Coyote was over by the big basket of salmon, approaching it, wary, but out in the open, in the full sunlight, in the full current. And a boy and a man borne by the same current were coming down the long sage-spotted hill behind the gas station, each with a gun, red hats, hunters, it was killing season. "Hell, will you look at that damn coyote in broad daylight big as my wife's ass," the man said, and cocked aimed shot all as Myra screamed and ran against the enormous drowning torrent Coyote fled past her yelling "Get out of here!" She turned and was borne away.
Far out of sight of that place, in a little draw among low hills, they sat and breathed air in searing gasps until after a long time it came easy again.
"Mom, that was stupid," the child said furiously.
"Sure was," Coyote said. "But did you see all that food!"
"I'm not hungry," the child said sullenly. "Not till we get all the way away from here."
"But they're your folks," Coyote said. "All yours. Your kith and kin and cousins and kind. Bang! Pow! There's Coyote! Bang! There's my wife's ass! Pow! There's anything— BOOOOM! Blow it away, man! BOOOOOOM!"
"I want to go home," the child said.
"Not yet," said Coyote. "I got to take a shit." She did so, then turned to the fresh turd, leaning over it. "It says I have to stay," she reported, smiling
"It didn't say anything! I was listening!"
"You know how to understand? You hear everything Miss Big Ears? Hears all—Sees all with her crummy gummy eye—"
'You have pine-pitch eyes too! You told me so!"
"That's a story," Coyote snarled. 'You don't even know a story when you hear one! Look, do what you like, it's a free country. I'm hanging around here tonight I like the action." She sat down and began patting her hands on the dirt in a soft four-four rhythm and singing under her breath, one of the endless tuneless songs that kept time from running too fast, that wove the roots of trees and bushes and ferns and grass in the web that held the stream in the streambed and the rock in the rock's place and the earth together. And the child lay listening.