"Humans and animals?"
"No. The kind of people who say, There are two kinds of people' and the kind of people who don't" Coyote cracked up, pounding her thigh and yelling with delight at her joke. The child didn't get it, and waited.
"OK," Coyote said. "There's the first people, and then the others. That's the two kinds."
"The first people are—?"
"Us, the animals... and things. All the old ones. You know. And you pups, kids, fledglings. All first people."
"And the—others?"
"Them," Coyote said. "You know. The others. The new people. The ones who came." Her fine, hard face had gone serious, rather formidable. She glanced directly, as she seldom did, at the child, a brief gold sharpness. "We were here," she said. "We were always here. We are always here. Where we are is here. But it's their country now. They're running it... Shit, even I did better!"
The child pondered and offered a word she had used to hear a good deal: "They're illegal immigrants."
"Illegal!" Coyote said, mocking, sneering. "Illegal is a sick bird. What the fuck's illegal mean? You want a code of justice from a coyote? Grow up, kid!"
"I don't want to."
"You don't want to grow up?"
"IH be the other kind if I do."
"Yeah. So," Coyote said, and shrugged. "That's life." She got up and went around the house, and the child heard her pissing in the back yard.
A lot of things were hard to take about Coyote as a mother. When her boyfriends came to visit, the child learned to go stay with Chipmunk or the Rabbits for the night, because Coyote and her friend wouldn't even wait to get on the bed but would start doing that right on the floor or even out in the yard.