Tantric Coconuts (3 page)

He dug in his pockets until he found the keys. He hesitated. While Angel was old enough to make her own choices, he didn’t want to enable the bad ones. Crazy gene or not, he
was proud of his daughter. Her spirit was unique and she loved the world in ways that most would not understand.

Larsen took Angel’s hand and pressed the keychain to her palm. “I love you very much. I know it has been hard since your mother died. Take Bertha and paint her however you like. Put mountains on the side. I’ll put a toolbox together for you. Get car insurance and, when you’re ready, you and No Barks go and see what you can find in America. Perhaps there is something there you can fix.”

Angel hugged her father. “Thank you,
Age
. You’re the best!”

After Larsen finished his lunch, he decided to write to Aunt Lilly at the correctional facility. He had talked to her twice since her incarceration. She was not able to make bond, so she would remain in Pierre until the trial, which was many months away. She did not like the court-appointed lawyer who tried so hard to convince her that dreams were not legal defenses. Larsen would tell Lilly about Angel’s journey and see if there was anything he could do to help her.

Anticipating his vacation foray into nature and the twelve-hour drive to New Mexico, Ted packed flea powder for Argo and car-sick medicine for himself. Before getting on Highway 56 to head southwest, he pulled into the Four Corners Convenience Station, filled the gas tank, and checked the oil and tire pressure. While the tank slowly filled, he adjusted the position of a piece of yellow ruled paper that was taped to the dash. At the top of the page, it read:

What to do on vacation!

According to several of the guidebooks he had purchased, Santa Fe, New Mexico, and its environs offered many excellent, canine-friendly activities, including hiking and superb fly-fishing. Also carefully detailed, below his list of activities, were directions and the names of several recommended RV sites along his route.

List making and other precautions resulted in a late departure from Crossing Trails. Strong winds dropped out of an otherwise clear sky and pushed forcefully against the tall
profile of the RV. The safe practice was to drive a little more slowly. By seven o’clock that evening, the sun was getting low in the sky and Ted was an hour behind schedule. Confusing Argo with someone who cared, Ted announced, “It’s going to be dark soon. We need to find the next RV park.”

The old terrier lifted his jaw an inch off the floor, yawned, and went back to sleep.

About fifteen minutes later the entrance to one of Ted’s approved campgrounds, Perfect Prairie RV Park, unexpectedly and without the least warning, sprang up in front of Ted. As he closed in on the entrance, Ted considered passing it, turning around at the next opportunity, coming back, and making a proper turn from the opposite direction. That was not, however, the choice Ted made. Instead he pushed the brake pedal hard and began his turn. The setting sun’s glare on his windshield made it hard for him to see far down the road.

At about the same time a camouflaged, flying tanklike structure came barreling toward him.

Panicked, Ted let out a “Yikes!” yanked the steering wheel even harder to the left, accelerated into the turn, and gambled that the strange vehicle would yield and the Chieftain wouldn’t tip.

Angel was onto something big—driving seventy miles an hour in a decrepit bookmobile while doing meditations to
the sound of Lakota drum music—when she realized that she too had missed her turn. Believing there is purpose behind all things, she just drove on. Adventure lay on the unknown road. This is how she found herself driving east in a very remote corner of New Mexico in Bertha the Bookmobile. No Barks was sleeping beside her on an old piece of buffalo hide that Aunt Lilly had used for a curtain to block out the glare from the western sun as it flared and disappeared behind the Black Hills.

Angel, concentrating on the reduction of her alpha waves, was a bit slow to react to the lumbering vehicle that turned in front of her. When she noticed the Winnebago at twelve o’clock high, she applied her brakes hard. Bertha was as nimble as a Sherman tank. At nearly twice the weight of the Chieftain and with momentum at the reins, Bertha emerged the clear victor in the collision that followed.

When Ted finally brought the Winnebago to a complete stop in the first space off the highway, he was relieved (he was alive!) but frightened (how had this happened to him, the most careful of drivers?). He looked down at Argo and asked, “Are you hurt?”

The Chieftain continued to rock up and down on its shocks like a young Marine doing push-ups. Suddenly something clanged to the ground. Ted unlocked the driver’s-side door and climbed out of the cab, anticipating seeing dead bodies strewn about the campground like autumn leaves. Fortunately there were none, so he focused on the property damage.

There was a sizable dent in the right rear quarter panel. On the ground near the rear of the vehicle was the back half of the water tank, which had broken off from the chassis. It could have been worse, much worse. The sound of a poorly muffled engine caught Ted’s attention. The unusual vehicle that had just rammed him was slowly approaching from the highway. Having already wounded the Chieftain, Ted suspected, the driver was now going in for the kill.

Angel pulled in behind the damaged RV and pondered the meaning of the personalized Kansas license plate,
SHARK
. This was a strange name for a land vehicle. Something her father had said came rushing back to her. She cringed as she heard his too-soft words in her head. She leaned forward, slapped the dash with her open palm, and said, “Buffalo dung.” She could not believe it. “I forgot the insurance.”

If anyone was hurt, there could be serious trouble. She climbed out the cab door and cautiously approached the Winnebago, holding her breath and hoping that her business plan as a spiritual consultant was not about to receive a serious revision.

She was expecting an elderly driver. Instead, a very frightened-looking young white man was circling about, dazed. He was neatly dressed and about her height. He was attractive in a frat-boy sort of way, with blue eyes and brown, neatly trimmed hair. He finally looked up at her. Though dazed, he asked, “What happened?”

Angel took one look at the dented right rear quarter panel of the Chieftain and summed it up for him. “I think we had an accident. Are you and your family okay?”

Ted looked back at the tall, dark-haired woman. “It’s just me and my dog and we’re fine. What I meant to say was what do we do now? Should we call the police? How about you? Are you hurt?”

Angel put her hand just above her hip bone. “My lower back is a tad whacked and your RV is a bit dented.” Hoping to avoid the insurance quagmire, she tried to reach down and
touch her toes but pulled back, wincing in exaggerated agony. “Maybe we should just call it an even swap—my bad back for your little dent?”

Ted scoffed, “It doesn’t quite work that way when the accident was your fault.”

“Mine?” Angel asked with her hands still on her hips.

“Yes, I believe it was your fault. Ted Day is my name.”

“I think you turned in front of me. Angel Two Sparrow.” She stuck out her hand.

In lieu of a proper greeting ritual, Ted dug in his wallet and offered Angel his insurance card. “Have your agent call my agent. There’s no need for us to argue over it.”

Angel casually rebuffed Ted’s offer as she walked away. “Never mind all that insurance stuff. We’ll sort it out tomorrow.”

Ted shook his head and thought to himself,
Grandpa, this is exactly why I don’t go on vacations
. Beyond the constriction in his chest, Ted noticed another thing: there was something very unusual about this woman. He needed another look to complete the thought.

He turned and watched Angel as she walked back to her strange vehicle and climbed in. One glance was enough. It was her clothing. While attractive, she wore a bizarre combination of things that had no business being put on the same body at the same time. It was much more in your face than wearing stripes with plaids. Black combat boots do not go with frilly lace, calf-high socks. Jean shorts are not to be patched with fluorescent yellow duct tape. He tried to remember the
letters on the tiny wooden blocks strung on her necklace. It came to him:
I
-
M
-
A
-
G
-
I
-
N
-
E
. He found this word particularly irritating under the circumstances. When it came to driving and most everything else in life,
knowing
would always trump
imagining
. This Angel Two Sparrow (he wondered what kind of a name that was) needed to do less
imagining
and a lot more paying attention.

Having seen enough to close the book on Angel Two Sparrow, Ted looked back at his grandfather’s RV. For so many years his grandfather had kept it in nearly perfect condition. Now, as the new owner, on day one of trip one, he’d had an accident. Upset, Ted had a childish impulse to curse the vacation gods.

Instead, he stomped back inside the Chieftain, slammed the door behind him, and, for Argo’s benefit, put a fine point on it. “Barely out of Kansas and our vacation is ruined.” Argo refused to participate in the rant. This was Ted’s problem.

The more he thought about his dented RV and her
IMAGINE
necklace, the more frustrated he became. This much was clear: Angel was some New Age nutcase. As if this were a legal quandary that could be analyzed and resolved with sufficient analysis, Ted removed a pen and a yellow legal pad from a drawer on the left side of the sink. He listed his options, along with a candid assessment of each.

Not particularly fond of any of his options, Ted stopped pondering for a moment and instead thought about the necklace, picturing in his mind another word sculpted in the same crude script. He printed
K-N-O-W-I-N-G
! across the top of his legal pad.

He laid his pencil down and sighed. He would go with option three. There was no sense in fighting it; the accident had been his fault. He’d be lucky if she didn’t sue him for hundreds of thousands of dollars for back surgery she didn’t need. He picked up the pencil as option number four came to him.

Argo finally woke up and joined Ted at the small kitchen table, suddenly very interested in the calamity called Ted’s vacation. The dog wagged his tail and seemed to be coming back to life.

“Are you excited, old boy?”

Argo pawed at his leg.

“Isn’t vacation great?” Ted got up from the table and dug through the kitchen drawer looking for a leash. “Hope you enjoyed it. In another five or ten years, we might try it again.”

Once outside, Ted removed his lawn chair from the external storage space and set up camp beside the green plastic picnic table so generously provided by the owners of the RV park. By flipping a toggle switch just inside the door, Ted extended the motorized awning to protect him and Argo from the last glaring rays of the setting sun.

Ted and Argo practically had the entire campground to themselves. Bertha the Bookmobile was parked at the other end, more than sixty yards away, so Ted let Argo sniff around without his leash. The dog was very good about not wandering off.

Settled into his lawn chair, Ted closed his eyes and made himself comfortable in the raw outdoors. He glanced at the cover of one of the books he’d brought along,
Religion for Dummies
. Shortly after Grandpa Raines had died, Ted had been stumped by a form that asked about his grandfather’s religious preferences. He didn’t know about them, and he wasn’t sure about his own, either. He laid the book on the ground. Later he might have the energy for salvation, but for now he just wanted to relax and consider his carefully crafted options for this ruined vacation.

He had not been resting for more than five minutes when the other paw fell. He was startled by the appearance of an enormous dog trotting uninvited toward his campsite. Argo was nowhere to be seen. As the beast came into better view, Ted stared at it in utter disbelief. When it was close enough
for him to really get some sense of its size, Ted realized that it wasn’t so much a dog as a wolf. A big-ass wolf.

He opened and shut his eyes twice, thinking the hulking gray and white apparition might disappear. Surely he must be experiencing a problem with his contact lens. A smudge, maybe, like the Virgin Mary appearing in an ordinary caffe mocha, or just a strange play of shadows. When it didn’t disappear, Ted gripped the sides of the lawn chair, wondering how this could be possible. A wolf?