Coyotes
Tim McIntire
I took a couple of deep breaths and pushed the door open. The tinkling of the welcome bell echoed off the concrete floor, its cheerfulness tinny and strange. Sam Lopez was sitting at the counter, his gold-framed reading glasses gleaming under the fluorescent lights. He was leafing through the latest TV Guide and didn’t look up.
I glanced around quickly, then shoved my hands into my pockets and strode around the store, trying to take in the racks of rifles along the wall, the rows of pistols under glass, and the boxes of ammunition stacked like canned tomatoes at the Safeway. My library research suddenly seemed useless. Everything looked exactly the same: completely foreign and unfamiliar. I risked a glance at Sam, who was still reading the Guide, oblivious. I turned back to the rifles, but it was no use. Suddenly, I could hear my own breathing, as loud as a jet engine. I walked to the counter and placed my hands on the glass for balance.
“Could you not lean on the counter like that? Leaves smudges,” Sam said, still reading his magazine.
“Sorry.” I yanked back my hands like they’d been burned, and was suddenly very aware of them. They were awkward and heavy. I stuck my left hand in my pocket, but that felt wrong. As I looked down through the glass countertop at several used pistols with little manila tags, it dawned on me that I had no idea if these were fair prices or not. I wondered if I was expected to haggle.
I looked up, ready to try again, only to find Sam staring at me. His expression was stony, but his eyes shone bright and wet. I suddenly wished I’d driven the extra hour to Santa Fe.
“Coyotes!” I blurted. “In my yard.” My face flushed hot.
Sam’s eyes narrowed. He pulled his glasses off and began rubbing them with a faded flannel shirttail. “Coyotes,” he said quietly. He pursed his lips and nodded, then held the glasses up to the light, checking for spots. He placed them back on his face and ran a calloused hand through his bristly gray hair. “So you’d like a rifle, then, for your coyote situation. That sound about right, Mr. Cole?”
I nodded. Sam leaned back in his chair and pulled a soft pack of Pall Malls out of his breast pocket. He shook one down, snagged it out with his upper lip, and lit it with a silver Zippo that was lying next to the cash register. He took a deep drag and released it slowly, then looked me dead in the eyes.
“You know, it’s been my experience that when a man who’s never owned a gun in his life suddenly shows up itching to buy one, it usually means he’s got a bigger problem than coyotes.” He took another drag off his cigarette. The smoke hung in the air between us.
I kept my breathing steady. I smiled conspiratorially and said, “Well, Sam, I don’t know what to tell you. But the fact is that these are some pretty big fucking coyotes.” My smile spread.
Sam let it hang there for a while. Then he inhaled sharply on his cigarette, letting his mouth open a little and sucking in smoke through his nose. He held his breath. When he exhaled, nothing came out, and the brightness was gone from his eyes.
“Okay, then. I guess we’d better get you a gun.”
I went home that night with a brand new Remington 30-06 rifle and four boxes of ammunition. I also had a nickel-plated .38 caliber revolver that Sam said was good for beginners, which I slowly and carefully loaded before placing it back in its case. I wouldn’t need it for a while.
I sat on my back porch with the rifle and tried to remember everything Sam had said about shooting: squeeze, don’t jerk; exhale when you pull the trigger; sight a little high. It was after dark when they started getting close enough to see with the floodlights on the back of the house.
It took me about six tries before I finally hit my first coyote. I’d been expecting him to fly back like a gunshot victim in a movie. Instead, he just fell on his side and twitched once. I walked out to the carcass. His guts were spilled all over the ground, steaming in the autumn chill. Once I saw that he was really dead, I threw up in great rolling heaves until nothing was left but bile and spit. I apologized softly and began to cry. I said I hoped he understood, then sat on the ground next to him for what felt like a respectful time. I dug him a shallow grave.
Back inside, I washed the stink from my hands and poured myself a big glass of Scotch from the bottle I’d bought after visiting Sam’s. I drank it off in one gulp. It burned my throat and brought fresh tears to my already wet eyes. I could feel its vapors rising from my stomach and its warmth blooming out to my hands. Once I felt steady again, I reloaded the rifle and waited for the next coyote to come sniff around the tripe I’d bought from the supermarket and tossed in my back lot. Thus I began the process of repetition, of squashing my humanity down until it could no longer get in the way.
After my fourth kill, I stopped throwing up. After my seventh, I stopped crying. By my ninth, it was only taking an average of two shots to get a hit. I never even finished the bottle of Scotch. Over the course of four weeks, I killed and buried eighteen coyotes. It became rote. Load, sight, fire, bolt, fire, check, dig, bury. At the end of my shooting, I’d take out my cleaning kit and do a real thorough job, running the soft cloth through the barrel like Sam had shown me. I’d oil everything carefully and store the rifle in its case until I took it out the next night.
This was the strange calculus I’d developed: it takes eighteen coyotes to steel a man’s heart to the point where he can take a life easily. It was actually more like fourteen, but since I didn’t know if killing a man would be the same as killing a coyote, I did the last four just to be sure.
One day, Mr. Jiminez came by while I was grading exams. He wanted to know when my report on the new curriculum would be ready. While he was talking, I was picturing his intestines spilling out over the button on his suit coat and blood jetting from his forehead.
I always used to lose my keys until I realized that it was pointless to try to remember where I left them. Instead, it was more important to know myself well enough to know where I would have left them. This was the same thing. I knew that I would balk on December 20 and that all my planning would go out the window unless I could dull that part of myself that would respond with weakness and horror. So I shot coyotes in my backyard and shot everyone else in my mind.
If I was really changing, my students didn’t seem to notice. They were still rowdy, still seemingly unreachable. I wondered what they would do if they knew that I was picturing them between the sights of my rifle. It had nothing to do with them. I was picturing nearly everyone between the sights of my rifle. There was no anger behind it. It was just more repetition.
Most nights, I’d place several large logs in my heating stove, the gas long since disconnected, and fall asleep sitting up in a chair. I would linger in the place somewhere between memory and dream, when everything feels real and immediate. I would indulge in thoughts that I should have left behind. I had my favorites, vivid in their perfection. I would unfold them slowly, letting them drift through me.
I had gotten home a little late. The sun was already setting, October orange smeared across the clouds. My father would have called it a Navajo sunset. I killed the engine and swung down out of the cab. The old yellow Scout had developed a rattle south of Bernalillo, and I was going to have to get out the shop lamp and try to fix it before bed. My ratty brown loafers kicked up little clouds of dust from the useless patch of dirt that was supposed to be our garden in front of the trailer.
When he heard the truck door slam, Michael came blasting out of the front door and wobbled down the warped wood steps as fast as his little two-year-old legs would carry him. I had a small heart attack watching him lurch down the stairs, trying to take them like a big boy, no hands. I knew Sarah would scold him for going outside without shoes. I knew she’d scold me for letting him. His little belly pooched out over his Pampers, his skin a perfect blend of Sarah’s brown and my white.
“Papa!” he hollered, throwing his head back and smiling like a crazy man. I dropped my briefcase and jogged to him, meeting him halfway before he fell down. I grasped him under his armpits and hoisted him up. A bolt of fire arced across my lower back, which was already stiff from the long drive. I ignored the pain and lifted him as high as I could, his perfect little body framed against the New Mexico sky.
I lowered him, cradled him in my arms, and stuck my face in his hair. It was already too long again, even after his first haircut just weeks before. I inhaled deeply. He thought he was a big kid, but he still had that baby smell that made me want to cram him in my mouth and chew him up.
He lifted his dirty little fingers toward my face. His enormous black eyes met mine, and everything was gone: the trailer, the Scout, my students over on the Res. He could always do that—look me in the eye and blank out the world. When he was born, before the doctor took him to poke and prod, I calmed him by tapping my finger over his heart and whispering secrets to him under the heat lamp.
He stroked my cheek, looking very serious. Then rattlesnake fast, he snatched my glasses off and flung them across the yard, howling with laughter. This was his idea of a joke coming off just right.
“You’re sneaky!” I cried.
“Neaky!” he agreed.
I plopped him down in the dirt and walked over to my glasses, fixing the bent post for about the hundredth time. I turned around slowly.
“You know who else is sneaky? Papa’s sneaky!” I pounced and buried him under a mountain of tickles. Our laughter filled the space, ricocheting off the trailers and trucks.
We wrestled on the ground until Sarah came out and pulled us to the table, where she fed us flatbread and beans. After she’d put Michael down, we sat on opposite ends of the couch, our feet tangled in the middle under a blue and purple quilt she’d sewn. She stroked my calves with her toes while I told her about my day, nodding and sympathizing like always. When it was time for bed, we crawled under our heavy blankets and made spoons. I fell asleep with her skin and her heat pressed against my back.
I never did fix the Scout.
As autumn gave way to winter, I began taking care of the items on my list. I returned my library books. I cancelled my Visa and arranged for the phone and electricity to be shut off. I closed my checking account at the credit union and left my three hundred and eleven dollars in the collection plate at a Saturday mass at Our Lady of Guadalupe. I called George Tapahe into my office and told him I knew he’d been cheating on exams and that if he promised to stop, I wouldn’t tell Mr. Jiminez. He mumbled an apology and ran out.
I stayed up all night on December 19, cleaning the rifle one last time. I took the revolver out of its case and put it in one of the side pockets in the hunting fatigues I’d bought at the Army/Navy. While the strong black coffee dripped into the decanter, I took four large beef roasts out to the back yard and left them for the coyotes.
After midnight, I drove a rented Ford down the two-lane highway and parked in the public lot of a hiking trail about a mile away from the office complex. At three o’clock in the morning, it was deserted, so I opened the trunk, pulled out my rifle and my thermos of coffee, and crossed the road into the woods. I’d made this trip enough times that I didn’t need a flashlight. I took my time, being careful where I stepped. A twisted ankle could ruin everything. I followed an arroyo until I found the gnarled tree root that marked the place where I should begin climbing to the top of the hill.
I stopped once to empty my bladder against a large boulder. The smell was sharp in the night air, and I could feel the heat rising from my piss. I tilted my nose up to escape the ammonia stink. The stars were stark and crisp. The view prodded me into a daydream about pointing the constellations out to Michael. I saw myself kneeling on one knee, pointing up at the sky, his little head resting on my shoulder and sighting along my arm. Those three right there, I’d say. That’s Orion. I could all but feel him cradled in the nook of my shoulder, pressing his weight against me as he tried to see. The daydream turned sour when I realized he’d always been in bed too early to have ever seen stars.
From there, it took me about half an hour to find my way to the two large rocks overlooking the entranceway. I sat against the larger of the two, my back to the building. I poured myself some coffee, being careful not to fumble the slick plastic lid with my oversized hunter’s mittens. I drank it slowly, enjoying the flavor and the bitter bite. I wanted enough to stay alert but not enough to make my hands tremble. My aim had gotten much better, but I didn’t want to risk the shakes. So I sipped my coffee and enjoyed the stillness of the December night. A couple of hours later, the sunrise spilled pink and yellow across the hills. Months before, it would have taken my breath away and made my heart catch in my throat. Instead, I forced myself to lower my eyes and focus. The time for such things was long past.
By the time the sun was fully up, it was squarely behind me, bathing the front of the office building in soft light, which reflected off the giant red corporate logo. I figured that my Algebra I students would just be filing into the classroom to discover they had a substitute and a pop quiz on quadratic equations. I could hear their grumbling and felt pity for the sub, especially since he didn’t know he’d lucked into a long-term assignment. He’d know by lunchtime.
It was getting late, time to get ready. I packed up my thermos and set it aside. Then I slowly unzipped my rifle case. The rasp of the zipper sounded dangerous in the morning stillness. I pulled the rifle out, catching a whiff of cleaning oil as I worked the bolt a couple of times. I set the case on some leaves and the rifle on the case and began loading the magazine. It held four bullets. I hoped I wouldn’t need that many, but it didn’t hurt to be careful. It was too hard to press them into the magazine with woolen mittens on, so I slipped my right one off and immediately wished I hadn’t. The chill drove deep into my knuckles, and the freezing metal of the rounds didn’t help. I got them loaded as quickly as I could, then drove the magazine home with a clack. I put my mitten back on and shoved my hand into my armpit, trying to warm it back up.
I spread my old blue blanket out on the ground, hoping it would insulate me a little. I lay down on it, prone, with the barrel of my rifle poking through the two rocks, which gave me a surprisingly wide field of fire, covering most of the parking lot as well as the front door. The sun was high, and cars had started to trickle in. A rush of adrenaline made me dizzy when I realized how close it all was. Any moment, his dark blue Tahoe with the ski rack on top would pull in and park, and I’d have approximately fifteen seconds to make my shot. I forced myself to breathe deeply, trying to still everything inside.
The trial the year before had been short and awful. John Scanlon had taken the case on contingency, but I still hadn’t had the money to do what needed to be done. We had the county coroner to testify about the condition of the bodies and a rumpled chemistry professor from the university to testify about the science. The coroner was a career man and held his own against Ben Falit’s attorneys, but the professor fell to pieces, and they exposed a hundred different ways his tests could have been wrong. After their endless parade of well-paid experts, our man looked like a bumbling fool. In a desperate legal move, John recalled the coroner and drew forth an excruciatingly detailed reconstruction of the accident: how Sarah was killed instantaneously in the fire, but how Michael died several minutes later from blood loss after being torn apart by shrapnel that had recently been a propane tank. I tried to hold it together, but when he described finding Michael’s left arm three hundred feet from the trailer, I broke down completely, and the judge mercifully called a recess so I could compose myself and wipe the snot off my chin. Through my tears, I caught Falit looking at me with an expression of disgust and pity, like I was a homeless man or a drunk Indian on the sidewalk.
If we had had any chance of winning, it was destroyed under the weight of Falit’s lawyer’s final statement. It was a well-rehearsed piece of theater, and the woman who delivered it let her soft voice quiver just so as she talked to the jury about this tragedy, this horrible accident, this poor man and his poor wife and child, and that they knew it was awful, just awful, but that the reality was that all the evidence showed that Falit Propane, LLC didn’t bear any responsibility. When the fat forewoman read the jury’s decision, I just sat in my chair, slumped and silent. My knuckles dug into my thigh hard enough to raise swollen bruises. A beaming Falit accepted some handshakes and slaps on the back and didn’t so much as glance at me as he exited the courtroom. John just touched my shoulder softly and left. I never heard from him after that, though I did get an envelope from the professor. It contained his uncashed honorarium check and a handwritten note that said, “I’m sorry.”
My stomach lurched sharply as I saw Falit’s car rolling into his parking space at the front of the complex. I took two deep breaths and rolled my neck before I snugged the butt of the rifle up to my shoulder and lowered my eye to the iron sights. I was so still and focused, I could see the very tip of the barrel shaking slightly with each pounding thud of my heart. Everything slowed down, and as he stepped down from the truck, Falit seemed to grow huge. I knew I could take him in one shot. My finger tightened on the trigger as I tracked his progress around the front of the truck, waiting for the cleanest, straightest line of sight. He was wearing pleated tan pants and a dark jacket. His hair whipped in the wind, and it reminded me to shift my aim to compensate for the breeze.
Then he opened the passenger side door and a small boy hopped down onto the pavement.
He must have been about five, and he was wearing a dark blue jacket with a fur-lined hood, which was down. When I saw his sandy blond hair blowing in the wind, I knew he had to be Falit’s son. I let the barrel of the rifle droop. I realized it was winter vacation for elementary students, and the boy must be spending the day at his father’s office. It was an unexpected opportunity, and the symmetry was too perfect to ignore.
I could do to Falit exactly what he had done to me. This was a sudden chance for real justice, for eye-for-an-eye retribution. Let Falit live the next twenty years with the image of his son’s exploding face burned into his brain. Let him discover that they charge you less money for a child-sized coffin. Let him feel the coldness that comes when a velvet-voiced mortician tells you it can’t be an open casket because there is too much visible trauma. I lowered my eye to the sights and raised the rifle once more, aiming high and to the right to make up for gravity and the wind, and I was sure that the bullet would take him right in the center of his blond little skull. I tracked him as he took his father’s hand and started walking to the doorway. Two seconds later, his back was fully exposed to me, and I knew this was the moment to take the shot. I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, squeezing the trigger as I did.
My finger didn’t move. I took another quick breath. Just a coyote, I whispered. Just a coyote. They were walking along the sidewalk now, passing between the two leafless maple trees that framed the front entrance. I had maybe three seconds left. My whisper became a frenzied mantra. Just a coyote just a coyote just a COYOTE JUST A COYOTE!
But he wasn’t.
He was a little boy, and I knew his hand would be soft and warm and perfect in his father’s, that he liked to wrestle and that he’d be Superman for sure next Halloween.
The barrel of the gun was shaking wildly, and hot tears ran down my face. The glass door flashed in the sunshine, and then they were gone. I dropped the rifle onto the ground. The steel clanged loudly off a rock, echoing sharply across the parking lot.
I stayed still for a long while, propped up on my elbows and staring at the doorway as the other workers drifted in. My eyes were watering and my back ached from lying too long in the cold. Struggling to a sitting position, I leaned against one of the rocks for support. Its rough, frozen surface poked through my jacket and into my back. I pulled the thirty-eight from my pocket, opened the cylinder, checked the bullets, and flipped it shut with a snap of my wrist. I cocked the hammer like Sam had shown me, two clicks, not just one, so that I wouldn’t have to pull too hard to fire it.
The metal was surprisingly warm in my mouth. Keeping the gun in my pocket against my leg had kept it from freezing, and it tasted pleasant and tangy. I lifted my head and picked out a wispy white cloud drifting alone in the impossibly blue sky, savoring its simple perfect beauty. I let my eyes linger until I knew it was time.
My throat clenched as a sudden bolt of fear rippled through me, and I thought I wouldn’t be able to do it. But then Michael was there, in my lap. I stared into his perfect black eyes, and he placed his hand on my chest. My finger moved firmly and easily while he tapped in time with my heartbeat and whispered his secrets in my ear.
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