Christopher Moore - Coyote Blue

"I shouldn't be here," Sam said. Coyote ignored him and kept driving.

The clinic was housed in an old two-story house at the far end of town. A line of people — mostly women and kids — waited outside. Coyote pulled into the muddy parking lot next to a rusted-out Buick. They crawled out of the car and walked up to the door. Some of the kids whispered and giggled, pointing at Coyote. An old man who was wheeling an oxygen cylinder behind him said, "Crow Fair ain't 'til next summer, boy. Why you dressed for a powwow?"

"Be cool," Sam said to Coyote. "Don't scare him."

Coyote shrugged and followed Sam into the waiting room, a ten-by-ten parlor with a checked linoleum floor and mint-green walls hung with racks of pamphlets. Twenty people sat in folding chairs along the walls, reading old copies of People or just staring at their shoes. Sam approached a window where a Crow woman was absorbed in scribbling on index cards, intent on not looking at those who waited.

"Excuse me," Sam said.

The woman didn't look up. "Fill this out." She handed a form and a stick pen over the counter. "When you hand it in — with the pen — I'll give you a number."

"I'm not here for treatment," Sam said, and the woman looked up for the first time. "I'm here to see Pokey Medicine Wing."

The woman seemed annoyed. "Just a minute." She got up and walked through the door into the back. In a moment a door into the waiting room opened and everyone looked up. A young, white doctor poked his head out, spotted Sam and Coyote, and signaled for them to come in. Everyone in the waiting room looked back down.

Inside the door the doctor looked them up and down, Sam in his dirty windbreaker and slacks, Coyote in his buckskins. "Are you family?"

"He's my clan uncle," Sam said.

The doctor nodded to Coyote. "And you?"

"Just a friend," Sam said.

"You'll have to wait outside," the doctor said.

Sam looked at Coyote. "Keep it under control, okay?"

"I said I would." The trickster went back into the waiting room.

"He should be in a real hospital," the doctor said. "He was technically dead, twice. We brought him back with the defibrillator. He's stable now, but we don't have the staff here to watch him. He should be in an ICU."

Sam hadn't heard a word of it. "Can I see him?"

"Follow me." The doctor turned and led Sam down a narrow hallway and up a flight of steps. "He was severely dehydrated and suffering from hypothermia. I think he'd been drinking even before he went on the fast. It leached all the fluids out of his body. His liver is shot and his heart sustained some damage."

The doctor stopped and opened a door. "Just a few minutes. He's very weak."

The doctor went in with Sam. Pokey was lying in a hospital bed, tubes and wires connecting him to bottles and machines. His skin was a brown-gray color. "Mr. Medicine Wing," the doctor said softly, "someone is here to see you."

Pokey's eyes opened slowly. "Hey, Samson," he said. He smiled and Sam noticed that he still hadn't gotten false teeth.

"Hey, Pokey," Sam said.

"You got bigger."

"Yeah," Sam said. Seeing Pokey was breaking through his fog, and he was starting to hurt again.

"You look like shit," Pokey said.

"So do you."

"Must run in the family." Pokey grinned. "You got a smoke?"

Sam shook his head. "I don't think that would be a good idea. I hear you're still drinking."

"Yeah. I went to some meetings. They said I needed to get a higher power if I wanted to quit. I told them that a higher power was why I was drinking in the first place."

"He's outside now. Waiting."

Pokey nodded and closed his eyes. "I had a couple of visions about you meeting up with him. All those years he's quiet, then I get a bunch of visions. I thought you was dead until I had the first one."

"I couldn't come home. I shouldn't have…."

Pokey dismissed the thought with a weak wave of his hand. "You had to go. Enos would've killed you. He checked on us for years, lookin' in our mailbox for letters, watching the house. He drove himself plumb crazy. He give up on you when Grandma died and you didn't come home."

Sam had listened to the last part of the speech sitting on the edge of the bed with his back to Pokey. His knees had given out at the news that Enos was alive. He stared at the door. "I don't feel anything," he said.

"You okay?" Pokey said, trying to grab his nephew's arm.

"There's nothing. I'm not even afraid."

"What's wrong?"

Sam looked over his shoulder at Pokey. "I thought I killed him."

"You busted him up real good. Broke both his legs and an arm sliding down the face of the dam. Tub a lard didn't even have the manners to drown."

"I been running for nothing. I…"

"I should of never give you that Coyote medicine," Pokey said. His breath was starting to come in rasping gasps. "I thought if I got rid of it I wouldn't be crazy no more."

"It's okay." Sam patted Pokey's arm. "I don't think you had a choice."

Pokey continued to breathe heavily. "I saw a shadow that said you were going where there was death. I didn't know where to find you. I told Old Man Coyote. He said he knew." Pokey gripped Sam's arm. "He said he knew, Samson. You got to get away from him."

"Calm down, Pokey." Sam stood and put his hands on Pokey's shoulder. "It's okay, Pokey. It wasn't my death. Do you want the doctor?"

Pokey shook his head. His breathing started to calm. Sam took a pitcher of water from the bedside table and poured some into a paper cup. He held it while Pokey drank, then helped the old man lie back. "Whose death?" Pokey asked.

Sam put the cup down. "A girl." He looked away.

"You loved her?"

Sam nodded, still looking away. "She had a baby. Cindy's watching him."

"When did it happen?"

"This morning."

"Was Old Man Coyote with you when it happened?"

"Yes."

"Ask him to bring her back. He owes you that."

"She's dead, Pokey. She's gone."

"I been dead twice in the last two days. I ain't gone."

"She was shot, Pokey. A bullet went through her spine."

"Samson, look at me." Pokey pulled himself up on the bed so he could look Sam in the eye. "He owes you. There's a story that Old Man Coyote invented death so there wouldn't be too many people. There's another story that his wife was killed and he went into the Underworld to get her. There was a shade there that let her go as long as Coyote promised not to look at her until he got back to the world, but he looked, so now no one can come back."

"Pokey, I can't do this right now. I can't listen to this."

"He stole your life, Samson."

Sam shook his head violently. "This just happened to me. I didn't make any of it happen."

"Then make it happen now!" Pokey shouted. Sam stopped. "In the buffalo days they said that a warrior who had counted coup and had an arrow bundle could move in and out of the Underworld. He could hide there from his enemies. Go, Samson. Old Man Coyote can help you find your girl."

"She's dead, Pokey. The Underworld is just old superstition."

"Mumbo jumbo?" Pokey said.

"Yes."

"Crazy talk?"

"That's right."

"Voodoo?"

"Exactly."

"Like Coyote medicine?"

"No."

"Well?"

Sam didn't answer. He was gritting his teeth, glaring at his uncle.

Pokey smiled. "You still hate it when I talk about the old ways. Try it, Samson. What do you have to lose?"

"Nothing," Sam said. "There's nothing at all."

The doctor opened the door and said, "That's enough. He needs to rest."

"Fuck off, paleface," Pokey said.

Sam said, "Just one more minute, please."

"One minute," the doctor said, holding up his finger as he backed out of the room.

Sam looked at Pokey. "'Fuck off, paleface'?" He laughed. It felt good.