dogs – Kelly Yandell

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?

Pretending At Death

Bette stood, balanced over the water, hanging forward precariously from the rail on the bridge. It was velvet black all around save for a shaft of moonlight that invited her and pulled her down. It seemed to say, “I guide the tides, I can show you where to enter.” The water rippled slightly below, and she imagined the tinkling sound of distant wind chimes coming from the tiny waves below. The moonlight decorating one side of each small undulation mesmerized her. She drew comfort from the friendship of the moon and its cool hand accompanying her to this place and adorning the water below.

She took a final moment to appreciate her strong body. She hadn’t realized that her body was strong and that it had will. She had only ever thought of herself as being blown about by circumstance. Her arms were taut, pulled behind her and holding her out at an angle over the water far below her. Nothing was wrong. Everything was right and she felt a power in the starless sky where the moon and the water were the only beings outside of herself, the only bodies that mattered other than her and they were calling her home.

She felt the grip of her hands one last time. She appreciated them for letting her have this moment, this pause, this last view from above. She relaxed her hands. She let go. She said, “I’m coming,” as though she was joining a lover for dinner but had been running a few, unavoidable, minutes late. The cool air rushed up against her face, or rather she thought, she was rushing through the cool air. And then she wasn’t any longer. Her shell was cracked and beaten on the rocks below, but it didn’t matter anymore.