Charles De Lint - The Ivory and the Horn

"I don't want to hear another one of your stories."

13

But Coyote says:

Barking Dog looks up and the whole sky is filled with a rainbow. Now how can I get up there? he thinks. Those colors are just the paints I need for my arrows.

Then he sees Buzzard, and he cries: "Hey, Uncle! Can you take me up there so that I can get some arrow paint?"

"Sure, nephew. Climb up on my back."

Barking Dog does and Buzzard flies up and up until they reach the very edge of the sky.

"You wait here," Buzzard says, "while I get those paints for you."

So Barking Dog hangs there from the edge of the sky, and he's hanging there, but Buzzard doesn't come back. Barking Dog yells and he's making an awful racket, but he doesn't see anyone and finally he can't hang on any more and down he falls. It took Buzzard no time at all to get to the edge of the sky, but it takes Barking Dog two weeks to fall all the way back down— bang! Right into an old hollow tree and he lands so hard, he gets stuck and he can't get out.

A young woman's walking by right about then, looking for honey. She spies a hole in that old hollow tree and what does she see but Barking Dog's pubic hairs, sticking out of the hole. Oh my, she's thinking. There's a bear stuck in this tree. So she pulls out one of those hairs and goes running home to her husband with it.

"Oh, this comes from a bear, don't doubt it" her husband says.

He gets his bow and arrows and the two of them go back to the tree. The young woman, she's got an axe and she starts to chop at that tree. Her husband, he's standing by, ready to shoot that bear when the hole's big enough, but then they hear a voice come out of the tree:

"Cousin make that hole bigger."

The young woman has to laugh. "That's no bear," she tells her husband. "That's Barking Dog, got himself stuck in a tree."

So she chops some more and soon Barking Dog crawls out of that tree and he shakes the dust and the dirt from himself.

"We thought you were a bear," the young woman says.

Her husband nods. "We could've used that meat."

Barking Dog turns back to the tree and gives it a kick. "Get out of there, you old lazy bear," he cries and when a bear comes out, he kills it and gives the meat to the young woman and her husband. Then he goes off, and you know what he's thinking? He's thinking, I wonder what ever happened to Buzzard.

14

"Was I supposed to get something out of that story," I ask "or were you just letting out some hot air?"

"Coffee's ready," he says. "You want some?"

He offers me a blue enameled mug filled with a thick, dark brown liquid. The only resemblance it bears to the coffee I'd make for myself is that it has the same smell. I take the mug from him. Gingerly, I lift it up to my lips and give it a sniff. The steam rising from it makes my eyes water.

"You didn't answer me," I say as I set the mug in the dirt down by my knee, its contents untouched.

Coyote takes a long swallow, then shrugs. "I don't know the answer to everything," he says.

"But you told me you could find him for me."

"I told you I would try."

"This is trying?" I ask. "Sitting around a campfire, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes and telling stories that don't make any sense?"

He gives me a hurt look. "I thought you liked my company."

"I do. It's just—"

"I thought we were friends. What were you planning to do? Dump me as soon as we found the flute player?"

"No of course not. It's just that I want... I need to have some control over my dreams."

"But you do have control over your dreams."

"Then what am I doing here? How come every time I fall asleep, I end up here? "

"When you figure that out," Coyote says, "everything else will fall into place."

"What do you think I've been trying to do all this time?"

Coyote takes another long swallow from his mug. "The people of your world," he says, "you live two lives— an outer life that everyone can see, and another secret life inside your head. In one of those lives you can start out on a journey and reach your destination, but when you take a trip in the other, there's no end."

"What do you mean there's no end?"

Coyote shrugs. "It's the way you think. One thing leads to another and before you know it you're a thousand miles from where you thought you'd be, and you can't even remember where it was you thought you were going in the first place."

"Not everybody dreams the way I do," I tell him.

"No. But everybody's got a secret life inside their head. The difference is, you've got a stage to act yours out on."

"So none of this is real."

"I didn't say that."

"So what are you saying?"

Coyote lights another cigarette, then finishes his coffee. "Good coffee, this," he tells me.

15

"And these stories of his," Sophie said. "They just drive me crazy."

Jilly looked up from her canvas to where Sophie was slouching in the window seat of her studio. "I kind of like them. They're so zen."

"Oh please. You can keep zen. I just want something to make sense."

"Okay," Jilly said. She set her brush aside and joined Sophie in the window seat. "To start with, Barking Dog is just another one of Coyote's names."

"Really?"

Jilly nodded. "It's a literal translation of Canis latrans, which is Coyote's scientific name. That last story was his way of telling you that the two of you are much the same."

"I said sense," Sophie said. "You know, the way the rest of the world defines the term?"

"But it does make sense. In the story, Coyote's looking for arrow paints, but after he gets sidetracked, all he can do is wonder what happened to Buzzard."

"And?"

"You were following this flute music, but all you can think of now is finding Kokopelli."

"But he's the one playing the flute."

"You don't know that."

"Nokomis told me it was either Coyote or Kokopelli who tricked me into this desert dream. And she told me that it was Kokopelli's flute that I heard."

Jilly nodded. "But then think of what Max told you about how out of context she is. You've got a dream filled with desert imagery, so what's a moon deity from the eastern woodlands doing there?"

"Maybe she just got sidetracked."

"And maybe she really was Coyote in another guise. And if that's true can you trust anything she told you?"

Sophie banged the back of her head against the window frame and let out a long sigh. "Great," she said. "That's just what I needed— to be even more confused about all of this than l already am."

"If you ask me," Jilly said, "I think it's time you left Coyote behind and struck out on your own to find your own answers."

"You don't know how good he is at sulking."

Jilly laughed. "So let him tag along. Just take the lead for a change."

So that night Sophie put on the tape she'd bought around the time Geordie was messing around with his medicine flute. Coyote Love Medicine by Jessita Reyes. She lay down on her bed and concentrated on the sound of Reyes's flute, letting its breathy sound fill her until its music and the music that drew her into the desert dream became one.

16

Coyote's stretched out on a rock, the brim of his hat pulled down low to shade his eyes. Today he's got human ears, a human face. He's also got a bushy tail of which he seems inordinately proud. He keeps grooming it with his long brown fingers, combing out knots that aren't there, fluffing out parts that just won't fluff out any further. He lifts the brim of his hat with a finger when he sees me start off.

"Where are you going?" he asks.

"I've got an appointment."

From lying there all languid in the sun, with only enough energy to roll himself a cigarette and groom that fine tail of his, suddenly he bounds to his feet and falls into step beside me.