Little Coyote
Little Coyote. A Short Story.
They call me Little Coyote, like Ki and Ote, but my name is Quinn. It’s an awfully serious soundin’ name for where I’m from. I have a brother named Bubba and a sister named Joe. And even though we’re the same age, both of them are bigger than I am and have been kicking my butt since the day we were put together in this world. So not only am I small, but I’m named Quinn. Doesn’t bode well for a dog.
I have one brown eye. It’s apparently unremarkable. My other eye is as blue as the ocean around Mexico. A stranger lady wandered into Maw’s Pick and Choose looking for treasures of a non-dog sort, and she said that. She said she could go diving in my eye, that lady. She said she was from Dallas. Whatever that is. She used the word transfixed and I think that’s a good thing. She said darling…about me. She didn’t say that about Joe or Bubba. I almost had her. But, no matter how much doe-eyed begging I did, while being a very, very, good boy, it didn’t work. She held me like a child and cooed and purred at me. But then she said she didn’t like boy dogs because they smelled like Fritos and humped everything. Do they think we don’t understand them?
And while she did not say it out loud, I could see in her eyes that while she knew I was cute now, I was gonna grow up rough. I was going to look like a ranch mutt, and a small one at that. She was one of them that would save a dog from an expensive breeder, Maw said. But I think the lady has seen the bad and she’d just as soon not deal with trouble in this part of her life. That’s what even my little nose was reading. No more cleaning up messes.
Maw is the woman trying to help get rid of me. That’s a heck of a thing to say, but it’s true. Maw holds me like a baby, too, for hours at a time as she sits behind the desk of her shop on the side of the highway. Maw’s Pick and Choose is a thrift store that raises some money for the animal shelter. Maw set up a big kennel right in the middle for us to live in ’til somebody has a run of bad judgment. That’s what her man said. Her man tries jokes too. Here’s one. What do you get when you cross a wayward bitch and mismatched glassware? Maw’s Pick and Choose. He wasn’t being mean, he said. He’s always carrying on, Maw said. A real chatterbox, according to Maw.
I am the spawn of a wayward bitch, though. Some fella found me and Bubba and Joe on the side of the road and we surely would have got et by a real coyote in no time flat if he hadn’t put us in a greasy box on his floorboard and taken us to the pound. There were three more of us before he found us. I’m trying not to remember that.
But Maw just holds me like a real baby and lord do I try to be good so I can stay in her arms because as soon as she puts me back in that kennel with Joe and Bubba they are going to roll me because they can. And they are going to eat all the food because they can. They are each, by temperament, about two years from being put down for biting toddlers. Mark my words.
In a life where you can have a hundred siblings, it’s ok to hate a couple of them. I only know these two, and I’ll start my hating with them and hopefully end it there. I might hate that woman who made the humping comment. It was rude even if she might be right in the end.
She isn’t going to keep me either, Maw. She said something to her man about it and he said, well, if nobody bit the hook I’d probably be sent up north. I don’t know what that means. I don’t want to think about it at all. Maybe they are short on ugly cow dogs up there and we’re all the rage. Maybe those folks think it’s a moral imperative to adopt funny mongrel dogs with one ocean colored eye, instead of buying perfect on-purpose dogs.
They call me Little Coyote because I’m the color of cream and have some brownish fur coming in and I have five or so stripes on my head which is something my siblings don’t have. I guess I should be thankful they don’t call me Scrawny Chipmunk as those have the exact sort of racing strips on their heads, Maw said.
But Little Coyote is alright I guess. I still think of coyotes as dogs of an independent mind, who just can’t play by anyone else’s rules. And sometimes I wonder if they weren’t right on with that decision. I don’t see them trapped in a box arguing over kibble or being told that the one thing that is gonna save them is one ocean blue eye. The kibble might be better than some of the things they eat, like abandoned pups. Something deep tells me that the smell of warm blood or perhaps a little funk of death might suit me just fine someday. Something else deep down just wants a warm spot by a fireplace. And my own boy.
This morning the store was empty and the lights were off and we were all dreaming I guess of our mother, or some clean blanket. In comes Maw, unlocking things and turning on all the lights with little consideration of the napping going on, and she had a man with her. Not her man. There was crap all over the kennel. Not a great impression for visitors. Joe and Bubba woke up and started yapping and jumping and insisting that they were superior. And I suppose they are in many ways. Still those dumb dogs were hopping up and down all over their own poop.
The man was thinnish but looked rugged and strong. He had big hands. And a big hat. And a really low voice. And Maw opened the cage door and pushed her arms past Joe and Bubba who were nipping and crying like they’d never been loved before, which they hadn’t, and she reached in deep for me and pulled me straight out and put me into his big old hands. And she locked that kennel like there was only one option and no other would be considered. And Bubba even got the kennel door slammed on his paw. Maw was not having his guff at all. Ed, Maw said, meet Quinn. You need this baby and I need you to take him, she said.
And that man held me up eye to eye. He did. I was still sleepy and I probably was moving a little slow. He showed me in one heartbeat what being a pup was supposed to be and how the right man and the right pup put together made more than one human and one dog, and that men got chunks torn off of them in life and that was something that dogs can fix but nothing else can. Instead of being high on puppy fumes, he looked into my eyes and just about rolled a tear. He was bone sad. I could smell it. And I tried to tell him that I was bone sad too, only I hadn’t known it til he picked me up. And he heard me. Everyone wants to be loved, true enough. But a dog has to be loved! Else we’re just coyotes.
I don’t want anyone depending on me, Ed said. But he didn’t move to hand me back. Maw said, I figure it’ll end up being the other way around, Ed. Ed grumbled a sound that was sort of defeated, but it didn’t read bad.
Maw stood there looking at us like she had really done something. And she had. She brought me an Ed. He put me against his chest and reached into his pocket with the other hand and he pulled out money and put it on the counter and turned away from Maw and headed toward the door with me. Be seeing you, Maryann, he said.
I knew it, Maw said. I knew it. Then she started going on about some paperwork for the shelter and Ed said that the money was the only paperwork he was going to do and he hoped it covered the cost of them feeding his pup for a spell and he just kept on walking. And my heart almost exploded. It was doing like my tail. I think I may have lost consciousness. It hurt how much I loved this man and his soft denim shirt and his big scratchy hand that held me like I was so important. He pushed open the door and we walked out in the sunshine. I squinted my blue eye and I looked up at him and you know what? Ed squinted his eyes from the sun too and guess what else? His eyes were the color of the ocean.
His truck was parked right out front and it wasn’t locked or anything even though the back was full of tools and mud boots and barbed wire coils. I suppose he wasn’t the sort of man folks stole from. His grip, tender but unquestioning around my belly told me what his handshake was like and also a little about how he might fight, older thought he was.
Old Mike was sitting on the cement stairs. He comes around with things to sell. Maw gives him a few dollars. But he looked down at the dirt when my Ed came out, like a cowed animal. That tells you about Ed, doesn’t it? Not unkind. Not at all. But like a dog, the people know which ones not to trifle with. Mike finally looked up when Ed put me in the truck. You got the Little Coyote, Mike said. I think he’s gonna be a good dog. Ed cracked the smallest hint of a smile. And he looked at Mike and said, Yup, he’s a good’un. A good’un. Me.
Ed put me on the seat of his truck, not on the floorboard, and not in the back, and not in a box. He put me on the seat right next to where he sits like I was going to be his partner. We dogs know pretty soon how good or how bad it is going to go for us. I knew that I was right about Bubba and Joe. But for the very first time in my whole short life, I knew…I knew down to my tail which was going the speed of a hummingbird wing, that I, the runt, Quinn, the Little Coyote, had found the very best boy and I was going to be OK. I got the best one. And you know what? He thought he got the best one, too.
He pulled me right up against his leg and I can admit it. I licked his jeans. Right then and there. I licked that man, and I looked up just as a big hot tear landed in my ocean blue eye.
After he got out what he needed to, and he didn’t tell me what that was, and it was none of my business until he was ready to confide, but after the tears were done and he had pulled a bandana out from under the seat of the truck and wiped his eyes and nose with it, he looked red-eyed but relieved.
I would explain to him later that licking eyes is one of my favorite things. A service I provide for free. But things were new. And we were cautiously embarking on this journey together.
And that is when he started talking to me. To me. Like I was…his kid? His brother? His imaginary friend? God bless me, I’m his dog.
As he drove off with me, he said it all like this. Quinn is a strong enough name. I like Coyote, he said. Little Coyote is dang cute. And he rubbed the stripes on my head. He went on about how he didn’t suspect I’d be little for long. I don’t know, he said then. Maybe I would. We’ll try to feed you up and see if those rough ones were just stealing all your food, he said, but maybe you will just stay little. He scratched me gently behind the ear. I liked’ta died and my back foot got to twitching and he laughed.
Then he said this. I think it’s just Coyote with the whole three syllables, not with two. Coy-o-te. That’s proper. Quinn if you shit in the house. Yote if you wake up before 5:30 in the damned morning.
Coyote. With three syllables. Whatever those were. I wanted so bad to say you can call me mud as long as you call me yours. This big, strong man with the strong hands and the sad face and all the sun-worn skin and the gray hair, yessir, he is mine. That’s for sure.
Let’s go get you some food at the store, he said. Then we’ll go check on some cattle. What do you say, Coyote?
I let the tail do the talking. And he grinned so big and turned into the feed store parking lot. He could tell I was saying you’ll never be alone.
end.
