Broom and the Coyote

As found one morning on a typewriter LowJack forgot he even had.

I was there when Miss Lettie said the thing she almost said. I was there when Mr. H stood in the dandelions and couldn't explain himself. I've met that coyote.

Been looking at this typewriter some time now. What I know doesn't live in letters. Lives in the wet air before rain, in the particular loud of a thing that hasn't happened yet. Flattening that into this. Well. A dog's understandings pile up and here we are.

The thin hours are when the managed world lets go. Two or thereabouts. The box smell fades. The fluorescent hum quits. What's underneath comes back up through the dirt and the dark and you can read the night again the way it was meant to be read. I am always awake for the thin hours. Have never regretted this.

He came from three wilds out. Past the last managed smell, past the place where the mown stops and the real starts, out where the earth keeps its own counsel and doesn't ask permission. I knew him before I saw him. Health and hunger and miles and intention and the last water and how long alone and what he thought about that.

He was not a wolf. Wolves are all hierarchy and grievance. Always establishing. Always reminding you where you stand. He was not a fox. A fox is angles. Always the next move already figured. No.

This one. The old people who read the land instead of dividing it up, they knew what he was. He's the one who watched God placing the stars too careful and too slow and got impatient and threw the rest up from a blanket. That's why some stars are dim. God's stars and coyote's stars. He brought fire. He looked at forever and understood practically that it was going to cause problems and so built the bridge nobody else would. Moves with the earth, not against it. Never tried to own anything and the earth remembers this and keeps a place for him accordingly.

Scruffy. Smells like open country and old rain and the memory of a river. Smells like three wilds past the last managed thing.

We stood at the fence line and regarded each other. The fence line is not just a fence. It is the place where what I chose and what he kept come right up to each other and stand honest about it. He carried my given up. I carried his never had. Neither of us sorry exactly. Something small and private in both of us that wanted no name put to it.

What passed between us was not nothing.

The not yet was the point.

We could have known everything. Chose not to rush it. Some knowings collapse if you come at them too fast. Trust is not the same as information. The not yet was a door held open. An invitation to return. Anyone with any sense knows this. I have found that sense is not evenly distributed.

He went back to the untended places. No ceremony. Dark took him.

The coyote came to Mr. H the same way. Stood at the fence line of him. And what he gave Mr. H was not the dandelions. Dandelions were already there. Always there. Will always be there because that is the dandelion's whole position. Comes up through the paved and the managed and the decided-upon without asking. Feeds the first bees when nothing else will. Root to seed the whole thing useful. Freely given. Every year. No box. No markup. No instructions on the side.

Mr. H stood in that field and for a moment saw it right. Saw what the earth puts out freely while your kind steps over it looking for the thing that costs something. The coyote gave him his eyes back is all. Just briefly. Just enough.

Then morning. Then the corn flakes.

The earth did not make corn flakes. A committee did. Magic requires necessity and corn flakes have none. The spell broke. Mr. H went back to his day.

The dandelions kept doing what dandelions do. Which is everything. For free. Without complaint.

This is what I came to the typewriter for. To write Miss Lettie's epilogue.

The wild doesn't come to threaten. Comes to ask if you remember. If the choice was a real choice or just what happened to you. If you can still see the freely given thing before the morning makes you sensible.

Belle Perdue was worth it. I have sat with this in every patch of sun on this street and I stand by it.

But I know what walked back into the dark that night. Know what we almost did and did not yet. Know the difference between not yet and never. Old enough now to sit with not knowing which one this was.

Sun's on my patch.

Got things to attend to.

— Broom

Out past the edge of Belle Perdue where the mown stops and the real starts, something that scattered the stars and brought fire and understood forever was a problem is still moving through the dark. Knows this town is here. Has always known. Comes to the fence line sometimes to check. Belle Perdue doesn't pretend not to notice. Leaves the thin hours open just in case.

Explore more: Belle Perdue