Coyote

The woman turned down the radio and watched the truck pull up the dirt driveway. Its headlights flooded the kitchen. She checked on the roasting sweet potatoes, which were for the baby who was asleep in the bedroom.

“Hello,” the man said, stepping into the house. “It took me almost an hour to get here.”

“Was it hard to find?” the woman asked.

The man walked around the living room, knocking on a beam, inspecting the small, dark chimney. His shoes left a mark on the cream rug.

“Can you take them off?” the woman asked, without looking at him.

He placed his keys on the side table and sat down on the wobbling armchair to pull off his boots.

“It’s too far from the city,” he told her, his mood dark. The woman could sense that he was going to say something to hurt her.

“It was the best place I could afford,” she told him, sitting down on the sofa.

“I like the wood floors,” he said, and pressed his socked feet firmly down.

“I do, too,” she said. “The house gets a lot of good light.”

“I want to see her,” he said.

The woman motioned toward the baby’s room and the man disappeared down the hallway. When he came back a few minutes later, the skin beneath his eyes was purplish. “I want her with me,” he said.

“She’s too small,” the woman told him.

“She’ll be fine,” he said.

“She’s still breastfeeding,” the woman said.

“She can take a bottle. I want her with me two nights a week,” the man said quietly but angrily.

“We can go to court then,” the woman half-whispered.

“They’ll split the time between us. This is California,” the man said.

This exchange aroused a frantic and ferocious animal inside the woman. She walked to the kitchen so she wouldn’t have to be near the man anymore. She ran the cold tap to drown out the sound of her own despair and shut off the oven. The voices on the radio murmured, and she thought her chest would explode. When she returned, she brought the man a glass of water and stood at a distance with her arms crossed.

“Your house is too far from me,” he said, shifting so the armchair rocked onto its front legs. “How big is the lot?”

“Bigger than I expected,” the woman said. The land beyond her house appeared vaster than it was because the lots on either side weren’t developed. Only once, she’d walked from the house to the foothills with the baby wrapped to her body. She’d spotted a large coyote staring down at her in the middle of the day. She guessed the coyotes lived in these hills, camouflaged by the creosote bushes and rapeseed. This was no place to keep chickens or small animals. They’d be eaten alive every night. Not even a good place to keep a dog. Coyotes were known to lure them out, pretending to play, until the pack descended. “Come see,” she said.

The man pulled his boots back on and hoisted himself up. The screen door rattled shut behind him. He walked, as usual, five paces ahead of the woman. His shadow fell over the dying grass, which was so high it grazed her thighs. A lizard ran up a rock beside her.

The woman wondered how many hours the land would require from her before flourishing. How long it would take to mow the grass and move these large stones. Everything in her life was like this field, parched and full of stones. It required such patience and forbearance. But manipulating a dry field was a kind of soft power, wasn’t it? More creative than brute force, more supple than a straight line. With enough firm, steady pressure, and quietude, one could make all things yield.

“I can’t believe I was away from her for a month,” the man said.

“Well, you chose to go,” the woman replied. She looked up and found the pale moon hanging in the air. Across from it, the red sun blazed even as it sank beneath the horizon. A big hawk landed on the giant oak. It held its wings up high.

“Look at that,” the man said, turning as he walked. “A red-tail.” And then he was gone, though she could hear his arms and legs catching against the hard rock and dirt of the dry well.

The woman bent over the well’s dark mouth. She had marked the well’s location in her mind as parallel with the big oak, intersecting an invisible path from her house. But it had been several days since she’d walked this far. The unfinished well was twenty-eight feet deep. She had read about it in the property report. And as she looked down at the man’s face, she wondered how deep the well would have to be lowered to reach water.

“Are you all right?” she called. A brown cloud of dust plumed slowly towards her. The man examined his scuffed arms.

“How do you get out?” he shouted in disbelief.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Get help,” he commanded. He jumped against the wall and slid back down. “Shit,” he said, looking down at his hand.

“Are you bleeding?” the woman asked.

“Of course I am,” he shrieked. “Call the fire department.”

“We don’t have one here,” she told him.

“Call the police—call someone! Get help,” he yelled. “Don’t just stand there!”

He was always depressed and saying ruthless things. He had been gone for a month and then driven to her house to complain that she was too far. And now he wanted to take the baby away from her. The baby would scream all night until she exhausted herself. No, she wouldn’t let the man do that.

“Okay,” she said. She could hear the baby starting to cry. She ran back to the house and the screen door rattled behind her.

She held the baby close and kissed her head. The baby’s diaper was wet, and so the woman changed her, smiling and kissing the baby’s hands. She set her down in the little highchair and ran one of the sweet potatoes under water until it was cool enough to peel.

“Look at this—so delicious,” the woman purred, cutting the orange flesh with a spoon and spreading it on the tray. The baby’s shining eyes drank the woman in. What a sweet little creature the baby was, happy almost all the time, unlike the man and the woman. “A sweet potato for my sweet potato.” The baby grabbed two fistfuls and enthusiastically clapped the orange bits against the tray.

After the woman bathed the baby, they lay down on the bed. The woman read aloud small books about caterpillars, dogs, and bears. She lifted the bedsheet so that it ballooned high over them and then billowed all the way down, which made the baby laugh.

The woman rolled to her side, undraped her breast, and let the baby’s face press into her body. Always, a feeling of exhilaration ran through the woman’s body when she herself became the source of food. A feeling that all good things lay before her, as if she were on the edge of a bright, new moment. A feeling that also made her thirsty.

“Sweet girl,” the woman cooed, the baby slumped gently over her shoulder while she patted her. Together, they walked around the house, the woman picking up her plate from dinner, the baby’s toys, the man’s car keys, a blanket. What would she do with the man in the well? If he managed to climb out somehow, she would tell him she had called for help. He would be enraged, of course, and shout at her and tell her she was crazy. She couldn’t help thinking, though, that the well was the perfect place for the man. Its dark, earthen tunnel muted his anger. And there, he could cause no further disturbances to her life. He could do nothing but stay in the well.

~

Early the next morning, the woman went out to the well. The man was curled up, his body was too long to lie straight. She stared down at him until he stirred, a small jerk—which was a good sign that he was alive. She didn’t want to wake him, and so she packed the baby into her yellow Oldsmobile and drove to town to do her grocery shopping. She bought sausages, eggs, tomatoes, a bloody steak, carrots, milk, and ice cream, plus a rope.

For breakfast, she cooked the sausages, and sliced the tomatoes and salted them. She cut the raw steak in half and fried the bigger piece so she wouldn’t have to go back to see the man for his second meal. Then she scraped everything into a plastic container, and along with some water and utensils, placed the contents into the mop bucket she kept under the sink. She wrapped the baby to her body and walked to the well.

“What is that?” the man yelled, limping as he stood up.

“Food,” she told him. She lowered the rope, which she’d tied to the bucket handle, until he could reach it.

“Where are they?” he called.

“Who?” the woman asked.

“Did you get help?” he shouted.

“Oh, yes,” she called down.

“Why is it taking so long?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Call them again,” he demanded. “It shouldn’t take this long. It’s been the whole night.” His voice betrayed his fear.

“I’ll call again,” she said. “The neighbors didn’t answer their door.”

“Drive until you find someone!” he yelled, as if she were an idiot, and drank down the water and tore open the food.

“Okay,” she called down, and pooled the rope back into the bucket.

Inside the house, the woman retrieved the man’s car keys. She settled the baby into the carrier and placed the carrier under the truck’s passenger side dashboard. Then, very slowly, the woman maneuvered the man’s truck over the dirt and gravel to the back of the house so it wouldn’t be visible from the street. The air was strangely still, and heavy, gray clouds were gathering over the hills.

She turned her mind to clearing the field and building a raised garden. She could plant citrus, corn, squash, watermelon, and tomatoes. She calculated the hours of sunlight and gallons of water the parched land would need for a good crop.

In the evening, when she went to lock the screen door, she found a moth clinking against the lamp outside, caught between the gilded glass and the light bulb. Back and forth it flew, knocking itself silly. Surely, it would find a way out or slowly roast to death.

Just as she turned out the lights, she saw something move in the distance, and she froze. If the man had climbed out, she and the baby would have to run away. The woman stood in the shadow of the house and waited for her eyes to adjust to the dark. Coyotes were moving down the hills. The high grass was teeming with them. She held the sleeping baby close to her, breathing in the clean scent of her skin.

When morning came, the woman would scrub the mark out of the cream rug. She would drive down to the lumber depot and figure out what she needed to build the garden. She could even rent a large mower so she could cut the grass herself while the baby napped. And she would bring food to the man again.