Posted: August 29th, 2022

Coyote Blue Chapter 34~36

CHAPTER 34
Let Slip the Dogs of Irony
The owl was still perched on the power pole.

Adeline Eats sat in her easy chair reading the Book of Job, trying to keep her dinner down. On the way back from the clinic the kids had elected to have pancakes for dinner and Adeline had eaten a mountainous stack and all the mistakes. Now the matriarchs of breakfast, Aunt Jemima and Mrs. Butterworth, were waging a bubbling battle in her stomach while her kids burned with fever and Job suffered boils.
Adeline admired Job for keeping his faith. All she had was a house full of sick kids, a husband with a peyote hangover, an owl out front, and a little difficulty reading small print through her sunglasses, and she was ready to pack it in to her reserved spot in Hell. Old Job was quite a guy, especially with God acting like such a prick. What was that about? When her sisters talked about the Bible it was all the Sermon on the Mount and the Song of Solomon, Proverbs and Psalms; never smitings and plagues. And her sisters had never mentioned that God was a racist. He sure hated those old Philistines. Adeline had a cousin in Philadelphia; she wore a little too much eye shadow, but that didn’t seem a sin you should get smote and circumcised for….
Adeline’s religious reverie was interrupted by a tidal surge of acid in her stomach. She put the Bible down and went to the kitchen for some Pepto-Bismol. She found the bottle and wrestled with the child-guard cap for five minutes before deciding to smite its head off with the cleaver Milo used for hacking deer joints. She was raising the cleaver when the doorbell rang like a call from the governor.
She waddled to the door and threw it open. An enormously fat white man in a powder-blue suit was standing on the steps, hat in hand, sample case at his side, grinning like a possum eating shit. He looked vaguely familiar.
“Pardon me, ma’am,” he said. “I was looking for a Mrs. Adeline Eats, but I have obviously stumbled onto the home of a movie star.”
Adeline remembered that she was still wearing sunglasses and her hair was piled up on her head. She lifted her glasses. “I’m Adeline Eats,” she said. She peeked over his shoulder and shuddered. The owl was still on the pole.
“Of course you are. And I’m Lloyd Commerce, purveyor of the worlds finest vitamin supplement and herbal remedy: Miracle Medicine. May I come in?”
Adeline eyed him suspiciously. “Didn’t you sell me a vacuum cleaner a long time ago?”
“You’ve got a heck of a memory, Mrs. Eats. I did have the privilege of bringing to people’s lives that beam of brightness known as the Miracle. How’s it working?”
“I don’t know. I don’t have any rugs.”
“Very shrewd, Mrs. Eats. What better way to avoid dirty carpets than to avoid carpets altogether? The very reason that I have turned my efforts to a product that addresses the number one problem facing families today.”
“What’s that?”
Lloyd put his hat over his heart. “If you could just afford me a minute of your time, you will reap the benefit of years of research.”
“Okay, come on in. But you got to be quiet. My kids are sick and my husband is resting.” Adeline stepped out of the doorway and the salesman floated by her to the couch.
Adeline sat in her chair across from him. Her stomach gurgled and rolled. She stifled a belch. “Excuse me.”
“Indigestion!” Lloyd exclaimed as if he had discovered the cure for cancer. “Fortune has smiled on you, Mrs. Eats. I have in my case the bee’s knees of indigestion remedies.” He pulled a brown bottle from his case and held it out reverentially. “Mrs. Eats, may I present Miracle Medicine.”
Adeline fidgeted. “I don’t know if I can afford it. I’ve been off work for a couple of days taking care of my kids.”
“In that case, you can’t afford to be without it. And with a house full of illness you can’t afford to wait.”
“Will this stuff cure the flu?”
“The flu? The flu?” Lloyd shook the bottle at Adeline. “The flu doesn’t exist when you have Miracle Medicine. It makes them that’s sick well, and them that’s well better. This is no backward primitive remedy, ma’am, but the finest product that nature and modern science could come up with. Miracle Medicine cures croup, cramps, cankers, and the creeping crud.”
“I don’t know…,” Adeline said.
“And how could you know until you try it? Why, Miracle Medicine will even raise your self-confidence, as well as doing away with excess mucus, the embarrassment of bad breath, intestinal gas, dandruff, the heartbreak of psoriasis, most mental illness, and the post-peyote dry heaves.”
“I don’t think so,” Adeline said.
“You don’t think so? Mrs. Eats, may I see your medicine cabinet?” Lloyd pulled a plastic garbage bag out of his sample case.
“I suppose so,” Adeline said. “The bathrom is in there.”
“Come with me,” Lloyd said. He got up and led Adeline into the bathroom, where he threw open the medicine cabinet. He took a bottle of aspirin from the shelf and held it up. “What is this for, Mrs. Eats?”
“Headaches.”
“Don’t need it.” Lloyd threw the aspirin in the garbage bag.
“Hey,” Adeline said.
“Miracle Medicine makes headaches a thing of the past.” He grabbed the tube of Preparation H and tossed it in the garbage bag. “Hemorrhoids are behind you, Mrs. Eats.” Next went the cough medicine, the Band-Aids, some Neosporin ointment, and an old prescription for bladder infections.
“Hey, I need that stuff.”
“Not anymore,” Lloyd said. “Not with Miracle Medicine.”
Adeline was starting to get angry. “Put that stuff back.”
Lloyd lifted Adeline’s sunglasses and looked her in the eye. “Mrs. Eats, you say you have a house full of sick kids. What exactly have you done to make them better?”
“I took them to the clinic but we couldn’t get in. I’ve been praying.”
Lloyd nodded knowingly. “Well you can say good-bye to prayer.” He stormed back into the living room, picked up the Bible, and threw it in the garbage bag. “You don’t need prayer when you have a medicine that reduces swelling, increases sex drive, and directly addresses the national debt.”
“No,” Adeline said, following him. “I don’t want any.”
He went to the crucifix on the wall, tore it off, and threw it in the bag. “Quiets coughs, promotes regularity, increases energy…”
“No!” Adeline said.
Lloyd took the 3-D picture of Jesus off the television and threw it in the bag.
“Calms nerves.”
“No!”
“Cures acne.”
“No!”
“Cures crabs, spiritual indecision, poison sumac, rabies, and-”
“No!”
“Gets rid of unwanted owls.”
“How much is it?” Adeline said.
“Cash or check?” Lloyd said. He sat back down on the couch.
Adeline heard the bedroom door open. She turned and saw Milo coming into the living room, wearing sunglasses. He couldn’t tolerate bright light for a day or two after a peyote ceremony. “What in the hell is going on out here?”
“I was just talking to this salesman,” Adeline said.
“What salesman?”
Adeline turned around. The salesman, his sample case, and the garbage bag full of over-the-counter icons were gone. The brown bottle of Miracle Medicine sat on the table.
“Here honey, take some of this,” she said. “You’ll feel better.”
She felt better already.
Sam felt as if he were passing out, then the vertigo of falling. The sounds around him faded; Pokey’s voice became distant, then silent. He felt his stomach lurch, as if he had just gone into the big drop of a roller coaster, then an impact that flattened him on the ground. He looked up, expecting to see the others around him in the sweat lodge. The lodge, and everyone in it, was gone. There was nothing but blackness and the sound of his own breathing.
A thousand questions raced through his brain, but he realized that each one led to another and the best strategy was to maintain a state of automatic action and remember why he was here. He stood and squinted into the darkness. Two golden eyes were floating in front of him. He heard the sound of an animal breathing.
Suddenly a stone platform started to glow. On it stood a figure: a man’s body with a dog’s head, wearing an Egyptian kilt. Except for the golden eyes, he was black, so black he appeared to absorb light. He carried a golden staff tipped with the effigy of a falcon. Beside him on the platform was the source of the breathing sounds: a beast the size of a hippo, with the jaws of a crocodile on the body of a lion. It snorted and snapped at the air, flicking foam from its jaws. Behind them both stood a giant balance scale.
Despite all he had been through, Sam felt a wave of mind-blanking terror pass through him. He wanted to run, but couldn’t move. With the light coming off the pedestal he could see human bones scattered around him. He realized that he was standing on his toes, every muscle in his body rigid.
The black dog man snapped his staff on the platform. “Okay, up on the scale,” he said. Then he narrowed his gaze and stepped down from the platform. “Wait a minute, you’re alive. Go away. We only do the dead. Out, out, out.”
Of all the strange things Sam had seen in the last week, watching the dog mouth forming human speech was the strangest. It looked like the creature was trying to yak up a chicken bone. Suddenly the fear was gone. This was too goofy, like an Alpo commercial filmed in Hell.
“Are you the one I’m supposed to talk to about – about getting some help?”
“Look, I tried to warn you that my brother was going to cause you problems. I sent my agent to help you.”
“Your brother?”
“Coyote is my brother. He didn’t tell you?”
“No, he never mentioned a brother. He said I had to find the one that weighs the souls.”
The dog man scoffed. “Well there’s the scale. And here I am. Take a wild guess. Go ahead, Einstein, figure it out. I can’t believe he didn’t mention me.” He sat down, hung his head and began scratching himself behind the ears. “He’s an ingrate.”
The monster growled and Sam jumped back.
“That’s Ammut,” the dog man said. “He wants to eat you.”
Sam shuddered. “Maybe later. I’m here to ask a favor.”
“You don’t even know who I am, do you? That hurts. You think I don’t have feelings?”
“I’m sorry,” Sam said. “I’m a little preoccupied. I didn’t mean to be rude.” Preoccupied? Naked, in a supernatural world, talking to the dog-food god, trying to get back the woman he loved. Excuse my manners, he thought. “I’m Sam Hunter, and you are?”
“Anubis, son of Osiris. God of the Underworld.” He scratched behind his ears harder and his leg began to bounce with pleasure.
“Osiris? You’re Egyptian?”
“My people lived in the Nile Valley, yes.”
“But you said that you were Coyote’s brother.”
“He didn’t tell you that story either?” Anubis was irritated.
“No, sorry,” Sam said. How could Calliope’s life be in the hands of this neurotic canine? He decided to try to placate the god. “But I’d love to hear it.”
Anubis pricked up his long ears. “It was long ago,” he began. “And the god Osiris brought to the people of the Nile Valley the knowledge to plant grain, and he brought great floods to nourish the grains. With his queen, Isis, he ruled all of civilization, until his brother Set, the dark one, became jealous and killed Osiris, tearing his body into fourteen pieces and scattering them over the valley.
“But Osiris had consorted with Set’s wife, Nephthys, and she gave birth to two dog-headed sons, Anubis and Aputet. When Set found the boys he put them into baskets and set them afloat in the Nile. Later, Isis found Anubis and adopted him. But Aputet floated out to sea and across the ocean to another land in the West.”
Here the dog-headed god puffed himself up with pride. “Anubis was always the one bound to duty, the faithful. He found the pieces of our father and bound them together so that Osiris lived again. For that he was given the job of weighing human souls against truth, and taking people to the Underworld.
“And my brother,” Anubis said, “grew up in a wild land, with the powers of a god and no sense of duty or justice. All he cares about is the stories people tell about him. And he never remembers his brother, who has saved him so many times. He never visits. You’re sure Coyote never told you this?”
Sam didn’t know what to say. He thought of the Coyote tales he had heard as a child, and how this seemed to fit.
“No, I was told he brought my people the buffalo and taught us how to live off the land.”
“He did those things to serve himself. Without a way to live, how could they tell stories about him? He has used me for years to make his stories. Now he has returned to Earth and used you.”
It all fit. “He fucked up my life and got Calliope killed for the stories.” Sam was trying to control his anger. “I’m here because he wants people to tell stories about him?”
“He had to or he would end up like me.” Anubis lowered his voice. “Your people don’t have a word in their language for ;computer; or ;VCR; or “television.” The children are losing the old stories, the stories of hunting buffalo and counting coup. That’s not their world. Coyote was afraid he would be forgotten, like me. With the new stories he’s real again. You lived the stories that will bring him back. He doesn’t care about the people, only that they are talking about him. I tried. I sent my agent to help you.”
Sam looked at Anubis. “The big black guy, Minty? You sent him?”
“He’s mine, a dutiful son, but he doesn’t know it,” Anubis said. “I can no longer walk in your world because I am a dead god. I died of change. So I sent the black one to help you. He is mine like you are Aputet’s.”
“I’m his? What does that mean?”
“You were born for his stories. To live them, to carry them on.”
“He wants little kids to hear stories about killing innocent women? That’s supposed to be good for a people?”
“He doesn’t care. As long as the stories are told they will hold his people together. He says people need a good bad example. It gives them pride in doing the right thing. I have always done the right thing and my people are gone because of it, swallowed up by the Christian god.”

Order | Check Discount