Short Stories from Wing's Authors.

Coyote In Baja

by

JoEllen Conger

Heading south, down through Baja, my spouse and I knew “Coyote” had been there…although we’d never met him. I looked forward to finding one of his calling cards; a stylized coyote painted in yellow (like a pictograph) on the “beware-the-cattle” signs. Sometimes there would be four or five yellow coyotes to a sign. He obviously had lots of paint, or maybe it was “time” he had plenty of, in which to mark each post.

To be socially correct, I guess I’d have to say that when I felt his aura, I knew him to be an indigenous Native American. But in my heart he was an Indian in his early twenties, with proud shoulders, dark steely/sensitive eyes, high cheek bones and long, shiny, straight black hair, worn well down past his shoulders. His hatband of silver and turquoise conchos would be bright contrasts against his dusty, beat-up western hat.

He would have worn faded blue jeans and a body-hugging, tapered western shirt. His denim jacket would be so faded it wouldn’t even hint at its original color. Boots? No. Not cowboy boots. Not Coyote. He would have worn moccasins.

I never pictured his flute—but I knew he’d carry one strapped in a sheath on his back. I imagined I heard a hint of its whispered sounds on the desert zephyrs, like music…but not quite. It was more like a sigh. One moment I’d think I could hear it and then the sound would be gone on a shifting of the wind.

“I know,” I said to my traveling companion, “he’s a student on vacation. He drinks a lot of beer, so he has to stop frequently. While he’s stopped he paints the coyotes.”

I got to watching for Coyote’s calling cards, disappointed when a cattle sign would go by unmarked. Then he must have run out of yellow paint. Suddenly the coyote pictographs started again in silver. Strange how that made my heart sing. Somehow I had bonded with this mysterious traveler. But his supply of silver paint was limited, so now there were only one or two coyotes per sign, spaced at greater distances.

We turned off the highway, south of La Paz for Cabo Pulmo, a long stretch of unincorporated beach. I yelped with delight when I spotted another of coyote’s silver calling cards.

Pictured in my mind was coyote, sitting cross-legged on a rugged bluff with the wind carrying his music away while he watched the sun end its run for the day. The color of the sky would take up a sudden red glow before disappearing behind a bold, stark, purple mountain range. Night birds joined his farewell tune. The full moon would already be ghosting up the eastern sky.

My spouse and I started back up Baja. Coyote ran out of paint again. Or was it time? There weren’t as many painted coyotes to testify to his passing. We drove a hundred miles without seeing a single one. Eagerly, I watched each cattle sign as we passed it. Finally coyote’s color changed to gold…only one per sign. Then, bright blue, sandy brown and green in quick succession.

“Maybe he has to hurry back to work,” theorized my other half. “That’s why we aren’t seeing so many anymore.”

“Maybe,” I agreed. “Maybe he isn’t drinking as much.” But my disappointment became a feeling of genuine loss as the distances between his marks became fewer and farther apart.

In watching the placement of the cattle signs, I noticed there wasn’t room enough to park a car. How had coyote traveled? Surely not by car. I invented another picture of Coyote traveling by motorcycle. A motorcycle wouldn’t need as much room to pull off the pavement. It would have given him more freedom. But even a motorcycle needs sufficient area to park.  Maybe he was hitchhiking. Walking.

“Hey look!” cried my spouse, pointing to a sleek coyote rolling beside the road. All four of his feet stuck straight up in the air as he wallowed, playing with a stick. How joyous he seemed. His mouth gaped open in a grin.

Then I recalled that the Indians claim that “Coyote” is a trickster. Maybe he didn’t even need a motorcycle. Not Coyote. Not the flute playing shadow. Not a man-coyote shape-shifter. Maybe all he really needed was his flute. No wonder I saw him in my mind, with a twinkle in his eyes and a quirk at the corners of his smile.

He was just being “Coyote”…in Baja.