C.E. Murphy - Coyote Dreams

“Pretty much.” I drank my water and put the glass down again as Gary cocked his head at me.

“Maybe it’s a hint, darlin’. Why doncha do one?”

I opened my mouth and closed it again and looked intently at my empty glass. “Because last time I did, I was hoodwinked by the bad guys?”

“You think I’m one of the bad guys, Jo?”

Every vestige of good cheer drained out of me like somebody’d opened a valve, complete misery rising to take its place. My throat went tight and my eyes stung with tears, color heating my cheeks even as my stomach twisted and my hands turned icy. “If you are I’m throwing the towel in now, because I just couldn’t handle that.”

“Aw, hey, Joanie.” Gary took my wrist, pulling me to my feet and into a bear hug that left me snuffling in his shoulder. “I was teasin’, sweetheart. I ain’t one of the bad guys. Just an old dog with a pretty girl to look after.”

I snuffled again, leaking tears. “’m not little.”

He chuckled against my head. “Didn’t say you were, darlin’.”

“Oh.” I sniffled again and extracted myself to find a tissue. “I guess you didn’t.” Gary turned to watch me.

“You all right, Joanie?”

“Yeah.” I scraped up a smile and offered it to him. “You never call me Joanie.”

The old man waggled his head dismissively. “Tough broad like you don’t usually need to be called by a little girl’s name. You sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah. Just don’t turn out to be one of the bad guys, okay?” I gave him another weak smile, then put my cold hands over my too-hot face. It felt good, so I stood there until my hands warmed up again. “You think maybe there are some real spirit animals out there for me?” I asked into my palms.

“Only one way to find out.” Gary came up to me as he spoke, slinging his arm around my shoulders to give me another brief hug. “You found one for me, didn’t you? If an old tortoise could spare some time for me, there’s gotta be somethin’ out there for a powerhouse like you. I’ll get the drum.”

“Thanks, Gary.” I dropped my hands to watch him exit the kitchen, then slumped against the counter, trying to remember if my little emotional breakdowns were usually followed by getting my act together. Maybe I needed to start keeping a journal: Wednesday: burst into tears on Gary, then saved Seattle. A good day . The idea made me smile and I pushed off the counter to get ready for a spirit quest.

I had an almost complete lack of things that struck me as appropriate for preparing for a spirit quest. I had no overheated hut like the dream had featured, I had no drum circle, I had no guide and I had pretty much no idea what I should be doing, except for the examples of the dream and the success of the quest I’d done for Gary. With any luck, that would be enough. I forewent the towel I usually tucked against the front door, as the draft from under it felt nice in July, and plunked down in the middle of my living room floor.

There was no electric shock when Gary picked up my drum, and the beat he picked out didn’t send shards of light through my soul and out into the world. Overall, I thought that was probably a good thing, even if it did make my heart skip a thud with missing Morrison’s rhythm.

Wow. There wasn’t anything wrong with the thought, exactly, but it brought me to all sorts of places I just wasn’t prepared to go. I fought down a blush, totally without success, and hoped Gary didn’t see it. It took a while to get my heart rate back to normal after that, and visions of Morrison kept popping up in my head. I hadn’t gone out with him. It didn’t seem right for him to hang around my brain, clouding things up.

Wow, again. I’d had a real, honest-to-gosh date. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gone on a date. It’d been before my mother died, which meant at least a year ago. My social life was an absolute disaster. I was going to have to call Phoebe and see if she wanted to go out again, although maybe not to the club Thor had seen us at.

Then again, maybe. I felt a grin creep over my face and tried to push it away. I was sitting in the middle of my living room listening to a drum. It was not supposed to be the time to reflect on my personal life. This was the bit where it was all deep and dark and serious and mystical, so I could get inside my own head, or outside of it, and maybe meet a few spirit animals out there in the black.

That was, of course, the problem with trying to think of nothing. All sorts of somethings kept crowding around in my mind, vying for attention. Morrison, Mark, Thor…for a moment I paused to admire all the men suddenly in my life, then shook my head. Morrison was certainly not a man in my life. I mean, he was, what with being a man and in my life, but he wasn’t a Man in My Life. And a compliment from Thor probably didn’t make him a Man in My Life, either. I was getting a big head.

Mark, on the other hand. Mark was nice to think about. He was quirky and charming and absolutely no doubt too good to be true, and made a warm little bubbly place in my tummy that I liked. I let out a tired, content sigh and thought about Mark until his image dissolved and let me drift thoughtlessly in the dark behind my eyelashes.

Warmth and comfort and safety gradually surrounded me, all caught up in the sound of the drumbeat. My heart had staggered into the drum’s pattern, or maybe the other way around. Both felt languid and unworried, a part of me but not to be terribly concerned with. Distant sparkles glittered and faded in the dark, almost familiar now. I sat myself down, folding my legs yoga-style, and resolved in a laid-back kind of way to be patient. Judy’d said it was easier to do spirit quests for others than for yourself, and while I had good reason not to trust most of what she’d told me, that part actually resounded with some of what I’d read.

I’d asked for help for Gary—and for Colin, though that was something I didn’t want to think about in the middle of my own spirit quest—but doing so now seemed presumptuous somehow. My spirit animals, if they wanted to come to me, might take their own sweet time about it. I just had to be patient.

One of the distant shimmers took on a harder glimmer, making a seared sharp edge of brightness in the darkness. It brought with it color, desert-blue sky meeting red stretches of earth, coalescing at a horizon that seemed a thousand miles away. A road, straight and narrow and plumed with dust, cut toward that horizon, and the hard line of light glinted again. I walked forward, raising a hand against the shadowless skies, and squinted at puffs of dirt ambling up from the far-off vehicle.

I could hear people behind me, voices rising and falling with as much enthusiasm as could be generated in the heat. Someone was keeping an eye on me, not worried, but because I was a kid, and so someone had to watch out for me. I felt a hand on my shoulder as an adult stopped to watch the car with me, then a double-pat as he left me on my own.

Time folded, the car pulling up in a cloud of dust. It was an enormous old boat of an Oldsmobile, built in the seventies, four-doored and powered by a massive V8 engine. A fleeting thought, this is not your father’s Oldsmobile , scampered through my mind, but as the driver’s-side door pushed open and a young man got out, an unsettling jolt made my stomach cold.

It was my father’s Oldsmobile. The car I’d grown up in was out there in the desert, my dad climbing out to hail one of the adults behind me. I shook myself, realizing that for the second time, I was having a dream in which I was somebody else. I hadn’t known it this time, though, until I saw Dad. I knew him, but whomever I was dreaming as didn’t.

He was tall, taller than I thought of him as being. That was the kid’s perspective; I remembered Dad from my adult height, only an inch or two shorter than his. He gave me an impersonal nod before he passed me, offering to shake someone’s hand. I turned to watch him a few seconds, unused to strangers.