Coyote visits

Issue three: short fiction by Abigail F. Taylor

Original illustration by Lorena Carrington, 2024.

Haskell fell in love with a girl; there was no two ways about it. She stood two in front of him at the butcher, holding her little yellow ticket as she leaned forward to examine the pork shoulder in the display case. She held back a curtain of black hair with her free hand. Haskell rolled his heart in his tongue and regretted not putting on a cleaner straw hat before heading into town for the good grocery store in the white neighborhood. The cuffs of his jeans were musty from that morning’s work in the hay loft. He wished he had a stronger jaw, a dimple, like the hero, Billy Jack, whom he’d just watched kick ass and take names in The Born Losers the day before.  

The girl turned to smile her perfection at the butcher, now calling her number, and Haskell caught the swoop of her freckled nose, the prominent chin that was so familiar to him. He yelped, ‘Ruby Yukpa, that’s never you!’ and the two people wedged between them gave him startled, angry looks. 

‘Who’s asking?’ Her sweet expression angled itself ever slightly away from the butcher, slicing her order into wax paper. ‘Jim Haskell! It’s been a day!’ 

In the moment she took her order and paid, Haskell smoothed down the front of his jean shirt and tucked in the tail. She joined him in line, her thin hand laying on the edge of his shoulder as she leaned in to kiss him. He blushed. ‘I thought you ran off to California.’

‘I did but I’m back. Visiting family. How’s your mother, Jim? I heard she got diabetes.’

‘She’s doing okay. Thanks for asking.’

He didn’t want to talk about his mother, her foot creams, or the mean doctor, with his cold white hands running over her skin in a way that made her stiffen and hold her purse tight. He didn’t want to think about the way his mother looked at him with shining eyes while he translated what the doctor said. No. All he wanted was to talk and think about the pretty girl in front of him. 

Ruby nodded and plucked at the Peter Pan collar of her shirtwaist dress that stopped just short of her knees. The striped pastels looked good against her skin, like she was wrapped in lavender candy. The butcher called his number, and Haskell’s feet stuttered forward. Ruby waited off to the side, her parcel of meat tucked in her hand basket beside pre-packaged bran rolls. The butcher eyed him, hungry with a curious vulpine grin, like he could read the tumble of thoughts Haskell ever had about Ruby Yupka. 

‘Hurry up, boy!’ snapped a woman behind him with a ticket of her own. 

‘Don’t talk to them,’ grumbled her husband. ‘It isn’t worth it. He probably can’t read.’

Ruby turned on her heels. ‘Yes he can. We both can, and we understand English just fine, too!’

‘Can you read, boy?’ asked the husband while his angry wife snapped her heels against the tile. 

The heat rose up Haskell’s neck. His gaze shifted from them, to Ruby, watching him, rolling her eyes towards them as though pushing him to speak. To say his mind. The butcher watched, too, in that hungry and inhuman way that put a chill down Haskell’s spine. The butcher swiped his blood-speckled hands across his tobacco stained apron then propped his fists on the counter and rested his chin on top of them. ‘Go on. Speak. You can speak?’

‘I just don’t understand why they have to come to our grocers,’ grumbled the wife as she flashed her ticket. ‘If he still needs to figure out what he wants, we’ll just cut.’  

She and her husband pushed around Haskell, pointing to the best cuts of ribeye. The butcher tutted, not moving, waiting for Haskell to reclaim his space. Ruby watched, too, and frowned. Haskell turned his head so she couldn’t see how red he’d gotten, how mute he’d become in the sudden confrontation, and he leaned down to pick his straw hat off the floor before the couple in front of them could trample on it. 

He straightened with a sigh, and Ruby offered him an anaemic smile. Her fingers drifted to pluck an invisible piece of lint off his shirt. Haskell stared at her for so long that he forgot how to apologise. For being afraid. For making her stand up for him. For not being enough. 

‘You want to come ‘round for dinner?’ He spun the hat in his hand. ‘My mom’ll be happy for it.’ 

‘I’d like that,’ she said. ‘I’d been wanting to talk to you—’

His heart fluttered in his mouth again.

‘And a few others around town,’ she added quickly. ‘I’ve missed home so much that I want to see as many relatives as I can!’

It sank low but he fixed his mouth up, like it wasn’t a blow to his ego, like she’d been thinking about him ever since they were twelve, and he asked her to marry him with a ribbon he stole off the maypole. ‘Oh, yeah. Sure. Come by around seven. We’ll have a decent spread.’

Ruby squeezed his shoulder again and left him at the counter. 

The angry couple snatched up their order and grumbled loudly as they passed, ‘They’ll just let anyone anywhere these days …’ 

Now it was Haskell’s turn again, and he opened his mouth to order the only thing he and his mother could afford, but the butcher talked over him, ‘They called you boy.’ 

Haskell swallowed but forced himself to not look away from this hungry eyed man. 

‘They wouldn’t’ve if you didn’t act like one.’ 

Haskell took out his wallet and asked for the sheep’s head. The butcher shook his head with a sigh and slapped the meat down angrily on the counter. A cloudy eye peeked through the newspaper. 

The butcher muttered, ‘That girl is trouble but at least she’s fighting … boy.’

She came over to his house with a bottle of Boone’s Farm in the hook of her elbow and had changed into an outdated but more conservative dress that Haskell’s mother approved of. He wished she showed more of her slender, sun-kissed legs, and that his hand might find a reason to flutter to her knee. They ate the sheep’s head without rice or bread and only a scant serving of greens, so as not to upset his mother’s blood. When it was over, his mother showed them onto the patio with Ruby’s bottle of wine and Haskell’s cigarettes. It was there that Haskell braved himself to put an arm around Ruby and inched closer until their thighs touched. He lit a cigarette for her and she said, around the drag, ‘I wanted to ask you to come out with me to San Francisco.’

‘Me?’

‘And others.’

Haskell slipped his arm off her, but she stayed close. He shook a Lucky Strike out of the soft-top box for himself. ‘What’s it about?’

She glanced at him around the smoke and squinted like a movie star. Her skin was light enough to trick those Hollywood types. There was some sort of pull around Ruby Yukpa that turned a man’s guts inside out. She had that sultry look, that calm touch, but she was little like a colt. She could be white if she wanted. She could slip into the higher circles of society and live comfortably, without any trouble to bother her pretty head. Yet she was here, grinding her heels into Indian Nation politics. 

When she spoke next, it was with a sharp snap of excitement, like she couldn’t get the words out quick enough. ‘Well, it’s all Richard’s idea really, but there’s the Red Power Movement, you know, and Indians of All Tribes. We’re making the big push now for self-determination. That’s why it’s so important for you to join and for your mother and for everyone that’s still here!’

‘What about those of us who went into the cities for work?’ asked Haskell, thinking of his father and brother. 

Ruby’s head bobbed with zeal and a lock of her hair fluttered over her big, brown eyes. She pushed it back impatiently before Haskell could do it for her. ‘Forced us to leave the plots of land they forced us into, you mean! That’s why we’re traveling from town to town. We’re generating interests, putting real boots on the ground. No stone unturned. It’s a movement, Jim. Just like King and Malcom X. We have to do this for ourselves. John and Richard are going to come through here to make his peace and speak in the capital, but I wanted to see who I could muster up to join us in Oklahoma City.’

‘That’s your boyfriend?’ Haskell asked, feeling stupid. If he was going to get roped into politics for a girl, he needed to know if his reward would come in the form of a kiss or a pat on the back. A reward might not come at all and would he be okay with that? To put his life on the line and never be thanked for it was a daunting task. He’d be better off staying behind and waiting for his draft number instead.

Ruby leaned back and laughed, dark and rumbling as thunder. ‘What? John!’

‘No. Richard.’

Her laugh held a different tune to it and in the fading summer light, Haskell saw Ruby’s expression flicker inward, however brief. She hid it with her glass of wine. ‘No, of course not. We’re all just working on this together.’

Haskell nodded, ran his hands through his short hair, troubled by all this talk of movements and protests. A good Indian kept his head down and out of trouble. It frightened him to know that she would expose herself like that, put her neck out like a rooster offering itself to the soup pot, but he wanted to see her smile. So, he said, ‘Well, if it’s important to you. It’s important to me.’ 

‘I want it to be important to you because we’re human beings,’ she said. ‘Not because of me.’ Ruby’s cheeks dimpled and he leaned in for a kiss, but she had pulled pamphlets from the pocket of her skirts and pressed them against his chest. ‘I’m holding a meeting to talk more about it at the library tomorrow.’ Not at her house. This was probably for the best. Her father still hated him after the branding debacle from several years ago. That, and the man wanted no politics under his roof. 

Haskell understood that. A lot of the old people just wanted to keep their heads down. His own mother hadn’t talked much since his brother and father ran off to find work. The city swallowed them whole and wriggling. She hadn’t received a letter in six months, and everyone in town thought that the Yukpa sisters had shook free the Oklahoma dirt and settled somewhere far away where no one would question them if they said they were white.

Truthfully, Haskell didn’t know if all these groups and protest marches had anything to do with him. He was in a mind to keep himself to himself and work the farm and stay on the rez until he died. No trouble to nobody. It was the surest way for an Indian to see old age.  

‘You some kinda coward?’

Haskell jumped. The half-empty wine bottle skittered across the yard, knocking into the boots of a small, wily looking man. He stared at Haskell from the shadow of a black felt hat with a bright blue and white beaded band. He picked up the bottle, uncorked it, and sniffed. There hadn’t been a car on the road since Ruby left some twenty minutes before and the air was still enough he was certain he would’ve heard the man’s heavy black boots crunching through the trees at the edge of the property. 

‘I think I saw you in a movie,’ Haskell said without anything smarter to say. It was near dusk now when the light was between wolf-and-dog. 

‘Naw. Not me, just my hat. I asked you if you was a coward.’ He drank from the bottle and shook his head with a wince. His face was not Billy Jack’s but somehow familiar in its ancient lines and the hard way his jaw turned down. ‘I’ve had old mash from an outhouse better’n this!’

‘Coward? I’m just sitting here,’ Haskell replied.

‘See how that’s the problem?’

‘Who are you?’ 

The old man’s thin lips peeled back, farther than any mouth out to go. The sides of his face split open, bloody. Raw. He tongued the razor points of his teeth. ‘Just some fella who was told this place was where it rained sweetmeats.’   

Haskell stood with a dry laugh, thinking of the rifle hanging above the front door, the one he used to scare coyotes away from the chicken coop. ‘I think you're drunk, guy. Can’t you see sky’s clear? And you’re on my property.’

‘Property according to who?’

A tickling began to boil in Haskell’s stomach and his fingers curled at his sides. ‘I’ll ask you kindly one more time—’ 

‘What did kindness get any of us?’

The man was toying with Haskell, talking trash between sips off the stolen wine, and slinking closer to him, like a cautious predator. The last strip of fading silver light crested the trees without warning, the rolling shadow of a thunderbird blanketed the sky. A single beat of its wings split apart the air, knocking Haskell back with a gust of wind. He’d never seen one before. His mouth went slack and the wet sting in his widening eyes had nothing to do with the sudden storm.  The old man kept his footing by digging his toes into the dry grass  and held tight to his hat. A bark came from him as the thunderbird roared higher into the dusty night. 

Something hard like hail but unexpectedly sticky pelted Haskell’s face. He scrambled to his feet, running to the porch and caught sight of what rained down. Not rain or hail. Candied nuts, sugar ribbons, and bonbons gleamed in the porch’s naked lightbulb. ‘What the hell?’

‘It’s king for king and queen for queen!’ shouted the man. He held out his hat like a pauper’s collection tin. ‘Sweetmeats! Like I told you!’ 

‘Ma!’ Haskell shouted, stumbling up the porch steps to open the creaky front door. ‘Come and see!’

‘Coward.’ The man laughed. ‘Calling for your mama instead of collecting what could be yours.’ 

The door fell out of Haskell’s hand and clacked back into place. He stormed into the yard, yanking the man by the shirt collar, and gave him such a violent shake that the old, tacky scent of liquor leaked out of his skin. ‘This is my house and you’re not welcome here!’

He pushed the stranger through the yard, pushed him and pushed him until they were on the edge of the property. All the while, the man laughed, grabbing candies and fried dough dusted with sugar, nuts, bonbons, shoved into his pockets and hat each time he tumbled. ‘Good! Got some fire in your belly now!’ 

‘Just go away, old man,’ Haskell huffed through his nose and trudged back through the yard toward the house. Only it was gone and all that remained was the gently rolling hills. He spun on his heels. The old man remained standing at the edge of the property. He stuck a pink taffy into his mouth. The rage was back in Haskell and he shouted, ‘What sort of trick did you pull? Where is my house?’

‘I know a place where it rains women,’ he replied, disappearing into the bramble, like a snake in weeds. Haskell trailed after, thorns snagging at his bare arms and hips. The man was ahead of him, talking loudly, but Haskell couldn’t see the shape of him unless it was through the sides of his eyes. 

‘One time I went to a valley full of flying vaginas, and I spent all night catching them and kissing them! Hah!’

‘The fuck …’ Haskell whispered under his breath. He broke through to a clearing in the center of the scraggly wood and the stranger sat before him, warning bare feet by a small fire pit. 

He held out his hat to Haskell. ‘Want a piece of candy?’

Haskell shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair. A sound, half cry and half laugh, strangled out of his lungs. ‘Who are you?’

More than anything Haskell needed the old man to confess his origins and true name. He’d come out of the woods, brought a thunderbird and made it rain candies, and to Haskell it felt like a wine-soaked dream. He needed the man to say his own name or Haskell wouldn’t be able to trust that this was real. Names held power and Haskell didn’t think he could speak the old man’s, or rather the old god’s, until it was spoken to him. Until it was made flesh.

The old man tilted his head back and gazed up at the sky, still clear, and still dripping sweetmeats onto the surrounding post oaks. The mess of stars shone bright in his wide, brown eyes. ‘Many a man followed a woman to a greater good, you know. You wouldn’t be the first.’

‘Trickster. My dad used to tell stories about you.’

‘Your dad was a good man.’

‘I didn’t know you had the power to make it rain sweetmeats.’

‘I don’t.’ Whatever was in his mouth now danced around pointed teeth. Haskell hovered on the edge of the clearing, and he watched the stranger. Old Man Coyote. He stretched his calloused toes over the stones ringing the firepit. 

‘You said was a good man.’ Not is. Did that mean his father was dead or just in a dangerous situation that made him act against a standard moral code? ‘Do you know him?’

‘Might do.’ Coyote’s eyes gleamed yellow. 

Haskell huffed. What did a trickster god know about being a good man, anyhow? 

‘It’s going to rain women tonight. Big, fat, warm women are gonna fall out of the sky. Skinny ones, too, if you're into that sort of thing.’ He winked, and Haskell’s thoughts raced to Ruby, the way his arm felt around her. Old Coyote’s grin widened. ‘Oh that’s right. You got yourself a pretty, young thing.’

‘She’s got someone else,’ Haskell shoved his fingers angrily through his hair. ‘Why are you bothering me about her anyhow?’

At this, the old trickster god had the decency to look slightly forlorn. He rubbed the back of his neck and sighed. ‘Ah. Look kid, don’t go worrying about Richard Oakes. He’s the sort that will always have women. But he’s a good man, too. A woman wants a partner with a head on his shoulders. Knows what he wants for himself. She don’t need a child when she wants a lover.’

‘I’m not a child,’ Haskell snapped. 

‘Coward. Near enough the same.’ Coyote shrugged and leaned forward to poke the fire with a stick. He etched into the stones with the blackened tip before tossing it into the flames, and let it burn to ash. He dumped all the candy and sweetened nuts onto the ground, then fixed his hat back to his head.

Haskell pushed his hand through his hair, his fingers tangled in the sweet residue that clung to him like sweat. ‘This has been great and all, but I’m ready to go home now. So you can just go on and put my house back where you found it. When I come out the other side of those trees, I better see it there.’

Coyote rolled onto his knees, his unblinking eyes fixed onto Haskell, as he crawled forward. ‘Stay here! Get you some women. Don’t go back! It’ll rain arrows on you next. And there’s old warrior bones hiding around them trees! Say that they’ll scalp you in the night if you aren’t careful!’ 

‘I’ll skip the women, and the scalping,’ Haskell answered, slapping Coyote’s gnarled hands as the old man pawed at his shirttails. Coyote’s head tilted to the side, and his mouth split wide. He sat on his haunches and with the crackling fire, the pinon billowing smoke, he was nothing but a gruesome silhouette of slick teeth and shining eyes. 

‘Will you?’ 

The act of fear and dread was gone from Haskell. Coyote stood, clapped him on the shoulder and found another stick to poke the flames. ‘The only way to get back home is to keep on going.’

‘Why’d you even show up?’ Haskell said, flapping his hand angrily in the old man’s direction. Coyote shrugged and the brim of his hat tilted low over his nose. 

‘For the sweetmeats. The women. You’re just in the way. Being a good for nuthin’. Lump on a log.’ 

Grumbling, Haskell pushed his way through the trees but they kept changing shape on him, twisting and obscuring the path below and the stars above. Each time he broke through the forest, he ended up back in the clearing with Coyote. The old man smirked, tipped his hat, and snuggled into the log resting behind him. The third time Haskell was spit back out at the camp, the fire hissed and popped with a spray of fine mist coming down from the cloudless sky. 

Women, naked and dark-headed, unfurled from the smoke. They danced, swinging their hips and breasts to the rhythm of the gentle rain that brought them down from the sky. They giggled at the exaggerated snores Coyote made. One woman lifted his hat and planted a kiss on his wrinkled brow. The other two, soft-bellied and smelling of cedar and pine needles, draped themselves over Haskell, bringing him into the warm glow, nuzzling his neck with their generous mouths. 

‘Changed your mind?’ asked Coyote, feeding a bonbon to the woman who kissed him awake. ‘Or are you gonna move forward this time?’

Haskell rolled his eyes and stalked across the meadow, forcing his way through the thicker trees and the tall grasses at the back of Coyote. Light from the moon and fire snuffed out in one immediate breath. Haskell went forward, bold and unafraid. That is, until a whistle in the dark stilled his body. A hiss of air kissed his cheek with a hard edge of metal. Another arrow sailed past. Cursing, Haskell sprinted into the inky black, knocking into lichen-covered oak and stone at each turn. Like a pinball, he stumbled through the woods, narrowly missing arrows aimed at his skull, his chest, his groin. One managed to slice across the side of his knee, but he tucked and rolled. 

The floor disappeared beneath him. He was in a sudden freefall down the side of a ravine until a dry riverbed rose up to meet him. Haskell sprawled flat on his stomach, muscles tensed and lungs squeezed for breath. The arrows stopped raining down on him, but it was so dark he couldn’t see more than a few inches in front of his face. He slithered forward until he felt it was safe to stand and forced his eyes to adjust. He tried to remember the direction of this riverbed. He prayed that his feet would point him the way. 

The darkness shifted and through a rip in the air, the staggering shape of a powerfully built man appeared. A heavy knife he carried in his hand captured the glint of the unseen moon, and Haskell could make out the bare chest smeared with the blood that dripped from a festering wound at his hairline. With a piercing cry, the man lunged forward. Haskell spun, sprinting in the opposite direction, but there the man was ahead of him and coming fast, knife arm raised. 

Again and again Haskell turned, but each time the scalper was in front of him. Like Old Man Coyote kept appearing in his meadow. Haskell swallowed the bile built up in his mouth and sprinted toward the killer. He kept his arms tucked in and his head low as he spiked his shoulder into the man’s torso. Fingers twisted in Haskell’s hair, and an agonized scream ripped through his throat as his head was yanked backward. The brutal knife sawed through his skin and bone. Blood filled Haskell’s mouth. He kicked at the ground, levering himself upward as he clawed at the killer’s thick forearm. Bubbling blood and brain tissue drowned out Haskell’s next scream as the killer began to probe his brain, as though in search of a precious coin. 

With a mighty twist, Haskell angled himself and slammed his elbow into the killer’s groin. His grip loosened and Haskell staggered upward, the killer’s knife in his own hand. He ignored the slap of skin against his skull as he lunged forward and buried the knife in the killer’s chest. He fell backward, dragging Haskell with him back into the riverbed, turned muddy with gore. 

Instead of crashing into flesh, Haskell landed with a thump into the tall, warm grass that surrounded his house. The sky, empty except for the moon and spattering of stars, carried no whiff of burning pinon or the sticky sweetness of boiled candies. He laid there, inhaling the earthy warmth of his yard, fingers probing the tender, but perfect skin of his hairline. There was no blood coming from his knee or even proof that an arrow had pierced the fabric of his jeans. Then, rolling into a sitting position, he checked the rest of his body. Perhaps the wine Ruby brought was stronger than he thought and it was causing him to sink into twilight fantasies. 

Haskell went into the house, intent on taking a glass of water to his bed and sleeping away the strangeness of the evening. His mother called from her room, ‘Did Ruby leave already?’

‘Yeah, Ma.’ The steadiness of his voice surprised him.

‘What did she want?’

‘She’s putting together a political party.’ He hovered in his mother’s doorway, watching her frail body shift beneath the quilt. ‘Wants me to help.’

‘That’ll be good,’ she said after a weak pause. Her answer caught him off guard. He expected she would want him to keep his head down and stay safe, like he had wanted to do for himself. Inaction meant survival but was that really living? His mother smoothed a wrinkle out of the quilt spread over her lap and smiled. ‘Ruby’s the right sort of trouble … Will you get the light?’

Haskell hit the switch, and her room went dark. Upstairs in his own space, he gulped down half the glass of water, made sure the curtains were drawn, and eased out of his clothes. His wounded cheek and knee were sore, but he saw no cuts in the mirror on his dresser. A shadow with gleaming teeth shifted between the curtains. Haskell spun around, raising his fists, but there was no one. The room, quiet and small, was how it had always been…except for a black felt hat with a beaded band resting on his pillow. 

Curious if the thing was real or if it had materialised out of pure drunken fantasy, Haskell reached forward and folded his fingers around the felt brim. Several candies tumbled out of it. Haskell resolved that he would make his library visit with Ruby more than a weak-willed opportunity to impress her. 

He pushed back his hair and tried on the hat. Born Losers. The grim, dusty world was set up to make people like Haskell and Ruby fail, no matter the path they chose to take. Haskell might as well try his best to beat the odds. So, even if he did fail, at least he could say he tried. When he glanced back in the mirror, a cunning animal grin that was not his own, but superimposed there on the glass spread wide across Haskell’s reflection. Adapt. Survive. That was the counsel of coyotes.  

Connar L'Ecuyer, Urban coyote, National Park Service from USA, 2017 (Wikimedia)

Abigail F. Taylor

Abigail F. Taylor is a queer, #ownvoices author of Irish and Choctaw descent. By day she writes horror but she moonlights as a ghostwriter for contemporary romances. She has several poems and short stories floating around the literary spaces. Her debut, The night begins, came out with Luna Press Publishing in 2023, and will soon be joined by her next novel, Maryneal, 1962 from Wild Ink Publishing will hit the shelves in 2025. When not writing or reading, she takes long walks, practices aikido, and watches trash tv while working on a never ending counted cross stitch pattern. In a previous life, she was a horse girl and worked as an assistant director and script editor in the indie-film industry.