she pushed him away.

Raphael put his hands on his stomach. He glared at her. “What are you doing?”

Cherokee ran out of the room, out of the house, to the garden shed where Witch Baby was practicing her drums. Cherokee leaned her head against the wall, feeling the pounding go through her body.

“What’s wrong with you?” Witch Baby asked when she had finished playing.

“Can I stay here tonight?”

“Why? Is Raphael being a wild thing?”

“I just don’t feel like being in the house,” Cherokee said.

“
Sure!
” said Witch Baby. “I bet it’s because of Raphael. I just hope you use birth control like Weetzie told us.”

Cherokee frowned and started to turn away.

“I guess you can stay if you want,” Witch Baby said.

Cherokee curled up next to Witch Baby but she didn’t sleep all night. She lay awake with the moon pouring over her through the shed window, bleaching her skin even whiter. Sometimes she thought she heard Witch Baby’s
hoarse voice singing her a mysterious lullaby, but she wasn’t sure.

After that, Cherokee was afraid to see Raphael, but he called her a few days later and said there would be a rehearsal at his house the next day. It was the first time he had suggested that they play music since Zombo’s Coffin.

Raphael wore the fur pants. He didn’t say much to Cherokee but he sang and played better than ever. When they were done, he said, “I booked a gig for us.”

“Where at?” Angel Juan asked, peering over the top of his sunglasses.

“I thought you didn’t want to play,” Witch Baby said.

“It’s at The Vamp. We’d be opening for The Devil Dogs.”

“Sounds kind of creepy!” Cherokee said, but she was glad that Raphael wanted to play again.

“The owner, Lulu, heard our tape. She is really into us.” Raphael stomped over to the mirror, puffed out his chest and modeled the fur pants. “The Goat Guys are ready for anything now.”

Lulu was tall and black-cherry skinned with waves of dark hair and large breasts. She moved gracefully in her short red dress.

“How do you like the club?” Lulu asked Raphael, brushing his arm with her fingertips.

The Vamp was dark with black skull candles burning and stuffed animal heads on the walls. Cherokee shivered.

“It’s a great setup. Thanks, a lot,” he said, looking at
Lulu’s lips as if he were in a trance.

Lulu smiled. “I think you’ll be just great here, honey. Let me know if you need anything.”

She walked away, shifting her hips precisely from side to side. Raphael watched her go.

“Raphael!” Cherokee said. A stuffed deer head had its glass eyes fixed on her.

“Let’s do a sound check,” Raphael said to his cigarette.

Maybe it was the fact that they had been rehearsing or that after the first show it just got easier, or maybe it was the goat pants. Or maybe, Cherokee thought, it was the anger Raphael felt toward her after the night in her bedroom—the power of that. Whatever the reason, Raphael was not the frightened boy who had left the Rockin’ Coffin stage before the first song was over.

He strutted, he staggered, he jerked, he swirled his dreadlocks and his tail. He bared his teeth. He touched his bare chest. His sweat flew into the audience.

The audience howled, panted and crowded nearer to the stage, their faces bony as the wax skull candles they held above their heads. The flame shadows danced across Raphael’s face.

With the heat pressing toward them and Raphael’s bittersweet voice and reeling body moving them, Angel Juan, Witch Baby and Cherokee began to play better than they had ever played before. Cherokee felt as if the band were becoming one lashing, shimmery creature that the room
full of people in leather wanted to devour. Someone reached up and pulled at her skirt, and she whirled away from the edge of the stage. The room was spinning but even as she felt hunted, trapped, about to be devoured by the crowd at the foot of the stage, she also felt free, flickering above them, able to hypnotize, powerful. The power of the trapped animal who is, for that moment, perfect, the hunter’s only thought and desire.

When the set was over, the band slipped backstage away from the shrieks and the bones and the burning. Raphael turned to Cherokee, drenched and feverish. She was afraid he would turn away again but instead he took her face in his hands and kissed her cheeks.

“Thank you, Cherokee White Dawn,” he murmured.

Then they were running, holding hands and running out of the club. They ran through the streets of Hollywood but Cherokee hardly noticed the fallen stars, the neon cocktail glasses. They could have been anywhere—a forest, a desert—running in the moon-shadow of the sphinx, a jungle where the night was green. They could have been goats, horses, wildcats. They could have been dreaming or running through someone else’s dream.

They ran to Raphael’s house. Cherokee felt a metallic pinch between her eyes, something hot and wet on her upper lip. She touched her nose and looked at her fingers. “I’m bleeding.”

Raphael helped her lie down on his bed. He brought
a wet cloth and pressed it against her nose. “Keep your head back.”

“I get too excited, I guess.”

As he cradled her head in one hand, he began kissing her throat, the insides of her elbows and wrists for a long time. Then he kissed her forehead and temples. “Is it better?”

She moved the cloth away and sat up. It was dark in the room but the animals, pyramids, eyes and lotus flowers glimmered on the moonlit wall. Cherokee and Raphael were both sweaty and tangled. She could smell his chocolate, her vanilla-gardenia, and something else that was both mingling together.

“Coyote told me about Indian women who fell in love with men because of their flute playing and got nosebleeds when they heard the music because they were so excited,” Cherokee said.

“Does it work with a guitar?”

“It works when I look at you.”

He touched her face. “You’re okay now, I think…. I miss you, Cherokee. I want to wake up with you in the morning the way we used to. But different. It’s different now.”

It was different. It was light-filled red waves breaking on a beach again and again—a salt-stung fullness. It was being the waves and riding the waves. The bed lifted, the house and the lawn and the garden and the street and
the night, one ocean rocking them, tossing them, an ocean of liquid coral roses.

Afterward, Cherokee was washed ashore with her head on his chest. She could hear the echo of herself inside of him.

Cherokee noticed that the air was beginning to change, becoming powder-sugary with pollen as if invisible butterfly wings and flower petals were brushing against her skin. It was getting warmer. The light was different now—dappled greenish-gold and watery. After school, The Goat Guys would run, bicycle and roller-skate home to play basketball or, when Angel Juan got back from the restaurant wearing his white busboy shirt that smelled of soup and bread and tobacco, they would all ride to the beach in his red truck and surf or play volleyball on the sand until sunset. At night they rehearsed. It was hard for them to think about homework or studying when they were getting so many calls to play in clubs. Everyone wanted to see the wild goat singer, the winged witch drummer, the dark, graceful angel bass player and the spinning blonde tambourine dancer.

After rehearsals, or on weekends after the shows, Cherokee and Raphael stayed together in his bed or her tepee. She hardly slept. There was a constant tossing and
tangling of their bodies, a constant burning heat. She remembered how she had slept before—a caterpillar in a cocoon, muffled and peaceful. Now she woke up fragile and shaky like some new butterfly whose wings are still translucent green, easy to tear and awaiting their color. All day she smelled Raphael on her skin. Her eyes were stinging and glazed and her head felt heavy. A slow ache spread through her hips and thighs.

“Cherokee and Raphael are doing it!” Witch Baby sang.

Cherokee tried to ignore her.

“Aren’t you? Aren’t you doing it?”

“Shut up, Witch.”

“You are! I hear you guys. And you look all tired all the time.”

“Stop it, Witch. You shouldn’t talk. Why would you want to move out into the shed? I bet I know what you and Angel Juan do out there.”

Witch Baby was quiet. She gnawed her fingernails and pulled at a snarl-ball in her hair. Right away, Cherokee wished she hadn’t said anything. She realized that Witch Baby wouldn’t tease her if Witch and Angel Juan were doing the same thing.

Witch Baby bared her teeth at Cherokee. “I’m writing to Weetzie and telling!” she said as she roller-skated away.

Cherokee watched Angel Juan and Witch Baby more closely after that. She saw how Angel Juan tousled Witch Baby’s hair and picked her up sometimes. But he did it like an older brother. When Witch Baby looked at Angel Juan,
her tilty eyes turned the color of amethysts and got so big that her pointed face seemed smaller than ever.

One day, while The Goat Guys were rehearsing, Raphael went over and touched Cherokee’s hair. It was only a light touch but it was so charged that tiny electric sparks seemed to flare up. Witch Baby stopped drumming. Angel Juan’s eyes were hidden behind his sunglasses. Witch Baby looked at him. Then she got up and ran out of the room.

Cherokee followed her into the garden. “What is it, Witch?” she asked.

Witch Baby didn’t answer.

“I see how he looks at you when you wear your wings and play drums for him. I think he’s just afraid of his feelings.”

Witch Baby shrugged and chewed her fingernails.

“Tell me about Angel Juan.”

Witch Baby didn’t say anything about Angel Juan out loud, but Cherokee could tell what she was thinking.

He is a dangerous flamenco shadow dancer and a tiny boy playing music in the gutter. His soul sounds like my drums and looks like doves. He is fireworks. He is the black-haired angel playing his bass on the top of the tree, on the top of the cake. I want him to see the flowers in my eyes and hear the songs in my hands
.

After a show at The Vamp, some girls followed Raphael backstage. They wanted to stroke his fur pants, they told him, giggling. One kept flicking out her tongue like a snake.
They wore black bras and black leather miniskirts.

Cherokee stood with her arms crossed on her chest, watching them. Then she noticed that Angel Juan was standing in the same position with a frown on his face that matched her own. He turned and stalked out of the club, and Witch Baby came and stood beside Cherokee.

“All the girls pay attention to Raphael but Angel Juan is a slinkster-cool bass player and beautiful, too,” Cherokee said.

“Ever since you made Raphael those goat pants, he’s been acting like the only person in the band,” Witch Baby said. Then she added, “You never made anything for Angel Juan.”

Cherokee wished the girls would leave Raphael alone, take their hands off his hips and their breasts away from his face. But she thought he was happier lately than he had ever been and he would hold her in the tepee that night and sing songs he had made up about her until the images of the girls drifted out of her head and she fell into a sleep of running animals and breaking lily-filled waves. But what about Witch Baby? She would be curled up in the shed under the bass drum, alone. She would dream of Angel Juan’s obsidian hair and deer face, reach for him and find a hollow drum. What about Angel Juan? Cherokee thought. He would be waiting outside for them by his red truck with a frown on his face. He would drive home with swerves and startling stops. He would not look at any of them, especially Witch Baby. He was the only Goat
Guy Cherokee had not made a present for.

What should I do for Angel Juan? Cherokee wondered. I will ask Coyote.

Cherokee, Witch Baby, and Raphael went out to meet Angel Juan at his truck.

“We were hot tonight,” said Raphael.

Angel Juan turned to him. “What makes you think you are such a star all of a sudden, man?”

“I said
we
. I can’t help it if the girls like me,” Raphael said, tossing his dreadlocks back over his bare shoulders.

“They might like me too if I shook my hips at them like some stripper chick.”

“Maybe they would.” Raphael grinned and swiveled his hips in the goat pants. “Why don’t you, man? Too freaked out?”

That was when Angel Juan made a fist and hit Raphael in the stomach under his ribs. Raphael staggered backward, staring at Angel Juan as if he weren’t quite sure what had just happened.

Cherokee put her arms around Raphael. I will have to go back to Coyote, she thought.

Cherokee asked Coyote if she could go running with him around the lake. It was a morning of green mist, and needles of sun were coming through the pines. Cherokee had to run at her very fastest pace to keep up with Coyote’s long legs. She glanced over at his profile—the proud nose, the flat dreamy eyelids, the trail of blue-black hair.

“Coyote…” Cherokee panted.

“We are running, Cherokee Bat,” Coyote said. “Keep running. Think of making your legs long. Think of deer and wind.”

When they had circled the lake twice, Cherokee leaned against a tree to catch her breath. She felt as if Coyote had been testing her, forcing her forward.

“Coyote,” she said. “I have to ask you something.”

Coyote was tall. He never smiled. He had chosen to live alone, to work and mourn and see visions, in a nest above the smog. The animals came to him when he spoke their names. He was full of grace, wisdom and mystery. He had seen his people die, wasted on their lost lands. Cherokee had never seen his tears but she thought they were probably like drops of turquoise or liquid silver, like tiny moons and stars showering from his eyes. She knew that he had more important things to do than give her gifts. But still, she needed him. And she had gone this far.

“Coyote, Angel Juan is jealous of Raphael. He’s shy around girls—even Witch Baby, and I know he loves her. Witch Baby is jealous of how Raphael is with me. She wants Angel Juan to treat her the same way. Angel Juan is the only one of The Goat Guys I haven’t made anything for,” Cherokee blurted out. Then she stopped. Coyote was eyeing her.

“Cherokee Bat,” he said. “The birds have given you feathers for Witch Baby. The goats have given you fur for
Raphael Chong Jah-Love. What do you want now?”

“I want the horns on your shelf for Angel Juan,” Cherokee whispered.

She was braced against the tree, and she realized that she was waiting for something, for thunder to crack suddenly or for the ground to shake. But nothing happened. The morning was quiet—the early sun coaxing the fragrance from the pines and the earth. Coyote did not even blink. He was silent for a while. Then he spoke.

“My people are great runners, Cherokee. They go on ritual runs. Before these they abstain from eating fatty meat and from sexual relations. These things can drain us.”

Cherokee looked down at the ground and shrugged. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. You are very young still. So is Raphael. Angel Juan and Witch Baby are both very young. You must be careful. While your parents are away, I am responsible. Use your wisest judgment and protect yourself.”

“We do. I do,” Cherokee said. “Weetzie told me and Witch Baby all about that stuff. But this is about Angel Juan. We all have what we want, but it’s been harder for him his whole life and now he’s the only one without a present.”

“There is power, great power,” Coyote said. “You do not understand it yet.”

“I am careful,” Cherokee insisted. “Besides, if I haven’t been responsible, it doesn’t have to do with you or with
the wings and haunches. I just want the horns for Angel Juan so he won’t feel left out.”

“I cannot do any more for you. You’ll have to make something else for Angel Juan. I cannot give you the horns.”

“Coyote…”

“I want you to try to get more sleep,” Coyote said. “If you want to find the trail, if you want to find yourself, you must explore your dreams alone. You must grow at a slow pace in a dark cocoon of loneliness so you can fly like wind, like wings, when you awaken.”

I’m awake now, Cherokee wanted to shout. I’m a woman already and you want to keep me a child. You want us all to be children.

But instead she turned, jumped on Raphael’s red bicycle and rode down the hill, away from the lake, away from Coyote.

Cherokee could not stop thinking about the horns. Why was Coyote so afraid of giving them to her? She had always known inside that the wings and the haunches were not just feathers and fur. The horns must have even greater power.

Cherokee rode home and found Witch Baby practicing her drums in the shed.

“I tried to get a present for Angel Juan,” Cherokee said. “But Coyote won’t help me. I don’t know what to do.”

“What about those goat horns you were talking about?”

Cherokee played with one of her braids. “Coyote said
the horns have a lot of power. He’s afraid to give them to us.”

Witch Baby crunched up her face. “It’s not fair. Coyote helped you get presents for me and Raphael.” She was quiet for a moment. “I wonder what’s so special about the horns,” she said. “I want to find out.”

“Witch, don’t do anything creepy,” Cherokee said. “Coyote is like a dad to us and he is very powerful.”

Witch Baby pulled a tangle-ball out of her hair, looked at it and growled. Watching her, Cherokee wished she hadn’t said anything about the horns. Witch Baby might do something. But at the same time Cherokee was curious. What would happen to The Goat Guys if they had the magic horns?

I don’t need to know, Cherokee told herself. I’ll think of something else for Angel Juan. And Witch Baby is only a little girl. She won’t be able to do anything Coyote doesn’t want her to do.

Witch Baby was little. She was so small that she was able to slip in through the window of Coyote’s shack one night. Witch Baby was very quiet when she wanted to be, and very fast—so quiet and fast that she was able to take the goat horns off a shelf and leave with them in her arms while Coyote slept. Witch Baby was very much in love. She had convinced Angel Juan to drive her up to Coyote’s shack late at night and wait for her because, she said, Coyote had a present for them. Witch Baby was so in love
that all she cared about was getting the horns. She didn’t even think about how Coyote would feel when he woke a few moments after the red truck had disappeared down the hillside and saw that the familiar horn shadow was not falling across the floor in the moonlight.

When Witch Baby and Angel Juan got back to Witch Baby’s house, they sat in the dark truck.

“Well, aren’t you going to let me see?” Angel Juan asked.

Witch Baby took the horns out from under her jacket and gave them to him.

“Oopa! Brujita!”

“They’re for you. I asked Coyote if I could have them for you.”

Angel Juan held the horns up on his head and looked at himself in the rearview mirror. His eyes shone, darker than the lenses of the sunglasses he almost always wore.

“Thank you, Baby. This is the coolest present. I feel like a real Goat Guy now.”

Witch Baby looked down to hide the flowers blooming in her eyes, the heat in her cheeks. Angel Juan leaned over and kissed her face. Bristling roughness and shivery softness, heat and cool, honeysuckle and tobacco and fresh bread and spring. The horns gleaming like huge teeth in Angel Juan’s lap. Then Witch Baby leaped out of the car.

“Wait! Baby!” Angel Juan leaned his head out the window of the truck and watched her run into the shed. The horns were cool, pale bone.

Angel Juan attached them to a headband so he could wear them when he played bass. The next night, backstage at The Vamp, he put them on and admired himself in the mirror. He looked taller, his chin more angular, and he thought he noticed a shadow of stubble beginning to grow there. He took off his sunglasses and turned to Witch Baby.

“Hey, what do you think?”

“You are a fine-looking Goat Guy, Angel Juan.”

Cherokee and Raphael came through the door. Raphael and Angel Juan hadn’t been speaking since the fight, but now, wearing his horns, Angel Juan forgot all about it. And Raphael was so impressed by the horns that he forgot too.

“Cool horns,” he said, swinging his tail.

Cherokee gasped and pulled Witch Baby aside.

“What did you do?” She dug her nails into Witch Baby’s arm. “Coyote will kill us!”

“Let go, clutch! I did it because I love Angel Juan. Just like you got goat pants for your boyfriend.”

“I didn’t go against anyone’s rules.”

“You and your stupid clutchy rules!”

“We have to give them back! Witch!”