Hari Kunzru - Gods Without Men

Coyote made himself very small and flattened his belly against a strand of devil’s claw, clinging tightly as Yucca Woman’s nimble fingers threaded the weft through the willow wands. As soon as the strand passed beneath the willow, Coyote found himself in twilight. It was cold and gray. He looked across the land and saw many dim green lights, the glowing campfires of the dead. He squinted into the darkness. Finally he recognized the faces of his companions, the young warriors killed in the war against Gila Monster. He called out to them. “Haik ya ! Hello, my brothers! How good to see you! Are you happy here-aik ya ? Do you have enough to eat?” His friends replied, but being dead their voices were very faint and hard to hear. Just then, the nimble fingers of Yucca Woman passed the devil’s claw strand back through the willow wands and once again Coyote found himself in this world.

He felt frustrated but remembered the wise words of his penis. A second time Yucca Woman passed the devil’s claw thread beneath the willow and a second time Coyote clung on tight and passed into the Land of the Dead. Once again he saw his companions sitting around the pale campfires. Once again he called out. This time they beckoned to him, showing him they had made a place for him beside the fire. Still he couldn’t hear their words. When he passed into the Land of the Dead a third time he couldn’t resist and let go of the strand. He dropped to the ground and went to sit by the fire with his companions. “Old friends, it is good to see you-aik ya ! Tell me the news. What game do you hunt down here in the Land of the Dead? Do you still wrestle and throw sticks to pierce the hoop?” His friends said nothing.

“Coyote!” said his penis. “You have been very foolish! Look what you’ve done!” Coyote squinted up through the gloom and saw a young warrior climbing onto the devil’s-claw strand. “Good-bye, Coyote!” shouted the warrior. “Good-bye and thank you. You have saved me from the Land of the Dead. I’ve been here ever since I was speared in the war against Gila Monster. Now I shall go back and feel the sun on my face, and run and hunt and lay down with a woman.” Coyote shook his fist. “Haikya! You tricked me-aik ya ! I’m sorry I ever came down here.” He wept and wailed as he thought about how he had been tricked. “What a fool was I, to let go of the strand of devil’s claw. Now I will have to wait here in this gloomy spot, until I can fool another person into taking my place.”

Segunda listened to this story and knew that for all his power, Mockingbird Runner had fallen into a trap. She lay in the cover of bush and watched the lovers take off their clothes. She saw his red body next to her white body, and she knew there would be a baby, and it would be Coyote’s baby, belonging half to this world and half to the Land of the Dead.

“I suppose,” said Jaz, “we’d better wait for Mommy.” Raj was standing at the foot of the lounger, staring at the sky and humming in a high-pitched wavering tone, usually a sign he was hungry. Jaz tousled his hair. Raj took a step back, out of range.

“Oh, to hell with it. I could use something to eat, too.”

He fixed a lunch of tuna fish and rye crackers. They ate together by the pool. Raj stood, clutching his food in a hot little fist. Daddy perched glumly on a folding chair. Raj drank apple juice. Daddy had a beer. Daddy had another beer. He crushed red Tecate cans under the sole of his flip-flop and threw them at the painted metal bucket that served as a trash can. What the hell was Lisa playing at? She’d made her point. He was more than ready to apologize. If he admitted his faults, then maybe they could all go look at scenery or something. She was the one who’d wanted to take a trip out to this godforsaken place. And until she came back with the car, he and Raj were stuck at the motel.

An hour went by. He coaxed Raj into the pool and held him while he splashed, feeling his wriggling body twisting about in his arms, a little seal cub, a porpoise. Afterward he smeared more sunscreen on the boy’s torso and tried to persuade him to wear the floppy-brimmed hat Lisa had picked up at a Walmart on the way out of L.A. Raj didn’t want to know about the hat. Even tying the strap under his chin didn’t work; his fingers deftly picked open the knot as soon as Jaz’s back was turned.

The more he thought about Lisa, the more the print on his paperback novel swam in front of his eyes. You people . Well, sometimes she was you people. A piece of string, for God’s sake. That’s all it was.

Another hour passed. Jaz took Raj’s hand and went out to look at the road, in the magical hope that this would conjure his wife and their rental car out of the shimmering blacktop. The air had a pink haze. He considered walking down the hill into town. How long would it take? An hour? With the boy?

He always defaulted to work when stressed or angry. The sun was low and he was failing to concentrate on a pile of reports when his cell phone started to vibrate in his pocket, playing a trebly polyphonic “Ride of the Valkyries.” Not Lisa. The ringtone was his bad-taste private joke on Fenton Willis, a man it was probably risky to make jokes about, even if he wasn’t your employer.

“Mr. Willis.”

“Jaswinder.” The firm’s CEO was the only person in Jaz’s life other than his parents who insisted on using his full name. He pronounced it Jass-whine-dur , a mangled sequence of syllables he emitted with such ponderous formality that Jaz sometimes felt like the object of a hearts and minds campaign. Step one: Look him in the eye and address him using correct honorific. Step two: Tell him why you regret calling in the airstrike on his village … Watercooler gossip had it that in Vietnam Willis’s job had been to clear Vietcong tunnels, crawling along in the dark with a flashlight and a.38. Sometimes, on the subway or waiting in line for a coffee, Jaz found himself wondering how many of the men around him had done such things. Which of the guys strap-hanging on the F train had been to war? Which of them, with their copies of the Post and their laptop cases, had tortured or killed?

“So, how’s the desert?”

“It’s just great, Mr. Willis. We’re all having a great time.”

“Glad to hear it. I stayed in a neat little place round there. Working cattle ranch. Help with the roundup, rope a steer, that kind of thing. I could get Linda to send you the details. Great place. You spend a night on the range. Eat beans out of a mess tin, Indian feller tells ghost stories. Mesquite fire, the whole nine yards.”

“Sounds awesome, sir. But maybe next time. Our itinerary’s kind of set.”

“I see. Look, son, I wouldn’t bother you on your vacation, but I had lunch with Cy Bachman yesterday, and he seems to think you aren’t happy.”

“I wouldn’t put it like that, exactly.”

“Well, how would you put it?”

“I think we’re working well together. And Cy’s a talented guy. No doubt about it.”

“But?”

“I think there’s too much exposure. If it goes wrong there could be consequences.”

“That goes without saying. We’ve got a lot of chips on the table.”

“Not just losses for the firm. Systemic consequences.”

“You’ll have to unpack that for me.”

“I just think we haven’t thought through the logic of what we’re doing with Walter.”

“Cy says you’re risk-averse. He says you pitched him some kind of candy-assed moral argument, told him you thought taking highly leveraged positions based on his model was against your conscience.”

“That wasn’t what I said.”

“So what did you say? If you think the model’s no good, then you need to stand up and say so. I’m not paying you to spot problems and keep them to yourself.”