The Coyote Way, page 16
part #3 of Vanished Series
Chapter 22
The Walker
Joey lives in an old conversion van just like his grandfather did at the Arroyo. Matter of fact, it’s his gramp’s van. After Joey drove off the rez that day when the tribal council turned their backs on him, and I did too, he kept going north, almost like he wanted to drive himself off the map altogether. I often picture him as he must have been then. Blinded by sadness and pain but refusing to give up until he made things right for my family. He was on a cannonball run, fleeing some demons, chasing others down. He must have been a hell of a sight.
For some reason he hit the brakes in Montana, just south of the Canadian border. He was running from the agents then, and the cops, so a border run was risky. He needed a place to lay low and figure things out, so he rolled his van into Hamm, a speck of a town fifty miles west of I-25 in the middle of the plains. He pulled up under an abandoned carport that was once attached to a tiny house, but the house collapsed who the hell knows how long ago, certainly well before he and I were racing around the rez together.
He parked the van, and it promptly died. And that’s where it still sits to this day, over a decade later. Joey doesn’t like to let anyone in the Circle know about it, but that’s where he still lives most of the time. He might call it home, if he called any place home. But he doesn’t call any place home anymore, and that’s the problem.
Hamm, Montana, is one of those little towns you don’t even catch a whiff of when you’re cruising by. There are small towns—the kind where you might stop to gas up or grab a coffee to keep you going—and then there are really small towns. The kind that have four or five businesses on half a block, and that’s Main Street. The kind that have one crossroad and no real trees and every single building is a flat, single-story square. And if you step back a few paces, you can take in the whole of the town in one look, underneath an enormous open sky that seems twice as big for how small everything else is. There are only ever a handful of people there, and they come and go all the time. A guy living out of his van, even a guy who looks a little rough and haunted like Joey, can do whatever the hell he pleases so long as he doesn’t bother anybody, and Joey never does, because all Joey does is work on phasing.
Joey was the type of guy who did anything to get out of work back in the day. He and I were always looking for corners to cut, ways to slip away and do our own thing, which usually involved drinking beers or smoking cigarettes or throwing things at other things to see what happened. If you’d told me all those years ago that Joey would devote all of his time to studying and practice, I’d have laughed you out of the rez. It just wasn’t him. Then again, he probably thought the same thing when he heard I became a cop. Sometimes shit doesn’t go the way you think. People change.
His work with the crow totem damn near killed him. It would have killed him at first, the way he just dived into the thin space and held the phase as long as he could, but he took so many drugs that his body stopped rebelling like it should. He overrode his instincts with chemicals. Soon he was able to spend hours in the thin space, then days. He started meditating in the thin space. I watched him as he sat in one place, cross-legged, crow in hand, until I thought he’d blow away into the cold, sepia dust that the thin place seems made of. But he never blew away.
Joey learned to do what the agents did, which was essentially to live in the thin place. Of course, the agents were driven by our coyote at the time. They had a connection with him through the book that I think was the only reason they were kept alive. Joey had drugs. Still, he was able to inhabit the place for long stretches of time, test what it had to offer. He came out of his meditations and trances with a connection to the world beyond that I haven’t seen in anybody else, except maybe Caroline. That, and a raging pill habit.
I’ve watched Joey a long time. For a while I thought the pills would get him. That I’d get the tug and show up at his van and find him conked out against the door in a puddle of his own vomit. One time, about two years after I died, I checked in on him and saw him down one pill after another for about three hours, then he snorted one for good measure, and I just lost it. I screamed my lungs out at him. Forget that he and I are on separate planes and that nobody on earth could hear me. I yelled and I yelled at him about everything. Got it all off my chest, saying stuff like how Caroline and Owen needed him, and even pulling out the big trump cards like how Ana would be disappointed in him and how his own grandfather would turn his back on him if he saw him right now. About fifteen minutes into my tirade, he said, “I’m done.”
That’s when I figured out that he could sense me.
He dumped all his pills, locked himself inside his van with a jug of water and a tin of jerky, and got clean over a hellacious forty-eight hours in which I spent every free second I had next to him. I can’t touch him, of course, or hold a conversation with him. Nothing like that. But all the time Joey spent in the thin place changed him just like it changes everybody, and it made him more aware of me. He knew I was with him in the van over those two days. At the end of it he emerged sweaty and stinking into this lucidity that still allowed him to walk the thin place but kept him from killing himself with pills, and he thanked me.
So Joey knows when I’m there. Which is good, because I owe him something, and it’s time I gave it to him.
When Gam was murdered, she essentially had three things to her name: her Singer’s bag, the bell, and her crow totem, which she kept in a little bone box. The bell was never mine to have, and it found its next owner all on its own. As for the Singer’s bag, well, singing was Gam’s talent. I never had the will or the brains to get the chants and the ceremonies right, plus, each Singer’s bag is personalized, filled with things that have a powerful connection to the individual Singer. With her gone, it became just a bag of things. Ninepoint stole her crow totem, and then the agents stole it from him, but I got it back and gave it to Caroline at the same time I gave Owen the gambler’s totem. That leaves the bone box.
The bone box is a holder of things. Important things. Much like a pot. And it just so happened to break when Ninepoint ransacked it. It has the story of that night wrapped up into it, and that night means so much. I keep thinking about how the coyote was there, at my front door, when I came back. In a way, when I left the rez, the coyote moved in and took that box. I know in my heart that the bone box is our broken pot, and it’s time I took it back. The problem is, I can’t get to it.
When I walk into the lean-to I see the van door is closed and locked and the windows are rolled up, but it’s basically hotboxed: the windows are white with smoke, and there’s a big hole cut in the top where Joey rigged up an exit pipe. Good thing there’s nobody around here for acres in either direction, because I bet it reeks of pinon smoke, and probably a few other things too, of the more hallucinogenic sort. He’s essentially created a makeshift hogan out of his grandpa’s old conversion van. The sliding door is even facing east, now that I notice it. I gotta admit, I’m impressed. I walk inside.
Joey’s head, which had been resting peacefully on the back of the inside wall, straightens as soon as I take a second step inside the van, which is roomier than you’d think.
“Hi, Joey,” I say. “Nice setup you have here.”
He doesn’t answer, of course. Like I said, our connection isn’t like that, but he does look everywhere with his eyes for a bit before taking a deep breath of whatever mixture he’s thrown in this little coffee can he has smoldering on a piece of corrugated metal siding in the middle of the floor.
“Walker,” he whispers. “Ya at eeh.”
I shake my head. “Will you cut it with the Walker crap? I’m Ben. Just Ben.”
No answer, of course. Which is going to present a problem, because while I know that the bone box is our broken pot, I also know Joey has to deliver it to Owen and Caroline, which is hard for two reasons. First, the bone box is still at the rez. Second, Joey won’t go back to the rez. He’s still abiding by his banishment. Part of him still thinks he was thrown from the Navajo Way, even after all that came to light. Even though we know he had nothing to do with Ana’s disappearance.
The artifacts are about the journey, and Joey needs to make the journey back to his home. His real home. That’s how the bone box becomes the broken pot. But it’s not like I can tell him that. He can’t hear me. I’ve tried so many times to get anyone to hear me. It’s never gonna happen. There are rules.
Joey looks troubled. His eyeballs dart around under his lids like he’s having a bad dream, but I can’t shake him out of it. Joey was always sensitive, even before he hazed himself in the thin place, so it would make sense that he’s feeling the crush of the coyote here too. If the balance of the river is off, the balance of the living world is off as well. Soon enough, even Hamm, Montana, will feel it.
When Ana was having bad dreams, I’d tell her stories. You can’t go to bed again right after a nightmare. You’ll fall right back into it if you do, so you have to switch things up. Get a glass of water, go pee, or in the case of Ana and me, tell each other stories. But I can’t just tell stories here, can I? Joey can’t hear me. Unless, of course, he doesn’t need to hear me. Not my words, anyway. He’s pretty far under right now. You never know what kinds of things can cross over during a sweat. I have firsthand experience. I saw Ana during one.
So I sit back in the smoke and tell him stories. Just like I used to with Ana. Just like Joey and I used to as well, back around the campfires we’d make in my backyard.
“Remember that one time we made a big fire out back of my place, in the pit there by the rocks, and we tried to jump it? Remember how dumb we were?” I say, and I laugh out loud. That was a huge fire. The neighbors who had the other half of our duplex were not too happy with us, but then again, they never were.
“And then Ana came out and saw us and said she was gonna jump it too, and she ran for it, but you caught her up just in time and swung her up on your shoulders instead? Remember that?”
I remember. That’s a big memory. A special one that I almost don’t want to think about too much because I’m afraid I’ll change it by how badly I want to be back there again. Like I’ll make up things that weren’t there because I want more from it. But it’s now or never.
“We were all whooping around that fire, you, me, and Ana on your shoulders. Then we convinced Ana to go sneak us some of Dad’s beer. Of course she would have done anything for you, bro. So she ran off, but she didn’t know what she was doing, remember? She came back with Gam’s knitting. How the hell do you get knitting out of beer? That crazy girl.”
She came back so proudly with Gam’s knitting that we didn’t have the heart to tell her it wasn’t remotely what we asked for. We cracked up, and she cracked up along with us, which always used to worry me because she had a weak heart, even then. We all just laughed until we were lying on the grass and the fire was soaring above us.
“So you say, ‘Listen, man. I’m not getting your Gam pissed off at me. She’s a big deal. We gotta sneak this shit back.’ And you were right, but turns out Gam was watching TV right outside her room, so we try to send in Ana again, but now she’s having none of it when we tell her to put it back.”
Joey’s eyes are still closed, but they aren’t flitting as much anymore. And is that a smile on his lips? Maybe a ghost of a smile?
“It was up to us, remember? So we had Ana go in and do a little song and dance in front of Gam to distract her and then you and I snuck into her room. You almost lost it when you saw how Gam was watching Ana, like what the hell is this child doing now.”
Is that a nod? No, no nod. Just his chin falling gently to rest on his chest. The makeshift sweat brazier he rigged up here is slowly dying out. Which is good. I look out of the foggy window of his van, and I see that the sun is past high noon already. Montana time is New Mexico time. And we’re running out of both.
“We did it, though. We snuck in, on our bellies, thinking we were Hoskininni sneaking around in the valley or some shit like that. Trying to ambush the white man. But you thought her knitting went up on her shelf, remember? Up high. So you put it up there at first, and I kept whispering to you that it’s supposed to go in the basket by her bed, but you were up there and you weren’t listening because you were staring at that box. Remember that box, Joey?”
Somehow I think that Joey remembers that box. Maybe he’s even having some sort of vision of that box. Maybe in his vision it’s half box, half pot.
“I didn’t know what that was, man. Not then. I forgot about it five minutes later. But I bet you didn’t. You always had a head for this type of shit. All of it. The world I live in now. The thing I am. I can’t tell you how many times I thought you’d be better at this than I am. I think a lot of people would be better than I am. But at the end of the day, I’m on this side of things, and you’re on that side of things, and hell if I know if any of this is even getting through to you. It shouldn’t be. Because there are rules, and the rules say it shouldn’t be.”
I can see the sun moving down the line. I can feel the gathering pressure of the coyote. Suddenly all this seems like grasping at straws. We’re chasing after legends when there’s a killer at the doorstep. But then Joey laughs. I snap up and watch him carefully. He’s laughing and nodding. The way he did when he had Ana on his back and we were dancing.
“I need you to get that box, Joey,” I say. He quiets, and his face slackens again. I don’t know if he’s listening or if his mind is on some other faraway fantasy, but it’s getting late.
“It’s on the rez, man. The NNPD took it to bag and tag it as evidence in a case they never closed, just shuffled off once I disappeared, and Ninepoint disappeared, and the agents disappeared. It’s in the evidence room.”
I get up and move over to Joey so I’m right by his ear.
“Joey, you gotta get that box, and you gotta take it to the hogan today. Before five. I know you’re afraid of the rez. You don’t want to go back there, but you gotta think about Ana. About me. About your home there. What you did for my family… nobody I know is a better Navajo than you. Please, man. Do this for all of us.”
He’s very still now. I want to say more, want to plead more, maybe scream in his ear just in case louder is better, but I get a tug. The job never waits. I open up the map and step through and do what I need to do, which is escort a very polite Swedish guy through the veil. He puts up no fuss. Doesn’t even seem scared. Of the two of us, I bet I’m the one that looks scared. I’m checking the position of the sun, making mental calculations in my head as our time ticks away from us.
When I get back to Joey’s van and step inside again, the air is clear, the coffee can is clean, and Joey is gone.
Chapter 23
Grant Romer
This whole Native Market thing is nuts. I’ve never seen so many people in one place before. We left for Santa Fe early, took the school bus all the way up with a rickety trailer attached that held the parts of our booth, but when we get here the place is already crowded. People are milling about on the back streets, and all the cafes are jammed. They put us in a section of booths a little ways off the main plaza, where the local schools are all set up, and we get to work.
Chaco hops from terrace to terrace, watching me, watching the crowds. He finally agreed that it’s OK that I’m even here. With Owen and Caroline tracking down the rest of the artifacts then heading to the hogan, it makes sense that somebody actually shows up where we all think the coyote is going to do work.
Once the booth is up and ready, I retreat into the crowd. None of the art is mine, of course, and I don’t really feel up to explaining the indigenous programs of the high school I’ve been at for a little over a week to potential donors, so it makes sense, but more than that I sort of get the feeling that people want to see Navajo kids at the Navajo high school booth. The bottom line is this is a fundraiser. They’re showing art, yeah, but also trying to drum up money and community buy-in, and I’m not the type of kid that tourists think of when they think of a high school on the rez.
You’d think this might piss me off. It doesn’t. I knew what I was getting into when I suggested we head out this way in the first place way back when we got chased out of Pueblo by the guy with the itch. It’s guys like Mick who can’t seem to get over it, which is why I let out a bit of a groan when I see him milling through the crowd around ten in the morning, heading toward our booth. He sees me, and his eyes light up. He worms his way to where I stand under the shade of a wooden awning, my back against stucco that’s already getting hot. It’s a bluebird New Mexico day, and the sun shines so bright already you’d think it was plunked right there on the hills just to the west.
“What’s up?” he says, not quite looking at me. He turns his back to the wall too and wipes his hands nervously up and down his shorts.
“I thought you said this place sucks,” I say.
He’s bobbing his head, watching the crowd intently. “Somethin’ to do. You see any weird shit yet?”
“Naw, man. Looks to me like everybody is having a decent time.”
That isn’t exactly true. I’ve seen some fights over prices, I’ve seen a lot of shoving, and I’ve heard a lot of grumbling, but that’s the coyote effect. I can see his greasy steps here already. Mostly walking around the big statue at the center of the plaza, almost like he was doing some sort of pilgrimage or something. There’s even some tracks by our booth. But all I’ve seen so far are the tracks, never the thing making them. This is a prime place to pass that bead around, but I’m not about to get into all this with Mick. The guy gets on my nerves. I don’t like how he assumes I’m his friend.
“C’mon, man,” Mick says, pushing off the wall. “They’re already pre-gaming at the house party off Marcy Park. I got some stuff in my trunk. Come check it out.”
