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“This is the way that the story was first told to me – way back when I was nothing but a pup,” Coyote began. “Many, many, many long years ago.”
“You mean way back when people lived in caves?” Bigfoot asked. “Back when they carried clubs and ate dinosaur burgers for breakfast?”
“People weren’t actually around when the dinosaurs were,” I pointed out. “My science teacher taught me that.”
“What?” Bigfoot replied. “Haven’t you ever watched the Flintstones?”
I gave it up as an argument that was already lost long before it ever got started.
“I’m not that old,” Coyote angrily snapped.
“You’re not that young, either,” Bigfoot pointed out. “Besides, you only start the story that way in case you get any of the facts out of order – which you probably will - in which case you can always blame who ever told it to you first.”
“Do you really want to try and tell this story all by yourself?” Coyote asked. “I’m not sure there aren’t too many syllables in it for your vocabulary.”
“Tell on,” Bigfoot replied. “I’m not saying a single word.”
“That’d be a first,” Coyote retorted – but then he jumped right back into the flow of the story – before Bigfoot could squeeze one more wisecrack comment out of his mouth.
“It started with a young boy by the name of Little Billy,” Coyote began. “A young boy named Billy who lived all by his lonesome out in the deepest darkest woods imaginable. “
I sat down on a rock.
I had the feeling this was going to be a long old story – because so far I hadn’t actually heard any short ones - and I figured that I might as well do my best to make myself comfortable while I was at it.
“How come every question I ask you guys always has to lead to some dumb old story?” I asked. “It’s beginning to become a bit of a habit.”
“There is no such thing as a dumb story,” Bigfoot said.
“Our whole existence depends upon stories being told,” Coyote added. “So long as a story is told and told well we storied folk will continue to walk the earth.”
“So tell it, then,” I said. “Tell us all about that forest.”
I was getting a little impatient.
“There were trees in that forest that were so old that you would have to spend three hundred years of straight night-and-day calculating just to count up how many rings run round the middle of their trunk,” Coyote went on. “There were trees so old that their shadows had grown roots of their own and the roots had grown shadows. There were trees so old that their leaves had got all tangled up with the clouds and the moonbeams.”
“Okay, okay,” Bigfoot interrupted. “We got it. It was an old forest. Can you cut to the chase? I see my birthday coming up in about three months down the road and the way that you are winding up the wind you generate might blow out all of my candles before I even get around to thinking about baking myself a cake.”
“You’re interrupting me again,” Coyote said.
“Well tell it to us in a hurry,” Bigfoot said. “Life is too darned short for this sort of interminable monotony.”
“That’s what I’m doing,” Coyote said. “I am telling it just as fast as I am able to.”
“Well, tell it faster,” Bigfoot said. “Before it gets too dark to follow the trail.
“How come he lived by himself?” I asked. “Didn’t he have any parents?”
“Are you going to start interrupting now?” Coyote asked.
“I’m just asking is all,” I said, with a shrug. “I still want to hear the story.”
By then I did. It was funny, but every time that Bigfoot interrupted I wanted to hear it told all the more.
“Then I recommend listening a little more with your ears,” Coyote said. “and exercising your mouth a whole lot less.”
And then, before Bigfoot could add anything else, Coyote snapped at him.
“And you,” Coyote snapped. “If you interrupt one more time the very next story I intend to tell is going to concern the manner in which you were discovered asleep on top of that used car lot roof with that giant latex blow-up King Kong mannequin.”
Now that sounded like the kind of a story that I REALLY wanted to hear – but Bigfoot shut his mouth so fast that I swear I heard his jaw click shut.
So Coyote started his story again – completely uninterrupted.
“The boy didn’t live COMPLETELY by himself,” Coyote went on, answering my last question first. “He had parents – and I already told you that he had a dog.”
I nodded hastily, not wanting to interrupt him any more than I had to.
The way I figured it, if either myself or Bigfoot interrupted him one more time it would be weeks and weeks and weeks before we ever heard the end of Coyote’s story.
“Dogs are great companions – given that they aren’t quite coyotes - and this dog was the boy’s very best friend.”
I nodded again.
Coyote seemed happy with that.
“The boy’s name was Little Billy, on account of his Dad’s name was Big William.” Coyote went on. “The dog’s name was Shukramarama – which was what Little Billy had named him – because at the time that he had named the dog, Little Billy was only about three years old and he had liked names that rhymed inside and the name Shukramarama had sounded cooler to him than an entire refrigerator full of fresh-frozen polar bear toes - but everyone else called the dog Old Shuck, because the name was shorter than Shukramarama. Little Billy used to live with his parents and his grandparents – but one summer that all changed.”
I leaned in a little closer.
I hated to admit it – but this was beginning to get interesting.
“One hot summer night – when the moon was hanging in the sky like a fat rotting pumpkin – someone knocked on the family door.”
“Who was it?” I asked.
“It was Old Man Death who had come knocking on the door,” Coyote explained. “He had come for Little Billy’s grandfather – whose name was Old William.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “You mean there are THREE Billy’s in this family?”
“Did their last name happen to be Goat-Gruff?” Bigfoot asked. “And did they go trip-trap, trip-trap, trip-trap over a long wooden troll bridge?”
“Shut up,” Coyote replied.
“Was their mother’s named Billy too?” Bigfoot asked.
“Shut up,” Coyote repeated.
“Maybe they were a family of hillbillies,” Bigfoot suggested.
Which was funny.
“Actually, there was Old William, Young William and Little Billy,” Coyote explained.
“Where there’s a Will, there’s a way, I guess,” Bigfoot said.
“Are you done shutting up?” Coyote asked. “Because I could still sit down and tell that latex blow-up King Kong story.”
“I guess I’m done,” Bigfoot said. “For now at least.”
“And how about you?” Coyote asked before I could get my two cents in. “Are you going to let me finish this story?”
So I shut up again, for at least a half a breath or so.
“So Little Billy’s grandfather Old William walked outside and walked away with Old Man Death,” Coyote went on.
“Why’d the grandfather do that?” I asked.
“The grandfather was old and his bones had been aching for long past hurt and he figured that if he didn’t walk away with Old Man Death that there might be trouble for the family.”
This was a complicated story but I did my best to listen.
If it had something to do with getting Warren out of that pine cone cocoon and me back to somewhere close to the way that everything used to be – it was worth listening to.
“What happened then?” I asked.
“Well, three weeks later there was another knock on the door,” Coyote said. “It was Old Man Death again – only this time he had come for Little Billy’s grandmother, Wilhelmina.”
Wilhelmina?
It figured.
“I thought you said her name wasn’t Billy,” Bigfoot interjected.
“It’s Wilhelmina,” Coyote said. “That isn’t Billy, now is it?”
“If you say so.”
“Well, she had been feeling pretty stiff and tired and old herself,” Coyote went on. “So she went along with Old Man Death without making any kind of trouble. She missed her husband and she wanted to go off and be with him in the Kingdom of the Dead.”
I leaned back against the Warren-cocoon.
It felt a little cooler – like the sun had been shining on it all day long but it was now time for the night to fall. That Warren-cocoon felt like it was growing colder and its breathing seemed to feel a little bit more labored and I had the feeling that Warren was dying.
I still wasn’t sure just what that would feel like.
It had been hard enough losing one Dad, never mind losing a second.
“What’s that feel like?” I asked. “Being so lonely that all you wanted to do was to walk off with Old Man Death? And what does the Kingdom of Death look like? Do they have any sort of computer games there?”
I wasn’t sure if I was talking to Coyote or to Bigfoot or whether I was talking to whatever was left of Warren inside of that Warren-cocoon.
I might even have been talking to my real Dad.
“You won’t know until you get there,” Bigfoot answered. “And until then you just have to learn how to make do with just not knowing.”
I wasn’t so sure about that but I didn’t see any point in arguing with him over it.
“Three weeks later there come another knock at the door.”
“Was it Old Man Death?” I asked.
“It was,” Coyote replied. “Well, Little Billy’s father went to the door and told Old Man Death that he would have to go. You’ve caused enough trouble for this family, Little Billy’s father said to Old Man Death. Why are you so set in picking on us? Then Old Man Death told Little Billy’s father that sometimes it rains and sometimes and sunny and this was nothing more than Little Billy’s family’s turn to get rained on.”
“Who did he come for?” I asked.
“Old Man Death had come for Little Billy’s father – and try as he might, Little Billy’s father had absolutely nothing to say in the matter. He hung onto the doorway and he hung onto the banister and he hung onto the porch swing but then finally he had nothing left to hang onto and so he got up and he walked on down the road with Old Man Death.”
“What happened then?” I asked. “Did Old Man Death take Little Billy’s mother?”
“He did not,” Coyote said. “So why don’t you stop trying to guess all of the fun out of this story?”
I thought about all of that family walking down the road with Old Man Death and I had to wonder just how much fun this story was REALLY supposed to be?
“Little Billy’s mother cried for three straight weeks – from sun up to sundown until the pine floorboards of the house were soaked with her tears. And then on that night of the third week Little Billy’s mother stood out on the porch under the moonlight and she sang a song that sounded a little like a coyote howling at the moon and the waves talking to the shoreline and the wind whispering through the autumn trees on the longest midnight of the year. She sang a song that was both beautiful and terrible and as lonely as an empty water bucket, rusted at the bottom and poked full of holes.”
Closing my eyes and listening to Coyote’s story I could almost hear that lonesome woman singing her song.
To the ears of my imagination that lonesome woman sounded more than just a little bit like my Mom.
“So what happened then?” I asked.
“Well Old Man Death, he heard the song and its music called to him just as surely as a southern dream calls to the bump on the front of a wild Canadian goose bill. Old Man Death just walked up to her porch and she told him that if he didn’t take her there and then that she was going to keep on singing until the world filled up with tears and drowned.”
“So what did he do?”
“What could he do? If the world all drowned he’d be out of the death business – on account of everybody getting suddenly drowned,” Coyote said. “So he took her with him on down the road to the kingdom of death.”
“Three weeks later a raging swamp fever hit that area and Little Billy took sick and he lay on his bed and he dreamed of wildfire and furnace coal. The heat roared up in him from out of bones and he sweated so much that his sweat soaked the floors clear of his mother’s tears. Finally Old Man Death had nothing to do but to walk on up to Little Billy’s house and take Little Billy down the road with him too.”
WHAT???
“He doesn’t die too?” I said. “That isn’t fair!”
“Who said death was supposed to be fair?” Coyote asked. “Death is nothing more than a single card in a deck that we each have to turn over – one card at a time – until we reach that final card and the game is done.”
I thought about my Dad lying out there in that desert – blown to ribbons by that baby carriage full of high explosives and roofing nails.
Sometimes it is sunny and sometimes it rains.
“So what happened next,” I asked sullenly.
“Old Shuck had his own idea about where Little Billy was going to go,” Coyote said. “When Old Man Death walked onto the porch Old Shuck was standing there and waiting for him. That dog growled a growl that would terrify a thunderstorm into sunshine. “
“Did he chase Death away?” I asked. “Did he save Little Billy?”
I was really getting worried.
“I didn’t say that,” Coyote said. “The truth of it was that Old Man Death wasn’t afraid of that Old Dog Shuck. He knew that he just to reach out his hand and Old Shuck would be struck just as dead as graveyard dirt. A single puff of Old Man Death’s freezer-cold breath would have iced the very flesh of Shuck from off of his old dog bones – but Old Man Death truly admired the courage that the old dog was showing.”
“That’s an awfully good dog you’ve got there boy – Old Man Death said to Little Billy,” Coyote went on. “And while he was saying that he blew just enough of his breath onto Little Billy just enough for that fever up and stepped straight out of Little Billy’s bones quicker than you could say spit on a stick.”
Coyote kept on talking and I just followed him right on inside that story until I might as well have been standing there on Little Billy’s front porch right directly next to Coyote – the two of us listening to what Old Man Death had to say.
“Do you think that you would sell that dog to me?” Old Man Death asked. “I’d sure like to have him as my own.”
“Well that depends on what you want to pay for him,” Little Billy replied. “I’m kind of thinking that nothing you offer is going to be enough. Right now Old Shuck is all I have left of my family.”
“The price is your life,” Old Man Death said. “If that dog comes with me than you have to got to get up and shake this fever from out of your bones and live to about a hundred and three years of age – give or take a day or two.”
Little Billy didn’t know what to say – but Old Shuck knew exactly what needed to be done.
“That dog walked right on up to Old Man Death and he licked Death’s bony fingers with his long pink tongue,” Coyote kept on talking. “And the salt of the dead man’s bones worked its way into Old Shuck’s bloodstream and right then and right there he became Death’s very own dog.”
“So I guess that Death sweat works just a little bit like Giant Tears do,” I said, thinking back to Old Nanna Bijou, back in Thunder Bay – laying in a pool of his own tears and slowly turning into a mountain.
“I guess it does,” Coyote agreed with a knowing grin. “Just a little bit.”
And then Coyote slid right back into his story.
“So when ever Old Man Death knows that he has to make himself a house call,” Coyote went on telling. “He sends Old Shuck ahead to let people know that it’s time to go. Old Shuck is what some folks call a psychopomp – a messenger of Death. It was Old Shuck’s job to let families know that it is time for the saying of goodbyes. He lets people know when they have to go and make casserole and when they have to get their church clothes cleaned and pressed. He lets people know that Old Man Death is coming close behind.”
I shivered just a little.
Coyote smiled like that shiver was what he had been trying for in the first place.
He winked at me and Bigfoot grinned and just exactly before I giggled out loud when I realized just how scared silly I had really been – the grandfather of all hound dogs barked outside The Prophet’s door.
“It sounds like we’ve got company,” Bigfoot said, with a grin.
“Let’s just pretend that we’re not home,” Coyote suggested. “It’s probably just a salesman looking to sell us some toilet brushes.”
But of course Bigfoot did not listen to Coyote’s suggestion.
Instead, he got up and opened the door.
It wasn’t Death at the door – and it wasn’t a traveling toilet brush salesman. It was something a whole lot worse than either of those two combined.
It was Old Shuck.
He had heard Coyote tell his story told and Old Shuck had come running.
As big as life and twice as ugly.