Coyote

TW: Animal death, violence

“Coyotes have the gift of seldom being seen; they keep to the edge to the edge of vision and beyond, loping in and out of cover on the plains and highlands. And at night, when the whole world belongs to them, they parlay at the river with the dogs, their higher, sharper voices full of authority and rebuke. They are an old council of clowns, and they are listened to.” —N. Scott Momoday

Alan shot the coyote on a Saturday, just before sundown.

It was a good, clean shot, maybe through the heart. He’d been sitting out on the porch when he saw it, watching the road—the only thing connecting them to the nearest town still miles away, wide and uneven like a concrete river. Not many cars, but every once in a while, big trucks came hurtling along with enough force that you could feel the wind in your face from the porch. Past the road—the remaining houses still in development, their skeletons marking the flat expanse of sand and shrubbery. 

He’d barely caught the coyote in the periphery of his vision, a glimpse of ratty yellow fur making its way along the road with a long, loping stride, beady dark eyes glaring out its ugly, gaunt face. After a moment, it found what it was looking for; a bloody, flattened shape on the edge of the road that might once have been a jackrabbit. It bent its head hungrily over the carcass and ripped away a mouthful of fur and meat.

God, I hate those things, Alan thought. He’d been warned about the coyote population when he bought the land—warned about the coyotes, the scorpions, the rattlesnakes. The desert had a vested disinterest in preserving human life. That hadn’t mattered to Alan. The risk was its own reward; this part of the desert was remote and untouched, just as much a strange new frontier as the deep sea or the depths of outer space. A few unsold manuscripts and some unsuccessful marriage counseling sessions were nothing in the face of overcoming nature herself. The desert created survivors.

And although the change from living in the city had been sudden and drastic, the housing development was—as he’d had to tell Lisa a thousand goddamn times already—the housing development was really very nice, so new that half the other houses in the area were still under construction. They had their own man-made oasis—Wi-Fi, air conditioning, a yard full of leady plastic plants that never lost their leaves or their vivid green, a technicolor blue pool in the back. The frontier was conquered.

The only problem was that the coyotes had not gotten the memo on this front.

Every sundown like clockwork, the noises started up, the yips and barks so raucous and unceasing you’d think the stupid animals were having a frat party out there. Lisa bought a white noise machine to drown them out, but the coyotes seemed to take this as a challenge. They drove the dog crazy

Alan shot it mostly out of disgust, and partially to see if he could even manage to hit it. He’d bought the gun mostly because he’d liked the idea of having one.

“Sorry, pal,” he told the coyote. “One down, a couple hundred to go.”

***

Alan had been spending a lot of time in town lately. 

He hadn’t ever been the sort of guy who went out to bars—although this was really only because he was always busy with his manuscripts—but it was becoming necessary to escape Lisa and her ongoing campaign to make their little oasis as uninhabitable as the desert.

He’d woken up to an empty bed, as was the norm these days, and the distant sounds of Lisa on the phone with someone in the kitchen, probably a book club buddy. He had entertained the idea that Lisa’s city pals would be left behind in the move, but this had evidently been too much to hope for. She’d stopped talking when he’d entered the room—impossible to tell if she’d been talking about him or just wanted him to think so—and then stood like a statue until he’d left again. This game of telephone chicken had lasted more or less the entire day.

Alan was distracted from increasingly bitter thoughts about Janet and Stacy from the book club by the sound of the door opening, and the rush of hot night air that accompanied it. He looked up to see the newcomer: a woman, maybe a little younger but not by much, with one of the most interesting faces he’d ever seen.

She wasn’t beautiful, or even really pretty. If Alan had been writing a description for a novel, the word he would have chosen was striking. Her face was lean and hollow, her body narrow but muscular. Her hair looked like it really needed to be introduced to a hairbrush. 

It was a shock when she walked to his table without preamble and sat down across from him.

He only stared at her for a moment, and then managed to say, “Have we…um…met before?” Her face—although he couldn’t see it well in the dim lighting—was so oddly familiar.

She smiled and ducked her head, maybe shy, or just trying to seem shy; there was something disingenuous about the movement. It occurred to Alan that he was being flirted with. It was the first time since the age of thirty. 

She looked slyly at his wedding ring, and when he slid it off his finger, she laughed. Her voice was hoarse and dry, like a heavy smoker’s. He laughed with her.

“Hey,” he said, on impulse. “Do you want to get out of here?”

***

He’d lost his wedding ring.

Alan could believe he was stupid enough to have lost the goddamn ring. 

He’d driven back home early that morning, feeling smug and youthfully mischievous, like a teenager getting away with sneaking out to a party, his self-esteem fully restored. It wasn’t until the next morning that he realized he’d somehow misplaced the ring.

Lisa didn’t notice, thankfully, or maybe just didn’t care. 

“I wish you hadn’t shot that coyote on the road the other day,” she said to him moodily. 

“Oh, come on, you can barely see it from the porch,” he said, not looking at her. 

“It smells.”

Alan sighed in exasperation and said, “What do you mean, it smells? It’s all the way down the road.”

“Well, it smells like it’s right outside,” Lisa said. “Or else a rat died in the walls. And those coyotes were making so much noise last night, I couldn’t sleep. I think they were hunting something.”

“I didn’t hear anything last night.” Although if he sniffed hard, there was perhaps a whiff of dead animal.

“There weren’t any coyotes in the city,” Lisa said, in the tone that meant an argument was coming. “And we had friends next door, and I had my job, and—”

The doorbell rang.

Max, their golden retriever, whined from another room but didn’t run investigate like he usually would have.

Alan looked up from his coffee. “Now who the hell could that be?”

“Don’t swear,” Lisa said. “Maybe someone finally moved into one of those empty houses.” She went to the door. Distantly, he heard her say, “Hello?” and a low, hoarse voice muttering something in reply.

Lisa called out with some confusion, “Alan, she’s here to see you.” She stepped into the kitchen, and behind her was the woman he had met last night.

She looked at him with stony black eyes and said, playful, “I’m just here to return this.” 

She took out his wedding ring and set it on the table.

***

In the ensuing argument, he failed to notice when the woman left. It occurred to him belatedly that he hadn’t ever gotten her name.

Lisa eventually went off to the bedroom, shutting the door firmly behind her, and abandoning Alan to wallow in the living room. The silence hadn’t lasted more than five minutes when she slid the bedroom door open a crack and said, “Where’s Max? I thought he was in here.”

“How should I know?” Alan said, and Lisa shook her head and shut the door again. She was on the phone with somebody again. He distinctly caught the words, divorce lawyer.

“Max,” Alan called out half-heartedly. There was no answer, which was unusual. Wind whistled somewhere in the distance, louder than it usually was. Somewhere in the distance, a coyote yipped. A dog gave an answering bark from outside.

Frowning, Alan leaned in the hallway. The front door stood open. No sign of Max. “Jesus,” he muttered, and went for the leash.

Five minutes later, with a flashlight in one hand and the dog’s leash in the other, he ventured out into the night. The dog can’t have gotten far. 

To the left, he heard two more barks, and then a high, panicky yelp, from behind him this time—then a gurgle—then silence. He whipped his head around in the direction of the sound.

Several feet away, half-hidden in the darkness, was the woman from the bar, standing between him and the house.

She froze mid-step, black eyes stretched comically wide, as if to say Oops! You got me! She was smiling at him, expression still playful. Moonlight glinted off of a sharp white tooth. Something dark and wet glistened around her mouth

“Oh, God,” said Alan.

In one hand, she held something limp and fuzzy by the neck. She bent her head low to take another bite.

Alan dropped his flashlight and the leash and bolted.

Behind him, there was a slick, wet, tearing sound. A coyote howled gleefully, and then the night air was full of noise—yipping, barking, snarling. Not a single coyote, but an entire pack. 

He stumbled, almost falling, but just barely managed to catch himself in time. He ran without direction, lost in blind terror like a mouse fleeing a cat. He remembered the coyote with its mouthful of dead rabbit, those wicked teeth biting, tearing. 

Something nipped at his ankle.

He managed another burst of speed as uneven ground turned to asphalt under his feet and somehow, miraculously, the sounds of the pack fell away. Gasping, he managed to look over his shoulder.

They stood there—what must have been hundreds of them—scrawny, mangy creatures, their ribs showing through their thin fur, their eyes glinting with reflected light.

“That’s right,” he gasped, so out of breath he could barely speak. His heart was pounding in his ears so loudly, he couldn’t hear anything else. “You—you all stay back.”

He didn’t see the truck coming.

There was a crack like a tree branch breaking, hidden under the fading roar of the truck as it raced on, indifferent, leaving Alan’s crumpled body in its wake.

The first of the coyotes stepped onto the asphalt. Alan let out a low, gurgling moan of pain. The coyote hesitated, skittish, until it grew bolder and approached again. The others watched as it lowered its head to take the first bite. 

The desert, after all, created survivors.