Prologue
Author’s note: The main character in this novel is a Coyote spirit that has very, very little to do with any traditional indigenous conception. My Coyote is an amalgamation of the fairies of northern Europe, the genius loci of the ancient Greeks, and the puca of the pre-Christian Celts. Like the fairies, my Coyote has a short list of magical powers which include the ability to enthrall, to glamor, and to send people to an alternative reality. Like the genius loci, he is the spirit of a place. Greek spirits of locality usually were attached to a spring or mountain; mine is the spirit of a valley in Nevada. Like the Celtic puca, my Coyote is a shape-shifter who preys on people. Those who wish to learn about the Native American Coyote should consult Native sources.
Also, this novel includes references to an entirely imaginary indigenous tribe referred to as “the People.” There are several tribes that inhabited Nevada in the past and still have lands there or in Idaho or Utah today. The People in my book do not represent any of the real indigenous peoples, and any similarities are coincidental.
Prologue
Old Man Hardkoop died alone somewhere out in the desert near Winnemucca. Only Coyote knows where.
Most of the humans who pass through the Valley of Dry Bones have their eyes on the horizon and see very little of the desert outside the windows of their cars. Bored, they count off the miles left to get somewhere else. They calculate speed-to-distance, estimate their ETA, and grind out the hours of white line fever by fiddling with the car radio, tossing cigarettes out the window, eating junk food, or yelling at the kids in the back seat. Four hours to Reno. Three to Salt Lake City. An hour to Ely. They have no desire to be where they are. They want, often very badly, to be somewhere else.
Many, many years ago, Coyote saw some strange people passing the through Valley in a wagon train. They had their eyes on the horizon and dreamed of California, but they figured distance in terms of footsteps and diminishing water while calculating how long their cattle were going to hold out. They wanted very, very badly to be somewhere else. Coyote tracked their slow, stumbling struggle through the desert scrub with unsympathetic eyes.
Coyote was watching when Old Man Hardkoop finally gave up and lay down in the dirt to die. He’d been a passenger on the wagon of the Keseberg family—Mr. Keseberg being the guy who later became notorious for eating Tamsin Donnor. Mr. Keseberg’s oxen were the walking dead. He’d already tossed furniture overboard, and he and his wife were afoot, carrying their young daughter. He told Old Man Hardkoop to get out of the wagon and walk, knowing that the old man wouldn’t be able to keep up.
All of the settlers in the wagon train knew that Old Man Hardkoop wouldn’t be able to keep up. They didn’t discuss it, at least not while Coyote was in earshot. They just trudged onward, eyes on the distant mountains, dreaming with increasing desperation of California. To them, the desert was an obstacle, a dreadful passage, a trial that tested their moral and physical strength. They saw nothing in the desert to sustain their lives.
The sustenance was there. After all, the People had been living in the desert for centuries. Their ancestors had walked into the desert, looked around, learned what they needed to learn, and found what they needed to find. In the landscape of soft grays and beige, delicate pinks and vivid greens, of thorns and insects, of drought and torrential rain, they found rice grass and jackrabbits. They found springs of fresh water and a river. They found pinon nuts on the slopes of the mountain, reeds in the marsh, and antelope out in the sagebrush. In other words, they found the necessities of life: food, water, shelter, beauty.
The valley’s name came from the tendency of dead animals to hang around forever as white bones, cleaned by the vultures and insects and scoured by windblown sand. Strewn on the ground were the tiny bones of mice and the slightly more robust bones of rabbits. Coyote often stepped on bones of hawks and deer as he patrolled his territory. Once he found the bones of a desert tortoise rattling like castanets in its shell. He’d seen bones of snakes, bones of people, and bones of his brother and sister coyotes. All those bones were constant reminders of how everyone’s story ended, but none of the animals and nature spirits were afraid of death. Death was like the tangy taste of dried ants—it had a sting but flavored life. Death was the reminder to see beauty.
The valley is a wide, flat plain between sudden mountains that climb up abruptly, not bothering with foothills, straight to the sky. Often hazy from the hot dry air, washed out by the glare of the sun, or obscured by thunderheads, the mountains are like a distant dream. The best time for you to see the mountains, dear reader, is on an overcast day when the sky is a dark cloudy blue. Then your eyes can see across fifty or so miles of flat land to where the pinon forests cover the mountain slopes with a soothing dark green. The bones of the mountain are easy to see on those days: steep slants cut by ravines. The forces of erosion have been in action since long before Coyote came into being, and certainly long before you, dear reader, were born. The mountains are another way that death spices the lives of the living. All you have to do is look at the rocks and ravines to know that life is short.
Coyote didn’t pay much mind to the People who lived in his valley. They were competent, lived by the accumulated years of experience, and weren’t in need of his magic. Nor did he need much from them. They existed side by side, foraging and feeding, procreating and dying. Coyote didn’t pay much attention to their deaths because he knew that, while individual humans lived and died—just as the animals and plants lived and died—the web of life in the desert remained.
Old Man Hardkoop’s death was different. Coyote hung around to watch out of curiosity. He was...interested? No, that’s not right. Intrigued? Startled? Disgusted? The wagon people had turned their backs on one of their own. The People of the desert never did that. They moved seasonally, but they carried those who needed to be carried, as best they could. If they were starving—which happened every now and then—and they couldn’t carry someone with them, they mourned those that they couldn’t save. Coyote was baffled by the ways of the new people. They seemed to be stupid, incompetent, and cruel.
Old Man Hardkoop didn’t die right away. He tried to keep up. His feet were swollen and bleeding, his boots worn down to rags. The wagons—wearily dragged along by thin, thirsty oxen—didn’t move fast, and neither did the thin, thirsty women or the dusty, frightened children. Everyone shuffled and stumbled. Mrs. Keseberg held on the side of the wagon to keep herself on her feet.
No one spoke except to yell. Mostly they yelled at the oxen, but sometimes they exploded at each other with voices raw and ragged from the dust. When not yelling, they trudged in silence. Old Man Hardkoop didn’t ask for help. He staggered on, first only twenty feet behind the Keseberg wagon, then forty feet, then behind so far that he couldn’t see the wagons anymore, just the dust.
Coyote tracked him from the brush nearby. He watched the bony shoulders and limp, dusty hat; the swollen hands dangling; the tear tracks on the dirty cheeks. The old man’s eyes weren’t on the horizon, and any dreams of California were dead. His steps slowed. His head bobbled at the end of his skinny neck. He was wondering which step would be his last one when his knees gave out.
Coyote watched the old man collapse in a heap on the ground. There he slumped, his head dangling on his neck, his gnarly old hands laying in his lap. Maybe he thought about his home on the farm in Belgium. The tulips that bloomed in the spring. His wife, God bless her, in her grave. He had planned to return to Belgium, but that dream, too, was gone.
Coyote thought his hands looked like dead spiders. He watched the old man cover his eyes with his spidery fingers, wipe his face, and look around. Old Man Hardkoop couldn’t see any way to sustain life. Slowly, gently, he lowered his shoulder and his head down on the sand. Then he covered his face with one of his spider hands.
Coyote trotted away. It was all very confusing. For millennia, only the People had lived in the desert. Now these new people were passing through and they didn’t know anything, didn’t seem to want to learn anything, and they didn’t take care of their own. He didn’t like them.
